Dear Past Me: Do Not Let Your Kid Touch That Tiny Wild Reptile
Dear Sarah of last May. You're currently standing on the muddy shoulder of the Wissahickon creek trail, balancing a tepid Yeti mug of dark roast on your yoga pants-clad knee, utterly paralyzed. Leo is pointing a grubby four-year-old finger at...
The brutal truth about baby shows: Expos, screens, and survival
Listen. I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, my ankles were swelling over the tops of my sneakers, and I was standing in the middle of McCormick Place in downtown Chicago. A very enthusiastic woman with a microphone was trying to sell...
Dear Past Marcus: Debugging the Baby Shower Meatballs Crisis
I've got a digital meat thermometer plunged into the geometric center of a frozen sphere of ground turkey, and the reading is hopelessly stuck at 138Β°F. It's 11:30 PM on a Friday. The kitchen smells like a confusing collision of...
The End of Humiliating Baby Shower Games (And What to Do Instead)
Five years ago, I stood in a drafty village hall in Surrey, holding a plastic cup of warm sparkling wine, watching my sister-in-law unwrap a massive ball of clingfilm while wearing a blindfold. Someone shoved a disposable nappy under my...
Why the baby shark video is actually neurological genius
We're stuck in gridlock on Lake Shore Drive. The smell of three-day-old formula is radiating from somewhere under the passenger seat. In the back, my daughter has initiated the kind of breath-holding, red-faced scream that usually requires a medical intervention....
The Brutal Truth About Baby Products From A Tired Nurse
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday. I was sitting on my Chicago apartment floor surrounded by thirty-two cardboard boxes of varying sizes, smelling vaguely of spit-up and fenugreek. My son was three weeks old and screaming in that specific...
Why My Phone is Full of Blurry Baby Pictures (And What to Do)
My iCloud storage officially threw a fatal error at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday. I was standing in the pitch black of the nursery, balancing my eleven-month-old sonβs disproportionately heavy head against my collarbone, while frantically trying to delete cached...
The Brutal Truth About Pacifiers When Everyone Has an Opinion
I was sitting in the hospital bed on day two with my oldest, icing parts of my body I didn't know could swell, when the advice assault began. The hospital lactation consultant pointed a stern finger at my overnight bag...
The Messy Truth About Singing Your Baby to Sleep Every Night
I'm currently sitting on my back porch in the middle of nowhere Texas, trying to untangle a massive spool of macrame cord for an Etsy order while my youngest is strapped to my chest, completely passed out. But getting him...