Mike Blejer

My child is growing up to be a true man of letters (i.e., bullying his dad into eating them as he watches from the toilet like a jolly well constipated king).

What’s up dog?

One of the most important things a parent can do is foster self-reliance. That’s why I’m teaching my son to beat himself.

(I accidentally pasted the link in twice, but it's a good cause so I guess I'm leaving it?)

Donate to Help Curry Corner Through This Difficult Period, organized by Curry Corner Due to ongoing safety concerns in Minneapolis, Curry Corner has made the… Curry Corner needs your support for Help Curry Corner Through This Difficult Period

His staff is in hiding, so he's shut down his restaurant and is keeping them fed. FUND HIS GO FUND ME tinyurl.com/mtbr6re4

Donate to Help Curry Corner Through This Difficult Period, organized by Curry Corner Due to ongoing safety concerns in Minneapolis, Curry Corner has made the… Curry Corner needs your support for Help Curry Corner Through This Difficult Period

My co-worker (who's the self described "short round blueberry in the purple PWHL hat passing out water") said: OMG! Tell them that's Sukhdeep, who owns Curry Corner in Nordeast. People need to show up when he reopens and help him get his business back on stable footing.

The key to maintaining lifelong authority as a parent is to quiz your kid relentlessly from the moment they can barely speak. That way, they grow up believing you have all the answers and don’t even think to question it by the time they hit middle school and cognitively blow past you.

For no reason at alll, I have this picture filed away in my mind as “My Precious.”

At that point, my best shot at avoiding injury is to hope he grows a giant, unphotogenic humpback and I strategically shift to cataloguing our storied relationship via abstract watercolors and interpretive dance.

I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do when my kid gets too big for me to hold him with one hand and do a selfie with the other.

Memorialized this, the first of what I can only assume will be many, many occasions on which my son is objectively dressed better than me (although statistically speaking we probably both got our outfit from my mom).

(Or both)

Well, or someone bookish trying to set up a precedent for ignoring election results.

My darling may be only two, but even he can see right through this blatant Pluto erasure.

There’s a sweet spot right after dinner and right before the meltdown when Toddler becomes a really fun tiny drunk unproblematic frat bro. And I’m not saying it would be ethical to rent him out as an evening party mascot for local fraternities, but in this essay I will

And don’t kid yourself, buddy — you’re not the prop master in a student production of 12 Angry Men.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that it’s never good to generate evidence. Finding evidence? Great. You could be a detective, or a scientist, or an archaeologist who punches Nazis.

But making evidence? Best-case scenario, you’re the prop master in a student production of 12 Angry Men.

I don’t let him listen to Queen, and I turn off The Lion King right after Mufasa gets it. I’m a ’90s kid. My Luigi was a queen named Scar.

It’s wild how many kids’ stories center on kings and queens and princes and princesses. Then one day you grow up and realize it’s a thousand years of accrued pro-billionaire propaganda (adjusted for inflation).

Anyway, the point is, we’re egalitarian antimonarchists in this house.

On some days, parenthood requires me to be a detective, decoding my toddler’s rapidly evolving word jumble to solve what turns out to be a surprisingly human mystery.

Keep in mind, most of those words are crazy billionaire taint-licking pro-fascist lies, and he has to say them all with a straight face, it can’t be easy.

POV: You work from home and somehow you *still* end up sharing a cubicle.

Teaching my kid about friction early so he really understands what I’m talking about when I tell him he rubs me the wrong way.

Me to my darling child, my eldest son, my glowing lantern who daily illuminates the path through this dark world: yooo, you wanna get sh*tfaced?

It’s just so amazing to watch them grow up, to see all the little lights flicker on inside their heads, like take this photo series— if you look closely, you can see the *exact* moment he realizes it’s already too late.

When you’re staging a photo, lighting is everything. That’s why for the family shoot this year I used a stand-in of my exact mass equivalent (skinny goof; grumpy dog). I was gonna Photoshop myself in later, but it seemed hard and, honestly, no one’s noticed.

This Bumbo chair’s supposed to help your kid learn to sit up, but by the time he was old enough to use it, his thicc Blejer thighs didn’t fit in it, so I used it to train his neck.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked this kid to teach me how to use his dang abacus.

I know this really isn’t the point, but I’m still glad Dave went aaaall the way through the fame machine and came out a good one.

Plus, I’m pretty sure Republicans are bringing back child labor, and I think there should be at least a couple of cushy, air-conditioned jobs.