Magazine

Toddler hands grabbing a wooden baby jesus in a manger

Keeping the Baby Jesus Out of Your Toddler's Mouth

I was in the kitchen aggressively scraping burnt porridge out of a pan when the silence hit. Any parent of two-year-old twins knows that silence is never golden; it's highly suspicious and usually expensive. I dropped the pan, sprinted into...

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A tired pregnant mother drinking coffee while her toddler plays aggressively with a soft toy on the rug.

The Great Toddler Empathy Crisis and My Stained Maternity Shirt

I was exactly thirty-four weeks pregnant with Maya, sweating profoundly through a mustard-yellow maternity top that had a coffee stain shaped exactly like Florida right on the collarbone. It was 3:14 PM on a Tuesday, which is universally the worst...

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A messy kitchen counter with a baby feeding set and a coffee cup

The 2 AM Baby Chicken Meltdown: Purees, Poultry, and My Sanity

There I was at 2:13 AM on a Tuesday, standing barefoot in my kitchen wearing a stained t-shirt, staring down at a shattered glass Tupperware container of pureed baby chicken that I had just spent two hours boiling and blending....

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A cute cheetah cub playing in the grass looking very confused

What a Baby Cheetah Taught Me About My Own Crawling Toddler

We were standing in front of the big cat enclosure at the Bronx Zoo last Tuesday. I was wearing my aggressively stained Lululemon leggings, holding a lukewarm cup of drip coffee that tasted faintly of pennies, while Leoβ€”who's four going...

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Stressed mom looking at a sticky bottle of pink baby benadryl liquid

The 2 AM Baby Benadryl Panic and What I Actually Did Instead

It's 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in February. The wind off Lake Michigan is rattling the windowpanes of our Chicago apartment, and my toddler is sitting on the bathroom counter looking like a lightly boiled lobster. We had tried a...

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A frustrated dad looking at a white floral crown in a nursery

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 neighborβ€”a guy who brews his own seasonal...

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A realistic modern baby nursery with neutral colors and a bare crib next to a half-empty coffee cup

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...

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Exhausted mom holding a screaming baby in a dark kitchen at 3 AM

Living With The Boss Baby: Sleep, Siblings, And Your Sanity

There's a massive, glittering lie floating around pregnancy message boards that newborns sleep eighteen hours a day, and I just need to laugh hysterically at that for a second. Picture me at 3:17 AM last Tuesday, standing on the cold...

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Toddler girl wearing a comfortable organic cotton babydoll dress playing in the grass

Why Babydoll Dresses Are Secretly a Parent's Best Friend

It’s ninety-five degrees in East Texas, and my mother-in-law is trying to shoehorn my oldest child into a stiff, tulle monstrosity that looks like a wedding cake exploded. My kid is screaming like a feral cat in a church pew....

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