Magazine

A glowing baby einstein sea dreams soother attached to a wooden crib

My toxic relationship with that glowing Baby Einstein aquarium

It's 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in November. I'm standing barefoot in the hallway, wearing a stained nursing tank that I still haven't washed even though my son Leo is three and Maya is eight months old, and I'm practically...

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Toddler twin girls in London flat playing with soft baby dolls on the floor

Why baby dolls took over my flat (and what the science says)

I'm currently staring at a small, disembodied plastic leg poking out from beneath our sofa. It belongs to β€˜Baby Susan’, a doll who has suffered more blunt force trauma in the past three weeks than an amateur rugby player. If...

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A disassembled toy doll next to a sink full of soapy water and a scrub brush

The ugly truth about that baby alive doll hiding in your playroom

I'm standing over my kitchen sink at eleven at night with a pair of surgical tweezers, trying to extract a solid black clump of fermented synthetic cherry mush from the plastic esophagus of a toy. This is not how I...

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Toddler sitting on a playmat looking frustrated next to scattered wooden blocks

The hostage negotiation of the sorry baby apology milestone

The soft rubber block bounced directly off my collarbone and landed in my lukewarm coffee. It splashed onto my only clean pair of leggings. My two-year-old stood across the living room, chest heaving, waiting for the fallout. I looked over...

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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 mom holding a coffee while her baby chews on a wooden teething toy

The Truth About When Your Baby Will Actually Start Talking

It was late 2018, and I was sitting cross-legged on a primary-colored foam puzzle mat in a community center basement that smelled faintly of bleached diapers and absolute despair. I was wearing yoga pants that had definitely never seen the...

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Toddler boy aggressively putting a hat on a lifelike silicone baby doll on a messy living room rug

Why a Creepy Lifelike Baby Doll Saved My Sanity With Sibling Prep

I was sitting on my incredibly stained West Elm rug at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, wearing maternity leggings that definitely had dried yogurt on the left thigh, watching my three-year-old son Leo attempt a WWE-style suplex on...

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A wooden baby guitar next to a vintage record player in a messy Chicago apartment

The Baby Beluga Musician Was Right About Everything All Along

The radiator in our Chicago apartment was making that rhythmic clicking sound it only makes at three in the morning. My toddler was executing a flawless, rigid back-arch scream, the kind that usually shows either a dropped pacifier or a...

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Toddler sitting on a rug playing independently with natural wooden blocks.

Why We Need To Talk About The Nepo Baby Meaning In Parenting

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the living room floor at two in the morning with three laptops open. You're hitting refresh on the Lincoln Park cooperative preschool waitlist portal. You think if you just email...

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