Magazine

Marcus's 11-month-old baby reaching for a wooden block on the living room floor.

Why I Stopped Trusting the Internet About Early Development Toys

When my son was about four days old, my mother-in-law bought us a plastic command center that flashed strobe lights and yelled the alphabet in a robotic British accent. "He needs cognitive stimulation," she told me with absolute certainty. The...

Read more

Toddler sitting on the floor next to an open cardboard box of Kianao baby products

Exposing the Real Job of a Brand Ambassador in the Baby World

I was sitting on my living room rug at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, trying to bribe my screaming toddler with a half-eaten graham cracker so he would hold a wooden rattle for exactly three seconds. The natural...

Read more

Tired mom holding organic cotton baby clothes and silicone teether

The Great Bath Time Scam: What To Actually Put On Infant Skin

I was standing in aisle 14 of Target at 8:47 PM on a Tuesday, wearing my husband’s paint-stained sweatpants and aggressively clutching a lukewarm oat milk latte. My phone was vibrating out of my hand with three different text threads....

Read more

A messy living room floor with a coffee cup and a wooden play gym

The Truth About Why Your Baby Ignores Their Expensive Playthings

It was December 2017, and my oldest, Leo, was exactly six months old. I remember this vividly because I was wearing black maternity leggings that smelled vaguely of spit-up and a nursing bra I hadn't washed inβ€”you know what, let's...

Read more

A stressed dad trying to hold two slippery, soapy toddlers in a bathtub.

A Letter To Past Me About The Great Baby Soap Delusion Of 2023

Dear Tom of six months ago. I see you standing in the baby aisle at Boots at 4:30 PM on a dreary Tuesday. You're holding a bottle of lavender-scented, midnight-calming, ultra-foaming wash in your left hand, and a Β£24 artisanal...

Read more

A dad struggling to apply mineral baby sunscreen to a squirming toddler's face

Baby Sunscreen: The Messy Truth About Mineral Paste Deployment

For the first six months of my daughter's life, I operated under the delusion that a standard Portland overcast day was basically nature's SPF. I figured the thick gray blanket of clouds hanging over the city was a built-in forcefield...

Read more

Half-finished mint green baby blanket next to a cold cup of coffee

The Truth About That Heirloom Crochet Blanket Pattern

It was, like, 3 AM on a Tuesday in 2017 and I was sitting on my living room rug wearing my husband’s stained gray college sweatpants, completely tangled in mint green yarn. I was seven months pregnant with Maya and...

Read more

A bewildered dad staring at an endless wall of baby lotions in a British supermarket.

Why Finding the Right Baby Lotion Feels Like Diffusing a Bomb

My mother-in-law cornered me in the kitchen when the twins were four days old, wielding a tub of something that smelled violently of synthetic lavender, insisting I needed to grease them up immediately lest they turn into dust. Two hours...

Read more

A toddler wearing snug-fitting bamboo pajamas sleeping comfortably in a crib

The Brutally Honest Truth About Buying Bamboo Pajamas For Kids

It's two in the morning, and I'm aggressively wrestling my screaming, slippery nine-month-old back into a rigid fleece onesie while my husband holds a cell phone flashlight in his mouth so we don't wake the toddlers in the next room....

Read more