The Honest Truth About Play Mats For Babies
I was on my hands and knees with a spray bottle of carpet cleaner, frantically scrubbing neon yellow newborn poop out of our cheap apartment carpeting, while my oldest screamed his absolute head off in a bouncy seat nearby. It...
Searching Reddit for a Baby Walking Game at 2 AM Was a Mistake
Itβs 2:14 AM. I'm wearing my husbandβs horrific faded college track sweatpantsβthe ones with the inexplicable bleach stain on the left kneeβand I'm hunched over my phone in the dark, furiously refreshing a forum thread. I'm holding a mug of...
Analog QA Testing: Why I Replaced The Flashing Toys With Wood
It was exactly 3:14 AM when my bare heel made contact with the plastic singing cow. I was holding a half-asleep eleven-month-old, navigating the dark hallway by memory, when 180 decibels of synthesized banjo music erupted from the floorboards. The...
The Brutally Honest Guide to Buying a Playpen for Babies
My mom texted me "just put the babi in a pen so you can work!" at the exact same moment a twenty-two-year-old Instagram parenting coach popped up on my feed with a beige infographic about how "restrictive containers stifle gross...
What To Do When Your Kid Demands A Baby Nessie Fisch On Roblox
It's 7:14 AM on a Tuesday. I'm wearing my husband's gray college sweatpantsβthe ones with the mysterious, hardened yogurt stain on the left knee that absolutely refuses to wash out no matter how much bleach I throw at it. I'm...
Raising a Brilliant Kid Without Buying Into All the Crazy Hype
I was sitting on my living room rug with my firstborn, sweating through my t-shirt while aggressively waving a black-and-white contrast flashcard in his face like I was trying to land a plane on a runway. He was four months...
Why I Finally Caved and Bought a Play Area for My Kids
It was a Tuesday morning in late 2017, and I was wearing a pair of black yoga pants that had a highly questionable smear of sweet potato puree on the left thigh. Maya was seven months old, which meant she...
The Myth of Baby Art and How to Actually Survive It
Iβm currently staring at a active purple streak on the toe of my left sneaker. It arrived there about an hour ago, during what my wife and I ambitiously labeled "creative enrichment time." The biggest myth of modern parentingβpropagated almost...
Surviving the baby dragon phase and other midnight disasters
Itβs 4:12 AM in our London flat, and Florence is standing upright in her cot, gripping the wooden bars like a tiny, furious inmate, screaming for a mythical reptile. Matilda, her twin, is entirely asleep but sporadically kicking the plaster...