The Truth About Googoo Babies (And What Mine Are Actually Saying)
Iβm currently elbow-deep in printing shipping labels for my Etsy shop while my youngest, Levi, is having what sounds like a very heated political debate with the ceiling fan. Heβs six months old, completely pantsless, covered in what I hope...
The brutal reality of raising a velcro baby and keeping your sanity
Listen. It was two in the afternoon on a Tuesday in mid-February. The Chicago wind was rattling the apartment windows, and I had needed to empty my bladder since ten that morning. Dev was asleep, heavily draped across my chest...
The Great Melanin Firmware Update: A Dad's Guide to Eye Color
Hey Marcus from six months ago. You're currently standing by the window in our perpetually gray Portland living room, angling a five-month-old infant toward the meager sunlight, trying to determine if her irises are hex code #4B5320 (Army Green) or...
When Do Babies Start Babbling? A Tired Momβs Guide to the Noise
There I was, sitting cross-legged on my living room rug surrounded by a mountain of unsorted laundry, aggressively waving black-and-white flashcards in my firstbornβs face. Leo was about four months old at the time, staring at me with the blankest...
The Zika Baby Panic: What My Pediatrician Actually Told Me
I was staring at the smeared remains of a mosquito on my laptop screen when Sarah walked into the home office, holding our eleven-month-old like a football and looking highly alarmed. We were supposed to fly to a wedding in...
The Real Reason Babies Never Actually Sleep With Custom Blankets
There's a massive disconnect between the baby gear you think you need before the kid arrives and the reality of keeping a tiny human alive. Before our son Leo was born, my mental image of fatherhood involved a lot of...
Why Diaper Tape Fails When Your Tiny Infant Becomes A Toddler
3:14 AM. The bathroom tiles are freezing. Mark is standing there holding his phone, looking absolutely bewildered, while intense, bass-heavy Russian hip-hop blasts out of his tiny phone speaker. He was literally just trying to google "big baby tape" to...
Dear Past Marcus: Stop Googling the baby steps anime at 3 AM
Dear Past Marcus, It's currently 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and you're staring at your phone in the dark while the baby (who's now 11 months old, by the wayβspoiler alert, we survive the sleep regression) does that weird dolphin-clicking...
Surviving a Baby Praying Mantis Hatch With an 11-Month-Old Kid
It was 6:15 AM on a Tuesday, and I was staring at a plastic mesh butterfly pavilion on my kitchen counter like I was waiting for a server to reboot. I held a plastic spray bottle in one hand, completely...