Swim lessons 4 days a week. It’s great in that it’s through the city so it’s very cheap… but getting kids to swim lessons every day after work means we get home, eat something, then go right to bed. Not really how I was hoping to spend the summer, but at least the kids really love getting in the pool. And a couple times we went for frozen yogurt after, and those have been some really nice times with them.

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4th of July is coming up and our oldest is probably old enough to internalize some ideas about the holiday. Neither me or my wife are ever excited by the holiday.

How do you talk about 4th of July with your kids?

My 14 year looks forwards to being conscripted for a year in the army when she turns 18. She'll volunteer if she doesn't get drafted. She is otherwise of sound mind, intelligent and has good politics. She just doesn't seem to be able to make the connection between being in the army and being a tool of the racist ghouls that she hates. She thinks it is just a big summer camp where you get to larp doing action bullshit.

To be fair, they're not sending conscripts to do war crimes abroad, not yet at least, but I'm my opinion, the way things are today, the best thing you can do to preserve your body and your soul is to stay as far away as you can from being an armed goon for the regime.

I feel very alone with this opinion. I seem to be the only one in the family who actually takes the stated goas of the military even remotely serious. Everybody else seems to think it is all about building character and learning discipline and making friendships and that kind of bullshit.

I've made a grave error in judgement that's going to require time and effort to remedy.

My toddler is addicted to PlayStation.

Caveat: We do plenty of stuff outside and crafts and whatnot it's not like it's their only form of entertainment.

It's the first thing he asks to do after waking up to the point where they now know they have to do something else first and will ask if it's game time the entire time. They've been playing Spiderman 2 and when we imagination play outside or with toys it's almost always Spiderman related.

In fact, they've started referring to things in real life as missions. We saw two puppies playing while on a walk and they stopped and said "dad let's do the watching dogs mission"

We're working on it. Limiting the time while not making other activities seem like punishments.

Gamer parents are a curse

7 weeks of solo parenting starts today. We had fish sticks and watermelon for dinner just cause we can. My kid has adopted a dead butterfly, the whole walk home he said “mama, thank you for bringing the butterfly home” as I carried that, my kid, the dogs leash and a filled poop bag back home on our walk.