My daughter’s awesome ’70s-inspired nursery
We moved into our rental on our first anniversary and when I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with my daughter Logan. I was so excited to get started on her nursery — I knew it was going to be bright and vibrant. I had made some pillow cases for my former Etsy store and paired them with a quilt that was made for my husband and I as a wedding gift.
Going from mad scientist to mother
That’s when I began to realize that during the first few months of my son’s life, I would not be living out any idealized role of mommy; I was a mad scientist, trying to figure out which baby soothing techniques would make him stop crying: a combination of white noise and bouncing, pretending I was at a wedding and doing The Hustle or taking him outside for some fresh air.
How can I deal with my partner’s baby-unfriendly quirk?
My husband hates lotion. He thinks it’s completely disgusting. I can’t even get him to wear sunscreen, despite his history of precancerous moles. Although this is worrisome to me, I’ve always chosen to avoid this battle. Which was fine until we had our baby four months ago.
A David Bowie and owl-themed bedroom for a kid named Bowie
When my husband and I first found out our second child was a girl we immediately said her name should be Bowie Irene. Of course her nursery should be decorated with pictures of the man himself.
Do you have tips for creating a baby play group that I’ll actually LIKE?
My highly sociable 15-month-old baby is now at an age where he is intrigued by other kids. He loves playing and constantly wants to interact. This sounds great… but I’ve happily avoided local play groups now for the past 15 months and the idea of going to one fills me with dread.
The challenges that come with breastfeeding after surviving breast cancer
In my cancer story, the diagnosis and treatment was a huge, out-of-nowhere inconvenience in an otherwise fabulous life that I believed I had the right to see fulfilled. And I didn’t need to breastfeed my son to fill him with all the potential of a healthy young man. Except in MY mothering story, I had to do everything possible to nurse him, simply because I wanted to, I was driven to. I believed it was my right.
The right answer to “how is the baby?” and why we have kids in the first place
If you don’t have kids but plan to have them some day, remember that. Chances are you’ll need to change the way you hear that question soon, so that when you have a baby you don’t start answering the way things are really going. Because, if you were being honest, you would probably say: “Baby is fine, except…” (don’t worry, there are LOTS of things you can fill in here. I’ll just add one.)
Our gender neutral tie-dye baby shower and 3 tie-dye styles to try
We decided to completely frustrate our friends and families: we decided to wait until our baby is born to find out if we are having a boy or a girl. Several people have had a hard time with this, but as a not very “girly girl” and a boy whose favorite color was pink growing up, we just weren’t that pressed to find out. Not to mention, we were really looking forward to the surprise. To have a fun baby shower with our friends we decided what could be more fun and gender neutral than tie-dye!