Magazine

Tired mom holding a sleeping baby in a nursery rocking chair

Reality Check: What Love Is Blind's Megan Got Right About Postpartum

"Sleep when the infant sleeps," my grandmother told me at my baby shower, sipping her sweet tea. "Hire a postpartum doula for fifty dollars an hour to do your laundry," said a girl I went to college with who now...

Read more

Tired dad sitting on the nursery floor between a baby and a golden retriever.

Surviving The Man Dog Baby Triangle: A New Dad's Guide To Chaos

Pixel's nose is shoved so far under the bathroom door he's practically snorting the bathmat, while eleven-month-old Leo is in the tub trying to eat a soapy washcloth. I'm currently typing this one-handed on my phone, damp from a recent...

Read more

Sleep deprived British dad holding twin babies in organic cotton

When is a baby no longer a newborn? The great potato awakening

I spent my first month as a father obsessively checking an app on my phone that promised to tell me precisely when the dreaded neonate phase would end. Don't do this. Don't set a calendar alert for four weeks post-delivery...

Read more

Dad and 11-month-old daughter looking at high-contrast board books on a playmat

How I completely debugged our library of baby books for girls

It's 2:14 AM on a Tuesday. I'm sitting cross-legged on the nursery floor, surrounded by a mountain of glossy cardboard. My wife, Sarah, is blissfully asleep down the hall, and our 11-month-old daughter is currently executing a sleep cycle that...

Read more

Toddler reaching for a plate of barbecue ribs on a bamboo blanket

Baby Back vs St Louis Ribs: Surviving The Family BBQ With Toddlers

My brother-in-law's backyard in Naperville smelled like hickory smoke and impending disaster. I was holding a lukewarm paper plate of potato salad while watching my toddler, who was wearing nothing but a diaper, aggressively gnaw on a piece of barbecued...

Read more

A messy baby eating semolina porridge in a highchair

The myth of the aesthetic baby suji bowl and what to do instead

Scraping hardened semolina off the ceiling fan wasn't exactly what I pictured when my mother-in-law told me suji would be the perfect first food for my son. I'm standing on a dining chair with a butter knife, chipping away at...

Read more

A baby pressing laptop keys while a tired dad drinks cold coffee

Surviving the Inevitable Baby Keyboard Smash in My Home Office

"asdfghjkl;'" was the exact, unedited message I sent to my accountant last Tuesday at 9:14 AM. I'd love to claim it was an avant-garde statement about the futility of modern tax law, but the truth is considerably shorter, louder, and...

Read more

A chaotic backyard barbecue setup with smoked baby back ribs and kids playing on blankets.

My Chaotic Weekend Learning How to Smoke Baby Back Ribs With Kids

I was elbow-deep in raw pork juice at 6:15 AM on a Saturday, staring blankly at a massive, slippery cut of meat while Maya, who's seven and currently entrenched in her "question everything" phase, stood three inches from my hip...

Read more

Taylor Big Baby guitar next to a ten-pound newborn in a Texas nursery

Why A Taylor Big Baby Fits My Nursery & My Ten-Pound Infant

Don't let your overly enthusiastic mother-in-law convince you to buy forty boxes of Size N diapers when your doctor says you're measuring three weeks ahead, y'all. I'm just gonna be real with you, that massive tower of pristine white Huggies...

Read more