Buying a high chair without losing your mind
My mother-in-law told me to just feed him on the floor like we did back home. My favorite shift-nurse at the hospital swore by strapping them into a bouncer with a bottle. And an influencer I hate-follow insisted that if...
A Letter to My Clueless Past Self About Hoarding Baby Gear
You're currently standing in aisle four of John Lewis, holding a Β£40 electronic device designed exclusively to warm wet wipes, quietly convincing yourself that if the twins experience a cold wipe on their bottoms, it'll somehow ruin their developmental trajectory...
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...
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...
The yellow menace: A twin dad's survival guide to baby shark toys
It's 4:12 in the morning. I'm standing in the hallway wearing nothing but mismatched socks and a pair of boxers that have seen significantly better days, violently negotiating with a water-activated plastic fish. The fish is singing. It has been...
The Myth That Ruined My Newborn Days (And The Baby Orangutan Fix)
I was wearing Tom's vintage college hoodieβthe gray one with the mysterious yellow mustard stain from 2014βand it was somewhere around 3:17 AM. Maya was three weeks old and screaming like I'd personally offended her entire bloodline. I had a...
Decoding baby names for boys: A dad's naming algorithm
Line 74 of my Google Sheet was flashing neon green. I'd written a custom script to highlight any moniker with a standard deviation of less than 5% in popularity over the last decade, filtering out anything that spiked due to...
Dear Past Priya: What I Wish I Knew About Buying A Baby Dresser
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting cross-legged on the floor of the guest room, staring at a particleboard plank and crying over a Swedish instruction manual. You have a screwdriver in one hand and half a jar...
Wait, Is Whatever Happened to Baby Jane a New Organic Brand?
It was 11:43 PM on a Thursday. I was wearing Daveβs raggedy college sweatpants with a deeply questionable yogurt stain on the left knee, balancing a lukewarm cup of decaf coffee on my chestβwhy do I even bother with decaf,...