Baby Back vs St Louis Ribs: Surviving The Family BBQ With Toddlers
My brother-in-law's backyard in Naperville smelled like hickory smoke and impending disaster. I was holding a lukewarm paper plate of potato salad while watching my toddler, who was wearing nothing but a diaper, aggressively gnaw on a piece of barbecued...
The myth of the aesthetic baby suji bowl and what to do instead
Scraping hardened semolina off the ceiling fan wasn't exactly what I pictured when my mother-in-law told me suji would be the perfect first food for my son. I'm standing on a dining chair with a butter knife, chipping away at...
Surviving the Inevitable Baby Keyboard Smash in My Home Office
"asdfghjkl;'" was the exact, unedited message I sent to my accountant last Tuesday at 9:14 AM. I'd love to claim it was an avant-garde statement about the futility of modern tax law, but the truth is considerably shorter, louder, and...
My Chaotic Weekend Learning How to Smoke Baby Back Ribs With Kids
I was elbow-deep in raw pork juice at 6:15 AM on a Saturday, staring blankly at a massive, slippery cut of meat while Maya, who's seven and currently entrenched in her "question everything" phase, stood three inches from my hip...
Why A Taylor Big Baby Fits My Nursery & My Ten-Pound Infant
Don't let your overly enthusiastic mother-in-law convince you to buy forty boxes of Size N diapers when your doctor says you're measuring three weeks ahead, y'all. I'm just gonna be real with you, that massive tower of pristine white Huggies...
What I Actually Learned From The Mother Baby Nurse On My Worst Night
It was 4:12 AM and I was sitting on the cold hexagon tiles of my bathroom floor, leaking from literally everywhere. Maya was exactly four days old. My older kid, Leo, who was three at the time, was blessedly asleep...
Why The Baby Beluga Musician NYT Clue Destroyed My Sleep Entirely
The glowing rectangle of my phone was the only light in the nursery at 3:42 am last Tuesday. Twin A (Maya) was draped across my left shoulder like a heavily sedated sack of potatoes, occasionally whimpering and aggressively gnawing on...
My Chaotic Baby Gemini Hiking Story On The Ashlyn Peaks Trail
Whatever you do, please learn from my colossal screw-up and avoid attempting the south ridge trail at Ashlyn Peaks with a six-month-old Gemini strapped to your chest while wearing non-breathable Lululemon knock-offs, because it'll end in chafing and tears. Mostly...
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...