Surviving the Sand: The Truth About Newborn Beach Clothes
We were standing on the windswept expanse of a Cornwall beach, holding two four-month-old twins who were dressed entirely in matching hand-knitted merino wool cardigans. My wife had envisioned a deeply aesthetic Instagram moment featuring the moody British coastline and...
Why the Newborn Kimono Shirt is a Bug Fix for Early Parenting
Before our son was born, I made the mistake of asking three different people how to dress a newborn. My mother immediately texted me a link to a 20-pack of standard crotch-snap onesies because that's just what babies wear. Our...
The Great Baby Accessories Delusion: What Parents Actually Need
I'm currently staring at a twenty-pound velvet baby fedora. I found it in a plastic storage tub at the back of our loft, resting gently atop a pristine, battery-operated wipe warmer. This box is essentially an archaeological dig of my...
The Great Wool Disaster: Picking the Right Yarn for Your Baby
The baby monitor glowing angrily on my nightstand said the nursery was exactly 68 degrees, which is supposedly the good sleeping temperature for a human infant. It was 2:14 AM on a damp Portland Tuesday, and my 11-month-old son was...
Why That Cute Infant Bedding Set is Actually a Terrible Idea
I was sweating through my maternity shirt, wrestling a thick, heavily embroidered quilt into a crib that looked like it belonged in a Victorian museum. I had just dropped way too much money on a matching ten-piece nursery package for...
The Baby Body Schwarz: Why I Dress My Kids in Black Onesies
When I brought home my first dark onesie, my grandma practically clutched her pearls and warned me that putting an infant in black was inviting bad luck, my sister-in-law swore I needed soft pastels to stimulate his developing brain, and...
Wie groß sollte eine Babydecke sein? A dad's troubleshooting guide
The left rear wheel of the stroller locked up with a brutal clicking noise right in the middle of a crosswalk in Portland’s Pearl District. It was raining, obviously, because we live in Oregon and taking an 11-month-old outside requires...
What do newborns wear in summer to avoid melting completely
My first catastrophic error as a father was a pair of matching linen blend cardigans. It was mid-August, the temperature inside our third-floor London flat was hovering somewhere around the legal limit for a sauna, and I was holding two...
A Penguin With Blanket: Safe Sleep And Sanity For Exhausted Moms
I'm standing in the freezing nursery of our drafty Texas farmhouse at three in the morning, holding my oldest son, Jackson, who's screaming like an absolute banshee. I'm staring in sheer panic at this massive, incredibly thick fleece blanket I'd...