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Exhausted dad in a London registry office holding twins wrapped in blankets

The Agony of Choosing Unique Baby Girl Names at the Registry

The pen was hovering over the official birth registration form, my hand physically shaking, and not just because I was running on four minutes of broken sleep and half a stale Hobnob. We were sitting in the fluorescent purgatory of...

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Tired mother holding a silicone cup away from a reaching infant

When can babies have water: surviving the summer hydration wars

July in Chicago is a specific kind of swampy misery. Two years ago, the air conditioning unit in our third-floor apartment wheezed its last breath right in the middle of a heatwave. I was sweating through my nursing tank top,...

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90s nostalgiababy boomersboundariesfamily careparenting humourtoys
Frustrated mom holding coffee next to a pile of vintage 1980s baby gear.

When The Grandparents Bring Over Their 1980s Death Trap Baby Gear

I was wearing my husband’s stained grey sweatpants, the ones with the mysterious hole near the left knee, standing in my driveway at 10 AM on a Tuesday while clutching a mug of coffee I had already microwaved three times....

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A tired father inspecting a baby cot mattress with a flashlight.

What Finding Baby Bed Bugs at 3 AM Actually Does to a Parent

The glow of my phone screen at 3:14 AM illuminated what I can only describe as a tiny, malevolent sesame seed crawling across Maya's fitted sheet. I had only come into the nursery because she had done that specific, high-pitched...

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baby bathbaby safetyinfant careparenting humourtwin dad
Exhausted dad kneeling beside a bathtub holding a wet baby wrapped in a towel

Surviving Twin Bath Time And The Suction Cup Seat Illusion

Before I had even figured out how to turn on the taps in a way that wouldn’t instantly scold or freeze my daughters, I was already fielding contradictory instructions from everyone I knew about how to wash them. My mother-in-law...

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6-month-oldgearparenting humoursustainabletravel
A tired dad holding a baby backpack while examining a baby covered in a messy blowout

Debugging the Baby Bag: The Mobile Hardware You Actually Need

I'm standing on the wet sidewalk outside Stumptown Coffee on SE Belmont, holding my eleven-month-old son at arm's length like he's a highly unstable radioactive isotope. It's forty-three degrees, misting in that relentless Pacific Northwest way, and my child has...

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A dad trying to put a long sleeve organic cotton romper on a squirming baby boy

Debugging The Complete System Failure Of Dressing A Baby Boy

I'm currently staring at a pair of dark wash, rigid denim jeans in size 9-12 months. My son is actively executing a perfect alligator death roll on the changing pad, and I'm supposed to somehow force his chaotic, rapidly expanding...

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animal learningbaby safetyearly developmentoutdoorparenting humoursurvival
A bewildered dad holding a baby while looking at a fluffy duckling

Backyard Baby Ducks: A Dad's Guide to Feathers, Fluff, and Chaos

If you've ever seen a cartoon or read a children's book, you probably think a baby duck’s default state is bobbing happily in a crystal-clear pond while eating breadcrumbs, which is exactly why I nearly short-circuited when my wife pointed...

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Why the happy baby pose saved my structurally ruined spine

When my lower back finally gave out, I received three distinct pieces of advice from three very different people. My mother-in-law told me I needed to sleep on a plank of pine wood because that’s what her uncle did in...

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