A Letter to Past Me About the Reality of Wooden Toys
Dear Tom of six months ago, You're currently standing in the nursery, aggressively arranging a set of aesthetically pleasing, neutral-toned blocks on a floating shelf. You're exhausted, operating on perhaps four cumulative hours of sleep, but you're deeply smug. You've...
The Absolute Truth About Your Toddler and Their Blanket Bunny
Some mom in Lincoln Park is currently telling me her ten-month-old doesn't need "props" to self-soothe while we stand by the infant swings. She is wearing cashmere to a playground. Her kid is actively gnawing on a literal piece of...
The ultimate guide to surviving pants for baby (and their parents)
Twin A's left leg is currently trapped in the right armhole of a sleepsuit, while Twin B has somehow managed to remove her entire lower half of clothing using only the corner of the coffee table and sheer, unadulterated willpower....
Why skandinavische kindermode labels survive the toddler years
I spent my first Chicago winter as a mom stuffing my son into a puffy fast-fashion snowsuit that made him look like a very angry, overstuffed marshmallow. He could barely lower his arms to his sides. When we finally made...
The survival guide to the baby knit pullover
It was thirty degrees in Chicago last November, and my fourteen-month-old was doing the alligator death roll on the living room rug. I was attempting to line up three microscopic buttons on a very trendy, very stiff denim jacket his...
The truth about Holzspielzeug 2 JΓ€hrige and surviving toddlerhood
Listen. It was Tuesday at three in the morning when my foot found the plastic farm animal. I was shuffling toward the kitchen to get water, sleep-deprived and freezing in the middle of a Chicago winter, and my heel came...
The 3 AM bunny and blanket crisis that broke me
My hands were elbow-deep in a hamper of sour-smelling sleep sacks at three in the morning. The radiator in our Chicago apartment was making that metallic rhythmic clanking sound it always makes when it drops below zero outside. From the...
Pants Windeln: The Unexpected Glitch in the Diaper Transition
Yesterday morning, my mother-in-law told me I need to put my 11-month-old in pull-ups immediately because he's standing up in his crib. An hour later, a guy at my local Portland roastery holding a pour-over confidently explained that disposable training...
The Day We Banned Plastic: Why Wooden Toys For Age Two Actually Work
I was sitting on my living room rug at six in the morning on a Tuesday, armed with a tiny eyeglasses screwdriver, aggressively trying to extract a corroded AA battery from a plastic fire engine. This particular toy had been...