Magazine

An eleven month old baby trying to eat a credit card on a rug

Dear Past Marcus: Debugging The Toddler Consumerism Bug

Dear Marcus from exactly six months ago, You're currently sitting on the living room rug, watching our five-month-old try to gnaw the security chip off your Amex card. You think it's hilarious. You're probably taking a photo to send to...

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Red panda eating bamboo on branch next to a sleepy human infant

What an Endangered Red Panda Taught Me About Parenting My Wild Child

The glow of my dual monitors was the only light in the living room while my eleven-month-old son performed what I can only describe as a sustained velociraptor screech from his playpen. It was 3:14 AM. I was supposed to...

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Exhausted dad holding coffee while his 11-month-old plays on an organic polar blanket

Why Raising an 11-Month-Old Feels Like Having a Baby Polar Bear

At 3:14 AM last Tuesday, I found myself sitting on the nursery floor in the dark, bathed in the blue light of my phone, holding a sleeping 11-month-old who currently weighs as much as a medium-sized microwave. My browser history...

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Messy living room with bright plastic infant items mixed with wooden blocks

The Plastic Avalanche: A Real Parent's Guide to Better Play

The singing plastic dog went off at exactly 3:14 AM. I know the exact time because the microwave clock was glaring at me in the dark kitchen where I was standing in a milk-stained gray nursing tank, furiously shaking a...

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Baby chewing on an electric toothbrush handle in the bathroom

The Elektrische Zahnbürste Kinder Guide: What Actually Works

At 7:14 PM last Tuesday, I was pinning my 11-month-old to the bath mat in a gentle, modified jiu-jitsu hold while a neon-green vibrating brush whirred aggressively against my left nostril. He was laughing. I was sweating. The toothpaste had...

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Exhausted dad looking at baby monitor stats on a tablet in a dark nursery.

Raising a Black baby: A glitch report to my past self

It's 3:14 AM. I'm currently staring at the humidity sensor output for the nursery, trying to correlate a 4% drop in ambient moisture with why our son has been awake since one in the morning. I'm writing this to you,...

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Priya sorting through a pile of useless baby shower party trinkets in her kitchen.

The Brutal Truth About Shower Gifts That Guests Actually Keep

I'm standing in my kitchen, staring at a tiny resin carriage I just found in the back of my junk drawer. I honestly don't know whose party it came from. Before I had my own kid, I thought you had...

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A woman holding a pen over a blank baby shower card next to a gift

What to write in a baby shower card without losing your mind

I'm sitting in the passenger seat of our sedan, balancing a small square envelope on the dashboard while my husband dodges Chicago potholes. We're twenty minutes late to my cousin's baby shower. The pen I dug out of the glovebox...

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Exhausted British dad looking at a laptop spreadsheet of rare daughter monikers while holding two bottles.

My 3am breakdown over finding genuinely rare monikers for daughters

It was 3:14 in the morning, the glow of my MacBook illuminating the half-eaten Hobnob resting dangerously close to my wife's massive, third-trimester bump. We were locked in a vicious, whispered argument over whether "Lyra" sounded too much like "liar"...

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