There’s a great scene in Sam Apple’s “American Parent” where the author has his wife wrap him in a swaddling blanket so he can experience what it’s really like to be swaddled like his baby.
This weekend, during a 40th birthday celebration for my sister-in-law, I did something similar.
My stunt didn’t involve a swaddle; considering I [...]

Listen up, parents: If you think you’re spending too much money on your infant or toddler, you probably are.
This isn’t exactly a news flash. According to 2009 data from Easy Analytic Software, infant gear sales soared at $1.66 billion in 2008, and are expected to reach $1.86 billion by 2014. Baby gear sales have more [...]

Spending sizable chunks of every day with my new daughter, I often wonder to myself what it must like to be her. What does she see? What does she think? And what difference do all of those baby-oriented gizmos and gadgets really make?
Today, I tried to find out.
It was an impromptu experiment. L and I [...]

L has received some fly new onesies this month, but none is better than the one my parents bought her from a San Francisco-based, family-owned baby clothier named Chicks & Frogs.
The onesie makes a subtle and harmless stab at Apple’s famous MP3 player, declaring, simply: iPoo. A matching hat takes the joke one step further, [...]

I’ve spent the better part of the last week reading Sam Apple’s new book, “American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland.” I must admit: I’ve enjoyed it much more than I usually enjoy parenting books.
Instead of sticking to the self-important memoir, Apple (himself a first-time dad) interweaves real-life data about everything from [...]