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Two toddlers attempting to eat a wooden block while a tired dad watches

A Letter to Past Me About the Reality of Wooden Toys

Dear Tom of six months ago, You're currently standing in the nursery, aggressively arranging a set of aesthetically pleasing, neutral-toned blocks on a floating shelf. You're exhausted, operating on perhaps four cumulative hours of sleep, but you're deeply smug. You've...

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A tired dad holding a wooden baby rattle while looking at his laptop

Why I Was Completely Wrong About Rasseln FΓΌr Babys As A New Dad

It was Tuesday at roughly 4:12 PM, and my living room looked like a warehouse explosion at a brightly colored plastics factory. I was sitting on the rug holding a neon green plastic hippo. I shook it. It emitted a...

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Toddler playing with Kianao wooden building blocks on a rug

The truth about Holzspielzeug 2 JΓ€hrige and surviving toddlerhood

Listen. It was Tuesday at three in the morning when my foot found the plastic farm animal. I was shuffling toward the kitchen to get water, sleep-deprived and freezing in the middle of a Chicago winter, and my heel came...

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Maya screaming in a stroller while I hold a dropped buggy spielzeug and a spilled coffee

The Buggy Spielzeug Survival Guide (Because I Almost Lost It)

I was sweating through a grey Zara sweater that honestly already smelled like old milk, standing outside a bakery on a Tuesday in April. It was raining, naturally. Maya was ten months old and doing that back-arching scream that makes...

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A simple wooden stacking rainbow and block set scattered on a living room rug.

The Day We Banned Plastic: Why Wooden Toys For Age Two Actually Work

I was sitting on my living room rug at six in the morning on a Tuesday, armed with a tiny eyeglasses screwdriver, aggressively trying to extract a corroded AA battery from a plastic fire engine. This particular toy had been...

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Baby playing independently with wooden toys on a soft organic playmat

Why I Stopped Entertaining My Baby (And What Happened Next)

I was sitting on my living room floor in a puddle of my own postpartum sweat, aggressively waving a black-and-white high-contrast flashcard in my oldest son’s face. He was eight months old at the time and violently uninterested, choosing instead...

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Toddler chewing on a wooden activity block on the living room rug

Holzspielzeug ab 1 Jahr: Why it is mostly expensive teething rings

Listen, it was 11 PM on the night of my son's first birthday. The living room smelled like smashed vanilla frosting and desperation. I was sitting on the rug, surrounded by a mountain of brightly colored cardboard and plastic, doing...

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A baby holding a large soft silicone twenty-sided die while sitting on a playmat

Safe Baby Dice: Why We Banned Regular D&D Sets At Home

Tuesday night, 8:43 PM. I'm wearing yoga pants permanently stained with breastmilk and a three-day-old messy bun that's defying gravity. My husband, Dave, is mid-sentence explaining how his half-elf rogue is going to pick the lock on the dungeon door,...

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A close up of a spiky black and orange baby lady bug on a green leaf

What I Learned After Panicking Over Baby Lady Bugs

Whatever you do, please don't scream, snatch your eleven-month-old up like a football, and attempt to aggressively stomp a tiny, spiky, black-and-orange alien insect into the damp Portland mud while wearing your only clean pair of socks. I executed this...

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