Magazine

A messy baby eating sweet potato puree out of a green silicone suction bowl on a high chair

The Great Baby Bowl Delusion: What I Expected vs What Works

It was a Tuesday in 2017, and I was sitting on my kitchen floor wearing a gray nursing tank that smelled vaguely of sour milk, crying over a puddle of pulverized sweet potato. Leo was six months old. He was...

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Sarah holding a messy silicone baby bowl covered in spaghetti sauce.

The Messy, Soap-Tasting Truth About Choosing The Right Baby Bowls

Before I even bought a highchair for Leo, three different people gave me completely contradicting advice about feeding him. My mother-in-law cornered me in my own kitchen to say that plates were a waste of money and I should just...

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A dad covered in marinara sauce looking at a silicone suction bowl stuck to a high chair.

Baby Bowls Silicone: Troubleshooting The Night Spaghetti Won

6:14 PM, Tuesday. The ambient temperature in the kitchen was 68 degrees, but the marinara sauce slowly dripping down the bridge of my glasses was closer to 105. My eleven-month-old daughter had just executed a flawless physics demonstration right in...

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A confused dad looking at a messy high chair and a green silicone baby bib.

The Engineering of Bib Safety and Dishwasher Survival Protocols

My mother-in-law told me to just tie a cloth napkin around his neck because "that's what we did in the eighties." A guy on the r/daddit subreddit swore by stripping his kid down to a diaper and hosing him off...

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A silicone infant spoon covered in mashed avocado resting on a messy highchair tray

The Great Puree Illusion: My Humbling Education in Infant Spoons

The ceiling of my kitchen in Zone 3 currently sports a rather avant-garde splatter of pureed butternut squash, perfectly preserved from last Tuesday when I attempted to feed the twins simultaneously. Maya, deciding she was finished with her lunch, performed...

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A messy Stokke Tripp Trapp baby set pushed up to a modern dining table

What No One Tells You About the Stokke Tripp Trapp Baby Set

It's barely six in the morning in Chicago, the heat just kicked on, and I'm using a dull butter knife to chip concrete-level dried sweet potato out of the tiny plastic grooves of a high chair harness. My toddler is...

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A very messy baby covered in bright orange sweet potato puree happily chewing on a soft silicone spoon in a highchair

The sweet potato disaster and the ugly truth about baby spoons

I was wearing a cream-colored sweater, which, let’s be honest, is the first and most obvious mistake I made that day. It was around 5:30 PM, the exact hour when my blood stream is approximately four percent coffee and ninety-six...

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A baby wearing a waterproof silicone bib while eating messy spaghetti

The Messy Truth About Why We Finally Switched To Silicone Bibs

Let me paint a picture for you. It’s a random Tuesday in November 2017. Maya is six months old, and we're embarking on the mystical, terrifying journey of Baby-Led Weaning. I'm sitting on my kitchen floor at 2 PM wearing...

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A baby covered in orange sweet potato puree chewing on a flat silicone spoon

The sweet potato incident and the messy truth about infant spoons

There was sweet potato puree on the ceiling. I still don't fully understand the physics of how it got there, but there it was, a bright orange smear right next to the smoke detector in our Chicago apartment. My son...

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