I’m reading Thinking, Fast and Slow right now at the suggestion of a couple colleagues who are social scientists with an inclination toward meteorology. It’s an interesting book on psychology in its own right, but I’m reading it with the intention of gleaning some ideas that can be applied to why people make the decisions […]

I started writing this post before Monday, February 5 – a day that proved to be terrible on Iowa roads. You can read about the wrecks, including some that were deadly, here, here, here, here, and here. I was filling in on the morning shift that day and knew it was going to be a bad

This past week, our daughter turned three months old. The notion of the “fourth trimester” totally makes sense now. We admittedly had kind of a unicorn baby in those first three months, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. The thing is, a little baby doesn’t really do much other than eat, sleep, cry, and fill its

Okay, so the case can be made that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is even worse. That one’s issue is singular – it’s creepy at best and just plain wrong at worst (and let’s be honest, that’s probably the end of the spectrum it’s on). However, “The Christmas Shoes” has so much bad going for it

Now that our baby is five weeks old, I’ve found that I spend most of my time ruminating over things like “why does my daughter sound like a pterodactyl?” and “how drunk are the people who design sleepers?” This particular treatise addresses the latter – specifically, the three main types of button location designs we’ve

One of Poppyseed’s (our nickname for the baby) favorite pastimes while still residing in Wombsville was to get the hiccups. It was something that occurred most evenings, so when she first got the hiccups after coming into the Real World, Tracy didn’t think anything of it. I, on the other hand, was really thrown off.

Parents are gullible, and babies are manipulative. Baby: [acts adorable] Parent: Oh, you’re the best! Love love love! Baby, ten seconds later: [screams inconsolably] Parent: Shh shh shh shh Baby, two hours later: [still yelling despite being fed and changed and burped and healthy] Parent: omg what were we thinkinggggggg Baby: [stops crying, acts precious] Parent:

First night home from the hospital? Nightmare. In the little more than a week since we’ve been home, though, life has gotten smoother. One of our favorite pastimes is occasionally staring off into space. We’ve also determined that parenting a newborn is kind of like running a startup. You have to be able to pivot