Magazine

A tired dad looking at his smartphone while holding a confused baby in a nursery.

Surviving the Pretty Little Baby Connie Francis TikTok Trend

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and the nursery was running at an good 69.4 degrees Fahrenheit. I know this because I check the smart thermostat logs when I can't sleep, which is always. My wife was standing in...

Read more

A pink Casio Baby-G watch slipping off a seven year old's tiny wrist

The Truth About Buying A Baby G-Shock Watch For Your Kid

It was exactly 3:14 PM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in the middle of my kitchen wearing yoga pants with a highly questionable yogurt stain on the knee, desperately trying to saw through a thick pink resin watch...

Read more

A father staring bleary-eyed at a glowing baby monitor screen in a dark room.

The truth about the best baby monitors (and what actually works)

At 2:14 am on a Tuesday, I was staring at a glowing five-inch screen, utterly convinced my daughter had been replaced by a Victorian ghost. The night vision on our heavily marketed, terrifyingly expensive smart camera had turned my two-year-old...

Read more

A tired dad looking at a smartphone while a baby plays with wooden toys nearby

The Baby Shark YouTube Dilemma: Troubleshooting Infant Screens

My mother-in-law swore that firing up a specific bright yellow video was the only way to hard-reset a tantrum. My senior dev pinged me on Slack claiming that same video permanently alters neural pathways. And the guy steaming oat milk...

Read more

Stressed dad looking at a laptop while holding a squirmy baby

Why I Stopped Debugging My Baby's Percentile Data

The crinkly paper on the exam table was already shredded by the time Dr. Evans walked in with her tablet. Baby G, completely naked except for a very heavy diaper, was violently executing a series of bicycle kicks against my...

Read more

Dad checking his smartwatch decibel meter while holding a baby in earmuffs.

The Theater Beta Test: Bringing an 11-Month-Old to the Movies

I was standing under the dripping marquee of the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland, staring at the decibel meter app on my Apple Watch while my 11-month-old daughter Maya actively tried to chew off the zipper of my rain jacket....

Read more

A confused dad looking at an at-home baby doppler device next to a laptop.

The Great Baby Doppler Debug: Why I Stopped Tracking Heartbeats

My mother told me that if I just pressed a toilet paper tube against my wife’s belly, I could hear the baby’s heartbeat perfectly. A senior developer on my team swore by buying a discarded clinical-grade ultrasound machine off eBay...

Read more

Marcus holding the tiny black breast pump next to a massive coffee mug

Baby Buddha Pump: Why This Tiny Device Is A Vacuum Engine

It's 2 AM on a Tuesday. My wife is sitting in the glider, holding this sleek black plastic rectangle that's honestly smaller than my smartphone. We bought it because the internet forums promised it was a "cute" and "highly portable"...

Read more

Twin toddlers reaching for a mobile phone on a messy living room table

Why the Baby Alien Fan Bus Search Trap Ruined My Tuesday Morning

The iPad was smeared with a mixture of dribble and what I desperately hope was Marmite, sitting dangerously close to the edge of the kitchen island. It was 6:15 on a Tuesday morning, it was raining in that aggressively persistent...

Read more