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Tired dad holding a silicone panda teether while researching baby naming rules

The Bizarre Kat Timpf Baby Name Rumor & Our Naming Panic

You're currently staring at cell C42 on the "Child_Identifier_v3.xlsx" spreadsheet, blinking through the burn of blue light at 2:14 AM while your five-month-old aggressively tries to eat his own foot in the bassinet beside you. You've gone so far down...

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An exhausted pregnant woman staring blankly at a list of baby names on her phone

The 3 AM Meltdown That Finally Taught Me How to Name a Human

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in mid-August, and the air conditioning in our apartment had completely surrendered. I was 37 weeks pregnant with Maya, wearing my husband Mark’s hopelessly stained college lacrosse t-shirt, and I was crying so...

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Confused dad looking at a spreadsheet of baby names while holding a teething infant in Portland.

How The AGT Winner Jessica Sanchez Baby Name Wrecked My Math

Don't, under any circumstances, try to write a Python script that scrapes the Social Security Administration database to find a moniker with a mathematically perfect syllable-to-vowel ratio. This is a terrible way to name a human. I know this because...

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Wooden baby gym and organic cotton bodysuit in a nursery

Why the jennifer lawrence baby name choice makes so much sense

My mother-in-law told me to pick a heavy traditional Indian name to honor our ancestors. The charge nurse on the pediatric floor told me to invent something completely new so there wouldn't be five of them in kindergarten. The tired...

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Tired dad looking at a laptop spreadsheet while holding a baby

Debugging the Ultimate Spreadsheet of Baby Names for Girls - Dad Log

Dear Marcus from six months ago, You're currently sitting at your desk at 2 AM. Your daughter is five months old, sleeping for a miraculous forty-two-minute stretch, and your brain is finally quiet. Then your buddy Dave texts you. He...

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Mom scrolling on her phone while baby plays on a wooden play mat.

Why I'm Stealing Millie Bobby Brown's Top Secret Parenting Rule

I just spent forty-five minutes frantically deleting old Facebook albums from 2019 while my toddler tried to climb the dishwasher, and let me tell y'all, the panic sweat was real. I was looking at my oldest son's digital footprint, and...

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A frustrated dad staring at a laptop screen filled with a spreadsheet of baby names

The Google Sheet That Nearly Broke Us: A Guide to Baby Girl Names

Row 47 of our shared Google Sheet was where my marriage nearly met its untimely end over the name 'Blythe'. My wife, heavily pregnant and radiating a sort of exhausted menace, argued that it sounded literary and sophisticated. I argued...

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Priya reviewing a list of baby names scribbled on a hospital notepad

The brutal truth about picking baby names that won't ruin them

My mother-in-law cornered me in the kitchen at twenty weeks pregnant to gently suggest that our child's name needed to reflect our deep ancestral roots. Later that afternoon, my hipster neighbor in Logan Square casually mentioned over the fence that...

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A tired father holding two identical personalized baby bibs in a messy kitchen.

Surviving Weaning and the Tactical Genius of a LΓ€tzchen mit Namen

I'm currently staring at a smear of pureed pumpkin that has somehow defied gravity to reach the ceiling rose of our Victorian terrace. It's seven in the morning on a Tuesday, and one of the twinsβ€”I'm fairly certain it's Florence,...

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