That time my seven-year-old demanded we get a baby leopard
It was Tuesday around 4:15 PM, raining, and I was wearing those grey sweatpants with the mysterious bleach stain on the left thigh. Maya, who's seven and currently in her aggressively vocal animal rights phase, dropped her neon pink backpack...
A Warning To Past Me About Surviving The Plastic Brick Phase
Dear Tom of six months ago. You're currently standing in the doorway of the nursery, holding a lukewarm cup of tea, looking affectionately at a beautifully curated shelf. You think you've absolutely nailed this parenting thing, don't you? You haven't....
My Entirely Accidental Education on the Yamaha Baby Grand Piano
I was literally on my hands and knees on the living room rug, wearing those gray Lululemons with the hole in the left knee that my husband Dave absolutely hates, holding a bright yellow Stanley tape measure while my third...
What Nobody Tells You About the Clapping Milestone
I was sitting cross-legged on my living room rug, completely covered in pulverized Cheerios and dog hair, aggressively patting my hands together while chanting "yay!" like a deranged cheerleader. My oldest son, Tucker, who was about ten months old at...
The baby doll movie voice search disaster on a rainy Tuesday
It was exactly 6:14 AM, the rain was coming down in that relentless, gray Portland way, and I was holding a bottle of formula I had meticulously calibrated to precisely 98.6 degrees. My daughter, currently known in my mental database...
The Microtransaction Trap: My Nephew and the Baby Dragon Evo
I was elbow-deep in a Level 4 diaper blowout when my ten-year-old nephew, visiting from Seattle, leaned into the blast radius and asked if I could spot him twenty bucks for a baby dragon evo. I froze, holding a soiled...
Why The Baby Driver Soundtrack Vibe Is Actually Perfect For Your Kids
I was sitting in my minivan in the preschool pickup line, sweating through my second shirt of the day in this unforgiving Texas heat, when my sister-in-law shot me a frantic text. She was asking if the whole "baby driver"...
The 3 AM Plastic Crisis & The Truth About Baby Einstein Toys
It was 3:17 in the morning, November 2017, and I was wearing my husband Dave's oversized college sweatpants with an unidentified gray stain on the knee. I was doing that frantic, desperate bounce-sway dance with my four-month-old daughter Maya, who...
Why I Threw Away the Pink Plastic (And Found Better Baby Girl Toys)
It was 2:14 AM on December 26th, and I was sitting on the floor in a nursing bra that had completely given up the ghost sometime in 2016 and a pair of Dave's boxer briefs, furiously crying over a plastic...