Magazine

Tired dad holding a baby lovey blanket next to a sleeping toddler

The 3 AM Disaster That Taught Me Everything About Baby Loveys

Tuesday, 6:42 PM. The Central Line. Specifically, the perilous two-inch gap between the train carriage and the platform at St. Paul's station. That's exactly where it went. Maya's beloved, slightly grey-tinged, biologically questionable scrap of fabric slipped from her sticky...

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Folded organic cotton baby blanket on a wooden nursery rocking chair

What the hospital ruined about my cozy baby blanket fantasies

I'm currently staring at a hand-knit, cable-stitch monstrosity that my great-aunt sent from Delhi. It weighs about as much as a small dog. Before nursing school, before I had a child of my own who treats sleep like a hostile...

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Mother wearing a chunky silicone teething necklace while holding a baby

Why I Finally Swapped My Gold Chain for a Mother Teething Necklace

We were at a coffee shop in Wicker Park last Tuesday when I saw it. A perfectly nice woman at the next table wrestled a string of Baltic amber beads around her six-month-old's chubby neck. I took a slow sip...

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Mother dressing baby girl in an organic long sleeve bodysuit on a changing table

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...

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A pile of folded organic cotton side-snap baby clothes on a wooden dresser

Why I Threw Away Every Regular Onesie During the First Month

It was day three postpartum with my oldest, and I was sweating like a sinner in church. He was screaming that high-pitched, breathless newborn wail. He'd just delivered a mustard-yellow blowout of epic proportions. I was staring at his umbilical...

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Baby sleeping safely in a ribbed infant knit romper with secure snaps

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...

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A frustrated dad inspecting the hardware on a knitted baby romper

Decoding the Knitted Romper: A Dad's Guide to Baby Hardware

My mother-in-law cornered me in the kitchen last Tuesday to declare that any kind of woven wool would immediately give the baby a full-body rash. Ten minutes later, my neighborβ€”a guy who brews his own kombucha in a garageβ€”leaned over...

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A frustrated dad looking at a buggy with a bamboo blanket safely clipped to the side instead of covering the front

The Blanket Stroller Mistake: Why I Stopped Making Pram Nap Tents

It was exactly 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, and my weather app claimed it was 81.4 degrees in southeast Portland. My eleven-month-old son was in the middle of a sleep regression that felt like a malicious firmware update, and I...

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A confused dad staring at a massive pile of plain white baby bodysuits

Debugging the Base Layer: A Dad’s Guide to Bodysuit Blanks

Before my son was born, I received three distinct pieces of base-layer advice that completely crashed my internal logic board. My mother insisted I needed to wrap the baby in three layers of fleece because our Portland house is drafty....

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