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Pregnant mom sitting at a messy kitchen table crossing out a list of baby names

Top Baby Names: Picking One Without Starting a Family Feud

I was sitting at my kitchen island at 37 weeks pregnant with my oldest, eating dry cereal out of the box, staring at a yellow legal pad that looked like the diary of a madman. It was just a giant...

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Exhausted mom in a messy living room looking at baby name lists on her phone.

The Real Reason I Cried About My Baby's Name at the Hospital

I was sitting in exactly the wrong position on that terrible plastic-covered hospital mattress, wearing mesh underwear that I swear was designed as a medieval torture device, nursing a lukewarm cup of what the cafeteria boldly claimed was coffee, when...

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Tired dad holding a silicone panda teether while researching baby naming rules

The Bizarre Kat Timpf Baby Name Rumor & Our Naming Panic

You're currently staring at cell C42 on the "Child_Identifier_v3.xlsx" spreadsheet, blinking through the burn of blue light at 2:14 AM while your five-month-old aggressively tries to eat his own foot in the bassinet beside you. You've gone so far down...

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An exhausted pregnant woman staring blankly at a list of baby names on her phone

The 3 AM Meltdown That Finally Taught Me How to Name a Human

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in mid-August, and the air conditioning in our apartment had completely surrendered. I was 37 weeks pregnant with Maya, wearing my husband Mark’s hopelessly stained college lacrosse t-shirt, and I was crying so...

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Confused dad looking at a spreadsheet of baby names while holding a teething infant in Portland.

How The AGT Winner Jessica Sanchez Baby Name Wrecked My Math

Don't, under any circumstances, try to write a Python script that scrapes the Social Security Administration database to find a moniker with a mathematically perfect syllable-to-vowel ratio. This is a terrible way to name a human. I know this because...

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Wooden baby gym and organic cotton bodysuit in a nursery

Why the jennifer lawrence baby name choice makes so much sense

My mother-in-law told me to pick a heavy traditional Indian name to honor our ancestors. The charge nurse on the pediatric floor told me to invent something completely new so there wouldn't be five of them in kindergarten. The tired...

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Tired dad looking at a laptop spreadsheet while holding a baby

Debugging the Ultimate Spreadsheet of Baby Names for Girls - Dad Log

Dear Marcus from six months ago, You're currently sitting at your desk at 2 AM. Your daughter is five months old, sleeping for a miraculous forty-two-minute stretch, and your brain is finally quiet. Then your buddy Dave texts you. He...

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Mom scrolling on her phone while baby plays on a wooden play mat.

Why I'm Stealing Millie Bobby Brown's Top Secret Parenting Rule

I just spent forty-five minutes frantically deleting old Facebook albums from 2019 while my toddler tried to climb the dishwasher, and let me tell y'all, the panic sweat was real. I was looking at my oldest son's digital footprint, and...

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A frustrated dad staring at a laptop screen filled with a spreadsheet of baby names

The Google Sheet That Nearly Broke Us: A Guide to Baby Girl Names

Row 47 of our shared Google Sheet was where my marriage nearly met its untimely end over the name 'Blythe'. My wife, heavily pregnant and radiating a sort of exhausted menace, argued that it sounded literary and sophisticated. I argued...

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