What the Lindbergh baby taught me about nursery security
Listen, it's two in the morning in Chicago, the radiator is hissing like a dying snake, and I'm standing in my toddler's room staring at the window latch. I should be sleeping. Instead, I'm thinking about a homemade wooden ladder...
What Is A Baby Booter? Decoding My Late Night Parenting Typos
I'm currently sitting on my living room rug matching tiny socks in the dark, trying desperately to keep my eyes open. Out here in the rural Texas hill country, 2 AM is incredibly quiet—just the hum of the AC, a...
The Mattress Myth and Other Midnight Lies About Baby Congestion
At 2:14 a.m., holding a screaming infant who sounded remarkably like a broken accordion, I made the fatal mistake of consulting the internet. A very cheerful parenting forum told me I should simply prop up one end of my daughter's...
The Great Baby Diaper Delusion: What Nobody Tells You About The Poop
"You absolutely have to use cloth, it's the only way to avoid the toxins," my mother-in-law said, handing me a stack of what looked like medieval torture bandages while I was exactly thirty-eight weeks pregnant and sweating through my maternity...
Debugging My Baby Girl's First Halloween Costume Disaster
I was standing in the driveway, sweating through my flannel, trying to solve a geometry problem that shouldn't exist. It was 52 degrees in Portland, a classic damp October morning, but my internal CPU was overheating because I couldn't get...
My Bizarre Search for a Baby Firefly Costume and What I Learned
The baby monitor on my secondary display currently reads exactly 68.4 degrees, which is supposedly the good ambient temperature for an eleven-month-old to achieve deep REM sleep, though she's currently doing this weird phantom nursing motion with her mouth that...
Is My Child an Alien Baby? A Troubleshooting Log for Past Me
Dear Marcus from exactly six months ago. You're currently standing over the bassinet in the pitch black, holding your phone flashlight cupped in your palm so Sarah doesn't wake up, watching a tiny chest stop rising for what feels like...
Decoding the Weird Joker Baby Suit Panic Sometime Around 3 AM
It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday when my 11-month-old's thermal management system completely crashed. We were trying to do a quick family photo in the living room, and my mother-in-law had aggressively gifted us a tiny, three-piece synthetic tuxedo....
Why we really need to talk about the ugly side of baby headbands
You pull it out of the tissue paper at your baby shower. It's a stiff nylon elastic band attached to a sequined peony the size of a small cabbage. The aunties in the room coo over it, telling you how...