Why the Puffy Baby Snowsuit is a Hardware Flaw
I'm currently staring at a photograph of my son from roughly two months ago. He looks like a deeply unhappy neon blue marshmallow. We were trying to leave our Portland apartment for a walk in forty-degree drizzle, and my wife...
The weird truth about keeping your infant son warm this winter
I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, standing in a freezing Chicago parking lot, violently arguing with my mother on speakerphone about wool. She was convinced my unborn beta would instantly freeze to death the moment we left the maternity ward unless...
Surviving the Holidays: The Truth About Baby Boy Christmas Outfits
I'm sitting on the floor of my sister-in-law's guest room in Naperville, sweating entirely through a silk blouse. It's December 24th, two years ago. I'm holding a rigid, red velvet baby blazer that costs more than my own winter coat,...
My Absolute Worst Night With Matching Baby Christmas Pajamas
The zipper was officially jammed in the microfleece reindeer antlers. It was roughly two in the morning on December twenty-third, and my six-month-old, Maya, was screaming with the raw intensity of a level-one trauma arrival. Her face was the color...
Debugging The Baby Beanie: My Thermal Miscalculations As A Dad
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, roughly two weeks after we brought our son home, and I was staring at the Nanit monitor on my nightstand like it was a mission-critical server dashboard. The camera feed showed my kid...
Why I Tackled a Newborn Cardigan Knitting Pattern for Twins
The bamboo needle slipped from my sweating thumb at precisely 3:14 a.m., sending a cascade of buttery yellow yarn unspooling across the duvet while my wife snored peacefully beside me, seven months pregnant with twins. I was supposed to be...
Surviving the Infant Cashmere Sweater: A Dad's Troubleshooting Guide
The garment had been sitting in its tissue paper like a museum artifact for three months. My wife's aunt had sent it from Geneva, and I had immediately designated it as high-risk inventory. It was a terrifyingly soft, aggressively expensive...
Surviving Chicago Winters With a Long Sleeve Baby Girl Bodysuit
I'm standing by the changing table in our drafty apartment. It's mid-November, the wind is howling off Lake Michigan, and my six-day-old daughter is screaming. She looks like a furious, wrinkled potato. My mother had lovingly shipped a box of...
The brutal truth about buying an infant knit romper for your kid
My mother called from San Jose on a Tuesday to warn me that wool would give my baby a rash that would scar him for life. The very next morning, my sister-in-law swore that unless I put him in thick...