Magazine
System Error: Why We Banned the Baby's Breath Flower at Home
My mother-in-law texted me four massive paragraphs about how Gypsophila represents everlasting love and is a hard requirement for the nursery design if we wanted to respect tradition. Three hours later, our Portland neighbor—a guy who brews his own seasonal...
Why a 5-Yard Baby Wrap Saved My Sanity (and My Etsy Shop)
I was standing in the middle of my living room, openly weeping, completely tangled in what felt like a parachute. My oldest, Wyatt—who's now five and still the reason I've a twitch in my left eye—was six weeks old and...
The Ridiculous Truth About Buying Baby Uggs For Your Newborn
November 2017. I was sitting at a crowded Starbucks on 4th street, wearing yoga pants that were definitely covered in spit-up, frantically wrestling a tiny, caramel-colored sheepskin bootie onto seven-month-old Maya's left foot for the eighth time in twenty minutes....
Surviving the Absolute Avalanche of Useless Newborn Baby Stuff
At 34 weeks pregnant, my wife and I entered a fugue state in a suburban retail park and bought a machine specifically designed to heat baby wipes to exactly 37 degrees Celsius. I remember standing at the till, handing over...
Surviving the Baby Spice Era: Turmeric Stains and 90s Pop
There's a very specific, aggressive shade of yellow that a pulverized carrot takes on when you enthusiastically fold half a teaspoon of turmeric into it, and I can tell you exactly what it looks like because it's currently permanently bonded...
Why Looking Up Ice Ice Baby Lyrics At 3 AM Changed My Parenting
It was 3:17 in the morning, and my oldest was screaming with the kind of red-faced, breathless stamina that makes you seriously question your life choices. I was sitting on a cheap, half-deflated yoga ball in our drafty Texas farmhouse,...
Why the jennifer lawrence baby name choice makes so much sense
My mother-in-law told me to pick a heavy traditional Indian name to honor our ancestors. The charge nurse on the pediatric floor told me to invent something completely new so there wouldn't be five of them in kindergarten. The tired...
The Smart Speaker Disaster and Finding Safe Lil Baby Songs
My mother-in-law cornered me in the kitchen last Thanksgiving to explain that if I didn't play Mozart for my son at exactly 432 hertz, his neural pathways would fail to optimize for advanced calculus. The next day, the barista at...
Chasing the Pottery Barn Baby Dream Without Losing Your Mind
When I was seven months pregnant with Maya, I was a walking target for unsolicited opinions. I remember my mother-in-law cornering me at my own shower, wearing this aggressively floral blouse, and insisting I needed to buy a massive, heavily...