Magazine

Toddler looking into a brooder box of baby chicks

Raising Baby Chickens: A Reality Check Letter To My Past Self

There's a cardboard box vibrating in the passenger seat of my minivan, and it smells faintly of wood shavings and poor life choices. It’s early March, raining sideways here in rural Texas, and I'm staring at the steering wheel while...

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A single baby chick standing under a radiant heat plate

The 3 AM Reality of Raising a Baby Chick With a Toddler

It's three in the morning on a Tuesday. I'm standing over my bathroom sink with a warm, damp paper towel, delicately wiping dried feces off the backside of a baby chick. My husband is asleep. My toddler is asleep. I'm...

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Exhausted dad trying to figure out a complicated fabric baby carrier

The absolute origami nightmare of strapping on a baby carrier

I was standing in the middle of our cramped London kitchen at two in the afternoon, sweating profusely, completely tangled in eighteen feet of modal fabric. One twin was screaming from the bouncy chair on the floor, the other was...

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A toddler looking at a baby capybara in a zoo enclosure

Why a baby capybara is a terrible pet for your toddler

My sister-in-law texted me a video of a giant rodent eating a popsicle in a plastic wading pool with a message saying we needed to buy one immediately. Two hours later, a mom at the neighborhood park asked me in...

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Stressed mom looking at a smartphone calculator with a coffee mug nearby

Why Every Baby Math Formula Is Basically Lying To You

It was 3:14 AM, and I was sitting on the nursery floor wearing my husband Mark’s oversized gray college sweatpants—the ones with the mystery bleach stain on the knee—aggressively typing numbers into my glowing phone screen while my coffee from...

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Exhausted pregnant mom on couch watching a soap opera on her phone

Exposing the Baby Bump to Billionaire Wife Fantasy for Real Moms

It was 2:43 AM last Tuesday, and I was pinned under a snoring toddler, elbow-deep in a bag of salt and vinegar chips, aggressively squinting at my phone screen in the dark. I had fallen down the darkest, weirdest rabbit...

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Priya staring at a pile of pureed sweet potatoes in tiny plastic cups

Dear Priya: The messy truth about that baby bullet blender

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently standing in the kitchen at eleven at night, staring at a massive pile of organic sweet potatoes. You just bought a specialized baby bullet blender, and you're entirely convinced you're going to...

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A small black portable breast pump sitting on a bedside table next to a coffee cup.

Dear Past Me: Finding Sanity With the Baby Buddha Breast Pump

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the cold bathroom tiles at 3 AM. The heavy white plastic box of your standard issue insurance pump is plugged into the wall, trapping you within a three-foot radius of...

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A soft bamboo blanket and organic cotton retro shorts folded on a nursery chair

The tiny tuxedo myth and other hard truths about baby boy gifts

I was sitting at my cousin's baby shower in Naperville last month, watching her unwrap a tiny, stiff tweed blazer. The tags said zero to three months. It had elbow patches. Everyone cooed, but I just stared at it, calculating...

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