School for two-year-olds?

I remember one of my first conversations with a NYC mom. We were living in New Jersey at the time and church-hopping. (Well, we are still church hopping, but that's another post.) Hoboken had zero thriving churches, so we started going to Trinity Wall Street Church in downtown Manhattan. Some of the first people we met there was a mom and her three-year-old daughter, and one of the first questions the mom asked was, "Have you thought about preschools? Trinity has a great preschool! You should go ahead and put your daughter (Cora then only one year old) on the waiting list, just in case." I tried to discreetly get the message across that I was a stay-at-home mom with no job prospects and that $20,000 just wasn't in the budget for a two-or-three-year-old's preschool tuition. Apparently I wasn't straightforward enough with that message because every single time after that, this mom would always ask us if we had put our daughter on the waiting list yet.

Truly, this was very sweet of her because Trinity does have an amazing preschool, and it's incredibly tough to get in. And, as with all networking, if your kid went to the prestigious Trinity preschool, they have a leg up on their kindergarten applications to other elite private schools.

But this hyper-pressure to put kids into school as early as possible seems to be pervasive here. Some parents want, like the above scenario, their kids to get their foot in the door of a top-notch private school. Some want to socialize their children into spending more time with friends, away from home, in a structured learning environment. Some parents want their kids to be in a foreign language preschool, so they begin learning a second language. Some parents just want a daycare option that is more "learning-oriented" (although I doubt preschool and daycare are really that different).

We did decide to put Cora into a Spanish immersion preschool. She is two-and-a-half. This still blows my mind a bit. The simple Texas girl from the 1980s in me says this is ridiculous. Back in my day, kids started kindergarten at age five. Now we're starting kids in pre-pre-k at two?! But, you know, my kid loves it, and from 9am to 12pm, I only have to deal with the baby and getting a little class prep done. I do justify the expense because toddlers are capable of picking up a foreign language. Also, we don't really have many friends here yet, so maybe we'll make friends.

But is this a NYC thing, or is it happening in other parts of the country? Are there other cities and states where two-and-three-year-old "preschools" are becoming more and more normal? Is it because of working moms or wealthier families? If I have any readers out there who can provide me some insight, I'd appreciate a comment. For the moment, I'd better go order my two-year-old's school supplies from amazon.com (because that's how we roll in Brooklyn, order everything online).

Apartment Tour

I am always curious about peoples' homes, so it's only fair that I show you mine. We live smack in the middle of busy Brooklyn, in a three-bedroom apartment. The front rooms (dining and living) face the street, with constant traffic noise. I love the colors we chose for these rooms, though.

Yes, the dining room desperately needs a large picture/mirror, but I have a mild phobia of hanging things.

The bookshelf to the left of the keyboard holds Chad's monitor and work supplies, for when he works from home.

The library/office/guest room is connected to the living room and is my sanctuary. I can work on my laptop or read while Cora watches a movie. Yes, I'll admit it, my kid watches movies on a regular basis.

The middle bedrooms (Ewan's and Cora's) have no real windows, just small slits of windows that open into a "light shaft," which is like a really big column of space between buildings, just to allow light and a bit of air. Ewan's room was my craft room/the guest room - and will be again when he can move into Cora's room - that's why the changing table has markers and colored pencils dangling above it and bins piled up on a cart beside it.

Cora's room is the biggest in the apartment because she will share it with Ewan and because the grandparents dote on her through donations of toys and books. I think I'll do a separate post about how I fit all of the kid/baby gear in our small apartment.

The back rooms (kitchen and master) overlook a beautiful backyard and are actually very peaceful. The white-painted tin ceiling, offset by the green ivy on the windows, is my favorite thing to see in the morning.

Let's be honest, the sink and counter are usually piled high with dirty dishes.

Oh, yes, and our teeny bathroom! Two bathroom apartments are pretty rare in this area, so most people squeeze into one small bathroom.

And that's our Brooklyn apartment! I hope you enjoyed the tour. :)

Fire escape garden

This summer, I decided that I would be a gardener. I live in Brooklyn, so we have to apply the term "garden" pretty loosely, here. The only outdoor space we have is our fire escape. The plants made their way from Lowe's (via my sister's car, very handy to have around), up the stairs, and out the window about two months ago. Just the other day, two little tomatoes finally started to ripen.

I call them Fred and George, and I plan to eat them in a salad very soon.

Now, if you know me, you should be very impressed that this tomato plant is not only alive, but thriving. I generally kill plants quite quickly, but New York has been getting a decent amount of rain, so Mother Nature's helping me out.

I can't in good conscience sit here, bragging about Fred and George, though, because, well, I have to show you the rest of the fire escape garden...

As you can see, tomatoes doing great, basil growing fine, and then there are the carcasses of oregano and parsley... You can also see the empty pot that was going to hold cilantro, but I've never gotten around to it. What you can't see is to the right of the window, begonias and an azalea that died a horribly slow death. Even more annoying than getting plants upstairs and potted outside is getting dead plants into trash bags and downstairs. The neighbors below surely don't appreciate little clods of dirt splatting on their nice, metal deck. Ah, well, at least there's Fred and George, until my salad feast, anyway.

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Blog updating note: As you probably noticed, I updated the sidebar to show my professional-ish websites and my profiles for various social media things. I like having all of my "digital selves" in one spot - makes my digital self feel more unified. I have a couple more goals for updating the blog: 1) new design/color scheme, 2) new name - I'm just not diggin' Morgan's Cozy Chair anymore, and 3) maybe a new font too, I like fonts.

Hoboken vs. Brooklyn

Today, I had to go back to Hoboken for some miscellaneous errands (pick up dry cleaning, return cable box, etc), and the 5 hour trip gave me some time to think about life in Hoboken, and how life in Brooklyn is different so far.

Hoboken is..
..small and easy to navigate. (It's only a square mile, remember.)
..car-friendly, in that many apartment buildings have parking.
.modern, or apartments there at least have the modern conveniences, like dishwasher, disposal, central A/C washer/dryer.
..safe enough that I felt comfortable walking about a mile to church Sunday evenings.
..cheaper than living in Manhattan.
..baby-friendly, since at least half of Hobokenites have kids.

As a mom in Hoboken, I liked having my car. I liked driving to Wal-Mart/Sams, Pier 1, and Ikea. However, it also meant that I usually couldn't walk to the things I needed. The grocery store was just a little too far (8-9 blocks, I'm a wuss, you don't have to tell me). The hair salons in our neighborhood were way too expensive. I didn't even know where a hardware store was. The closest coffee was Dunkin Donuts, and we were near any restaurants, either. Granted, we lived in the deserted Northwest corner, but that's where the good deals were. All the haps are in the Southeast corner of Hoboken, but it's expensive to live down there, and you still aren't in the city - you have to take the PATH, the subway-like train, and then transfer to a subway. Heck, we didn't even live near the PATH, it took me at least 25 minutes just to get to the PATH, then 20 minutes on the PATH, then transfer to a subway. You're talking 60-90 minutes from our apartment to a location in the city.

However, I will say that I liked the open sidewalks, the park 3 blocks away, the friendly neighbors (when I saw them), the elevator in our building, and having a washer/dryer in the apartment. I also liked our leisurely weekend afternoons, when we could walk to the water and see the Manhattan skyline - you can't beat Hoboken's view of the city.

Brooklyn is..
..close to the city. We live within three blocks of four subway lines, which means that I can walk to the one I need and take it to my destination, without transferring. Of course, we do live with the sound of one of those subway lines, rumbling underneath the floorboards, but it just sounds like distant thunder...underground.
..cool all on its own. With Prospect Park, the Botanic Gardens, the Central Public Library, a home-grown brewery, and more bars/restaurants than you can shake a stick at, Brooklyn is a tourist destination.
..full of neighborhood conveniences. There's a little market down the street, or I can walk to the giant (seriously, Texas-sized) grocery store four-five blocks away. There's a pharmacy across the street, a hardware store across the street, a laundromat around the corner, an awesome nail place around the corner, it goes on.
..expensive! Eesh, we are paying through the nose to live here.
..part of New York City, and that means you pay city taxes, grr.
..old, which is a plus and a minus. It's a plus because I love, love our tin-impression ceilings, decorative archways, and aged wood floors. It's a minus because we don't have a dishwasher, garbage disposal, central A/C, or washer/dryer.
..totally hipster, which is also a plus and a minus. Hipsters love local beer, tasty food, fresh produce, and crafty fairs (all of which I love too), but they do weird things like raise chickens in the tiny brownstone backyards.

As a mom in Brooklyn, I love all the kid-friendly activities that are literally in our neighborhood. I haven't gone to any of them yet, because we're still unpacking and traveling quite a bit, but there's music in the park, story time at the library, and yoga for toddlers down the street. I love the Burrito Bar across the street, with its delicious happy hour margaritas and super kid-friendly service. They tie a balloon to the highchair for your kid to play with! I love the fantastic coffee shop down the street. I love that we now live between two parks, one on the way to the Texas-sized grocery store, and one on the way to boutique shopping.

However, I do not love lugging the stroller up and down stairs all the time. My arms are going to be awesome in a few weeks. We live on the second floor, so all our groceries and laundry go up and down, up and down, along with the baby and the stroller. Speaking of which, I do not like doing laundry at a laundromat or washing all the dishes by hand. I also am still uncomfortable with out my trusty SUV. We had to do Ikea exchanges (twice!), and we had to hire movers to pick up, take to Ikea, and bring back. That gets inconvenient and pricey.

So, I'd say Brooklyn wins, which is good because now that we're close to unpacked, there's no way I'm moving again any time soon!

Colorful New Apartment

My amazing sister slept on our couch for two weeks (!) so she could be here to help pack, paint, and babysit. Let's just say she has a great, big IOU coupon coming in the mail!

I've moved many times, so the packing isn't very exciting, but the painting, now that was exciting. The new apartment has three spaces, which we're using as living, dining, and library, separated by decorative, flat arches. The ceiling of the living room has an impressed tin ceiling that was painted white. We knew we wanted to accentuate the arches and the tin ceiling and that we wanted color. This is terribly mean of me, but I'm not posting pictures of the actual rooms just yet. Once I clear out the boxes, I'll post pictures. In the meantime, here are the colors from the Benjamin Moore Historic Colors line:

Living Room, Wythe

Library, Stratton

Dining Room, Georgian Brick

And then for the master bedroom, which also has a decorative, impressioned tin ceiling, we went with Rockport Gray.

Pictures of the actual rooms coming sometime, but unpacking with a baby is a little slow-going!

Moving to Brooklyn

It's really happening, folks! We're moving to Brooklyn in June. It's a beautiful, three-bedroom place, with high ceilings, two non-working fireplaces (all the fireplaces up here are plugged up, mostly for liability reasons), a living room, a dining room, and a room that we'll make into a library. Also, it's very close to the subway that Chad will take into work, so his commute will only be 20 minutes. For Cora and I, the apartment is close to a couple of playgrounds, the giant and beautiful Prospect Park, and the public library, which has a huge children's reading area. We're giving up a few modern conveniences, like a dishwasher and a washer/dryer, but I'd say that for all the other things we're gaining, it's totally worth it!

Since we're hoping to be settled in Brooklyn for the rest of our time in NYC, I'm officially going on the job hunt. So, if you know of an awesome place to work in the New York area that is looking for someone to write, edit, research, and maybe do some fun design work, let me know. =)

House-hunting in Brooklyn

Now, if you know me in rl, as my mmo player buddies used to say in reference to someone they knew in real life, you have probably already heard something of my house-hunting woes through facebook or some other online outlet. If you're my mom, you've heard every tear-inducing incident over the phone. (Thanks, Mom.)

But, this is a blog about what it's like to be a mom in the NYC area, and moving is a very big part of that! Especially when you move as much as we do. Since we were married in 2007, we have lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Denver for one month, a two-bedroom apartment in Nashville for 12 months (with a summer stay in a one-bedroom apartment in Berlin in the middle of that lease), a two-bedroom duplex in Nashville for 14 months (with a two-month stay in a one-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires, immediately followed by a two-month stay in a different shared three-bedroom apartment also in Buenos Aires in the middle of that lease), and now a two-bedroom apartment in Hoboken, NJ for the last 8 months. Oh wow, let's all just take a deep breath...and re-read that because it looks like craziness...

Since we are dangerously close to breaking our record for longest stay in a single place, we're really itching to move again. Just kidding, that's not it. The real issue is that it still takes Chad 45 minutes to get to work, even when he takes the expensive ferry, and it takes me 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours to get anywhere in the city. The times are nearly doubled if it's a night or a weekend because Hoboken is a commuter town. We like to go to the city during times other than 8am-7pm, though!

So, we've set our sights on Park Slope in Brooklyn, the coolest, cutest little neighborhood that is juuuust barely within our financial budget, assuming I continue to cook every blessed meal of every day. Or until I get a job, ha. Anyway, we've also decided that we really, really need a three-bedroom apartment. It sounds so greedy! But the third bedroom can be tiny, as long as it fits a desk and a crib, that's all! Guests may have to sleep on the couch - sorry!

We have figured out all the logistics, though: train times, monthly budgets, selling my car, parks in the area, grocery stores in the area, everything. All we need now is the place. Enter realtors. Dun, dun, DUUNNNN! (I really need a more interactive blog for this kind of storytelling.) Realtors have this peculiar arrangement in Brooklyn. Landlords release information to realtors about an apartment for rent, 4 or 5 different realtors post to craigslist and such, and potential tenants call/email/text realtors for access to the apartment. Realtors, at their leisure, respond to potential tenants, arrange for a time to see the place, accept deposits, and handle the contracts.

Keep in mind, the potential tenant (ie, myself) is the one who has to scour craigslist and such, harass the realtor into finding time to show the place (because the realtor is SOO busy with 300 other apartments on the market), be stood up by the realtor (who is still SOO busy with other apartments), arrange another time, almost get stood up again, find out that the realtor went to the wrong address (300 addresses to keep track of!), and finally meet the realtor at the desired apartment. The potential tenant (again, me) then has to ask many questions about utilities, when the place is available, laundry, and such, only to find that the realtor knows 10% of the answers (because it gets confusing with so many apartments). Then, because there are 3 other potential tenants who are going to see the apartment in 15 minutes, the first potential tenant (me) must decide very quickly whether or not to put down a deposit because there's a 95% likelihood that the next person who sees the place will.

AAAAND the potential tenant is supposed to pay the realtor's fee! That's 12% of the annual rent, which, at $3000/month is somewhere around $4,320! WHAT?!? You make me do the research, harass you into meeting me, and not expect you to know anything about the apartment, AND you want me to pay you over $4,000 dollars!!! What's worse, the other potential tenants don't seem to mind. We've lost several apartments because we tried to negotiate having the landlord pay the realtor's fee, and we were scooped by some other louse who would.

The realtor is bad, but sometimes the landlord is just as bad. Every single time you ask to see a place, the realtor asks who is moving in, to which I reply, "Myself, my husband, and our child." 60% of the time, the realtor reports back that the landlord does not think the apartment is suitable for one trivial reason or another, and I begin to get the feeling that the landlord simply does not want children in his building (I won't say his/her because it's always "his").

Even when the landlord "allows" me to see the apartment, we travel 1 1/2 hours to Brooklyn, we wrangle the realtor into meeting with me, and we love the place and put down the deposit, still - STILL - there are problems. The last landlord didn't like our financial paperwork because Chad had only been working for 3 months. He has a job at an awesome law firm in Manhattan, and that's not good enough?! The sleazy landlord rented it to someone else, and we're still working on getting our deposit back.

I never knew that moving could be so horribly hard. I've been actually very lucky because Cora's been in Texas with grandparents for almost 2 weeks, but most of my time has been fruitlessly wasted on this house-hunting business in Brooklyn. I feel sorry for little Cora because she's about to get dragged to Brooklyn every day. At least she likes the subway and being outside. It's warm, so maybe we can play on dirty doorsteps while we wait to be stood up by realtors.

Sorry this is such a downer post, but finding an apartment in the City when you have a kid is no fun at all. I know it will all work out in the end; it always does. I just want the end to come soon! And then we will host lots and lots of guests in our cool Brooklyn apartment and show them all sorts of fun in NYC. Just have to keep my eye on the prize.

Fresh Direct

Maybe I really am an urban mom - a few days ago, I ordered groceries online and had them delivered the next day! It's been pretty frustrating to get to the grocery store with Cora, especially since she still needs two naps a day, and because of horrendous commuter traffic, I can only go somewhere in the car between 10:30am and 2:30pm. So, I've been going to the local store, which is expensive enough that I thought it was worth checking into Fresh Direct, a grocery delivery service that started in NYC and is spreading to NJ and CT. I was surprised to find that although certainly more expensive than Wal-Mart, is competitive with our local store. Then, I found an awesome coupon online, and that sealed the deal.

 While Cora napped, I clicked through a checklist of produce, dairy, meat, even canned goods. 30 minutes later, I'd hit send and she was just waking up. Instead of dragging her through traffic and a Wal-Mart in the suburbs, we played with puzzles, much more preferable. The next morning, groceries delivered! I popped our dinner in the slower cooker, and life felt manageable. Now, if I can just find more of those coupons, we might just do this again. Or their promo campaign of getting first-time users hooked by the convenience of it all just might work. Even more amazing, my shopping list is saved, so to order the same two weeks' worth of meals would only be a click away...
Then, the baby ran away with the tomatoes, hehe.

Etsy

The Etsy lab is in Brooklyn, a mere hour and fifteen minutes by bus and subway from Hoboken! They offer classes/workshops every Monday night in different crafty things. Yesterday, there was a drawing class, geared especially for people who don't draw. That would definitely be me. So, I took my bus to my subway, and popped up in DUMBO, "Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass," a previously-industrial-renovated-gentrified-and-polished-up-for-wealthy-hipsters area. The Etsy lab is on the 7th floor of these cool warehouse buildings.

The drawing class was surprisingly fun. The artist, Carol, started us off with a left-handed portrait of the person sitting across from us, great because it reduced expectations and introduced us to someone. I lucked out that the guy sitting across from me had lots of easy-to-draw facial hair. The second set of exercises was drawing objects without lifting the pen from the paper. That was hard and I refuse to show any of those, ha.

The third involved taking something we'd drawn in the one-liner exercise, redrawing it, and detailing it with thicker/thinner lines and color. She did a demo of this. After 15 minutes of concentrated effort, I had a rather cute pink elephant to show. All-in-all, pretty fun, and I hope to go back for another Monday craft night at Etsy.

We went outside!

 

Every kid (and nanny/mom) in the neighborhood turned out for the first warm day in months. It was absolute madness. Little kids, big kids, and over-protective moms, all climbing around the play space and dragging the slush in with them.

But Cora had great fun! She also looked super cute in her little coat, a gift from her birthday buddy (also born January 8th, although about 25 years earlier), Kathy.

My mom also gave me an awesome pocket-sized video recorder, so I looked just as nutty as the parents in the jungle gym, following Cora around and filming her attempts at climbing ladders and such.

I guess we both had fun.

Hoboken

Yes, what a silly name for a city, but that's where we live, and it's better than our Northern neighbor, Weehawken. I thought ya'll might like a little info about our new city. (By the way, I'm having a very hard time not saying, "ya'll," but I'll have to stop because I'm getting pretty tired of repeating myself. One "ya'll" in a sentence and everyone acts like they didn't understand a thing I just said.)

Hoboken has about 40,000 people stuffed into one square mile, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The streets are fairly wide, room enough for four cars across, but most of the streets are one-way. So, there are two lanes of parking on the outsides, one lane of double-parking (which can be on either side and sometimes causes problems), and hopefully one lane is left open for moving cars. The major two-way street in town, Washington, can fit six lanes of cars, so each side has parking, double-parking, and hopefully some moving traffic.

Theoretically, Hoboken is easy to navigate. All streets are in a grid, and the numbered streets (1-14) run East-West. Unfortunately, all the one-ways and buildings that take up 2-3 blocks make it a bit of a maze. So, we've started to opt more and more for walking, but we'll see how long we hold out, since the winter weather will probably make the car increasingly tempting.

The first officially recorded game of baseball in US history was in Hoboken in 1846 between the New York Nine and the Knickerbocker Club. (Guys, seriously? You're just asking to get your pansy knickerbockers knocked off. I don't know who won, though.)

Frank Sinatra is from Hoboken, and every year, there is a sound-a-like competition in Sinatra Park.

Carlo's Bakery of the Cake Boss TV show is in Hoboken, and on the weekends, there's a line 2 blocks long to get into the tiny shop.

In the Northern part of town, I've even seen a warehouse full of giant plaster animals and vegetation, which I assume will either be part of the Macy's Day parade or a giant's lawn decoration collection. --In fact, I just looked up Hoboken in Wikipedia, and yes, Hoboken is home to the Macy's Day Parade Studio! Because why would Manhattan waste space on plaster sculptures bigger than a $800,000 condo? Send those things to New Jersey.--

As late as the 1960s, though, Hoboken was actually a cruddy industrial port with slum-like housing. In the 1970s, NJ built a new port in Newark and an Interstate that connected NJ to NY, bypassing Hoboken and leaving the little town obsolete. It wasn't really until the 1990s that NJ started to reclaim the waterfront, build open park spaces facing the NYC skyline, and encourage commercial real estate. Now, Hoboken is considered a "bedroom community" of Manhattan, since most of its residents sleep here but basically live in Manhattan. You can get to Manhattan by subway (called the PATH train), ferry, or bus in 25-45 minutes.

I will say that Hoboken is growing a bit of its own downtown entertainment, though. It has a cute main street, lined with small shops, Italian restaurants, and a few Starbucks. There are even a couple bars that do live music and such. And there is a brand new movie theater! Five screens, that's right.

I hope you all (ugh, takes too long to type) enjoyed getting to know more about Hoboken.

Munchen

We met our law school friends and former neighbors, Kathy & Adam, in Munchen (aka "Munich"). Since they'd already been there a couple of days, they toured us around the major sights.


Here we all are in front of the Rathaus. As you can see, the baby backpack was fully operational, and little Cora was even protected from the dreary Deutsche drizzle.

-->Baby travel note: In the case that other parents have found this blog with such desperate search terms as "baby Europe backpack how to?!" (which I myself used only a month ago), I'll be posting these baby travel notes. Here you see Cora (7 months, 17 pounds) in the Kelty backpack. We tried on several brands, and this was the only one that fit both of us and Cora. So, before you spend all night reading amazon reviews (like I did), go try them out with your baby to see if there is even more than one option. In here, we stored all of her daily needs: diapers, wipes, bags, several bottles, spare formula in a tupperware container, toys, pacifier wipes, burp cloths, and blankets, as well as Chad's sweatshirt and hat.

Cora very much enjoyed being able to see the sights from her backpack, and she could take short 10-30 minute naps when she was completely exhausted, but she did miss her regular nap times.

That afternoon, uncle Curtis came in from Bonn to meet Cora for the first time! We also introduced Cora to the beautiful combination of beer and pretzels. (Do note that this is a joke. Cora did not drink any beer. She did, however, munch on some pretzel, although it took us a few minutes of Cora's sickened facial expressions to figure out that we should scrape off the giant grains of salt.)

As much as we love Germany, we were off to the Czech Republic. We rented a car (+car seat and GPS) and drove to Prague. I'll opt not to relive the rest of the evening, since it involved attempting to find a castle, getting utterly lost, having no Euros with which to buy dinner, starving ourselves (even pregnant Kathy!) until we finally reached Czech and could stop for a midnight kebab, and finding a place to park the car at 3am in Prague. Upcoming in the next post: the more pleasant experience of Prague.