Why Don't You Want Me Like I Want You Baby? (The Clingy Phase)
I was standing at the kitchen island yesterday, attempting to eat a cold piece of toast while packing up a stack of orders for my Etsy shop, when my grandmother dropped the classic line she always reserves for moments of...
How to Actually Troubleshoot Your Way to an Fantastic Baby
It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, the Portland rain was actively mocking my sanity against the bedroom window, and my 11-month-old was throwing a massive runtime error. I had tried the bouncing walk, the aggressive shushing, the weird yoga-ball-hip-sway...
Why My Toddler Will Never Wear Rigid Cowboy Boots Ever Again
We were standing knee-deep in what I sincerely hoped was just regular East London mud at Mudchute Farm when the screaming started. Molly, one half of my two-year-old twin disaster squad, had suddenly frozen in place, glaring with pure, unadulterated...
The Absolute Mess of Tiny Sneakers and What Actually Works
I'm sweating through my faded vintage band t-shirt. The air conditioning in our cramped Brooklyn walk-up is completely shot, and my husband Dave is just standing there in the doorway. He's holding my iced oat milk latte—which is definitely mostly...
Debugging the Parent Posture With Baby Cobra Yoga
I was exactly 4.2 minutes into a "Beginner Yoga for Stiff People" YouTube video, contorted into a shape that felt biologically incorrect, when my 11-month-old decided my ribcage was a drum set. I was trying to troubleshoot what my wife...
How My Eleven-Month-Old Gained Root Access to Our Entire House
There was a spoon flying toward my left eye before I'd even managed to fully process that the coffee maker was empty. I ducked, the metal clattered against the stainless steel fridge, and my eleven-month-old son glared at me from...
Debugging the baby boy wardrobe: A first-time dad’s logs
My thumb was actively bleeding. It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, rain was aggressively battering our Portland bedroom window, and I was locked in a physical struggle with a tiny, angry, poop-covered human. The adversary was a rigid denim...
The 3 AM Blowout That Made Me Rethink Gerber Baby Clothes
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, the ambient temperature in the nursery was exactly 61.5 degrees, and I was staring at a structural failure of catastrophic proportions. The containment vessel had breached. My eleven-month-old son, who was supposed to...
How To Say Hasta La Vista Baby Without Losing Your Mind
My right shoe was on. My left shoe was somewhere under the hallway console table. My ten-month-old had a death grip on my sweatpants, wailing like I was walking into a fire instead of just getting a routine dental cleaning....