Before and After: Surviving the Panic of Your Kid's Baby Steps
I'm sitting on the floor of our living room. Itβs a Tuesday in late 2021, and I'm wearing a pair of black leggings that have a mystery yogurt stain crusted onto the left knee. My son, Leo, who's thirteen months...
The Only Real Baby Feeding Chart You Will Actually Ever Need
I was standing in the kitchen at 3:14 AM wearing a milk-stained nursing bra and one mismatched sock, sobbing over a laminated spreadsheet taped to my freezer door. My oldest was screaming in his bassinet down the hall, and I...
When Do Babies Say Their First Word? My Honest Mom Truth
I was sitting cross-legged on our living room rug, shoving a laminated flashcard of an apple into my oldest sonβs face while he actively tried to eat the corner of it. He was thirteen months old. The girl down the...
The Truth About When Your Baby Actually Sits Up
When my daughter Maya was five months old, I got three entirely different pieces of advice about her sitting up in the span of about twenty-four hours. My mother-in-law, bless her, came over and immediately started shoving Maya into the...
A Letter To My Past Self: When Do Babies Start Rolling Over?
Dear Tom of October 2022, You're currently sitting on the floor of the living room, drinking lukewarm instant coffee and staring at Florence and Matilda. They're roughly fourteen weeks old. They're on their backs. They have been on their backs...
Debugging Gravity: When Do Babies Start Sitting Up Usually?
It's currently 7:14 PM, and I'm building a fortress of couch cushions around my eleven-month-old daughter on our living room rug. She is folded entirely in half, staring intensely at a piece of lint she found near the coffee table....
First Steps and Bruised Knees: A Twin Dad's Guide to Walking
I used to think there was a specific, magical day when it happened. I genuinely believed that sometime around their first birthday, Iβd be sitting on the sofa with a lukewarm coffee, and one of the twins would simply stand...
Waiting For The First Real Smile Without Losing Your Mind
It was three in the morning during a brutal Chicago February, and the radiator in our apartment was making that rhythmic hissing sound. I was holding my son after a feed, staring at his squished face in the dim light...