Magazine

Tired dad holding a crying 11-month-old baby while looking at a laptop screen

Troubleshooting The Baby Come Back Phase Without Losing Your Mind

2:14 PM. Portland is doing that misty drizzle thing outside where it's not quite raining but you still get entirely wet. I've stepped exactly 3.4 feet away from the playmat to grab my lukewarm coffee from the side table. I...

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An 11 month old baby boy stuck in the corner of a living room

Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner: A Dad's Guide To The Reverse Gear

It was exactly 6:14 PM, the thermostat was holding steady at 68.5 degrees, and I was watching my 11-month-old son slowly reverse himself into the precise 90-degree angle where the drywall meets the glass sliding door. He looked like a...

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A six month old baby doing the wobbly tripod sit on a playmat while holding a teether

The Messy Truth About When Your Baby Finally Learns to Sit Up

I was sitting on the cold linoleum floor of a slightly damp church basement wearing yoga pants that hadn’t seen a yoga studio since Obama was in office, staring at a six-month-old named... Brayden? Jayden? Let's go with Jayden. Jayden...

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A tired father awkwardly trying to squeeze a very chubby baby into a standard infant car seat.

The absolute physical reality of raising a genuinely big baby

I'm standing in the middle of our dimly lit bedroom, sweating through a t-shirt, attempting to pull a cotton sleepsuit over my daughter's left thigh. The label, stitched with mocking delicacy, reads 'Up to 1 Month'. As I try to...

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A very tired mom drinking cold coffee and scrolling her phone in the dark looking for parenting advice.

Searching Reddit for a Baby Walking Game at 2 AM Was a Mistake

It’s 2:14 AM. I'm wearing my husband’s horrific faded college track sweatpants—the ones with the inexplicable bleach stain on the left knee—and I'm hunched over my phone in the dark, furiously refreshing a forum thread. I'm holding a mug of...

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Exhausted dad trying to measure a squirming toddler on a wooden floor

The Great Lil Baby Height Panic: A Dad's Late Night Mistakes

The metal tape measure snapped back with the terrifying velocity of a striking cobra, narrowly missing my left eye and causing Twin B to shriek with such piercing intensity that the neighbour's dog immediately began howling in sympathy. It was...

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A heavily pregnant woman attempting a yoga inversion on a sofa.

Gravity, sofas, and the dizzying truth about spinning babies

"Don't try to pull me by the shoulders, Tom, you'll misalign my pelvis," Sarah hissed. She was currently suspended upside down with her knees on our mustard yellow sofa and her forearms flat on the living room rug, her face...

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A dad looking confused while his 11 month old baby yells at a rubber spatula

What Age Do Babies Start Talking? My Audio Troubleshooting Log

Yesterday, my mom texted me that I clearly said "tractor" at eight months old. This morning, the barista at our local Portland roastery informed me his daughter was speaking in full, complete sentences before her first birthday. Meanwhile, my Reddit...

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A tired mom holding her baby who is practicing lifting their wobbly head on a playmat

A Letter To My Past Self: When Can Babies Hold Their Head Up

Dear Past Sarah, You're currently sitting on the faded gray IKEA rug in the living room, the one that already has a weird stain on it from when the dog threw up last Tuesday. You're wearing Mark's old college sweatshirt—the...

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