Magazine

A very tired dad staring blankly at a wall of infant milk cans in a grocery store aisle.

The Great Formula Panics: What I Learned About Feeding My Kid

It was 4:12 AM, I was holding a screaming, thrashing newborn, and my laptop screen was glowing in the dark with a massive spreadsheet titled Formula_Matrix_v4_FINAL.xlsx. My wife walked into the kitchen, looked at the screen, looked at my bloodshot...

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A bewildered dad looking at a baby platypus plush toy next to a modern laptop and baby gear.

The Baby Platypus Taught Me More About Parenting Than Books

When it came time to figure out how we were going to explain the birds and the beesβ€”or just basic mammalian biologyβ€”to our kid, I got three entirely different pieces of advice within a 24-hour window. My mother-in-law told me...

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A sleep-deprived dad staring at a spreadsheet of baby boy names on his laptop

Decoding baby names for boys: A dad's naming algorithm

Line 74 of my Google Sheet was flashing neon green. I'd written a custom script to highlight any moniker with a standard deviation of less than 5% in popularity over the last decade, filtering out anything that spiked due to...

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Dad checking his smartwatch decibel meter while holding a baby in earmuffs.

The Theater Beta Test: Bringing an 11-Month-Old to the Movies

I was standing under the dripping marquee of the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland, staring at the decibel meter app on my Apple Watch while my 11-month-old daughter Maya actively tried to chew off the zipper of my rain jacket....

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A tired father holding a wooden baby mobile in a messy nursery

A Letter To Past Tom About Hanging Baby Mobiles

Dear Tom of six months ago. You're currently standing in your socks on a wobbly Ikea step stool at 2:13 AM. You have a plastic, battery-guzzling, brightly coloured spaceship contraption in one hand and a tiny screwdriver clamped between your...

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Tom's messy London kitchen while testing the best baby food maker for his twin girls

The Great Puree Panic: Confessions From A Splattered Kitchen

There's currently a perfectly symmetrical, brilliantly orange splatter of sweet potato puree cooling on my left eyelid. It's Sunday at four in the afternoon, the sky over London has already surrendered to that bleak, bruised-plum colour of mid-winter, and I'm...

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A tired dad holding a teething toddler with red cheeks

Why Baby Face Nelson Has Nothing on My Toddler

It's 4:17 in the morning, and the glowing screen of my phone is illuminating half of my face while the other half is being rhythmically kicked by a two-year-old foot. I'm frantically trying to Google why one of my twin...

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Marcus looking stressed while holding a coffee mug and staring at a laptop screen

Why Adding a Baby Duck to Our Family Was a Terribly Stupid Idea

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday. The baby monitor was flashing that menacing yellow warning color, indicating my son was tossing around again. I was sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, scrolling through a local...

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A dad nervously checking the rearview mirror at a baby in a rear-facing car seat.

The real baby driver 2: A letter to my past self about car seat panic

Dear Marcus from six months ago, You're currently idling in the driveway of the Hawthorne Fred Meyer in your Subaru. The engine is running. The heater is set exactly to 70 degrees because you read somewhere that anything else will...

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