What a wild baby beaver in Chicago taught me about toddlers
We were standing ankle-deep in mysterious brown water at the North Park Village Nature Center when I saw it. The temperature was hovering around forty-eight degrees. My son had already thrown his left shoe into a patch of reeds. I...
Why a Baby Alligator is My Toddler's Weirdest Obsession
It's Tuesday at 2 PM, and I'm standing in this aggressively air-conditioned reptile sanctuary off the highway in Florida, sweating through a vintage band tee that used to be my favorite before it got permanently stained with oat milk. I'm...
Why a Reborn Baby is Actually the Ultimate Parenting Hack
There I was at 2 AM, staring at a browser tab filled with pictures of hyper-realistic infant dolls, fully convinced the sleep deprivation from my second pregnancy had finally cracked my brain. The glow of the laptop was illuminating the...
Why Babydoll Dresses Are Secretly a Parent's Best Friend
Itβs ninety-five degrees in East Texas, and my mother-in-law is trying to shoehorn my oldest child into a stiff, tulle monstrosity that looks like a wedding cake exploded. My kid is screaming like a feral cat in a church pew....
Dear Past Me: Stop Googling "Baby Chicks For Sale" Before You Read ...
You're standing in aisle four of the farm supply store. Itβs April. You're wearing those black leggings with the mysterious crusty yogurt stain on the left knee, balancing a rapidly melting iced oat milk latte against your hip, while Mayaβwho's...
The Portland Backyard Bug: Debugging Encounters with Baby Animals
I'm standing in my perpetually damp Portland backyard at 6:15 AM, holding a lukewarm mug of coffee like a shield, while my 11-month-old son, Leo, points a chubby, sticky finger at what appears to be a vibrating pile of dead...
How the Peppa Pig New Baby Episode Saved My Sanity With Two Kids
I was sitting squarely on the cold bathroom tile, staring cross-eyed at two pink lines on a plastic stick, while my two-year-old was actively trying to flush my best Mac contour brush down the toilet. He paused his plumbing experiment,...
Why searching for the cast of baby reindeer will ruin your evening
It was 5:17 AM on a Tuesday, an hour that shouldn't legally exist, and my living room looked like a crime scene involving a half-eaten box of oat biscuits and an aggressively smeared syringe of sticky, strawberry-flavoured Calpol. Florence, the...
The Reality of Fitting a Baby Grand Piano in a House with Toddlers
I'm currently on my hands and knees in the lounge, holding one end of a metal tape measure while Maya, who's two, tries to eat the other end. Her twin sister, Lily, is repeatedly smashing a wooden spoon against the...