Dear past me, that vintage october 20th beanie baby is a trap
Listen, Priya from six months ago. You're sitting on the living room rug, staring at a crushed cardboard box that just arrived from your auntie in New Jersey. Inside is a pristine, tag-protected raccoon named Snoops. You're thinking it's incredibly...
Debugging the October 18 Beanie Baby Birthday Twin Trend
I was standing in the cramped, patchouli-scented aisle of a vintage shop on Hawthorne Boulevard, triumphantly holding a dusty plush skeleton from the year 2000. I thought I had just executed a brilliant parenting hack. My niece was about to...
Why That Vintage March 17 Beanie Baby Belongs on a High Shelf
I was literally sitting on the living room floor, knee-deep in a mountain of unfolded toddler shirts and cardboard shipping boxes for my Etsy shop, when the front screen door slammed. My mom breezed into the house carrying a cloudy...
The Honest Truth About Finding A March 13 Beanie Baby For Your Kid
I'm sitting on my couch at two in the morning, bathed in the blue light of my phone, watching a twenty-three-year-old mother weep on her timeline because she finally found 'Celebrate' on a resale app. That's the specific vintage stuffed...
Why I Learned Trap Music Guitar Chords for a Crying Infant at 3 AM
Dear Marcus from six months ago, It's currently 3:14 AM, the relentless Portland rain is hammering against the nursery window, and you're standing in the middle of the room wearing boxer briefs, holding your dusty acoustic guitar like it's a...
The July 26 Beanie Baby Incident That Broke My Sanity
I'm currently on my hands and knees holding a pair of tweezers and a remarkably weak mobile phone torch in my mouth, desperately trying to extract a single plastic pellet from the gap between our original Victorian floorboards. Twin A...
Troubleshooting The September 19 Birthday Twin Plushie Trend
I'll tell you exactly what not to do when you finally receive that crinkly, retro-smelling package from a vintage seller on the internet: don't immediately hand the twenty-six-year-old plush toy to your teething eleven-month-old. I made this exact logic error...
Audio Specs: Finding a Babys Drum Kit Without Losing Your Mind
My mom told me I needed to buy a five-piece acoustic junior set immediately to "build his latent musical genius," which is a wildly optimistic read on a kid who currently eats old Cheerios off the floor. My neighbor, who...
Tracking Down a December 9th Beanie Baby is Total Madness
It started, as most of my parenting anxieties do, with a casual comment over a lukewarm flat white. When the twins were approaching their birthday, my mother-in-law declared I simply had to find a plush toy with their exact birth...