Troubleshooting the 3 AM Baby Glitch and Other Night Terrors
My thumb was hovering over the backspace key at 3:14 AM, the harsh blue light of my phone screen illuminating the spit-up crusted on my shoulder. I had managed to type exactly six letters into the search bar with my...
Dear Past Tom: The Utter Chaos of Choosing Italian Monikers
Dear Past Tom (specifically, the deeply naive version of me from roughly six months ago who confidently volunteered to help my sister-in-law pick out an Italian moniker for her upcoming arrival), You're currently hunched over a lukewarm flat white in...
Why we are all lying about the dreaded tablet toddler phase
Listen, we're sitting at a loud brunch spot off the Blue Line, and my son decides the texture of his waffle is deeply offensive. He throws it on the floor. He starts winding up for that specific, ear-piercing shriek that...
What A Million Dollar Baby Actually Costs (And Sounds Like)
Traffic on Lake Shore Drive is at a dead stop. My toddler is aggressively kicking the back of my seat in perfect time to the bass thumping from the radio. It's that Tommy Richman track. You know the one. Before...
The trey coolin baby boo trend: digital safety for your infant
The blue light from my phone was throwing weird, sharp shadows against the nursery wall. It was 3 AM. My son was finally asleep on my chest after a four-hour teething marathon that left us both smelling like sour milk...
Why we threw out the traditional gendered baby name playbook
I was thirty-two weeks pregnant, sitting at the kitchen island at three in the morning, aggressively pointing out cells in a Google Sheet. My husband was asleep. The spreadsheet was simply titled The Child. Row forty-seven was the name Emerson....
In Which Week Baby Gender is Developed: My Ultrasound Data Log
I was literally holding my phone up to the ultrasound monitor at week twelve, trying to overlay a digital protractor app onto the blurry gray static on the screen. "If the angle of the genital tubercle is greater than 30...
Confessions of dressing my toddler in the teenage dirtbag trend
2:14 AM. The bedroom smells faintly of sour milk and desperation. The Wheatus audio loops on my screen for the forty-seventh time. I watch another exhausted mother transition from a photo of her wearing studded belts and smeared black eyeliner...
Surviving The Baby Kitty Phase When Your Kid Decides To Meow
Sarahβs Honda hadn't even cleared the driveway before the transformation occurred. I was standing in the kitchen, tracking the ambient room temperature on the thermostat (a solid 68 degrees), when I heard a sound that I can only describe as...