Why I Finally Ditched the Neon Plastic Baby Play Gym
It was a Tuesday, roughly 2:15 PM in late October 2017. Maya was exactly fourteen weeks old, and I was wearing a pair of dark grey maternity leggings that I had absolutely no intention of retiring anytime soon. They had...
Dear Past Marcus: Troubleshooting the Great Baby Mat Matrix
Row 47 of my "Baby Infrastructure" Google Sheet is where my sanity finally encountered a fatal error. It was 2:14 AM. The ambient temperature in the nursery was exactly 71.4 degrees, I had logged 11 wet diapers for the day,...
Debugging Tummy Time: What You Actually Need From A Baby Mat
There's this deeply embedded cultural myth that to successfully raise a functional human infant, you must provide them with a floor space that looks and sounds exactly like a Las Vegas casino. When Leo was about two months old, I...
Why Most Infant Play Mats Are A Trap (And What Actually Works)
I was on my hands and knees in the middle of my living room, frantically trying to scrub curdled breastmilk out of a felt lionβs mane with a single dry baby wipe, while my three-month-old screamed like I was actively...
Why The Wrong Infant Play Mat Will Ruin Your Tuesday Afternoon
It was 2:14 PM on a particularly bleak, rain-lashed London Tuesday, and a plastic, primary-coloured toucan was aggressively singing a distorted, tinny version of βLa Cucarachaβ while swinging precisely three inches above my daughterβs nose. I was sitting on the...
How I Finally Found a Play Activity Mat That Did Not Drive Me Crazy
When I was pregnant with my oldest, Tucker, I swear everybody had a loud opinion on where exactly the baby was supposed to exist when I wasn't holding him. My grandmother told me to just throw a handmade quilt on...