Troubleshooting BBQ: Baby Back Ribs vs Spare Ribs for Babies
There we were in our backyard, forty-five minutes into a rare sunny Portland afternoon, when I casually handed my 11-month-old son, Leo, a massive, sauce-drenched spare rib. In my sleep-deprived brain, this seemed like a brilliant Baby-Led Weaning victory. I...
That First Slippery Baby Pear And The Constipation Chronicles
My thumb was covered in aquaphor and desperation. It was day four of the great solid-food bowel strike, and my son was looking at me like I had betrayed him. Starting solids at six months is heavily romanticized on the...
Spare Ribs vs Baby Back Ribs: A Dadβs Guide to Debugging Toddler BBQ
I was standing at the meat counter of our neighborhood New Seasons in Portland, panic-googling whether "baby back" meant the ribs actually came from a baby pig. My wife Sarah was three aisles over dealing with a minor avocado-related meltdown...
The Great BBQ Debate: Ribs and Baby-Led Weaning
Summer in Chicago means the lake breeze is sticky and someone is always firing up a smoker in a park. We were at a family cookout near Montrose Beach last July when my husband's uncle handed my eight-month-old a massive,...
Demolishing the First Food Myth: Why You Need A Pear Baby
I was standing in the baby food aisle staring at a nine-dollar pouch of organic Peruvian maca root and wild blueberry puree when I realized we had collectively lost our minds. My six-month-old was sitting in the shopping cart, happily...
Sorting Out the Mess: Are Jelly Babies Safe for Your Toddler?
So there I was at our big family barbecue last Sunday, balancing my six-month-old on my hip while trying to wrangle my toddler away from the sprinkler, when the contradictory advice started rolling in. My mom, bless her heart, told...
Debugging Mealtime: The Hunt for Non Toxic Baby Plates
I was standing in our kitchen at 6:15 AM on a Tuesday, holding a steaming "eco-friendly" bamboo baby plate that suddenly smelled exactly like the motherboard I accidentally fried during a college hackathon. My 11-month-old son, Leo, was banging his...
LΓ€tzchen Frottee: A letter to my past self about solid foods
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the kitchen floor wiping sweet potato puree off the baseboards with a dried-out baby wipe while your son cries because he rubbed it into his left eyebrow. You think this...
The soapy nightmare that led us to stainless steel toddler plates
Tuesday night, 6:43 PM. Kabir had just aggressively rejected a batch of organic mac and cheese that I spent twenty minutes hiding pureed cauliflower inside. I was standing over the kitchen sink, eating the lukewarm leftovers directly off his favorite...