Don't Give Your Kid That 1997 Purple Bear
I was standing in my mom's sweltering Texas attic last July, sweating through my t-shirt, while she rummaged through a stack of plastic storage bins. She finally pulled out a Ziploc bag with the reverence of someone handling the Declaration...
The Connie Francis Pretty Little Baby Trend Made Me Cry
I'm sitting on the faux-wool rug of my Chicago apartment, staring at my phone through the kind of sleep deprivation that makes your teeth physically ache. Rohan is asleep on my chest, a dead weight of milk-drunk toddler. If I...
Why the Viral Baby Grinch Trend is Actually Ruining Holidays
My mother-in-law told me I needed to establish firm dominance the second my toddler started acting like a green menace this December. The moms in my neighborhood group suggested the exact opposite, telling me to lean into the chaos and...
The surgical reality of buying a baby alive doll for your kid
It's eleven at night. The lighting in my guest bathroom is deeply unflattering. I'm holding a pair of stainless steel tweezers in my right hand and my phone flashlight in my left. Pinned firmly beneath my elbow is a rigid...
The Great Megastore Myth and What Babies Actually Need
The most long-standing lie of modern parenting is that you can't safely extract a newborn from the hospital without first making a pilgrimage to a brightly lit, warehouse-sized retail behemoth. I distinctly remember sitting in the dark at 3am, furiously...
The day my mother's vintage toy hoard almost ruined our lives
I was elbow-deep in a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal on a miserable, sleeting Chicago afternoon when my mother dragged a black Hefty garbage bag into my apartment. She had the frantic, secretive energy of someone smuggling contraband across a border....
My toxic relationship with that glowing Baby Einstein aquarium
It's 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in November. I'm standing barefoot in the hallway, wearing a stained nursing tank that I still haven't washed even though my son Leo is three and Maya is eight months old, and I'm practically...
When Ice Ice Baby Goes Wrong: Teething, Choking, and Cold Fails
I was standing in my kitchen at two in the morning in a ratty t-shirt, sweat dripping down my back because Texas in July is basically a swamp, watching a piece of ice slide out of my fingers and straight...
Why I Spent Three Weeks Hunting for a Beanie Baby Birthday Twin
When I was pregnant with Maya, I was sitting on my living room floor in those terrible maternity leggings—you know the ones, the ones that pill between your thighs after literally three hours of wear—when I received three distinct, entirely...