The Cut - This Boy We Made

Paul found him that morning. Our 22-month-old boy, staring and still, awake without a sound. A 20-pound toddler in blue pajamas, lying across the only thing we allowed in his crib — a taut cotton sheet.

Tophs hadn’t smiled to reveal the dimple planted deep on his left cheek or hopped up on his short, thick feet to call for me. Even though he was almost 2, he didn’t always call me “Mommy” or Paul “Daddy.” Sometimes he switched our names around or stole Paul’s pet name for me. “Baaaaaabe! Baaaaaabe!” The adult word in Tophs’s raspy baby voice never grew old.

Mercury goes retrograde on Friday — find out what that means for your weekly horoscope. If the onslaught of New Year’s diet marketing is taking a toll on your body image, here are some tips for tuning it out. A fan “exercised very poor judgment” in making a fake bomb threat to jump the line at a free Doja Cat concert. File this one under “huh”: The Norwegian military is making people return their military-issued underwear after service. Remember we told you about the 90 Day Fiancé star who made $50K a week selling her farts in jars until it made her sick enough to land in the hospital? She’s pivoting to NFTs now. Er, maybe. And it wouldn’t be a day ending in y if we didn’t share an uplifting dog story: Russ ran off into the mountain wilderness of Tahoe; four months later, rescuers found him alive, trapped in five feet of snow.

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