What Nobody Tells You About the Clapping Milestone
I was sitting cross-legged on my living room rug, completely covered in pulverized Cheerios and dog hair, aggressively patting my hands together while chanting "yay!" like a deranged cheerleader. My oldest son, Tucker, who was about ten months old at...
What's a Nepo Baby? Raising Hard Workers in a Privileged World
It was ninety-eight degrees in July, smelling heavily of cheap sunscreen and chlorine, when I realized I had created a monster. My four-year-old, Beau, was clinging to the edge of the community pool screaming bloody murder while the other kids...
What is a Baby Deer Called? (A Dad's Woodland Survival Guide)
Richmond Park is a very specific kind of purgatory at six-fourteen in the morning in late spring. The grass is entirely composed of freezing mud, the air is thick with that distinctly British drizzle that doesn't actually look like rain...
The Truth About Baby Cobra: Tummy Time Pushes and Insurance Panic
I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a stack of medical bills and listening to hold music from my insurance provider, while my four-month-old was face-planted on the rug trying to lift his unnervingly heavy head. The biggest...
The 3 AM Plastic Crisis & The Truth About Baby Einstein Toys
It was 3:17 in the morning, November 2017, and I was wearing my husband Dave's oversized college sweatpants with an unidentified gray stain on the knee. I was doing that frantic, desperate bounce-sway dance with my four-month-old daughter Maya, who...
The truth about that heavy baby elephant walk
I'm sitting on the living room floor watching a fourteen-month-old slam his whole foot down against the hardwood like he's trying to squash a very large, very resilient bug. His arms are bent and held up by his ears like...
What pediatric nurses actually think about feeding baby dolls
I'm standing over my kitchen sink at two in the morning with a pair of surgical tweezers, a flashlight held between my teeth, and a deep sense of regret. My toddler's favorite interactive infantβthe one that supposedly eats synthetic powdered...
Surviving the First Five Years: A Twin Dad's Messy Guide
Yesterday at 6:15 AM, I found myself holding a dollop of peanut butter on a baby spoon, staring at my daughter Florence like I was defusing a bomb, while her sister Matilda was busy trying to lick the skirting board....
When Do Babies Start Talking? My Meltdown And What I Learned
I was sitting on the sticky laminate floor of the community center at 10:45 AM, wearing black leggings that definitely had dried yogurt crusted on the left knee, while a 14-month-old named Brayden pointed at a plastic truck and clearly...