How to Stop Your Toddler from Accidentally Breaking a Baby Dachshund
I was halfway through a tepid cup of Earl Grey when I saw it happening in slow motion. Twin A, my slightly more chaotic two-year-old, was attempting to swing her leg over a visiting twelve-week-old sausage dog like she was...
Spotting Cerebral Palsy in Babies: A Twin Dad’s Messy Story
It was a bleak Tuesday in November, raining with that specific London spitefulness, and I was lying on the living room rug surrounded by the debris of early parenthood. At six months old, my twin girls were engaged in entirely...
A Letter to Past Me About Baby Skincare and Greasing Up Twins
Dear Tom from November, You're probably standing in the downstairs loo right now, aren't you? You're holding a writhing Florence under one arm like a poorly packed rugby ball, staring at her left calf and wondering if babies can get...
What I Wish I Knew About Giving Babies Water Before I Panicked
It's July 2020. I'm wearing a pair of maternity bike shorts that have a mysterious, hardened yogurt stain on the left thigh, and I'm sweating through my second t-shirt of the day. My husband, Dave, is standing next to our...
Memo to past Marcus: What I wish I knew about black babies
You're currently holding your phone at a forty-five-degree angle under the nursery humidifier's weird blue LED light, trying to compare the exact hex code of your son's left earlobe to the back of your own hand. Stop doing that. You...
What the rainbow baby definition actually means in real life
It was a Tuesday in late October, raining that gross sideways rain we get in Seattle, and I was sitting in the driver's seat of my Honda CR-V in the Walgreens parking lot. I was wearing these awful maternity leggings...
Debugging the photoshoot: When taking baby photos goes wrong
I'm balancing precariously on a plastic step stool, my phone hovering exactly 28 inches above the crib mattress, sweat pooling in the small of my back. Below me, my 11-month-old son is thrashing like a malfunctioning animatronic, actively destroying the...
What I Wish I Knew About Oatmeal Baths Before Destroying Our Tub
Dear Jess of six months ago: you're currently standing over the hall bathroom tub with a metal kitchen strainer, crying while trying to fish soggy, bloated breakfast oats out of the drain before your husband realizes you've destroyed the plumbing...
The Messy Truth About Surviving Your Baby's First Rhinovirus
I was sitting in the dark in my rocking chair at three in the morning, holding a six-month-old who sounded exactly like a broken coffee percolator. Snot was literally bubbling out of his left nostril with every breath. My oldest...