Magazine

Tired dad singing to his 11-month-old baby in a dark Portland nursery

Hush Little Baby Bribes: A Late Night Letter To My Past Self

Hey Marcus of exactly six months ago. You're standing in the dark right now, aren't you? It's 3:14 AM. The nursery thermostat reads exactly 68.4 degrees because you checked the app three times. Your left shoulder is completely numb, you've...

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A tired mother looking at a baby teeth chart while her toddler chews a toy

The baby teeth chart lie: What to expect when fangs arrive

I've got my knee gently pinning her left arm to the carpet, my elbow blocking her right, while I try to wedge a clean index finger past her lips. She has just ruined her first baby tee of the morning...

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A baby covered in meat juices chewing happily on a pork rib bone.

The Absurd Reality of Handing Your Infant a Rack of Baby Back Ribs

I'm sitting across the dining table watching one of my six-month-old twin daughters hold a massive, grease-slicked pork bone in her tiny, dimpled fist. She is gnawing on it with the intense, primal focus of a prehistoric hunter who has...

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A very tired father staring into the middle distance while holding a crying baby.

Decoding the Relentless Midnight Screams of Your Tiny Human

It’s 3:14 in the morning and both twins are vibrating with the kind of acoustic violence usually reserved for heavy metal festivals. I'm standing in the dark, rocking on my heels in a rhythm that has permanently damaged my lower...

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A tired dad holding a wooden baby gym while staring blankly at a tablet screen

The Baby John Phenomenon: Decoding Screen Time & Newborn Life

"Just put on that little animated kid, it's basically a mute button for crying," my lead engineer told me over Slack while I bounced a screaming infant on my knee. "If he looks at a screen before he's two, his...

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A tired twin dad holding two babies who are chewing on their organic cotton clothes.

The Great Baby Myth And Other Delightful Lies We Tell New Parents

At precisely 3:14 AM on a rainy Tuesday, while scraping what I desperately hoped was mashed sweet potato off the nursery ceiling, I realised the central lie of modern parenting. Before the twins arrived, well-meaning relatives and aggressively pastel-coloured books...

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A messy living room floor with a wooden baby play gym and a half-empty coffee mug

What On Earth Is A Skilla Baby? Sorting Out Real Milestone Myths

Three different people gave me completely contradictory advice about raising a baby in the exact same twenty-four-hour period after I brought my oldest son, Leo, home from the hospital seven years ago. My mother-in-law, standing in my cramped kitchen wearing...

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exhausted mom holding a tiny lil baby in a dimly lit chicago nursery

How to keep your lil baby alive without losing your entire mind

Listen, I spent my first two weeks as a mother doing everything exactly wrong. It was three in the morning, and I was bouncing violently on a yoga ball, aggressively shushing while balancing my phone on my shoulder to play...

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A confused dad looking at his baby holding a wooden teething ring instead of a smartphone screen.

Debugging the baby shark phase: Viral videos and double teeth

Don't ever assume an algorithm knows how to soothe your kid better than you do. I learned this the hard way at a coffee shop on Hawthorne last Tuesday, thinking a quick blast of YouTube would act as a temporary...

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