Magazine

Toddler boy aggressively putting a hat on a lifelike silicone baby doll on a messy living room rug

Why a Creepy Lifelike Baby Doll Saved My Sanity With Sibling Prep

I was sitting on my incredibly stained West Elm rug at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, wearing maternity leggings that definitely had dried yogurt on the left thigh, watching my three-year-old son Leo attempt a WWE-style suplex on...

Read more

A wooden baby guitar next to a vintage record player in a messy Chicago apartment

The Baby Beluga Musician Was Right About Everything All Along

The radiator in our Chicago apartment was making that rhythmic clicking sound it only makes at three in the morning. My toddler was executing a flawless, rigid back-arch scream, the kind that usually shows either a dropped pacifier or a...

Read more

Toddler sitting on a rug playing independently with natural wooden blocks.

Why We Need To Talk About The Nepo Baby Meaning In Parenting

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the living room floor at two in the morning with three laptops open. You're hitting refresh on the Lincoln Park cooperative preschool waitlist portal. You think if you just email...

Read more

A confused dad looking at his baby holding a wooden teething ring instead of a smartphone screen.

Debugging the baby shark phase: Viral videos and double teeth

Don't ever assume an algorithm knows how to soothe your kid better than you do. I learned this the hard way at a coffee shop on Hawthorne last Tuesday, thinking a quick blast of YouTube would act as a temporary...

Read more

Mom sitting on the floor with baby surrounded by scattered colorful baby blocks

The Big Myth About Childrens Stacking Blocks

I'm currently sitting on the floor of my living room, nursing a bruised heel because I just stepped on a rogue wooden square while carrying a laundry basket the size of a small car. My youngest, who's nine months old,...

Read more

Messy living room floor covered in wooden blocks and toddler toys

Spielzeug Kinder 2 Jahre: Surviving the Toddler Toy Explosion

I was standing in the dark hallway at 3 AM holding a laundry basket full of spit-up stained onesies when my heel came straight down on a plastic light-up police car that screamed "WEE-WOO PUT YOUR HANDS UP" into the...

Read more

Toddler Leo knocking down a wobbly tower of wooden bausteine kinder in the living room.

Why I Stopped Overthinking Bausteine Kinder & Let Them Crash

It's 6:15 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm sitting on the cold kitchen floor wearing David’s faded college sweatshirt that has a completely unidentified yogurt stain on the cuff, gripping a mug of lukewarm coffee like it's a literal life...

Read more

A wooden rattle toy sitting on a playmat next to a baby's hand

Why a Basic Rassel Toy Beat My High-Tech Baby Parenting Theories

I'm sitting on the living room rug surrounded by three different glowing screens, a Wi-Fi enabled bassinet that tracks micro-movements, and a massive spreadsheet charting exactly how many ounces of milk my son has consumed since Tuesday. On the main...

Read more

A toddler playing with a wooden block set on a living room rug.

Why we finally switched to holz kinderspielzeug (wooden toys)

It was a Tuesday. 6:14 AM. Leo was three, Maya was basically a blob, and I was holding a cold mug of coffee while wearing a stained Nirvana t-shirt I’ve owned since college. I was staring at our living room...

Read more