Why buying your first baby boy shoes is a complete medical scam
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently standing in a boutique in the West Loop holding a pair of miniature high-top sneakers that cost more than your favorite nursing scrubs. You're tracing the stiff leather with your thumb and...
The Messy, Honest Truth About Getting a Baby Axolotl
It was 7:00 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in my kitchen trying to pour coffee while my four-year-old oldest son shoved a piece of construction paper directly into my line of sight. On it was a crude...
The Plastic Avalanche: A Real Parent's Guide to Better Play
The singing plastic dog went off at exactly 3:14 AM. I know the exact time because the microwave clock was glaring at me in the dark kitchen where I was standing in a milk-stained gray nursing tank, furiously shaking a...
Raising a Black baby: A glitch report to my past self
It's 3:14 AM. I'm currently staring at the humidity sensor output for the nursery, trying to correlate a 4% drop in ambient moisture with why our son has been awake since one in the morning. I'm writing this to you,...
The Science of Baby Animals (And Why I Can't Bring A Hamster Home)
I was standing in Petco at 4:15 PM on a Tuesday, staring blankly into a terrarium of baby bearded dragons, genuinely calculating if acquiring a tiny reptile would solve my 11-month-oldβs mid-afternoon fussiness. In my sleep-deprived logic, she liked the...
The Truth About Baby Fat and When to Actually Worry
I was standing in the checkout line at HEB last Tuesday, balancing a pack of diapers on my hip and praying my debit card wouldn't decline, when the cashier zeroed in on my youngest. "Oh my goodness, look at those...
Pediatric Nurse Guide: Surviving Your First Baby Wrap Carrier
My mother-in-law told me that tying a baby to my chest would ruin his spine forever and give him flat feet. Then my lactation consultant said if I didn't wear him twenty-four hours a day, he would inevitably develop an...
The completely honest truth about buying baby walking shoes
I was standing in the middle of a high-end boutique holding a pair of tiny, structurally rigid leather high-tops that cost more than my weekly grocery haul. My daughter wasn't even pulling to stand yet, but the footwear had these...
A dad's guide to the elusive baby turkey (and weaning woes)
It was 5:17 in the morning when the farm animal flap-book aggressively entered my peripheral vision, wielded by Twin A, who had somehow escaped her sleeping bag and decided that the pre-dawn darkness was the ideal time for agricultural education....