Magazine

A frustrated toddler chewing on a safe silicone teether instead of a dangerous ice cube.

Ice cube ice ice baby: Why the freezer trend is a terrible idea

When my son cut his first tooth, I got three contradictory texts in the span of an hour. My mother called to tell me to wrap an ice cube in a clean muslin cloth and let him gnaw on it,...

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Hardware-mounted wooden walk-through baby gate at the top of a modern staircase

The Real Truth About Finding A Hardware Mounted Baby Gate With Door

My mother-in-law told me I didn't need one because, in her day, they just watched their kids. The neighborhood Facebook group insisted I needed a custom, four-hundred-dollar lucite barricade imported from Sweden. Then my old charge nurse from the pediatric...

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Mother pushing stroller over bumpy Chicago sidewalk

The truth about rubber baby buggy bumpers and modern stroller safety

We were somewhere on Fullerton Avenue when the sidewalk just ended. It didn't taper off or gracefully transition into a crosswalk. It just turned into a crater of jagged concrete and exposed rebar, a true Chicago masterpiece. My toddler was...

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A dad adjusting the harness of a rear-facing infant car seat in a car.

Troubleshooting the hardware of your very first infant car seat

My wife's contractions were six minutes apart upstairs in room 412 of Legacy Emanuel, and I was down in the subterranean hospital parking garage violently wrestling a molded plastic base into the backseat of my Subaru. The Portland rain was...

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Priya sitting in driver seat looking at rearview mirror

Baby Driver Actor Dead: The Reality Check We Didn't Ask For

I was sitting in my freezing Honda CRV in the Target parking lot when the notification popped up. It was December 2024. The heater was barely working, and my toddler was finally asleep in the back after a forty-minute screaming...

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Millennial mother holding her toddler while looking at her aging parents in a messy living room

Surviving The Baby Boomer Age With A Toddler In Your House

I brought my aging parents to live with us in Chicago last winter. Don't attempt to merge decades of generational trauma and a teething toddler by just smiling and pretending you've unlimited emotional bandwidth. It was a Tuesday when I...

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A bewildered dad awkwardly testing bath water temperature with his elbow.

Debugging Bath Time: My Quest for a Safe Baby Bathtub

I’m standing over our stainless steel kitchen sink, my heart rate clocking 130 BPM on my smartwatch, holding what can only be described as a furiously squirming, soap-covered water balloon. My wife Sarah is standing exactly two feet to my...

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Exhausted dad staring at a medicine bottle at 2 AM while holding a crying baby who feels like a tiny furnace.

Why That 81mg Baby Aspirin Bottle Is A Massive Parenting Trap

The digital clock on the microwave read 2:14 AM, the Portland rain was actively trying to dissolve our roof, and my 11-month-old son felt exactly like a MacBook Pro rendering 4K video on your bare legs. I was frantically bouncing...

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A tired mother locking her car door from the inside while holding a sleeping infant.

The parking lot panic and the truth about keeping kids safe

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're sitting in the back of your Honda CR-V in the Target parking lot on Elston Avenue. The doors are locked. The engine is running. You're sweating through your grey scrub top. You just...

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