From Cheap Laughs to Safe Skin: The Truth About Funny Bodysuits
It was May 2017, and I was sitting in a sweltering community hall in what I honestly thought was a breezy maternity maxi dress but was actually just a floral greenhouse for my incredibly swollen thighs. I was eight months...
The Great Dance Recital Rash and Why I Burned That Nylon Bodysuit
We were wedged in the stall of the tiny, non-air-conditioned bathroom at Miss Patty's School of Dance, and my four-year-old was screaming like I was actively peeling off her actual skin. Lily had just finished the dress rehearsal for her...
A First-Time Dad's Guide to Surviving the Infant Knit Sweater
Dear Marcus of six months ago. You're currently standing in the nursery, sweating straight through your gray t-shirt, staring at a rigid, cable-knit wool tube. Your son, who was perfectly happy three minutes ago, is now purple and screaming. His...
BeiΓring Holz: Why I Tossed the Plastic for Wooden Teethers
I'm literally sitting on the floor of my laundry room right now, picking golden retriever hair off a neon green, gel-filled plastic teething ring that my three-year-old just excavated from the dark abyss under the living room couch. Itβs sticky....
The 3 AM Blowout That Made Me Respect the Newborn White Onesie
It was 3:14 AM. November. I know this because my phone flashlight was blinding me and the digital clock on the microwave was blinking in the background while I stood in the kitchen wearing a fleece Target robe from like,...
How a Simple Penguin Blanket Saved My Sanity and My Marriage
It was 2:14 AM and I was literally hovering over the Motorola baby monitor, zooming in on my oldest son's pixelated chest to make sure it was still rising and falling. The thermostat in our drafty Texas farmhouse said 62...
What I Learned After Buying a Blanket With Rainbows for My Twins
We were standing by the dismal puddle that passes for a duck pond in our local park when a woman I had never met touched my arm and gave me a look of deep, teary-eyed solidarity. She was staring intently...
The Pyjama Baby Protocol: A Dad's 3 AM Debugging Guide
It's exactly 3:14 AM, the nursery thermostat reads a chilling 68.5 degrees, and I'm holding my breath while attempting to thread a tiny, flailing leg into a tube of fabric in near-total darkness. The structural integrity of the diaper has...
Hosen Kinder: Why Stiff Baby Trousers Are a Hardware Failure
There I was at month four, holding what looked like a perfectly scaled-down replica of my own selvedge denim jeans, staring at my son while he executed a perfect, continuous death roll on the changing table. I had exactly three...