Magazine

A baby playing with a wooden play gym on a living room rug while a tired dad holds a cup of coffee.

Lil Baby Harvard: Raising a tiny genius without losing your mind

Within forty-eight hours of bringing the twins home, I received three distinct pieces of unsolicited advice regarding their future intellectual dominance. My mother-in-law arrived with a set of high-contrast Mandarin flashcards (I speak passable French; my wife speaks sarcasm). Our...

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Confused mom holding a coffee cup looking at a bunch of bright green dinosaur toys and colorful baby building blocks.

The Truth About the Digital Dinosaur Taking Over My Living Room

It's 6:15 AM on a Tuesday. I'm standing in the kitchen wearing Dave's old college sweatpants—the grey ones with a literal hole in the left knee—and holding my third cup of coffee, which is already lukewarm. Leo, my four-year-old, is...

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Toddler having a meltdown on the living room rug after a tablet is taken away

The Cocomelon baby shark meltdown and how we survived

It was a Tuesday at 5:15 PM, which in a Chicago November means it had been pitch black outside for an hour. I was standing in my kitchen, staring at an unpeeled onion, trying to figure out how to cook...

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Stressed mom holding a coffee mug while looking at a tablet screen in confusion

A Letter To Past Me: That Cry Baby Movie Was A Huge Mistake!

Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago, Right now you're standing in the kitchen. It's exactly 6:14 AM on a Tuesday, and you're wearing those awful gray maternity sweatpants—yes, the ones with the mysterious bleach stain on the left thigh...

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A toddler playing with wooden building blocks on a rug instead of an iPad

The Ugly Truth About Those Viral Baby Hazel Games

It was 4:13 PM on a Tuesday and I was wearing my husband Dave’s oversized college hoodie that smelled faintly of old garlic, holding a lukewarm mug of French roast that I had already microwaved three separate times. I was...

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A dad staring at a collapsed block tower while his loser baby cries on a wooden play mat.

Why The Sore Loser Baby Phase Feels Like A Fatal System Error

7:14 PM. The structural integrity of the three-block tower has failed. My 11-month-old son, Leo, is staring at the fallen soft rubber cubes like they just insulted his ancestors. His face turns the color of a locally sourced Portland beet,...

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Dad stepping over a massive pile of baby toys scattered across a living room floor.

The Great Baby Spielzeug Overload: Surviving the Toy Avalanche

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was performing what I thought was a routine diaper exchange protocol in the dark when my left heel made contact with a singing plastic farm animal. I don't know what kind...

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A brightly coloured plastic dog toy sitting next to scattered wooden baby blocks on a rug.

Why I Completely Surrendered to the Fisher-Price Baby Era

It's 4:17 in the morning, and my bare foot has just made solid, agonising contact with the Smart Stages Puppy in the dark hallway. Without warning, an aggressively cheerful, synthetic voice belts out, "I SEE YOU!" followed immediately by that...

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Toddler playing a baby hazel app on an iPad in the dark bedroom

That Night a Baby Hazel App Cost Me Nine Bucks and Total Sanity

I was elbow-deep in printing shipping labels for my Etsy shop at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night, entirely convinced my four-year-old was dead asleep in his room, when my Apple watch buzzed with an $8.99 charge from the App...

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