Why Pippi LΓ€tzchen Saved Us from the Teething Drool Nightmare
I'm standing in my kitchen at 4:12 PM on a Tuesday in late November. I'm wearing my husband's oversized grey fleece that smells vaguely of stale coffee and desperation, and I'm holding my five-month-old son, Leo. He is screaming. Not...
LΓ€tzchen fΓΌr Erwachsene: Why My Stance on Adult Bibs Changed
Tuesday night. Mashed sweet potato on the wall. A spreading tea stain. It's the classic sandwich generation clichΓ© brought to life in my dining room. I'm cutting grapes into symmetrical quarters for my toddler while simultaneously pretending I don't see...
How Many Bibs Do I Need? A Tech Dadβs Guide To Drool Mathematics
Tuesday, 3:14 AM. I'm standing in our freezing laundry room holding a tiny, sour-milk-soaked triangle of fabric by two fingers, staring into the dark void of the dryer drum. My wife is upstairs walking our screaming 11-month-old in tight circles,...
Dear Past Tom: Put Down the Plastic and Get Organic Cotton Bibs
Dear Tom of October last year. You're currently standing at the kitchen sink at 2:14 AM. You're furiously scrubbing a bright orange, polyurethane-coated dribble catcher with an old toothbrush, wondering why it smells faintly of a wet dog that has...
LΓ€tzchen Frottee: A letter to my past self about solid foods
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the kitchen floor wiping sweet potato puree off the baseboards with a dried-out baby wipe while your son cries because he rubbed it into his left eyebrow. You think this...
What Are Bibs Actually For? A Nurse's Guide to Baby Drool
My mother-in-law told me I needed forty cloth neck-ties before we left the maternity ward. The lactation consultant said skin-to-skin meant strictly naked feeding, with absolutely no fabric allowed between us. My neighbor swore I only needed two plastic wipe-clean...
Why we went through forty muslin bibs a week before getting it right
I was standing in the kitchen at ten past four in the morning, aggressively wrestling with a tiny square of fabric. Twin A was draped over my left shoulder, producing a volume of milk spit-up that frankly defied physics, while...
The Truth About Baby Bibs (And Why You Need Them On Day One)
It was October 2017 and I was sitting in this ridiculously overpriced cafΓ© downtown wearing a beige cashmere sweater that I had bought specifically because it made me feel like a functioning human adult. Leo was three weeks old. He...
The Messy Truth About Why We Finally Switched To Silicone Bibs
Let me paint a picture for you. Itβs a random Tuesday in November 2017. Maya is six months old, and we're embarking on the mystical, terrifying journey of Baby-Led Weaning. I'm sitting on my kitchen floor at 2 PM wearing...