Magazine

A mom sitting on a living room rug laughing while her baby babbles at a wooden toy.

The Truth About Googoo Babies (And What Mine Are Actually Saying)

I’m currently elbow-deep in printing shipping labels for my Etsy shop while my youngest, Levi, is having what sounds like a very heated political debate with the ceiling fan. He’s six months old, completely pantsless, covered in what I hope...

Read more

Exhausted mother holding a clinging infant in a baby carrier inside an apartment

The brutal reality of raising a velcro baby and keeping your sanity

Listen. It was two in the afternoon on a Tuesday in mid-February. The Chicago wind was rattling the apartment windows, and I had needed to empty my bladder since ten that morning. Dev was asleep, heavily draped across my chest...

Read more

A close up of a curious infant looking up at the camera

The Great Melanin Firmware Update: A Dad's Guide to Eye Color

Hey Marcus from six months ago. You're currently standing by the window in our perpetually gray Portland living room, angling a five-month-old infant toward the meager sunlight, trying to determine if her irises are hex code #4B5320 (Army Green) or...

Read more

A smiling baby laying on an organic playmat chewing a wooden bunny teething ring

When Do Babies Start Babbling? A Tired Mom’s Guide to the Noise

There I was, sitting cross-legged on my living room rug surrounded by a mountain of unsorted laundry, aggressively waving black-and-white flashcards in my firstborn’s face. Leo was about four months old at the time, staring at me with the blankest...

Read more

Marcus looking exhausted while holding a spreadsheet about mosquito repellant and a baby bodysuit.

The Zika Baby Panic: What My Pediatrician Actually Told Me

I was staring at the smeared remains of a mosquito on my laptop screen when Sarah walked into the home office, holding our eleven-month-old like a football and looking highly alarmed. We were supposed to fly to a wedding in...

Read more

A dad looking confused holding a personalized baby swaddle in a nursery

The Real Reason Babies Never Actually Sleep With Custom Blankets

There's a massive disconnect between the baby gear you think you need before the kid arrives and the reality of keeping a tiny human alive. Before our son Leo was born, my mental image of fatherhood involved a lot of...

Read more

A frustrated mom holding a roll of baby-proofing tape next to a toddler

Why Diaper Tape Fails When Your Tiny Infant Becomes A Toddler

3:14 AM. The bathroom tiles are freezing. Mark is standing there holding his phone, looking absolutely bewildered, while intense, bass-heavy Russian hip-hop blasts out of his tiny phone speaker. He was literally just trying to google "big baby tape" to...

Read more

A dad holding an 11-month-old baby who is pulling up to stand next to a coffee table

Dear Past Marcus: Stop Googling the baby steps anime at 3 AM

Dear Past Marcus, It's currently 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and you're staring at your phone in the dark while the baby (who's now 11 months old, by the wayβ€”spoiler alert, we survive the sleep regression) does that weird dolphin-clicking...

Read more

A tiny green baby praying mantis crawling on my finger while my 11-month-old tries to grab it in our kitchen.

Surviving a Baby Praying Mantis Hatch With an 11-Month-Old Kid

It was 6:15 AM on a Tuesday, and I was staring at a plastic mesh butterfly pavilion on my kitchen counter like I was waiting for a server to reboot. I held a plastic spray bottle in one hand, completely...

Read more