Debugging the Holiday Magic: Our First Baby Elf Setup
"Put it on the mantle so he knows Santa is watching," my mother told me on Thanksgiving, handing me a felt doll with suspicious eyes and unnaturally long limbs. "Don't bring that surveillance state psychological warfare into your home," my...
When Britney Spears ...Baby One More Time Ruined Our Tuesday
The snow outside our Chicago apartment was coming down completely sideways. It was day three of being trapped indoors with a 6-month-old who had abruptly decided that afternoon naps were a biological construct he no longer believed in. I was...
Surviving the Kitchen Disco: The Truth About Your Dancing Baby
Before the twins arrived, I received three distinct, entirely contradictory pieces of unsolicited advice regarding music and infants. The frighteningly intense instructor at our antenatal class warned us that bouncing a child incorrectly to a beat could permanently traumatize their...
Choosing the Perfect Baby Costume Without Losing Your Mind
It was late October, and I was standing in the middle of a crowded Target aisle, sweating profusely into a stretched-out grey maternity tank top I still couldn't stop wearing. I had a screaming four-month-old Leo in one arm and...
Unpacking the hit me baby one more time lyrics at 3 AM
It was 3:14 AM in Chicago. The wind was doing that thing where it aggressively rattles the apartment windows, and my toddler was running a mild fever from an ear infection. I was operating on maybe three hours of broken...
Why That Vintage Ty Beanie Baby Is a Terrible Gift for Infants
My mom's care package arrived at 2 PM on a Tuesday, smelling faintly of mothballs and unfiltered 1997 optimism. I sliced open the cardboard, pulled out Claude the Crabβcomplete with the pristine heart-shaped tag encased in a plastic protectorβand handed...
What The Baby Baby Justin Bieber Era Taught Me About 3 AM
If you want to know exactly how to make sure your child never, ever goes back to sleep, let me share my foolproof method from the first month of raising twins. When you hear the inevitable 3 AM wail, you...
How Always Be My Baby Lyrics Fixed My Kid's 2 AM Sleep Bug
It's 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, the Portland rain is actively trying to break my windowpanes, and I'm standing in the exact center of the nursery desperately trying to remember the bridge to a 1996 Mariah Carey pop anthem. My...
The Brutal, Beautiful Truth About the Always Be My Baby Phase
I'm standing at my kitchen island right now, staring at a mountain of laundry that smells vaguely like goat feed and sour milk. On the left side of the counter, I've got my four-year-old's mud-caked jeans that look like they...