Magazine

Exhausted father staring at a baby name book while holding a cup of lukewarm tea.

The Absurd Quest for Baby Boy Names Unique Enough Not to Be Steve

My mother-in-law cornered me by the kettle at week twelve of the pregnancy to insist that strong, traditional English names like Arthur or George were the only guaranteed way to prevent a child from a life of petty criminality, while...

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A dad holding his baby looking confused at an iPad playing an 80s movie.

Why the Three Men and a Baby Cast Lied to Us About Fatherhood

It was 3:14 AM, my 11-month-old son was attached to a bottle, and the glowing screen of my iPad was illuminating my deeply exhausted face. I was watching an 80s comedy classic to stay awake, watching Tom Selleck hold a...

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A tired dad scrolling on his phone while twin girls play on the floor

Why The Uncle Richard Is My Baby Daddy Drama Actually Helps

It's 3:14 in the morning. One of the twins has inexplicably managed to lodge a rogue, rock-hard piece of toast behind the nursery radiator, and the other is performing a prolonged, operatic wail because our profoundly indifferent tabby cat looked...

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Exhausted dad in a London registry office holding twins wrapped in blankets

The Agony of Choosing Unique Baby Girl Names at the Registry

The pen was hovering over the official birth registration form, my hand physically shaking, and not just because I was running on four minutes of broken sleep and half a stale Hobnob. We were sitting in the fluorescent purgatory of...

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Tired mother holding a silicone cup away from a reaching infant

When can babies have water: surviving the summer hydration wars

July in Chicago is a specific kind of swampy misery. Two years ago, the air conditioning unit in our third-floor apartment wheezed its last breath right in the middle of a heatwave. I was sweating through my nursing tank top,...

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Frustrated mom holding coffee next to a pile of vintage 1980s baby gear.

When The Grandparents Bring Over Their 1980s Death Trap Baby Gear

I was wearing my husband’s stained grey sweatpants, the ones with the mysterious hole near the left knee, standing in my driveway at 10 AM on a Tuesday while clutching a mug of coffee I had already microwaved three times....

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A tired father inspecting a baby cot mattress with a flashlight.

What Finding Baby Bed Bugs at 3 AM Actually Does to a Parent

The glow of my phone screen at 3:14 AM illuminated what I can only describe as a tiny, malevolent sesame seed crawling across Maya's fitted sheet. I had only come into the nursery because she had done that specific, high-pitched...

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Exhausted dad kneeling beside a bathtub holding a wet baby wrapped in a towel

Surviving Twin Bath Time And The Suction Cup Seat Illusion

Before I had even figured out how to turn on the taps in a way that wouldn’t instantly scold or freeze my daughters, I was already fielding contradictory instructions from everyone I knew about how to wash them. My mother-in-law...

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A tired dad holding a baby backpack while examining a baby covered in a messy blowout

Debugging the Baby Bag: The Mobile Hardware You Actually Need

I'm standing on the wet sidewalk outside Stumptown Coffee on SE Belmont, holding my eleven-month-old son at arm's length like he's a highly unstable radioactive isotope. It's forty-three degrees, misting in that relentless Pacific Northwest way, and my child has...

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