Everyone told me to write it down and I thought I would remember. I do not remember. I cannot tell you which week she found her hands. These are the five things I wish someone had put in a box…
The Diary
The Closet Swap: Summer Out, Sweaters In
I put this off until the morning I reached past eleven sundresses to find one cardigan. The swap took about ninety minutes with the baby napping in the carrier, and the closet has been calm ever since. It is not…
Dressing a Newborn for Fall Without Overdoing It
My first cold-weather outing with her, I put on roughly everything we owned and she was furious and sweating by the time we reached the end of the road. The rule I got from our health visitor and have used…
The Lighting Change That Made the Evenings Feel Different
It gets dark at five now and for the first week of that every year I feel vaguely awful without connecting the two. Then I remember it is the lighting. One big cold ceiling light doing all the work makes…
The Chapped-Lip Fix I Wish I’d Sorted Out Years Ago
I used to reapply the same waxy balm about thirty times a day and wonder why my lips never actually got better. They were not getting better because I was sealing them and never repairing them, and because I kept…
The Soothing Kit That Got Us Through the Witching Hour
Every evening between about six and nine, our otherwise reasonable newborn became a different person. Nothing was wrong. She was fed, dry, held, and still inconsolable. I learned two things that month: the witching hour is real and it passes,…