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A tired mom holding a coffee cup while looking at a baby on a round play mat

The Honest Truth About Play Mats For Babies

I was on my hands and knees with a spray bottle of carpet cleaner, frantically scrubbing neon yellow newborn poop out of our cheap apartment carpeting, while my oldest screamed his absolute head off in a bouncy seat nearby. It...

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A very tired mom drinking cold coffee and scrolling her phone in the dark looking for parenting advice.

Searching Reddit for a Baby Walking Game at 2 AM Was a Mistake

It’s 2:14 AM. I'm wearing my husband’s horrific faded college track sweatpants—the ones with the inexplicable bleach stain on the left knee—and I'm hunched over my phone in the dark, furiously refreshing a forum thread. I'm holding a mug of...

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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...

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A wooden baby playpen set up in a living room with a neutral play gym inside.

The Brutally Honest Guide to Buying a Playpen for Babies

My mom texted me "just put the babi in a pen so you can work!" at the exact same moment a twenty-two-year-old Instagram parenting coach popped up on my feed with a beige infographic about how "restrictive containers stifle gross...

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A confused and exhausted mom holding a coffee cup looking at a tablet screen.

What To Do When Your Kid Demands A Baby Nessie Fisch On Roblox

It's 7:14 AM on a Tuesday. I'm wearing my husband's gray college sweatpants—the ones with the mysterious, hardened yogurt stain on the left knee that absolutely refuses to wash out no matter how much bleach I throw at it. I'm...

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A wooden baby play gym set up on a messy living room rug.

Raising a Brilliant Kid Without Buying Into All the Crazy Hype

I was sitting on my living room rug with my firstborn, sweating through my t-shirt while aggressively waving a black-and-white contrast flashcard in his face like I was trying to land a plane on a runway. He was four months...

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Sarah drinking coffee while baby plays safely in a wooden play space.

Why I Finally Caved and Bought a Play Area for My Kids

It was a Tuesday morning in late 2017, and I was wearing a pair of black yoga pants that had a highly questionable smear of sweet potato puree on the left thigh. Maya was seven months old, which meant she...

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An 11-month-old baby holding a chunky crayon with a fist grip on a messy paper

The Myth of Baby Art and How to Actually Survive It

I’m currently staring at a active purple streak on the toe of my left sneaker. It arrived there about an hour ago, during what my wife and I ambitiously labeled "creative enrichment time." The biggest myth of modern parenting—propagated almost...

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A tired dad holding a wooden toy dragon while a toddler plays on a rug

Surviving the baby dragon phase and other midnight disasters

It’s 4:12 AM in our London flat, and Florence is standing upright in her cot, gripping the wooden bars like a tiny, furious inmate, screaming for a mythical reptile. Matilda, her twin, is entirely asleep but sporadically kicking the plaster...

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