Magazine

exhausted millennial mom holding a crying teething baby in the kitchen

Teething Nightmares, 90s Nostalgia, and the Vanilla Ice Ice Ice Baby

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and our kitchen floor was aggressively cold. Maya was six months old and shrieking like a tiny, angry banshee because her bottom left tooth was trying to break through her gums with the...

Read more

Millennial mother holding her toddler while looking at her aging parents in a messy living room

Surviving The Baby Boomer Age With A Toddler In Your House

I brought my aging parents to live with us in Chicago last winter. Don't attempt to merge decades of generational trauma and a teething toddler by just smiling and pretending you've unlimited emotional bandwidth. It was a Tuesday when I...

Read more

Diane Keaton holding a baby in the 1987 movie Baby Boom next to a modern exhausted mom

Why Watching Baby Boom As A Parent Feels Like A Personal Attack

It’s 10:43 PM on a Tuesday, and I'm sitting on the left side of my couch wearing college sweatpants that have a literal hole in the knee and a maternity bra that I haven’t actually needed for two years but...

Read more

Exhausted dad feeding peanut butter to twin girls in a messy London kitchen

The baby 2015 rulebook shift and why my mother is still appalled

My mother’s voice was echoing out of the iPad, bouncing off the kitchen tiles, and rising to a pitch usually reserved for discovering a burglar in the sitting room. I was holding a small, plastic spoon loaded with smooth peanut...

Read more

A scattered pile of wooden blocks on a living room rug next to a coffee cup

Analog QA Testing: Why I Replaced The Flashing Toys With Wood

It was exactly 3:14 AM when my bare heel made contact with the plastic singing cow. I was holding a half-asleep eleven-month-old, navigating the dark hallway by memory, when 180 decibels of synthesized banjo music erupted from the floorboards. The...

Read more

A wooden baby gym and pacifier clip sitting on an organic cotton swaddle

A letter to my pregnant self about newborn clutter and tiny things

I'm writing this to you from the floor of the nursery. It's 2 a.m. in Chicago, the radiator is hissing, and I'm staring at a pile of miniature laundry that somehow multiplies when I blink. You're probably six months pregnant...

Read more

A wooden baby play gym set with crochet hanging toys against a white background

The Baby Steps Game Disaster and How to Actually Teach Walking

It was somewhere around 3:17 in the morning, a time that I'm increasingly convinced exists solely to punish parents for their past life choices. Maya, the slightly more reasonable of my two-year-old twin daughters, was fast asleep in her cot,...

Read more

A partially unwrapped chocolate peanut nougat candy bar next to a toddler silicone bib.

Dear Me: The Truth About Giving A Baby Ruth Candy Bar To A Toddler

October 31st, 11:30 PM. The kid is finally asleep. You're sitting on the living room floor surrounded by a mountain of plastic pumpkin loot. You unwrap a baby ruth candy bar. You look at it. You think about how your...

Read more

Exhausted dad holding coffee while his 11-month-old plays on an organic polar blanket

Why Raising an 11-Month-Old Feels Like Having a Baby Polar Bear

At 3:14 AM last Tuesday, I found myself sitting on the nursery floor in the dark, bathed in the blue light of my phone, holding a sleeping 11-month-old who currently weighs as much as a medium-sized microwave. My browser history...

Read more