Magazine

Priya holding a flexible baby boy shoe in a messy Chicago apartment

The brutal truth about buying baby boy shoes for early walkers

My mother-in-law showed up on a Tuesday with stiff leather high-tops because she said my son's ankles were going to collapse without support. An hour later, a mom influencer on my feed claimed that putting anything other than raw, unbleached...

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Messy toddler eating blue frosting from an ocean themed birthday cake

The 2 AM Meltdown Over A Toddler Shark Birthday Cake

Blue gel food coloring doesn't wash off human skin. It bonds to your cuticles on a cellular level and stays there for a week. I learned this at two in the morning on a Thursday, staring down a very deformed,...

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Toddler pushing a wooden walker wagon filled with heavy books

A Letter to Myself Before Buying That Baby Push Walker

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're standing in aisle fourteen of the Target in River North, staring at a plastic contraption that plays the alphabet in three different languages. Your coffee is ice cold. Your baby is nine months...

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Twin baby pushing a wooden cart walker across a living room floor

The Wheeled Menace: Surviving the Push Walker Baby Era With Twins

It was 4:17 PM on a rainy Tuesday when I found Molly wedged firmly beneath the living room radiator, her lower half encased in a brightly coloured plastic UFO that was loudly playing a tinny electronic version of "Old MacDonald."...

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Toddler taking wide flat-footed steps while balancing with high arms

The truth about that heavy baby elephant walk

I'm sitting on the living room floor watching a fourteen-month-old slam his whole foot down against the hardwood like he's trying to squash a very large, very resilient bug. His arms are bent and held up by his ears like...

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A wooden push toy sitting in a messy living room next to a cold cup of coffee

The Only Sane Guide to Finding the Best Baby Walker Right Now

When Maya was eight months old, we went to a family barbecue where I received three entirely different lectures about baby mobility in the span of twenty minutes. My mother-in-law cornered me by the potato salad to insist that I...

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Toddler taking first steps in flexible lightweight sneakers at the park

Why the Nike Swoosh 1 Changed How I Think About Baby Shoes

It was a random Tuesday, maybe 9 AM, and I was wearing leggings that definitely hadn’t been washed since Sunday. I was hovering by the microwave, nursing my third cup of aggressively mediocre dark roast, when my mother-in-law dropped a...

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A pile of baby shoes never worn sitting next to a barefoot 11-month-old

Baby Shoes Never Worn: Why Barefoot Is Always The Smart Move

I'm currently sitting cross-legged on the floor of our hallway in Portland, staring at a plastic storage bin filled to the brim with tiny, immaculate, aggressively rigid footwear. It’s raining outside, the house is hovering at exactly 68.4 degrees because...

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Toddler wearing soft knit baby shoes while walking on a wooden floor

The Truth About Baby Feet: Why Those Tiny Shoes Are a Scam

My mother-in-law held up a pair of hot pink, patent leather, miniature high heels at my baby shower like she had just extracted a rare diamond from a mine. I smiled, nodded, and immediately mentally categorized them as biohazard waste....

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