David Minerva Clover

I mess up and do things very differently than I want to sometimes. When that happens, I have one rule for myself: I stop and apologize to my kid.

This morning my son woke up laughing. My son woke up laughing and I woke up crying. My son woke up laughing and his little squeaky voice was a light in the darkness to me. I went into his room and moved towards his crib and he smiled at me. And I was so grateful, grateful for him and who he is, but also grateful that he is still a baby and I do not have to explain what happened last night.

None of us follows any one parenting philosophy to a T; we’re all making split-second decisions about what is and isn’t dangerous.

I don’t get out much — and it’s not because I don’t have a sense of adventure or don’t care about learning about the larger world: It’s because I’m broke.

The Trump administration plans to define trans people like me out of existence. How can I keep my trans family safe now?

A human being does not go through an experience like that without getting to know themselves really, really, well. I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined. Today, I am going to share some of those lessons with you.

Back when we decided to have a baby together, we had a plan. She was never, ever going to have to work full-time. She was going to work part-time, and I was going to work part-time, selling dog food at that cute little store I used to work at. We would have one day off a week in common, and we would be broke, but we would get by. We would be tired, but we would be happy.

It is worse to be fat shamed because thin shaming is often just fatphobia in disguise. Let me say that again for the people in the back.

We’re trying to raise him with a lot of options and very few assumptions, but I won’t be mad at you if you call my kid “handsome little boy” or something. It’s fine. People have a hard time talking about babies without gendered labels. Even I have a hard time with it, and I’ve put a kind of ridiculous amount of energy into analyzing this stuff.

However, I do have one favor to ask. Please, for the love of everything that is good in this world, stop calling him “little man.”

I stand at the ready to remind these adults what ought to be common sense: mind your own plate. Stop policing how kids eat!