Magazine

Dad looking confused at a bowl of orange sweet potato baby puree

Debugging Stage 1 Baby Food: A Dad's First Bites Protocol

It's 6:14 PM on a Tuesday, and I'm currently staring at a splatter of bright orange sweet potato puree on my kitchen ceiling. I'm trying to reverse-engineer the physics of how a human being weighing exactly 16.4 pounds managed to...

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A baby covered in plain yogurt holding a silicone spoon while sitting in a high chair.

The Messy Truth About Baby Yogurt: What I Wish I Knew Back Then

I'm currently staring at a crusty, suspicious white stain on my kitchen ceiling and I've absolutely no idea how it got there. Wait, no, yes I do. It's whole milk Greek yogurt, flung with the precision of an Olympic shot...

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Confused dad watching his eleven month old destroy a vanilla cake on the floor

Dear Past Marcus: Debugging the First Baby Smash Cake

I'm currently using a plastic putty knife to scrape hardened Greek yogurt off the kitchen baseboards. It's 10:43 PM on a Saturday. The baby is finally asleep, though his hair still smells faintly of mashed bananas and damp sponge. So,...

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Baby looking confused at a messy bowl of pureed food

The unspoken truth about baby rice cereal and starting solids

My mother-in-law was hovering by the kitchen island at two in the morning, holding a cardboard box of generic infant flakes and shaking it at my husband like it was a maraca. She whispered that if we just put a...

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Sarah's kitchen counter covered in orange sweet potato splatters and a spoon.

The Great Sweet Potato Incident: A Very Messy Guide to First Foods

It was a Tuesday at exactly 2:14 PM, and I was wearing my husband Dave's gray college t-shirt that had a mysterious, crusty stain on the left shoulder. I was sitting at our kitchen island, staring blankly at the wall,...

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A baby covered in spaghetti sauce during a messy mealtime at the highchair.

What Is Baby Led Weaning? My Messy, Honest Survival Story

It was 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, and I was wearing a gray nursing tank that smelled faintly of sour milk and desperation. I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, holding a giant, freshly steamed floret of broccoli...

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Twin baby girls covered in mashed sweet potato sitting in high chairs

When Can Babies Eat Baby Food? A Dad's Guide To The Mess

It was 5:43 PM on a Tuesday, and I was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, using a single wet wipe to scrape what used to be a premium organic avocado off the skirting board. Above me, my twin daughters...

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Stressed mom looking at a smartphone calculator with a coffee mug nearby

Why Every Baby Math Formula Is Basically Lying To You

It was 3:14 AM, and I was sitting on the nursery floor wearing my husband Mark’s oversized gray college sweatpants—the ones with the mystery bleach stain on the knee—aggressively typing numbers into my glowing phone screen while my coffee from...

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A sleep deprived mom holding a glass baby bottle in a dark nursery.

How to Choose a Baby Bottle Warmer Without Losing Your Mind

I distinctly remember standing in my kitchen at 3:14 AM with my oldest kid screaming his lungs out in the other room. I was staring bleary-eyed at a frozen bag of breastmilk, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, and...

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