The brutal truth about shopping a baby clearance warehouse sale
The wind off Lake Michigan was whipping my hair into my mouth while I stood in a line wrapping around an industrial park in Skokie. I was six months pregnant, freezing, and holding a lukewarm decaf coffee, waiting for the...
Why your toddler needs real fishing bibs (and not cute raincoats)
There's a very specific, high-pitched intake of breath a two-year-old makes when the icy water pooling on a rented fibreglass boat seat finally breaches her supposedly "weather-resistant" corduroy trousers. Itβs a sound that cuts through the roar of a vintage...
My Desperate Search for "Spielzeug fΓΌr 1 JΓ€hrige" (Toys)
Yesterday at 5:14 AM, I staggered into the living room to grab a burp cloth and stepped directly onto a plastic cow that immediately began mooing "Old MacDonald" in a haunting, battery-depleted baritone. My 11-month-old daughter, sitting in her playpen,...
Losing My Mind Inside Infant Stores (And What You Actually Need)
My mother-in-law cornered me at my own baby shower, pointed at my seven-month belly, and told me I needed to buy absolutely everything brand new or the baby would contract some kind of Victorian wasting disease. Twenty minutes later, my...
The Brutal Truth About Car Seats For Babies And Surviving The Setup
It was late August in Texas, meaning the hospital parking lot felt like the inside of a preheated oven. My husband Dave was violently yanking a seatbelt through a gray plastic base, sweating completely through his shirt, while the discharge...
The freezing truth about strapping infants into baby car seats
It's February in Chicago, the wind chill is somewhere around negative twelve, and I'm standing in the concrete wind tunnel of Northwestern Memorial's parking garage at two in the morning. My husband has his phone flashlight clenched between his teeth....
A Letter to Myself: What I Wish I Knew Before Entering the Toy Store
Dear Tom from exactly six months ago, You're currently standing in the middle of aisle four of a massive, warehouse-style toy store just off the M25, sweating profusely into your supposedly breathable cotton t-shirt while the twins double-team a meltdown...
Why Infant Silicone Replaced Every Plastic Bowl In My House
I was sitting on my kitchen floor at two in the morning, staring at a warped plastic breast pump flange floating in a pot of boiling water. It had melted just enough to look like modern art. The smell of...
Debugging Baby Winter Temperature: A Dadβs Layering Logic
We were twenty-two minutes into the deployment phase of leaving the house, standing in our freezing Portland driveway, when the entire system crashed. I had just spent a quarter of an hour wrestling my 11-month-old son into a heavily insulated,...