What do you do when your kid is inadvertently rude to strangers?
I’m a server at a restaurant that has a unisex uniform that includes a button-down white oxford and tie. I’m a woman who has a very short pixie haircut. Recently, a young girl loudly proclaimed to me, “YOU LOOK LIKE A BOY!”
This family definitely knows how to bask in the sun and love each other
I oh-so-very much love family photo sessions that take place at parks and playgrounds, like this one from Natalie Champa Jennings Photography. It’s just like.. you want insta-kiddo smiles? Let them run around, swing, and be crazy!
Gender, adoption, and identity: how being transgender will help me be a better dad
When I began testosterone replacement, I was giddy and excited. Surgery made me anxious, but I was relieved when it was over. And now: nothing. The elation I expected never came. I had rejected the most basic gift from my mother and father — I had declared myself someone other than the daughter they had welcomed two decades earlier.
A Merry Prankster-inspired bus birthday cake that looks so bad it’s good
My son has spent the better part of his almost three years on the planet totally head over heels for any kind of vehicle that has wheels and can move. Cars, trucks, bicycles, and… buses. So last year for his second birthday I set out to create something perfect, sweet, and wondrous: a bus cake.
“Mom, why do the kids at school call me poor?”
A few months ago my three children and I moved from a not-so-great suburb of Detroit to a more affluent part of the city. I was thrilled by the idea of them attending a school in at top-notched district that also seemed to have a close-knit and more liberal leaning community. Up until a few days ago everything was going as smooth a skein of fair trade silk. Now that the ripples of a new move and a new school have dissipated, that “new community smell” is starting to get a little rank.
Becoming a parent made me better at my job
As I was approaching my last year of grad school for my Master’s in English, I had been dating an awesome, goateed, tattooed locksmith for a few months. That Christmas, as I was choosing my thesis advisor and getting ready to embark on the challenge of writing a full short story collection, my body started to feel a little weird. What I thought was nerves over the impending thesis, we came to find, was actually our little droidlet beginning to grow. Surprise! The following August, my son was born.
A photo project about Nagorno-Karabakh’s birth encouragement program
Jenn recently shared a NY Times piece calledThe National Womb, which is a project that documentary photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind underrtook. The focus is a “birth encouragement program” that the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh implemented in 2008: basically, the government gives cash to newlyweds each time they have a kid.
How to get a sickness-prone preemie home on public transportation
Having a preemie at home during any season is hard — it can be a challenge to explain to friends and family why they very seriously have to wash their hands as soon as they enter, or why you really can’t come over for a few weeks. If your preemie was born with a chronic lung condition or weakened immune system, it’s difficult to not be scared of absolutely everything or everyone he or she might come into contact with. I know from first-hand experience: my son Jasper was born two months early in 2009, and spent a month in the NICU.