Can Babies Eat Baby Doll Pizza? The Takeout Incident
I was standing on Stark Street in Portland in a light drizzle, holding a lukewarm oat milk flat white that cost entirely too much money, while my husband Dave balanced a massive, grease-stained cardboard box on his hip. We were...
Dear Priya: The messy truth about feeding a buttermilk baby
Listen. You're currently standing in the dairy aisle at Patel Brothers, staring at the cartons of cultured buttermilk and traditional chaas, having a mild internal crisis. Your mom has been asking for weeks when her precious granddaughter can finally have...
Why Homemade Baby Suji Saved My Grocery Budget and My Sanity
"Just give him rice cereal in a bottle," my grandma told me over the phone while I was actively scraping a dried crust of mashed banana off my kitchen cabinets. "No, skip grains entirely, meat only," a girl in my...
The Barefoot Myth and Why You Actually Need Baby Slippers
It was 2018, and I was standing in a ridiculously overpriced baby boutique in downtown Seattle wearing leggings that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in at least a week. I was holding my lukewarm vanilla latte in...
The Brutal Reality of Buying an Extra Wide Baby Gate For Your Home
My mother-in-law told me to just line up the heavy dining room chairs to block the living room archway. My neighbor at the park swore by those wooden accordion things from the nineties, completely ignoring the massive strangulation risk. The...
A Letter to Myself Before Buying That Baby Push Walker
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're standing in aisle fourteen of the Target in River North, staring at a plastic contraption that plays the alphabet in three different languages. Your coffee is ice cold. Your baby is nine months...
What Age Do Babies Start Crawling? A Tech Dad's Reality Check
I'm lying flat on the cold oak floor of our Portland living room with a digital laser measure, trying to calculate the exact trajectory of my eleven-month-old daughter. She isn't moving toward me. She's pushing herself violently backward like a...
When do babies start clapping: a letter to my panicked past self
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the jute rug in the living room. Your knees hurt. You have sung some variation of pat-a-cake forty-seven times today. Your coffee is cold and your eight-month-old is staring at...
Surviving the 9-Month Sleep Regression and Absolute Chaos
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in the dark wearing a pair of maternity leggings I should have burned six months ago and my husband Dave's faded college hoodie, staring at Maya. She was gripping...