Unpacking the Baby Three V3 Toy Trend and Having a Third Kid
It was Sunday morning and I was standing in my kitchen wearing the exact same cranberry-colored yoga pants I had slept in, desperately waiting for the coffee machine to stop dripping, when my sister-in-law walked in and handed my seven-year-old,...
The October 10th Retro Plushie Incident (And Other Dad Fails)
The postie arrived at exactly 10:14 am on a grim Tuesday morning, thrusting a slightly damp cardboard box into my hands with the weary expression of a man who knows my house receives entirely too many parcels. It was the...
Why a wooden baby walker is the only one I trust in my house
Tuesday morning, my coffee is already cold, and my toddler is currently trying to pull himself up on a precarious mid-century modern plant stand. The heavy ceramic pot is wobbling. My heart rate does that familiar violent spike I used...
What a Tiny Baby Lemur Taught Me About Motherhood and Survival
Don't, under any circumstances, let your highly impressionable four-year-old watch a nature documentary about the rainforest forty-five minutes before lights out, unless you want to spend the next two weeks of your life explaining why a baby lemur can't sleep...
How I survived the Π΄Π΅ΡΡΠΊΠΈ ΠΌΠ°ΡΠΈΠ½ΠΊΠΈ invasion in our living room
The exact moment I realized my living room had been permanently rezoned for industrial use was at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday. I was walking barefoot to the kitchen to fix a bottle, half asleep, when my heel came down...
Expectation vs Reality: Montessori Toys for Nine Month Old Twins
There I was, at 6:42 am on a Tuesday, trying to fish a soggy, half-dissolved piece of Amazon packaging out of Maya's mouth while her sister, Chloe, methodically used a Β£45 plastic, battery-powered farm animal as a blunt instrument to...
Spielsachen 4 Jahre: The Truth About Toys For Four-Year-Olds
The most successful grift in the modern parenting industrial complex is the word "educational" slapped on a box containing a plastic, seizure-inducing nightmare. You know the exact toy I'm talking about. Itβs usually shaped like a dog or a heavily...
Debugging the Playroom: An Honest Dad's Guide to Toy Wooden Toys
My mother-in-law was standing in our kitchen holding a neon plastic command center that apparently taught conversational Spanish through flashing LEDs, while my neighbor from the Portland farmer's market was actively telling me that anything other than raw, untreated birch...