Why I Stopped Overthinking Bausteine Kinder & Let Them Crash
It's 6:15 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm sitting on the cold kitchen floor wearing Davidβs faded college sweatshirt that has a completely unidentified yogurt stain on the cuff, gripping a mug of lukewarm coffee like it's a literal life...
Why a Basic Rassel Toy Beat My High-Tech Baby Parenting Theories
I'm sitting on the living room rug surrounded by three different glowing screens, a Wi-Fi enabled bassinet that tracks micro-movements, and a massive spreadsheet charting exactly how many ounces of milk my son has consumed since Tuesday. On the main...
Why we finally switched to holz kinderspielzeug (wooden toys)
It was a Tuesday. 6:14 AM. Leo was three, Maya was basically a blob, and I was holding a cold mug of coffee while wearing a stained Nirvana t-shirt Iβve owned since college. I was staring at our living room...
What I wish I knew about spielzeug fΓΌr kleinkinder back then
I was sitting dead center on the rug in our tiny apartment living room, wearing yoga pants that Iβm pretty sure had crusty sweet potato purΓ©e smeared on the left thigh from three days prior, just staring blankly at a...
Why Wooden Toys for a 1-Year-Old Might Actually Save Your Sanity
It's 5:42 am on a Tuesday, and I'm currently staring at a plastic farm animal that has been singing the same off-key rendition of 'Old MacDonald' for fourteen consecutive minutes. Maya has her tiny foot firmly planted on the cow...
Ditching the Plastic Jumper for a Real Montessori Activity Space
I was sitting on my incredibly stained living room rug at 6:15 AM wearing yesterdayβs maternity leggingsβthe ones with the hole in the left kneeβclutching my third mug of desperately black coffee, while my firstborn, Leo, aggressively bounced in what...
A Letter to Past Me About the Reality of Wooden Toys
Dear Tom of six months ago, You're currently standing in the nursery, aggressively arranging a set of aesthetically pleasing, neutral-toned blocks on a floating shelf. You're exhausted, operating on perhaps four cumulative hours of sleep, but you're deeply smug. You've...
Why I Was Completely Wrong About Rasseln FΓΌr Babys As A New Dad
It was Tuesday at roughly 4:12 PM, and my living room looked like a warehouse explosion at a brightly colored plastics factory. I was sitting on the rug holding a neon green plastic hippo. I shook it. It emitted a...
The truth about Holzspielzeug 2 JΓ€hrige and surviving toddlerhood
Listen. It was Tuesday at three in the morning when my foot found the plastic farm animal. I was shuffling toward the kitchen to get water, sleep-deprived and freezing in the middle of a Chicago winter, and my heel came...