New Favorites - 2016 edition

I thought I'd share a few things that made this year better, easier, more interesting... (in no particular order, and I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of things, but my 40 yo brain is a sieve...)

1) Red Thread Good Cold Brew Coffee: 
I discovered this by accident on our trip to the Hamptons this summer. In Sag Harbor, where we hadn't been since 2011, there is a little shop (near the new Jayson Home summer outpost) called Sylvester & Co. (a "modern general store" owned by interior designer Lynda Sylvester).  I stopped in since I saw the sign for coffee and it was amazing.  They serve it hot and iced in their café and while I prefer the latter, I'm still enjoying it this winter hot.  By some strange coincidence, her other shop is in Savannah, so we went there as well the very next month. (FYI: she just announced she is closing her Savannah store)  Thankfully, you can order the beans or cold brew concentrate (which I highly recommend) online from her site.  My fave is Dreamy Decaf (which has a bit of chocolate in it).  I'm considering investing in her retail expansion.  Exciting times for this cool company! Bye bye Starbucks...

2) Lavender ice cream from Leopold's Ice Cream:
This is a seasonal flavor from the famous Leopold's in Savannah, GA, where they've been making ice cream since 1919.  I can't even explain how good it is.  Just trust me.  You can order their ice cream online, but only when in season (which is April and September for lavender).

3) Hamilton (the Broadway show, the PBS documentary, the soundtrack, the mixed tape, the legend)
When I was in NYC in last summer, Hamilton was still in previews and the President was in town taking it in (we went to Larry David's Fish in the Dark).  Watching it debut at the White House in 2009 is worth the view.  It wasn't really a cultural phenomenon yet, though since several of my friends from college went the high school with Lin-Manual Miranda, I'd been following it for awhile on social media.  The show has recently now opened in Chicago (with a new cast), and soon will also be in London and San Fran, but if you want to hear the original NY cast, check out the soundtrack, which is amazing.  I also highly recommend the Mixed Tape (which is other artists singing some of the songs), which if there was ever something that actually improved on the original...  Both are labeled "explicit", so if you want to listen (perhaps in the car) with kids, which gets me through some days and they also love, you can buy the edited versions. It is a such an inspiring show, and for a history buff, it's great to see so many people interested in it.  It actually got me excited about and prompted me to ask my mother more about our ancestor, Johann Daniel Miesse, who fought in Washington's army.

4) My VanMommy (aka the Honda Odyssey, aka Mr. Blue)
I've already sung its praises and five months (and nearly 10K miles!) in, I'm still a fan. Ugh, recalls...

5) Odd Mom Out
I don't otherwise do Bravo and I don't do reality TV.  But I do do this scripted comedy, which has been picked up for a third season.  It's amazing and hilarious and if you aren't watching it, you are seriously missing out.  I think you can stream all the episodes online. It got me through getting called up for jury duty and sitting around waiting out the day to make my whopping 30 bucks.

6) Out on the boat
My dad is an odd duck. He got a power boat about the time I went away to college (convenient, right?) which he almost never takes out, and since we aren't up north that much in the summer, we don't get out much either.  Well, we spent a lot more time up this summer to see my step-father, and made sure to rectify that this year and the kids had an absolute blast.

7) Last Chance/Nordstrom Rack
I've never been a big Nordstrom shopper (though I love their café), but I finally started hitting the Rack (especially for kids' stuff, Tea, Peek, Boden, Hanna, et al) and now it's like an addiction.  I got M a $300 silk Oscar de la Renta dress there for $40.  We also just got only their second Last Chance Store in the country (so maybe like the next to last chance), where I scored a J. McLaughlin dress for myself for $10. This is part of how I support my Tory Burch clothing addiction, while still being financially prudent.

8) The Inside Track...
Patagonia is one of the only brands where a name label will conspicuously grace my children.  Mine don't advertise for free people, but I make an exception for them.  They donated all $10 million of their Black Friday sales to environmental charities. Typically, I shop their great sales and get all we need, but now a friend of mine from high school is working there as a designer (after cutting her teeth at Lands End), so I am lucky to have access to generously shared discount codes for 40% off.  Let me know if you need one.

9) Bon Iver's 22, a million
Another new Bon Iver album, this one for my 40th birthday. My high school (in podunk nowhere) also somehow produced two-time Grammy winner Justin Vernon (who I didn't know then, as he was four years behind me).

10) 23 and me
My mom's been a busy bee researching our ancestry for several years now (prompted by her retirement to care for my late grandmother), but I decided to spring for a DNA ancestry and health analysis on 23 and me, to see what came back. Because at the end, you know I'm just a numbers person.  Thrilling, right?

11) Wellesley Women of the World
About the time my gen on the Bump boards moved, imploded, or whatever, sometime after the twins were born, I moved on and then happened to accidentally come across all the Wellesley boards on FB, which very happily took their place.  Between familiar faces from the Bump (hi ladies!) and from my college days, it felt like home. I have a complicated relationship with the place (I went back for the first time in several years the day before the election), and it's been one hell of a year to be an alum, but as I like to keep the drama to a minimum and need smart, honest, compassionate women by my side, I'd have a hard time finding a better place to land.

12) Last but not least, The Man Repeller (aka Leandra Medine Cohen) who I didn't follow previously, recently very sadly lost her first pregnancy (from a WTF IVF break) in her 14th week, and her post(s) about it since are definitely worth the read.  This is an especially hard time of year to experience loss (and be dealing with infertility generally).  It's been six whole long years already since I lost my first.  My how the time passes.

Turning Five

The kids turned five last week and we made it through their crazy last week of school with programs and colds galore.  Then we headed into the city for our annual birthday trip to visit the doctor and stay over to enjoy the city during the holidays (we usually make it in for staycations a handful of times a year otherwise). We were healthy enough to make it up to Zoolights, which we missed last year, though I think the cab and bus rides were the highlights for them.

They also just went to the eye doctor for the first time (in preparation for kinder) and they are looking great and so far thankfully have their daddy's great eyes (I had glasses starting in elementary school and it was downhill myopia hell from there until I got LASIK surgery in 2007).  

The pediatrician has them steady on their super tall and skinny growth curves.

Alistair

Five years: 40.6# 45.75" (50th%, 94th%) BMI: 13.67/2.81%

Four years: 36#, 42.5”(52^nd%, 91^st%) BMI: 14/4.6%

Marielle

Five years: 40.6# 45" (57th%, 91st%)

BMI: 14.09/16.32%

Four years: 36.2# 42.25” (61st%, 93^rd%) BMI: 15.7/14.3%

This is the only time of year we do anything approaching matching outfits...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Catching Up

So I've totally bombed on the blog this year, like nearly a complete epic fail.  So four months later...  I tried to post about the Hamptons (and separately about their two show houses), but that didn't happen (too many photos and it blew up).  Then we went to Savannah/Hilton Head Island for our tenth anniversary/my 40th, which was hot and amazing.  And I went to Boston for another long weekend, which was cold but great.  The election, and nada... oh well.

My OB/gyne finally managed to talk me into getting my BRCA 1&2 testing done, (since my sister had a young and rare reproductive cancer dx) which I had been putting off, since my other sister was negative.  It ended up only costing me a few hundred bucks, and I'm negative for both, which is obviously fantastic given the prospective treatment plan (double mastectomy-oophorectomy).  Unfortunately for me, they found that I have a different genetic mutation (MUTYH), that triples my risk of developing colon cancer (which is what ultimately killed my grandmother five years ago at 94), which sucks pretty badly.  So in addition to turning 40 and getting another mammogram (which is still awful, but came back fine), I also have to add getting regular colonoscopies (and I already got my first, which thank goodness, was also fine). 

Ironically, much worse than actually turning 40, are the health screeners that will hopefully get me through a few more decades.  Colonoscopies themselves are no biggie, but you have to fast and then slam 32 ounces of what tastes like really bad cough syrup the day before to clean you out, so that's pretty awful.  And how are mammograms still so horrible, like someone somewhere (likely a woman) can't devise something that isn't a torture device?

The kids are doing great and getting huge.  Like I'm going to have two four-foot-tall kindergartners soon enough.  They turn five in five more days. OMG.  So we have... they are in two different schools crazy holidays, parties, birthdays, Christmas, no-break, and up to 40 4-5 year olds for their jumpy house party come January.  And I'm supposed to be starting a new work project, I volunteered and was elected to be VP of his school's PTA, and trying to figure out how we are going to get out of this frozen tundra for a bit.  Thankfully, I put the kibosh on our regular India trip this year.  I just can't deal with being gone for weeks and feeling like death at this time of year on top of everything else.

We finally got around to getting new pics done for holiday cards (better late than never), but we got our first snow storm that day, so we were forced inside his studio.  They are somehow ridiculously more photogenic than either of their parents.

Thankfully, my step father has made it through his chemo, radiation, and now surgery for his cancer as well as can be expected.  Praying for clear scans and as much time as possible for him.