Magazine

Exhausted dad holding coffee while his 11-month-old plays on an organic polar blanket

Why Raising an 11-Month-Old Feels Like Having a Baby Polar Bear

At 3:14 AM last Tuesday, I found myself sitting on the nursery floor in the dark, bathed in the blue light of my phone, holding a sleeping 11-month-old who currently weighs as much as a medium-sized microwave. My browser history...

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Messy living room with bright plastic infant items mixed with wooden blocks

The Plastic Avalanche: A Real Parent's Guide to Better Play

The singing plastic dog went off at exactly 3:14 AM. I know the exact time because the microwave clock was glaring at me in the dark kitchen where I was standing in a milk-stained gray nursing tank, furiously shaking a...

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Baby chewing on an electric toothbrush handle in the bathroom

The Elektrische ZahnbΓΌrste Kinder Guide: What Actually Works

At 7:14 PM last Tuesday, I was pinning my 11-month-old to the bath mat in a gentle, modified jiu-jitsu hold while a neon-green vibrating brush whirred aggressively against my left nostril. He was laughing. I was sweating. The toothpaste had...

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Exhausted dad looking at baby monitor stats on a tablet in a dark nursery.

Raising a Black baby: A glitch report to my past self

It's 3:14 AM. I'm currently staring at the humidity sensor output for the nursery, trying to correlate a 4% drop in ambient moisture with why our son has been awake since one in the morning. I'm writing this to you,...

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Priya sorting through a pile of useless baby shower party trinkets in her kitchen.

The Brutal Truth About Shower Gifts That Guests Actually Keep

I'm standing in my kitchen, staring at a tiny resin carriage I just found in the back of my junk drawer. I honestly don't know whose party it came from. Before I had my own kid, I thought you had...

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A woman holding a pen over a blank baby shower card next to a gift

What to write in a baby shower card without losing your mind

I'm sitting in the passenger seat of our sedan, balancing a small square envelope on the dashboard while my husband dodges Chicago potholes. We're twenty minutes late to my cousin's baby shower. The pen I dug out of the glovebox...

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Exhausted British dad looking at a laptop spreadsheet of rare daughter monikers while holding two bottles.

My 3am breakdown over finding genuinely rare monikers for daughters

It was 3:14 in the morning, the glow of my MacBook illuminating the half-eaten Hobnob resting dangerously close to my wife's massive, third-trimester bump. We were locked in a vicious, whispered argument over whether "Lyra" sounded too much like "liar"...

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A wooden convertible crib next to a half-empty coffee cup in a messy nursery.

The absolute hell of buying baby furniture (and what to buy)

It was 2017, I was twenty-four weeks pregnant with Maya, and I was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of a massive warehouse store crying into a half-empty iced oat milk latte. I was wearing these atrocious grey Target maternity...

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A father looking at his glowing smartphone in a dark nursery while holding a sleeping infant.

What a Baby Flamingo Taught Me About the 50/50 Parenting Split

The digital meat thermometer flashed 98.6 degrees, which meant the bottle of pumped breastmilk I was holding was exactly best for human consumption. It was 3:17 AM on a Tuesday, the Portland rain was actively trying to dissolve our bedroom...

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