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early developmenteducational toysparenthoodplaytimesafety tipstoddler
An 11-month-old baby holding a chunky crayon with a fist grip on a messy paper

The Myth of Baby Art and How to Actually Survive It

I’m currently staring at a active purple streak on the toe of my left sneaker. It arrived there about an hour ago, during what my wife and I ambitiously labeled "creative enrichment time." The biggest myth of modern parenting—propagated almost...

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A wooden convertible baby chair pulled up to a messy dining table

Surviving the baby chair transition without a trip to the ER

The sweet potato puree was everywhere. It was day three of solid foods. Riya was slumped to the left in a hand-me-down high chair that looked like a plastic spaceship. She coughed, gagged, and suddenly went silent. My ER nurse...

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An unplugged flat iron cooling precariously close to a crawling baby on a tile bathroom floor.

The Truth About Baby Bliss (And Why It Doesn't Have a Power Cord)

The smell of singed nylon bathmat is something that stays with you. I was standing in my cramped Chicago bathroom, trying to salvage two hours of sleep with some under-eye concealer, when Kiran started doing his signature banshee wail from...

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Stressed mom looking at a sticky bottle of pink baby benadryl liquid

The 2 AM Baby Benadryl Panic and What I Actually Did Instead

It's 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in February. The wind off Lake Michigan is rattling the windowpanes of our Chicago apartment, and my toddler is sitting on the bathroom counter looking like a lightly boiled lobster. We had tried a...

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Dad trying to apply thick white mineral sunscreen to an actively squirming baby.

Debugging Baby Sun Safety: The Great Sunscreen Firmware Update

There's currently a streak of stark white zinc oxide smeared across the black upholstery of my Subaru, a matching smudge on my favorite dark t-shirt, and a suspicious clump stuck in my eleven-month-old’s left eyebrow. Somehow, despite dispensing what felt...

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Vintage plush toy sitting next to a modern wooden baby gym

The Truth About Finding Your Kid's Beanie Baby Birthday Twin

The biggest myth about millennial parenting is that our childhood artifacts belong in our babies' mouths. You see it on social media constantly. A perfectly filtered, beige nursery. A pristine six-month-old sitting on a linen rug. And in their chubby...

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90s nostalgiaBabybaby clothesParenting Guidesafety tips
A teenager playing with a baby on a playmat in a living room

Nostalgia and Reality: Hiring Your First Sitter

I'm standing in my kitchen, wearing a nursing bra stained with something yellow, staring at a sixteen-year-old named Chloe who just asked me if babies can eat grapes whole. This was my first attempt at hiring a baby sitter. I...

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A plump baby seal resting alone on a grey coastal rock formation

Why Rescuing That Adorable Coastal Baby Seal Is A Terrible Idea

We were twenty minutes into what was supposed to be a restorative family morning on a Cornish shingle beach, locked in a desperate battle with a pop-up windbreak that refused to pop anywhere but directly into my face, when Twin...

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A tired mom stepping over a baby gate holding a cup of coffee

The Great Staircase Panic: A Messy Guide to Baby Gates

It was 7:14 AM on a Tuesday in November, I was wearing one wool sock and one ankle sock, and I had my back turned to the living room for exactly four seconds to pour my second cup of coffee....

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