Magazine

Stressed mom sitting on the living room rug looking at a baby percentile calculator on her phone

Dear Past Me: Please Put Down That Baby Percentile Calculator

Dear Jess from six months ago, You're currently sitting on the faded living room rug with a floppy yellow sewing tape measure in one hand and your phone in the other, furiously typing slightly inaccurate measurements into a baby percentile...

Read more

Mother sitting on a park bench watching her toddler climb a wooden structure.

Watching my kid fall off the playground cured my helicopter anxiety

The wind coming off Lake Michigan was aggressive enough to make my eyes water, but I couldn't blink. My two-year-old was fifteen feet up a rope climbing pyramid at Maggie Daley Park. His left foot was wedged between two cables....

Read more

A very tired mom wearing a stained t-shirt holding a coffee mug and looking thoughtfully out a window

The Myth That Ruined My Newborn Days (And The Baby Orangutan Fix)

I was wearing Tom's vintage college hoodie—the gray one with the mysterious yellow mustard stain from 2014—and it was somewhere around 3:17 AM. Maya was three weeks old and screaming like I'd personally offended her entire bloodline. I had a...

Read more

Confused mom holding coffee while looking at baby contest pictures on her phone.

The Baby of the Year Contest Reality Check No One Gives You

My husband just walked into the kitchen and caught me hunched over my laptop like a sleep-deprived gargoyle, intensely scrolling through the baby of the year 2024 contestants pictures. I had half-drunk, room-temperature coffee dribbling down the front of my...

Read more

Stressed mom holding a rubbery seafood tentacle near a high chair

Why The Whole Infant Octopus Trend Almost Broke My Mama Sanity

I was standing at my kitchen island at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, poking a slick, purple tentacle with a pair of tongs, questioning every life choice that had led me to this moment. My oldest son, Liam, was fourteen...

Read more

A sleep-deprived dad staring at a spreadsheet of baby boy names on his laptop

Decoding baby names for boys: A dad's naming algorithm

Line 74 of my Google Sheet was flashing neon green. I'd written a custom script to highlight any moniker with a standard deviation of less than 5% in popularity over the last decade, filtering out anything that spiked due to...

Read more

Dad checking his smartwatch decibel meter while holding a baby in earmuffs.

The Theater Beta Test: Bringing an 11-Month-Old to the Movies

I was standing under the dripping marquee of the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland, staring at the decibel meter app on my Apple Watch while my 11-month-old daughter Maya actively tried to chew off the zipper of my rain jacket....

Read more

A tired father holding a wooden baby mobile in a messy nursery

A Letter To Past Tom About Hanging Baby Mobiles

Dear Tom of six months ago. You're currently standing in your socks on a wobbly Ikea step stool at 2:13 AM. You have a plastic, battery-guzzling, brightly coloured spaceship contraption in one hand and a tiny screwdriver clamped between your...

Read more

Exhausted mother singing softly to her toddler in a dark nursery room

The Complete Chaos of Baby Lyrics and What Actually Soothes Them

My mother-in-law cornered me in the hospital recovery room to insist I strictly sing classical raagas if I wanted a smart child. Twelve hours later, the night nurse doing my vitals told me to skip singing entirely and just use...

Read more