Magazine
The Absolute Absurdity of the Baby Doll Carrier (And Why We Own Two)
My mother-in-law firmly believes that giving a two-year-old their own miniature baby wearing apparatus is mildly ridiculous and encourages them to grow up entirely too fast. The woman at our Tuesday morning playgroupβwho wears floor-length unbleached linen in the dead...
Why Learning Pretty Little Baby Chords Beats Playing Mozart
Three years ago, I was sitting on my cheap living room rug, sweating through my nursing tank top, frantically trying to sync a Bluetooth speaker to a twelve-hour Spotify playlist called "Mozart For Genius Brain Development." My oldest son, the...
The Truth About Gifting an October 24th Birthday Twin
My mother-in-law unzipped her floral weekender bag and pulled out a vacuum-sealed plastic pouch with the solemnity of someone handling a transplant organ. Inside was a slightly crushed, orange and black plush cat. She had spent three weeks scouring the...
October 16 Beanie Baby Nostalgia: Cute Decor or Safety Hazard?
I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant, sweating through my maternity shorts in my momβs un-air-conditioned Texas attic, when she pulled out the holy grail of our 1990s retirement plan: a massive, cracked plastic tub full of Beanie Babies. I was up...
The 3 AM Hunt for the October 14th Beanie Baby
The screen of my laptop was basically burning my retinas, but I couldn't look away. It was 3:14 AM. I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with Leo, sweating through a pair of maternity leggings that I had been wearing for, oh...
Choosing my first baby doll before the new sibling arrives
My daughter was holding the plastic newborn by its left ankle, dragging its bald, rigid head across the kitchen tile like a club. The eyes clicked open and shut with every hollow bounce. I was seven months pregnant with baby...
The reality of matching mom and son baby clothes without the cringe
Before my son arrived, three different women cornered me with wardrobe advice. My mother-in-law insisted I needed tiny, rigid denim trousers for him, as if a newborn has business meetings to attend. A senior nurse on my floor told me...
The Brutal Reality Behind the Romantic Let's Have a Baby Idea
I'm standing in the kitchen at 3 a.m. scraping dried spit-up off my shoulder while my husband snores from the guest bedroom. Four years ago he pulled out a ring on a beach in Mexico and whispered marry me let's...
The Unexpected Hazard of Press-On Nails During the Baby Years
I was on my hands and knees in the living room, aggressively parting the fibres of our Berber rug like a forensic investigator looking for a microscopic weapon. Chloe, my sister-in-law, hovered above me near the sofa, clutching a lukewarm...