What I Learned After Buying a Blanket With Rainbows for My Twins
We were standing by the dismal puddle that passes for a duck pond in our local park when a woman I had never met touched my arm and gave me a look of deep, teary-eyed solidarity. She was staring intently...
Surviving Brutal Winter Walks With a Fusssack für Kinderwagen
It was a violently miserable Tuesday in November when the double buggy jammed in the middle of Regent’s Park. The wind was doing that specifically British thing where it somehow cuts diagonally upward through your coat, and I was desperately...
The brutal truth about buying your baby's winter sweater
It was mid-November in Chicago, which means the wind off the lake feels like tiny knives. I was running late for a four-month well-child check. My mother-in-law had gifted us this thick, chunky-knit mustard pullover that looked adorable on the...
The Baby Sweater Survival Guide: How Not to Overcook Your Child
"Put a hat on her, she’s losing heat!" shouted an elderly woman at the bus stop, gesturing wildly at Maya (who was currently sweating through her vest and trying to eat a discarded bus ticket). Ten minutes later, a bloke...
The painfully honest truth about willkommensgeschenke für babys
My mother-in-law arrived on day three clutching what looked like a Victorian christening gown and declared that a new baby must only be dressed in white lace. The DHL bloke who dropped off our tenth Amazon box of the week...
Lätzchen Silikon: Why I abandoned the cloth bib fantasy
It was day four of baby-led weaning. My son had managed to work a single wedge of roasted sweet potato into his hair, his ears, and the space between his toes. But the real tragedy was his chest. He was...
My Utterly Chaotic Guide to Surviving Your First Infant Winter
I'm standing in our icy driveway, and the wind is absolutely howling. It's November 2017, Maya is barely six months old, and I'm holding a lukewarm mug of dark roast in one hand while trying to wrestle a screaming, rigid...
The truth about newborn winter dresses and freezing temperatures
November in Chicago is a specific kind of brutal. The wind does that thing where it physically hurts your face. I was standing in my hallway holding my three-week-old daughter, who was stuffed into a thick velvet holiday dress, layered...
Why the cropped baby tee saved my sanity and his cord stump
Day five postpartum. Three in the morning. July in Chicago. The window unit AC was rattling like a dying lawnmower, the ambient humidity was somewhere around ninety percent, and my son was screaming with the kind of intensity that makes...