The Ikea Baby Chair Truth: Posture, Choking & Cleaning
My mother-in-law wanted me to register for a leather-bound high chair that cost more than my first car. My occupational therapist friend cornered me at a brunch to explain that any baby chair without a perfectly adjustable, solid oak footplate...
How To Master Oven-Baked Baby Back Ribs Without Ruining Dinner
I'm staring at a piece of pork that has the structural integrity of a radial tire. It's six fifteen in the evening. My toddler is doing that rhythmic, high-pitched hyperventilating thing that usually means we're two minutes away from an...
Tylenol for Babies: What I Wish I Knew Before the 3 AM Fever Spike
Dear Marcus from six months ago. You're currently standing barefoot on the cold hardwood floor of the nursery at 3:17 AM. You're holding a sticky plastic syringe filled with an unnervingly bright purple liquid. Your wife is gently rocking a...
The Real Truth About Starting Solid Foods With Your Little One
My mother-in-law cornered me at the Piggly Wiggly the other day and told me that if I didn't put a scoop of rice cereal in my three-month-old's nighttime bottle, he would never sleep through the night and I'd be tired...
The Truth About Googoo Babies (And What Mine Are Actually Saying)
Iβm currently elbow-deep in printing shipping labels for my Etsy shop while my youngest, Levi, is having what sounds like a very heated political debate with the ceiling fan. Heβs six months old, completely pantsless, covered in what I hope...
The Truth About Infant Gas Drops (And What Actually Worked For Us)
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in 2017, and I was standing in my kitchen wearing a pair of maternity leggings that smelled distinctly of sour milk and sheer desperation. I was running on roughly forty-five minutes of fragmented...
The Only Dutch Baby Pancake Recipe You Will Ever Actually Make
It was 6:13 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in the middle of my kitchen wearing my husband Daveβs old college sweatshirt with a mysterious, crusty white stain on the left sleeve that Iβm pretty sure was dried...
Acoustics of the Womb and My Metal Baking Sheet Drop Disaster
The noise sounded like a Ford Taurus crashing into a cymbal factory. It was just me dropping six aluminum baking sheets onto the kitchen tile, but in our quiet Portland apartment, the acoustic shockwave was violently loud. Our dog scrambled...
The Unfiltered Truth About When Your Newborn Can Actually See You
I spent three months of my pregnancy painting a perfectly muted sage green mural on my son's nursery wall. I curated taupe crib sheets. I bought dusty rose swaddles. I spent an embarrassing amount of money making sure his room...