Magazine

A pile of organic cotton baby blankets next to a wooden crib

The absolute best yarn for baby blanket knitting and buying

I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, sitting heavily on my living room rug in the dead of a Chicago winter, surrounded by four giant garbage bags of yarn. My mother-in-law had just dropped them off. She had this grand vision of...

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Portland dad holding a baby back rib next to a messy 11-month-old at a summer BBQ

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...

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Messy stack of fabric and a half-finished baby blanket on a coffee table

Surviving the Hype: Baby Quilt Patterns and Actual Safe Sleep

It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was eight months pregnant with Maya, sobbing over a jammed bobbin on a borrowed Singer sewing machine. I was wearing maternity leggings that definitely had a hole in the crotch, my...

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A tired mom holding a folded baby blanket in a messy nursery

Baby Blanket Size: A Messy, Exhausted Guide to Getting It Right

I was standing in my kitchen wearing my absolutely tragic gray maternity joggers, holding my third cup of violently lukewarm coffee, when I realized I was drowning in conflicting advice. I was pregnant with Leo, my first, and three different...

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A soft bamboo baby blanket with a blue woodland pattern draped over a nursery chair.

The Woodland Nursery Trend That Almost Gave Me a Heart Attack

It was late July in 2017, and I was standing outside a strip-mall Starbucks wearing high-waisted yoga pants that I had absolutely no intention of doing yoga in. Maya was exactly three months old. I was holding an iced Americano...

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A dad looking exhausted next to a crib with a neatly folded bamboo blanket

Thermal Throttling: Why We Finally Switched to a Bamboo Baby Blanket

It was 2:14 AM during that ridiculous heat dome we had in Portland last July, and the Nanit camera monitor was basically glowing red. The nursery temperature was hovering at 78 degrees despite the window AC unit aggressively coughing in...

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A confused dad folding a breathable organic cotton baby blanket in a Portland nursery.

Troubleshooting the Breathable Blanket for Newborns Paradox

I was standing in our Portland apartment's second bedroomβ€”newly converted from my gaming office to a nurseryβ€”staring at a stack of fourteen folded textiles. Fourteen. My wife, Sarah, had washed, dried, and color-coordinated a mountain of fabric based on a...

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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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