What Is A Baby Shower (And Why I Was Totally Wrong About Them)
I'm currently staring at a spreadsheet I built eleven months ago titled Baby_Shower_V1_Final.xlsx. My original strategy for figuring out what's a baby shower was to treat it like a vendor procurement meeting. I thought we could just email our friends...
Acoustics of the Womb and My Metal Baking Sheet Drop Disaster
The noise sounded like a Ford Taurus crashing into a cymbal factory. It was just me dropping six aluminum baking sheets onto the kitchen tile, but in our quiet Portland apartment, the acoustic shockwave was violently loud. Our dog scrambled...
When Do Babies Start Babbling? A Tired Mom’s Guide to the Noise
There I was, sitting cross-legged on my living room rug surrounded by a mountain of unsorted laundry, aggressively waving black-and-white flashcards in my firstborn’s face. Leo was about four months old at the time, staring at me with the blankest...
The Zika Baby Panic: What My Pediatrician Actually Told Me
I was staring at the smeared remains of a mosquito on my laptop screen when Sarah walked into the home office, holding our eleven-month-old like a football and looking highly alarmed. We were supposed to fly to a wedding in...
Why I Stopped Forcing Aesthetic Crafts and Let My Kids Make a Mess
Dear Jess from six months ago, I'm writing to you from the future, and you need to drop the organic sweet potato puree, step away from the canvas, and take a deep breath. You're currently sitting on the kitchen floor...
The Great British Baby Buggy Illusion and What Actually Works
I'm currently wedged in the doorway of a Costa Coffee in Balham, the rear left wheel of our double transport system inexplicably locked, whilst twin A attempts to lick the condensation off the glass and twin B practices a high-pitched...
Is My Baby Turning Blue Or Am I Just Sleep-Deprived And Panicking?
When we started weaning the twins, I received three distinct, entirely contradictory pieces of advice within a single twenty-four-hour period. My mother, dispensing wisdom from the 1990s, called to say, "Whatever you do, Tommy, don't give them carrots yet, they'll...
Finding The Best Baby Detergent Without Losing Your Sanity
I was standing in my basement laundry room at 3:14 PM on a Tuesday, holding Maya’s absolute favorite mustard-yellow onesie which was now covered in an ungodly amount of actual mustard-yellow poop, just completely frozen in panic because of the...
My Search for the Best Baby Books (A Warning to Past Marcus)
Dear Marcus from exactly 182 days ago: I'm looking directly at the memory of you slicing open an Amazon box on the kitchen island at 2:14 AM. It contains six different hardcovers claiming to hold the ultimate algorithm for newborn...