The Dad Show

The school-year premiere. Up at 6:30, the same front step as every year, and a ten-year-old walks half a mile to middle school — alone, for the first time ever — while Pete realizes a summer of bike rides is what trained her for it. Plus a nervous Rubik's cube hour, the quietest kitchen since June, an unauthorized ice cream stop, a smart aleck in the TV room, the raffle prize that put two kids in...

Mom departs for 48 hours at the Ritz-Carlton; Dad assumes command of the home front. Bonus screen time, delivery pizza, a 6 a.m. cat tribunal, a bike convoy to the farmer's market, a 4-H fair with actual owls, a tug-of-war, a big sister quietly being great, and pancakes before the clock runs out. The Summer 2026 finale.

Year fifteen of the great family migration to Bar Harbor: lazy mornings, a 75-night bike streak, a thirty-minute paddleboard prodigy, Zosa's Island, a five-minute international incident at the Canadian border, and lobster in every known form.

A hard one: saying goodbye to Zosa. Days of watching a silent AirTag, an answer that came from a stranger's kindness, and how the family walked the kids through their first big loss.

The big-girl bed arrives (free, off the town's secret bed conveyor), so the old bunk bed — bought new from IKEA four years ago, now wearing 200 cat stickers and 100 stuffed animals — has to come out: 12 tools, 4 hours, one vanishing allen wrench, a room-sized sliding puzzle, and an archaeological dig back to 2022.

Zosa the youngest cat leaves after breakfast and comes home after everyone's bedtime — so the family AirTags her, discovers her aliases and her dinner circuit, and mounts a full neighborhood quest following the dot.

The whole town shows up for Old Home Day — church pancakes, a parade everyone's in, a retired champion pet-show chicken — and Pete's son defends his cake walk title and goes home with a giant snake cake.

A 10-year-old learns to ride a bike, immediately rides ten miles, then launches a lemonade-and-egg empire — $100 in two hours. Dave does the math.

Mother's Day anxiety for dads — the pressure to make it perfect, the kids' "help" that makes everything harder, and somehow pulling it together.

Spring Break at Hershey Park — one kid refuses every roller coaster, gets talked onto one, hates it, then immediately wants to go again.

Dad's daughter hosts a sleepover with two 10-year-old friends. Giggling until 2am, snack raids, and the dad trying to hold it all together.

The family cat Z2 (zee-too) wants nothing to do with the two new kittens — until he slowly, reluctantly caves.

Spring break in DC goes sideways when an eight-year-old vanishes into the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum — and resurfaces mid-tour with a school group from Ohio.

Assembling furniture at midnight, the art of the dad voice, and other superpowers nobody tells you about.

Relay race meltdowns, wrong-direction sprints, and the dad who got more competitive than the kids.

The epic battle over tablets, timers, and kids who somehow always have five more minutes left.

Dad cooking disasters, mystery ingredients, and why "helping" in the kitchen always triples the mess.

Road trip survival stories — snack negotiations, backseat treaties, and the moment silence becomes suspicious.

Science projects revealed at drop-off, picture-day outfit crises, and a volcano that erupted in traffic.

Real dad product reviews: bubble blizzards, ceiling stars, and why the $3 foam sword beats everything.

The parenting manual nobody gave you — snack logistics, kid lawyers, and what actually counts as a win.

Biscuit the counter-knocking cat, a homework-eating legend, and the TV-blocking tabby who chose chaos.

Two dads trade their most unbelievable kid stories — a kite that flew with the kid and a boy who gave himself a personal day.