Magazine

A tired mom wearing a baby in a floral pattern soft structured carrier.

My Messy Journey With the Tula Carrier (And Why I Kept It)

It was a hundred and two degrees in July, right in the middle of a rural Texas Target parking lot, and my arms were bent backward like a stale pretzel. I was leaning heavily against the side of my minivan,...

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A bewildered dad looking at a baby platypus plush toy next to a modern laptop and baby gear.

The Baby Platypus Taught Me More About Parenting Than Books

When it came time to figure out how we were going to explain the birds and the bees—or just basic mammalian biology—to our kid, I got three entirely different pieces of advice within a 24-hour window. My mother-in-law told me...

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A tired dad holding a swaddled baby pig and a coffee mug in a messy kitchen.

What I Learned Debugging Life With Baby Pigs

I'm currently sitting on the kitchen linoleum at 3:14 AM with a laser thermometer in one hand and a syringe of milk replacer in the other. My 11-month-old daughter is finally asleep upstairs after a brutal teething episode, and I'm...

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Stressed mom sitting on the living room rug looking at a baby percentile calculator on her phone

Dear Past Me: Please Put Down That Baby Percentile Calculator

Dear Jess from six months ago, You're currently sitting on the faded living room rug with a floppy yellow sewing tape measure in one hand and your phone in the other, furiously typing slightly inaccurate measurements into a baby percentile...

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Mother sitting on a park bench watching her toddler climb a wooden structure.

Watching my kid fall off the playground cured my helicopter anxiety

The wind coming off Lake Michigan was aggressive enough to make my eyes water, but I couldn't blink. My two-year-old was fifteen feet up a rope climbing pyramid at Maggie Daley Park. His left foot was wedged between two cables....

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A very tired mom wearing a stained t-shirt holding a coffee mug and looking thoughtfully out a window

The Myth That Ruined My Newborn Days (And The Baby Orangutan Fix)

I was wearing Tom's vintage college hoodie—the gray one with the mysterious yellow mustard stain from 2014—and it was somewhere around 3:17 AM. Maya was three weeks old and screaming like I'd personally offended her entire bloodline. I had a...

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Confused mom holding coffee while looking at baby contest pictures on her phone.

The Baby of the Year Contest Reality Check No One Gives You

My husband just walked into the kitchen and caught me hunched over my laptop like a sleep-deprived gargoyle, intensely scrolling through the baby of the year 2024 contestants pictures. I had half-drunk, room-temperature coffee dribbling down the front of my...

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Stressed mom holding a rubbery seafood tentacle near a high chair

Why The Whole Infant Octopus Trend Almost Broke My Mama Sanity

I was standing at my kitchen island at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, poking a slick, purple tentacle with a pair of tongs, questioning every life choice that had led me to this moment. My oldest son, Liam, was fourteen...

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A sleep-deprived dad staring at a spreadsheet of baby boy names on his laptop

Decoding baby names for boys: A dad's naming algorithm

Line 74 of my Google Sheet was flashing neon green. I'd written a custom script to highlight any moniker with a standard deviation of less than 5% in popularity over the last decade, filtering out anything that spiked due to...

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