Jumping on the bed, pillow fights, watching Mom and Dad's TV, eating crackers on the duvet. Sometimes I feel like my bedroom is less of a retreat for us grown-ups and more like a fast-food restaurant playground. But what can I really do about it? Could I seriously make my bedroom off-limits to the kids when we live in such a small space? More

When my two year old developed an obsession with cars, trucks, buses, tractors (all things wheeled), I searched and searched for a "road rug" for him to drive on; you know, the rugs designed with ribbons of black with white dashes winding all around, sometimes with scenes of farms or cities printed on them. After a long search, I was relieved to save some money by finding we already had a really cool rug road right under our noses:

"Move to a ground floor!" is what I said to my pregnant friend who lived in the top floor apartment of a three story non-elevator building with those strange outside stairs we have here in Montreal (um, it gets cold and snowy here, hello!). But she preferred to stay put and appreciate all that great top-floor light. Here's how she dealt with it while going through first kid, pregnancy and second kid: More

I sat down with one of our maintenance guys this week to talk about rental damage left by kids. He let me in on the dark secrets of our 211-apartment complex. Here are the top kinds of damage they have to deal with from the families in our block, and a few tips of my own as to how to avoid them. More

Living in a city doesn't always make it possible to be alone in a single-family home. Often, you don't have a choice but to have people living below you. My family has found ourselves in this situation, and in an effort to respect our neighbors and to also teach our kids ways to live in urban environments, we have put together a few tips to help minimize the noise we produce as a family. More

Have you seen Kindling Quarterly, the new publication devoted to the subject of fatherhood? Through essays, interviews, editorials, art, and photography, Kindling highlights men whose work and creative lives go hand in hand with parenting. The first issue features an interview with former Onion editor Joe Randazzo, and a host of other illustrators, designers, cooks and musicians.

Anyone else get that dreaded feeling when their spouse leaves for work on Monday morning? The one that sounds like "Uh-oh, not another Monday"? Maybe it's snowing where you are? Maybe you haven't slept through the night in 8 months? Does your Monday need a pick me up? You may just need some emergency fun. More

When we moved to Boston from Sydney, Australia 3 years ago, the hardest part was the thought of separating our kids from their extended family. We still want aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins to be a strong presence in their lives. How do we maintain that, when everyone lives so, so far away? More