Watching The 1995 Baby-Sitters Club Movie As An Overthinking Dad
My mom told me the absolute best way to get a break from parenting is to just hire the 14-year-old kid who lives across the street because "she seems nice and probably knows CPR." My lead developer, a guy who...
The baby sis strikes back and other living room hostage situations
I'm sitting on the living room rug at two in the afternoon. The baby is asleep in the bassinet. My toddler is standing exactly three feet away, holding a rigid plastic triceratops, staring at the newborn with the kind of...
Why Barbecue Sauce is a Toddler Nightmare (And What to Do Instead)
It's 2:00 PM on the Fourth of July, it's ninety-eight degrees in the shade, and I'm sweating through a grey maternity tank top that I should have thrown away three years ago. Leo is fourteen months old and his face...
The midnight origami crisis: A letter to my past swaddling self
Dear Past Tom, You're currently sitting on the edge of a plastic-covered mattress in the maternity ward of St Thomas' Hospital, staring at a screaming, red-faced potato named Alice, while her twin sister, Lucy, is somehow already escaping the blanket...
The Truth About That Uncanny Squid Game CGI Baby Everyone Hates
It was Tuesday night, raining in Chicago, and I was sitting on my couch eating cold leftover palak paneer directly out of the Tupperware. My toddler was finally asleep upstairs, which meant I had exactly forty-five minutes of silence before...
Navigating Spare Ribs vs Baby Back Ribs With An 11-Month-Old
I was halfway through a surprisingly decent potato salad at my buddy Dave’s backyard cookout in Southeast Portland when I looked over and saw him handing my 11-month-old daughter a massive, sauce-drenched pork rib. My brain basically threw a fatal...
Exactly what vaccines do babies get? A twin dad's messy guide
We were sitting in the waiting room of our local GP surgery, surrounded by faded posters from 1998 warning about the dangers of excessive screen time, which felt deeply ironic given I was desperately playing a brightly coloured cartoon on...
The Great Upright Wobble: A Guide to Your Baby Sitting Solo
I remember the exact Tuesday I tried to engineer my twin girls into a seated position using an architectural configuration of nursing pillows that would have made a civil engineer weep. I was absolutely convinced that if I just propped...
The Great Eye Colour Waiting Game: A London Dad's Guide to Melanin
My mother-in-law leaned over the Moses basket on day three and declared with absolute certainty that Twin B's eyes were definitely turning brown because she spotted some microscopic muddy flecks near the pupil. The NHS health visitor popped round on...