Magazine

Dad and baby playing with a wooden drum kit on a nursery floor

Audio Specs: Finding a Babys Drum Kit Without Losing Your Mind

My mom told me I needed to buy a five-piece acoustic junior set immediately to "build his latent musical genius," which is a wildly optimistic read on a kid who currently eats old Cheerios off the floor. My neighbor, who...

Read more

A vintage plush dragon sitting on a nursery shelf next to wooden toys

Tracking Down a December 9th Beanie Baby is Total Madness

It started, as most of my parenting anxieties do, with a casual comment over a lukewarm flat white. When the twins were approaching their birthday, my mother-in-law declared I simply had to find a plush toy with their exact birth...

Read more

Mom sitting on a nursery floor playing pretty little baby chords while baby watches

Why Learning Pretty Little Baby Chords Beats Playing Mozart

Three years ago, I was sitting on my cheap living room rug, sweating through my nursing tank top, frantically trying to sync a Bluetooth speaker to a twelve-hour Spotify playlist called "Mozart For Genius Brain Development." My oldest son, the...

Read more

A vintage rainbow chameleon plush toy sitting on a modern wooden nursing chair

The 3 AM Hunt for the October 14th Beanie Baby

The screen of my laptop was basically burning my retinas, but I couldn't look away. It was 3:14 AM. I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with Leo, sweating through a pair of maternity leggings that I had been wearing for, oh...

Read more

Portland dad playing acoustic guitar while 11-month-old baby chews on a wooden toy

Debugging My 11-Month-Old Baby's First Guitar Playing Setup

Yesterday at exactly 4:13 PM, my daughter attempted to eat the low E string off my Martin acoustic dreadnought. I was sitting on the rug in our living roomβ€”which I keep at a very precise, data-backed 68.5 degrees for best...

Read more

A baby pressing laptop keys while a tired dad drinks cold coffee

Surviving the Inevitable Baby Keyboard Smash in My Home Office

"asdfghjkl;'" was the exact, unedited message I sent to my accountant last Tuesday at 9:14 AM. I'd love to claim it was an avant-garde statement about the futility of modern tax law, but the truth is considerably shorter, louder, and...

Read more

A stressed mother holding a cup of coffee while looking at messy toys on a rug

The Viral Fidget Toy You Should Never Give Your Teething Infant

It was 2:14 PM on a Tuesday and I was wearing my husband Dave's faded college sweatshirt that smells faintly of old garlic, desperately sweeping my hand across our living room rug like a frantic human metal detector. I was...

Read more

Toddler playing with wooden toys on the living room floor

Raising a Gemini Baby Without Losing Your Mind Or All Your Friends

"Don't tell Mr. Henderson that his grass looks like garbage. I don't care if that's what Daddy said in the kitchen, you keep your mouth shut because your wife is my friend and I've to sit next to her at...

Read more

Baby chewing on a wooden instrument surrounded by organic cotton blankets

What the Clairo Nepo Baby Drama Taught Me About Parenting

The internet wants you to believe the only way to give your kid a leg up in life is to be a multi-millionaire marketing executive who plays golf with record label CEOs. I know this because at 6:13 AM this...

Read more