The reality of personalized blankets with names for your baby
I was standing over a donation bin at three in the afternoon, aggressively stuffing a neon pink minky fleece throw into a plastic bag. It was a gift from a distant relative, given to me three months before my daughter...
My chaotic guide to finding an orphaned baby squirrel in your yard
The wind in Chicago in April is basically a personal insult. I was already standing in the kitchen watching my toddler have a full-scale meltdown because his morning banana had the audacity to break in half. I was mentally calculating...
Dear Past Tom: The Truth About Achieving That Baby Smoove Skin
Dear Tom from six months ago, You're currently sitting on the cold tiles of the downstairs loo at 3:14 AM, the only room in the house where you can turn on a light without waking your wife or the twins....
Farmyard Crises and Explaining Baby Sheep to Toddlers
I'm standing ankle-deep in something I'm desperately praying is just mud at Mudchute Farm, trying to wipe half a chewed oat biscuit off Twin Aβs cheek, when Twin B extends a sticky, demanding finger toward the livestock enclosure. The sky...
Hush Little Baby: A Letter to Exhausted Me About 3 AM Survival
Dear Jess from six months ago, You're currently standing in the hallway at 3:14 AM wearing a nursing bra that smells suspiciously like sour milk. You're bouncing rhythmically, staring at a chip in the baseboard, and desperately whispering the hush...
The Truth About Personalized Baby Blankets (A Hindsight Guide)
It was a Tuesday. 3 PM, raining, and I was wearing a nursing tank that smelled strongly of sour milk and desperation. Three-week-old Leo was finally asleep on my chest, and I was holding a dangerously lukewarm mug of coffee...
Keeping the Baby Jesus Out of Your Toddler's Mouth
I was in the kitchen aggressively scraping burnt porridge out of a pan when the silence hit. Any parent of two-year-old twins knows that silence is never golden; it's highly suspicious and usually expensive. I dropped the pan, sprinted into...
The Great Toddler Empathy Crisis and My Stained Maternity Shirt
I was exactly thirty-four weeks pregnant with Maya, sweating profoundly through a mustard-yellow maternity top that had a coffee stain shaped exactly like Florida right on the collarbone. It was 3:14 PM on a Tuesday, which is universally the worst...
The 2 AM Baby Chicken Meltdown: Purees, Poultry, and My Sanity
There I was at 2:13 AM on a Tuesday, standing barefoot in my kitchen wearing a stained t-shirt, staring down at a shattered glass Tupperware container of pureed baby chicken that I had just spent two hours boiling and blending....