Magazine

A heavily chewed cardboard book sitting next to a half-empty cup of cold coffee

The Great Baby Book Delusion: Expectations vs Actual Reality

I'm currently looking at a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar that has been so thoroughly chewed, sucked, and dismantled by my twin two-year-old daughters that it looks less like a beloved piece of children's literature and more like something...

Read more

A tired mother looking at a stack of conflicting baby advice manuals next to a crib

Why That Bestselling Parenting Manual Won't Actually Save Your Sanity

You're sitting in the semi-dark at 3:14 AM, the harsh blue light of your phone illuminating a stack of pristine, unread hardcovers on your nightstand while your newborn does that weird pterodactyl screech. You bought all of them when you...

Read more

A tired mom holding a toddler and a newborn baby in a messy living room

How the Peppa Pig New Baby Episode Saved My Sanity With Two Kids

I was sitting squarely on the cold bathroom tile, staring cross-eyed at two pink lines on a plastic stick, while my two-year-old was actively trying to flush my best Mac contour brush down the toilet. He paused his plumbing experiment,...

Read more

A stressed British father staring in horror at a television remote control

Why searching for the cast of baby reindeer will ruin your evening

It was 5:17 AM on a Tuesday, an hour that shouldn't legally exist, and my living room looked like a crime scene involving a half-eaten box of oat biscuits and an aggressively smeared syringe of sticky, strawberry-flavoured Calpol. Florence, the...

Read more

A tired dad sitting on the floor singing to twin babies on a wooden play gym.

How I Abandoned Indie Music to Become a Human Jukebox for Twins

Somewhere around the eighty-fourth consecutive rendition of The Wheels on the Bus, you experience a big sort of ego death. I was standing in the kitchen at 6am, wearing a t-shirt entirely crusted in dried porridge, aggressively miming the swish-swish-swish...

Read more

A confused dad looking at a tiny baby roach on the kitchen floor.

The 3AM Kitchen Intruder: Dealing With Baby Roaches

It was 3:14 AM, and I was doing something I explicitly knew I shouldn't be doing. Maya, who's two years old but possesses the demanding palate of a Michelin-star food critic, refused to go back to sleep unless her milk...

Read more

A tired parent sitting on the floor comforting a crying toddler in the dark

The 3AM Baby Monster Phase: Surviving Toddler Night Terrors

My mum told me to leave a small saucer of milk under the bed to appease the spirits. The bloke at our local pub, a man who has clearly not parented a child since 1982, suggested I simply tell the...

Read more

Toddler banging on the keys of a dark wood baby grand piano in a messy living room

The Reality of Fitting a Baby Grand Piano in a House with Toddlers

I'm currently on my hands and knees in the lounge, holding one end of a metal tape measure while Maya, who's two, tries to eat the other end. Her twin sister, Lily, is repeatedly smashing a wooden spoon against the...

Read more

A toddler in an organic cotton bodysuit looking at a baby chick in a plastic brooder tub.

Surviving Backyard Baby Chicks When You Already Have A Toddler

We were standing in the middle of a farm supply store somewhere in the Illinois suburbs when my husband decided we needed to teach our two-year-old about food sustainability. He was holding a cardboard box that vibrated with high-pitched chirps,...

Read more