Why the voice remote caused a Sunday morning toddler meltdown
I was halfway through pouring a deeply inadequate cup of instant coffee when I heard the unmistakable, booming sound of a cinematic explosion coming from the living room. Let me set the scene: 6:14 am on a Sunday. I hadn't...
Debugging The King Cake Baby Hazard: A Warning To My Past Self
Dear Marcus of six months ago: Put the fork down. Back away from the pastry. I know exactly where you're right now. You're sitting at the kitchen island in the Portland rain, staring at a slice of aggressively colored purple,...
My Massive Mistake With the Lil Baby Freestyle Playlist Search
The Sonos speaker in our living room was blinking white, which meant it was finally connected to my phone and ready to receive data. My 11-month-old son was sitting on the rug, staring blankly at the wall, waiting for some...
The Only Sane Guide to Finding the Best Baby Walker Right Now
When Maya was eight months old, we went to a family barbecue where I received three entirely different lectures about baby mobility in the span of twenty minutes. My mother-in-law cornered me by the potato salad to insist that I...
Surviving Baby's First Christmas (Without Losing Your Mind)
I was on my hands and knees under the dining room table at six in the morning, trying to fish a soggy clump of metallic green wrapping paper out of my oldest son's throat while he screamed like a banshee....
When Your Kid Goes Full Baby Yaga: A Very Tired Dad's Guide
The Nanit camera app on my phone says it's exactly 3:14 AM. My battery is hovering at 12%, and the ambient room temperature is holding steady at 68.4 degrees only because I spent forty minutes calibrating the smart vent system...
I Spent Three Hours Researching The Baby Tron (Itβs Not A Stroller)
I had my credit card resting on my laptop keyboard, three browser tabs open to tech review sites, and was aggressively searching for the firmware update logs for something called the "baby tron." My teenage nephew had mentioned it at...
The Truth About the Lydia Plath Baby Rumors & Sibling Roles
Don't ever let your four-year-old think he runs the nursery, and definitely don't believe a single thing you read on the internet at two in the morning. That was the harsh lesson I learned this week while scrolling through my...
Spiders, toddlers, and the absolute chaos of eight-legged pets
My brother-in-law told me a spiderling is the perfect first pet because it teaches quiet observation. My son's preschool teacher said bringing an arachnid into a house with a toddler is basically child endangerment. The guy at the local reptile...