+Falling asleep to the sounds of baseball. Mr. Magpie watches virtually every single Nats game through an MLB sports package and I find the pop of the ball off the bat, the muted roar of the crowd, the monotone of the announcer deeply soothing.
+This Vornado fan. We live in an art-deco, pre-war building on Central Park West and so at the dawn of every summer, the porters lug boxy AC units into our apartment. I despise and loathe those monstrosities. They do not cool particularly well and they are insanely noisy. As a result, Mr. Magpie and I try to make do without them until we absolutely cannot bear it, instead preferring the gentle whir and surprisingly effective dynamics of this fan. (Recommended by Wirecutter; read the Amazon reviews, too. It’s a really good buy.)
+New words. Just logged and have been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to use “etiology.”
+Climbing into bed early and reading, TV off, lights low. Currently devouring this.
+Weird admission: the smell of Mr. Magpie. I don’t know what it is, but his natural musk is irresistible to me.
+The message in this incredible children’s book, gifted generously to mini by one of my in-person book clubbers (thank you, thank you!). It’s all about listening and empathy and making space for your own emotions. It’s also reminded me that sometimes the best thing I can do as a mother is just listen–not problem-solve, or cheerlead, or afford a sense of perspective. Just listen.
+Country music at the dawn of summer. I put together a long list of “chick country,” much of it borrowed from the 90s — Shania, Faith, Dixie Chicks — and it is giving me life. It reminds me of open windows and rusted jalopies on dirt raods and wheatfields, though I’ve never lived that country life.
+Freshly laundered and ironed bedding. (And, in between cleanings, the Laundress’ Crease Release spray. I love the smell and it does a pretty damn good job of making your bed look tidy.)
+Watching Southern Charm — the only Bravo show I tune into these days. I can’t explain why; it’s an enigma unto myself. I think it has something to do with its seeming proximity to the truth, whereas other reality TV shows feel so blatantly fabricated. I mean, the fact that Thomas Ravenel fathered multiple children with Kathryn Dennis stands as proof paramount to me that there are some aspects of truthfulness to the show.
+Reading your comments and emails. Truly, one of the primary privileges and joys of my life.
+The way Tilly (our airedale terrier) jumps into Mr. Magpie’s arms and rests her face on his in the evenings. He is her person. They have a special bond that occasionally makes me sniffle.
+The occasional morning where I think — “I’m just not going to rush anything.” And we break precedent and invite mini into our bed with her breakfast and let her linger in her jammies and maybe watch an episode of Sesame Street and enjoy an extra cup of coffee without bustling through the usual quotidian tasks.
+Equally — the mornings when I have everyone dressed, fed, brushed, and happy by 9 a.m., with the beds made and the dishwasher empty and the kitchen cleared of breakfast debris. It’s that middleground kind of morning that kills me, when I’m hauling ass trying to get everything done but nothing is cooperating.
It’s no secret that SZ Blockprint caftans were one of my favorite discoveries last year (it all started with this style from J. Crew) and that I’ve been gradually amassing a collection of their dresses. They represent the perfect solution for pre-jammies, post-dinner relaxation. (Has anyone heard of / worn Mirth Caftans, BTW? Cute, but pricier!) But after featuring them dozens of times and then showcasing India Amory’s blockprint linen collection, I realized that I’m drawn in general to the blockprint aesthetic. It’s a boho-meets-Andy-Warhol vibe and I love it. Today, I thought I’d share a couple of blockprint and blockprint-esque finds:
I met the lovely and talented Aurelia Demark at an event with two other women of substance I’ve featured here in the past, Pam Munson and Laura Gelfand (it was a room full of inspiring female founders), and instantly fell for her gorgeous, heirloom-able line of fine jewelry and charms. I was especially drawn to the way Aurelia spoke about her own collection, which she designs with her mother (!): her eyes alight, eager. Here is a woman deservedly proud of the beautiful wares she has created. Her passion and confidence were electric, and her chops impressive: Aurelia has over 10 years of experience in fashion merchandising and marketing, including roles at Stuart Weitzman and, most recently, Tory Burch.
The back-story behind her brand is beautiful, too: inspired by a bespoke animal charm Aurelia’s mother had designed when Aurelia was born, the two reproduced the design to celebrate the arrival of Aurelia’s own first daughter decades later.
All of her beautiful keepsake pieces are crafted in New York City with solid 18K gold, precious stones, and engraved details. Incidentally, I first learned of this line of pieces, which are — in her words — “meant to mark life’s greatest, most personal moments” from yet another woman of substance I featured in the past, interior designer Jen Hunter, who just recently launched her own design business (and her taste is EXQUISITE). Jen often wears a beautiful charm necklace by Aurelia that I have eyed with envy for some time. It’s just a WOS network around here, eh?
I love her entire collection of whimsical pieces, but am especially smitten with this bracelet (seen above) — a charm for micro and a charm for mini!
Below, her answers to my Proust Questionnaire:
Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Loyalty, humor, integrity, kindness.
Your favorite heroine.
My dog, Scout.
Your main fault.
Perfectionism.
Your greatest strength.
Perseverance.
Your idea of happiness.
Sleeping in. Snuggling with my daughters, husband, and dog, Scout. Swimming in warm ocean water where I can see my feet. A French baguette with good butter.
Your idea of misery.
Having your ski boots hurt on a cold ride up the chairlift. And terrible turbulence on a plane — I have an overactive imagination.
Currently at the top of your shopping lust list.
I love perfume. My love for perfume started very young, as my grandmother would literally douse herself in Guerlain and my mother wore Chanel #19 throughout my childhood. Smelling a familiar scent always brings back powerful memories. I saw that Carine Roitfeld launched a collection of perfumes — excited to get my nose on them.
Recently, your “Affirmations” post hit home. We live in such a crazy world — it’s important to take time with your loved ones, show your love, comfort them, and teach them to grow confidently. You wrote that “we have already established a baseline of love and affection and admiration that I hope she will carry with her forever.” It’s so true; the love you put into your children you will receive back for the rest of your life.
Aurelia Demark-Inspired Finds.
Below, a couple of pieces inspired by this elegant, driven soul (you’ll note if you follow her on Instagram that she loves a good stripe, just like me):
P.S. I love that Aurelia’s line was founded by a mother-daughter duo. I’ve learned so much from my own mom; beautiful to see these lineages brought to bear in a thoughtful collection.
A few weeks ago, I listened to a fascinating podcast interviewing Katherine Paterson, an author you likely remember from your childhood. She wrote Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved, which — along with Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret — remain among the most formative works of fiction from my preadolescence. I didn’t know about periods until I read Judy Blume, and (spoiler alert) Leslie’s death in Bridge to Terabithia was among the first fictional traumas I encountered outside of the high parent mortality rate in Disney movies. The latter haunted me more than the (in retrospect) more deeply troubling bullying and abuse that play a prominent role in the work.
I was intrigued to hear what Paterson would have to say, as her work has clearly become cornerstone content for the middle school crowd. And she did not disappoint. She was refreshingly unassuming and delightfully anti-authoritarian on the subject of empowering children to read, explaining that she has often told children that if their teachers explain “the meaning” of her works, they would do well to absorb it so they can parrot back the facts for testing purposes — but that, in so many words, the true meaning of a work is up to the individual reader. Can you imagine receiving such a message as a wide-eyed, authority-conscious twelve year old?! I think it might have changed my life. I don’t think I came to such a conclusion until I was in my early 20s — and even then, as a graduate student, I still labored on occasion under the misapprehension that there were “right” and “wrong” ways to read a text. And in a certain, school-bound, sense, there were: earning strong grades was always more about reading the professor and his/her predilections and philosophies than it was about the text itself. Any professor who denies this has developed a severe case of intellectual myopia. But, more broadly, I agree with Paterson: books are living, breathing, movable feasts and they bear individualized meaning and nuance for each new reader.
Paterson shares a number of insights into cultivating good readers as children. One message that has stuck with me on the subject of asking children about the books they are reading and that I hope to trot out as mini ages and our conversations around books deepen: “If you know the answer to the question, it’s not a real question. You have to ask a question that you don’t know the answer to and then you’re engaged in the discussion of the book.” I’ve begun applying this sagacity to other realms as well. On occasion, I find myself prompting mini to detail her day: “What did you do? Did you go to the zoo with your nanny?” I’ve aimed to re-direct my mode of inquiry, asking her questions to which I have no clue of the answer. “How many sea lions were there?” “Was the monkey eating?” Etc. Her answers are fascinating, imaginative, and possibly previcatory in the best possible way. (Yesterday, as she was heading into my bedroom: “Where are you going?” “To buy cookies.” “What kind?” “Two.”)
But then there was this brilliance, which at once resonated deeply with me and stirred me:
“Fiction allows us to do something that nothing else quite does. It allows us to enter fully into the lives of other human beings. But, you may argue, these are not real people; they are fictitious, merely the figments of one writer’s imagination. At this point the other side of the brain takes over. There is nothing mere about Natasha. We know with what Walter de la Mare calls ‘the compelling inward ring’ that Natasha is true. She is more real to us than the people we live with everyday because we have been allowed to eavesdrop on her soul. A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed and just as a season with Natasha and Andre and Pierre may make us wiser and more compassionate people, a season with Heathcliff or Jude Folly has the power to shake us at the roots. The fake characters we read about will evaporate like the morning dew, but the real ones, the true ones, will haunt us for the rest of our days.”
How true: [good] books grant us permission to “eavesdrop on someone else’s soul.” I felt this way in particular with Sally Rooney, of whose books I wrote: “I have never met such round, complex characters in my life: they feel real, beyond fiction, as if they exist somewhere in the world and Rooney has only happened to eavesdrop upon them and afford us glimpses into their heartbreaks and hopefulnesses. There is something unforced, natural about the way she captures them.”
And with that, a roundup of my top picks for summer reading:
For the best character portraiture and a modern take on love: Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
For juicy pulp fiction on 1970s-era drug, sex, and rock-and-roll: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six.
For dark, female-centric, twisty-turny suspense: Ruth Ware’s Turn of the Key. (Please, please skip Liv Constantine’s The Last Time I Saw You — a true train-wreck of narrative improbability and absurd authorial convenience, though I thoroughly enjoyed their first book, The Last Mrs. Parrish.)
For thought-provoking familial drama: Sally Hepworth’s The Mother-in-Law. This book startled me — I picked it up thinking it would be a dark suspense, and while there is a death with mystery around it at the core of the narrative, found it elegantly written and provocative in the sense that it left me thinking about the expectations we carry into relationships with the families we inherit and the ones we build. I have a big bone to pick with one element of the plot design but won’t ruin it here…
If you liked Madeline Miller’s Circe (who didn’t? a full review here): Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. A reimagining of “the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.” People are loving this book.
For an exceptional food-centric memoir: Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums. From the description: “This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul.” I’ve read a number of Reichl’s books/essays in the past and she’s among the best. Cooking and memoir-writing go hand in hand, in my opinion — all about nostalgia, memory, place, feeling.
Because it just won this year’s Man Booker Prize award: Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi. Description: “Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters…who witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present.”
Because it’s bound to be popular and controversial: Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls. Gilbert is polarizing. I just recently learned that she has a rather idiosyncratic theory about creativity that people either love or reject (I’m in the latter camp, I think), and the disparities between Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, two of her most famous works, are countless and jarring. (I actually did not believe that they were written by the same woman and in fact thought there were two Elizabeth Gilberts for a stretch. I strongly preferred the latter, which was dizzyingly impressive in its careful, painstaking detail-orientedness and scope.) The former tends to evoke reactions of anger and eye-rolling among a certain set (“ugh, the unexamined privilege she represents in that book!” seemed to be the rejoinder among many of the women my book club) and admiration and conviction among another (“go! be free! namaste!”) In her latest book (just released today!), Gilbert shares a love story set in the New York City theater world in the 1940s; it is “told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.”
If you loved The Handmaid’s Tale (I could not stomach the series and so abandoned the entire enterprise wholesale): The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, due out in a few months, positioned as a sequel that promises to “answer the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.”
For something light: Frances Mayes’ Women in Sunlight, recommended to me by several Magpies. Written by the author of Under the Tuscan Sun, this is “the story of four American strangers who bond in Italy and change their lives over the course of an exceptional year.”
Post Scripts.
+Ordering this 100% mineral stick-sunscreen for mini. I’ve heard it’s a wonderful formula for applying on squirmy little ones (swipe instead of rubbing/making a mess everywhere)!
+Itching to order this Marysia one-piece. I mentioned it last week — so many people rave about its flattering fit! — but now I’ve found it marked way down…and I think I need it…
+A really good children’s sale raging here. I always get a bunch of pieces from here for mini when they run their sales — very well-made, but also a bit spend-y.
As I’ve mentioned fifty three hundred times, we are heading to the Hamptons in early July and I cannot wait. Between the crazy Memorial Day Sales and the eager anticipation of stowing all of my maternity wardrobe, I have been on a wardrobe expanding binge. Truth be told, I’ll probably be wearing a lot of the pieces mentioned here and, depending on how confident I feel a month out of delivery, my favorite one-piece swimsuit with some huge shades, as the house we rented has its own pool and I intend to sit by it for long stretches of time, reading a juicy thriller (this is next on my list). And for daytime, I’m drawn to the idea of loose-fitting linen jumpsuits (Everlane generously sent me this style in the indigo! — and I also love this style by Mara Hoffman, worn with my go-to plaid bag), SZ Blockprints caftans, and trousers like these. But there’s also my rekindled interest in tennis and an aspiration to wear lots of breezy maxi- and midi-length dresses. I am especially drooling over this boat-print Emilia Wickstead, this fun printed Mira Mikati (love the back!), and this inexpensive gingham beauty — as well as, of course, my linen Sleeper dress, which is possibly the most practical and beautiful thing I’ve bought for myself in a long while (nursing-friendly, season-appropriate, and flattering). I also don’t normally reach for minis anymore, but this breezy bow-shouldered polka dot number (under $150) and this similar style (under $85!) are calling my name for morning-time lounging. Below, a collage of some of my other favorite picks for a dreamy Hamptons wardrobe:
I’ll need to do a separate post on what we’ll actually be packing, practically, for a week with two kiddos in a rental home, but here is a good start: the best travel gear for kids. Also contemplating buying one of these as a kind of portable bassinet for micro…so darling!
I’ve not-so-casually mentioned this about 347 times, but I am SO excited about my new Sleeper Brigitte dress! I’d been eyeing one throughout the entirety of my pregnancy but it took until the very end for me to take the plunge. I think it will be the perfect nursing dress — polished, airy, comfortable. I bought mine in this blue “linum” floral print, in the midi length.
I get a lot of questions about how I make time to read so much. The truth is that my readership ebbs and flows. There was a legitimate two- or three-year period after I completed graduate school where I did not read any books. People assume I’m exaggerating, but you can ask Mr. Magpie — I would not read. Pursuing an advanced degree in literature had seemingly extracted all of the joy out of reading for me. I couldn’t face a text without — well, first, considering it “a text” (rather than an escape, or a mirror, or a site of enjoyment or enrichment or emotional exchange) and, second, finding myself deafened by a chorus of irritating voices reminding me to consider Derrida or “the male gaze” or “otherness” as presented in the work. The heavy machinery of critical theory switched on the minute I cracked a book open, almost like a neighbor buzzing away with his leaf blower for hours on end while you are trying to snooze next door. (Incidentally, there is currently one droning away outside my window, or maybe it’s a street drill — such is my level of extraction from the noise of home gardening — but in any case, it’s irritating.)
With time, though, came a gradual return to books and an unanticipated emotional awakening to their possibilities. As my grasp on the finer points of LaCan and Foucault waned, I found myself learning to read again. (And I’ve since learned how to read again and again, thanks to the smart ladies who read alongside me here on this blog and in our in-person book club gatherings.) But there have been other aids I have used to help me carve out more time to read:
+Buying a Kindle. Well, technically Mr. Magpie bought me this, but it has completely fueled my voraciousness as a reader. I find it much easier — physically and mentally — to read for small stretches of time on the Kindle than I do when I am toting a physical copy around. A physical book seems to require of me (I am sure much of this is mental) a place to sit, a stretch of uninterrupted time, and an ability to focus. Conversely, I find myself reaching for my Kindle when I am standing on the subway platform, or enjoying a blessed couple of minutes of quiet while mini colors, or waking at 3 a.m. unable to fall back asleep. It has changed my readership habits entirely: I will now read in small sips whenever I have little pockets of time.
+Retiring books when they don’t grab my attention. This was a hard habit to break, as I suffer from type A-style “completion desire” — if I’ve begun a book, I feel an awful compulsion to finish it and something akin to guilt if I don’t. But I have learned the hard way that elbowing my way through a book that does not interest me is a surefire way to kill my reading mojo. I’ll sit, quagmired, in a book for months on end. And for what?! Life is short. Drop the book and find something better to read.
+Reading books you love. I tear through books when I let myself read whatever tickles my fancy, with no regard for whether something is “highbrow” or “impressive” or “popular” or not. There was a time when I felt ashamed to read the latest pulp thriller or “chick lit pick” — it felt wrong, borderline unethical (?), given my substantial training in the field of literary criticism. I’ve long since dismissed those concerns as overly vain and entirely irrelevant. I read for many reasons, but chief among them is pleasure. So who cares? Read that juicy rom com of a book. (Incidentally, my favorite beach reads here.)
+Finding friends to read alongside you. Nothing holds me accountable to finishing a book like book club. (Join me!) I also often read books alongside my sister and cousin, who tend to share my literary interests. It’s so fun to unpack what we’ve read together, over pizza and a glass of wine. (My sister and I often disagree on books, though — ha!)
+Breastfeed a baby. HA. But seriously — I don’t think I’ve ever read more than I did while nursing mini. (I anticipate this go around will be very different as I’ll also be supervising a toddler, so…the long days of breastfeeding and reading are probably not going to materialize again.) Reading made the time fly right by and made me feel relaxed and — if I may say so — slightly virtuous: “aha! I am not only feeding my child but nourishing my spirit at the same time.” It was also a welcome break from scrolling through Instagram/Facebook, which had been my go-to nursing activity for the first few weeks. (A Kindle is a must-have for a nursing mom, FYI! You can use it with one hand! You can prop it up or use a stand so you can read hands-free! You can read while the lights are out or very dim in the wee hours of the morning! It is heaven!) More generically, though, even while not breastfeeding, I thought carefully about the times of day I would normally reach for my phone for an idle social media catch-up session and try to supplant that urge with reaching for my Kindle.
+Bring your book everywhere. When I was little, I was occasionally embarrassed by the fact that both of my parents never went anywhere without a book in hand. My mother always had a book propped up against the gear shift of her car in the carpool lane. My father would attend school events with an enormous Churchill tome tucked under his arm. I get it, now, and intend to fully embarrass my own children with the same slightly anti-social habit. There are always little pockets of time to kill. Why not fill the void with a quick five minute reading session?
+Audit your time. Someone once told me that “time is a tool to express your values.” It caught me off-guard and I began to think a bit more critically about how I was spending my spare time. Did it align with who I was? Who I wanted to be? I have always considered myself a curious person, and reading fuels and satiates that intellectual hunger. Acknowledging this helped me make more time and space for reading in my life.
With my new baby apparently here (it is so crazy to write those words, as I am actually drafting this post nearly ten days in advance of publishing it, and so — gasp!), I have been thinking lots about cherishing those fleeting firsts and lasts of the first year of a child’s life. I capture a lot of the wistfulness here, in this post I wrote about “Firsts and Lasts” with mini, two years (!!) ago:
These days, I wake to the sight of her empty bassinet, but feel something entirely different. Most mornings, my eyes travel over it thoughtlessly, so accustomed am I to seeing it there, her existence and all of her paraphernalia so deeply incorporated into the quotidian activities of my life that I barely give it a second thought. I’m too distracted by her cry, or too tired to think much of anything. Other mornings, I wake and look at it and fight the urge to cry. I thumb through pictures of her in it from just a few months ago, her limbs scrawny and her face red and squished and my recollection of this time continues to soften and float, suspended, in a haze of tenderness.
Did I adequately cherish those moments? Those mornings and noons and nights with her snoozing in it by my bedside?…”
+With mini, I used this Puj baby bath, which fits into any sink and was therefore a dream because of my c-section (you don’t need to bend over!). I also liked that it unfolds into a flat shape that can be slid away for storage. The only downside was that we found it dented/scuffed up pretty easily given its foam construction and that it developed mold. We ended up throwing it away when we moved. I then used this Boon tub within our bigger tub when we moved to New York until mini was about a year or maybe 14 months — at which point she transitioned into the full-size bath with this bath mat lining the bottom to prevent slips. With micro, I’ve been sort of waiting on the edge of my seat to see if he’ll be delivered via c-section or not, and if he is, I might try to get by with this inexpensive “sponge,” which a few readers have recommended and which I could place right in the sink for the first few weeks, while I’m recovering from surgery, as it doesn’t seem to make sense to buy a $45 Puj for about a month of use when I already have the Boon downstairs. OH THE LOGISTICS AND MATHEMATICS OF MOTHERHOOD.
+Apparently these are a great hack for introducing more vegetables in your toddler’s diet. Mini has been going through a phase where she doesn’t eat most vegetables. She’s great about trying most other things, but veggies are just not her style right now.
I turn (gulp, just say it) thirty five on June 26th. Thirty five. Thirty five has always sounded to me like mortgages, mammograms, and minivans. Like meetings with accountants, calling “my lawn guy,” going to bed at nine-fifteen-p.m., and eating cottage cheese while my kids enjoy pancakes. Like a La Croix when I really want a full-calorie Sprite.
But it’s not. Thirty-five is the neighbor to thirty-four, which has been an exceptionally generous year in my life. It was a year that answered. It was a year of emotional thawing, or warming, and on my thirty-fourth birthday, I watched Mr. Magpie transform before my eyes after a particularly trying string of frustrations and dislocations.
I will never forget this happy year in our small apartment, its walls already lit with the haze of nostalgia: rolling fresh pasta at our drop-leaf dining room table, in the midst of a major pasta obsession thanks to this cookbook, while cursing the diminutive size of our kitchen; the sound of mini’s breathless laughter during her maiden piggy-back rides on Mr. Magpie while I was sitting idly in the green and white striped rocking chair in her nursery, impossibly pregnant — just the sound of their laughter together in the other room made my heart swell; the Easter dinner that stretched from 5 PM to 8 PM with my sister and brother-in-law, punctuated by a dance party at mini’s behest, limbs flailing, music blaring; the sight of mini, sprawled out on her stomach, intently coloring her Disney coloring books; the many late nights reading in my bed while listening and not-listening to the city sounds just outside my window; the way I cajoled mini out of the bathtub on countless nights by telling her to bring Mr. Magpie “a cappuccino” of bubbles in a little blue plastic coffee cup, her dimpled butt sprinting out of the bathroom to present it to him, joyously. This is the stuff of a good childhood, I think, or I hope. But also — the stuff of a good parenthood. The snuggly feeling of belonging and attachment and safety and all-is-right-with-the-world. And I have thirty-four to thank for that feeling of respite after what feels like a decade of movement and undulation and uncertainty.
So I am grateful to thirty-four. And eager for what thirty-five will bring, too. I have a hunch — the kind of hunch you get when you read the first few pages of a book and feel yourself really lean in — it’s going to be a good one.
Post Scripts: What I Want to Wear on My Birthday.
I’ve asked Mr. Magpie to make reservations at either Prune, again (because — I mean, it was magic last year) or Le Coucou, because I’ve wanted to go there forever. And for the occasion, my sister and I have decided we will dress up: heels, gowns, whatever impractical fashion accessories we are into at the moment. Below, my top picks for a birthday dress — many of which I’ve featured multiple times over on le blog, so that should show you how much I’ve been pining after post-partem clothing:
This past week has ambled on by with the get-up-and-go of a college frat boy. But here we are, a week past micro’s due date and on the very eve of his birth via scheduled c-section, which I now consider a blessed deliverance in more ways than one, as I am wholly uncomfortable and entirely drained and finding it exceedingly difficult to walk more than a few blocks without needing a long sit. This, after all my hand-wringing about not wanting another c-section, and then discovering he was no longer breech and fretting over the unknowns of a vaginal birth: now we are back here, facing a c-section. As my SIL and three-time-c-section-warrior put it, after I unloaded some of my anxieties about the procedure: “There’s no getting around the bear of a surgery like this one, and it sucks having that knowledge the second time around. But your body has an imprint from the first time, so the adjusting will be less of a shock.”
Such is life, such is parenthood: God laughs when you make plans.
And so here I am, less than twenty-four hours away from meeting micro, flitting around my neighborhood, running last-minute errands (an extra pack of toilet paper, just in case), re-organizing my pantry (…?), enjoying a blow-out, and, oh, all the things that do not matter but that fill my day and afford me a sense of progress.
When I slow down (and maybe I should for the remainder of the day), I find myself weepy. Weepy with relief, with anxiety, with excitement, with exhaustion, with affection. Mr. Magpie had some ultra-generous, ultra-sweet words to say to me over our lunch date today and — oh! — I was a puddle in the middle of Bar Boulud, too happy and hormonal and wistful and to-hell-with-onlookers to care. It’s a strange thing to know that our lives will forever change, again, in a matter of hours. Who is this boy! What will our life be! How will I feel!
In between such musings big and small, I also had to share some scattershot thoughts with you before I dash off–
Thank you. For all of your words of encouragement via comment, email, and direct message. I feel so lifted. You are too kind and I am too lucky. I’ll be toasting with a full glass of champagne one day in the near future, clinking glasses with all of y’all in my mind.
I have pre-written a number of blog posts for the next week or two — so do not fear! I will be here. It may take me a minute to update you all on how we’re doing post-birth, but I dedicated a lot of time to writing over the past few weeks so there is lots to come.
There are some very good — dangerously good — sales going on right now. I did a roundup of my to picks from the memorial day sale here, but now Nordstrom, Neiman’s, and Bergdorf’s are running incredible discounts, too. A couple finds below:
SOMEHOW (POSSIBLY THROUGH CLERICAL ERROR?) THIS LA DOUBLE J TOP IS ONLY $44?!?!?!?!??!
By: Jen Shoop
A couple years ago, I enrolled in a tennis class for beginners and it was, as they say, “character-building.” I hadn’t been so colossally and publicly bad at something since, oh, high school? — when I was forced to try my hand at various outdoor sports as a part of P.E. All-in, it was a good thing to push myself out of my comfort zone (how often do we do that as adults outside of the professional arena?), but my was it humbling.
Meanwhile, Mr. Magpie has always been a solid tennis player (he is one of those vexing “natural athletes” — hopefully my children inherit this gene) and we played a couple of times, which, of course, and happily, necessitated the purchase of an entire new tennis wardrobe. I was reminded of this the other day as I switched out my winter wardrobe for my summer one and came across a bag full of sportswear, including a stack of barely-used tennis garb. The discovery left me determined to figure out a way to try my hand (again) at tennis this summer — and also, I will admit, left me poking around online looking for updated, chic looks for summertime aerobics:
P.P.P.S. Are you reading along with June’s Magpie book club pick?! It’s a good one (and blessedly short — more books need to be under 200 pages).
By: Jen Shoop
I wrote not long ago about the dissolution of a friendship. There were no dramatic fights or terse stand-offs or regrettable words. There was no central “conflict” — no climax. I sometimes feel the gradual ebbing and decline of what had once been a deeply meaningful relationship in my life was more excruciating than a lashing-out might have been. But maybe this is the way of adult friendships. To pocket a phrase from T.S. Eliot: “This is the way the world [or the friendships that make it go round] ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”
I spent stretches of days unpacking what had changed and whether I was to blame. I once missed my subway stop, too deeply engrossed in thinking through why I found myself recoiling and withdrawing from our conversations more often than not. I spent a string of several afternoons verbalizing my angst to my sister, who would sit, perched in the blue armchair of my living room, and nod with empathy.
“Do you feel like she adds to your life or subtracts from it?”
I saw, in the end, against my best wishes, a minus sign. I felt guilty thinking that–but there it was. Net-net, I felt less than, depleted in our interactions.
I am equally to blame in the ending of this relationship. I have changed in the last two years, substantively. I can see it in my own writing, the tenor and sweep of it so different from a few years back. Writing is a bizarre litmus to be sure, but this blog has held up a mirror to my transformation into — into what? It’s too reductive to say a mother, too facile to say a middle-aged woman. (Am I middle-aged?) But I find myself more serious, more measured, more drawn to the things that matter. I am more guarded, more jaded, more conscientious. And though I have always worn my heart on my sleeve, motherhood and aging and the failures and frustrations I carry with me and oh! the weight of things has left me increasingly tender at the bone. Just last night, Mr. Magpie missed mini’s bedtime by ten minutes, caught up in a board meeting. As I marched through our nightly routine solo, I felt his absence as though it were a thing corporeal. I helped mini onto her stool to brush her teeth: “No, daddy do it.” Midway through story time, the noise of a neighbor unlocking her door arrested mini’s attention, and she went flying out of the room: “That daddy?” As I picked mini up to place her on our bed, pathetically parroting Mr. Magpie’s nightly “rocket ship” routine where he counts down from five and then flings her into the bed, she looked at me quizzically, with disappointment: “No, that’s Daddy.”
When he came home, I felt my eyes well up with tears as I recounted her longing for him, how integral he is to her daily routine. Beneath a borderline mawkish appreciation for my daughter’s love for her father, I felt a thick, heart-swelling layer of gratitude: how fortunate I am to have such an involved partner in parenting. How lonely it might be otherwise.
I find myself dashing off meaty observational “field notes” along these lines to my dearest friends. I wonder what they think when they see a text from this silly heart — “oh, what maudlin or saccharine thought does she have for me today?” I’m only half-joking, as I find that my innermost circle of girlfriends seek and treasure similar moments of poignancy and meaning in their own lives, and echo them back in my direction, unafraid of their emotional ballast. I value these exchanges, and the strength of their collective gaze as these women of substance negotiate, unblinkingly, with the hefty heart of life–with the things that matter.
And so I may have a trimmer circlet of close friends these days. And I may find myself increasingly drawn to women who are willing to go there with me — to talk about the scary and hard and almost-don’t-want-to-say-it-out-loud things, like aging parents and the ailments of our children and the fears we carry about ourselves and our relationships and our abilities. And so I may be more inclined to bare my soul and have a cry than a 20-something Jen would have appreciated, back when I spent more time lingering over aspirations and distractions simply because I was not as deeply aware of the extent of my blessings, or the fragility of their presence.
This is me, on the eve of turning thirty-five: embracing the things and people that matter, letting the rest fall away.
Post-Scripts.
+Testing a new Molton Brown scent for body wash — the fiery pink pepper. Love it. They are so good at formulating the most incredible scents and I love the way it lingers on your skin for hours and hours.
+This chic maternity jumpsuit was restocked. I was eyeing it for most of the last two months of my pregnancy in the hopes it’d be available in my size! Love it. (Note: Hatch runs really big.)
+This Staud bag was THE bag last summer and I still find it incredibly chic — now 50% off!
+OK, I promise I’ll cease with the deluge of headbands (are you sick of this trend?), but this $18 gingham style is super cute in the beige colorway in particular — and such a good hack for a tired mom with limited time to shower/blow-dry/make herself feel pulled together.
+I’ve mentioned this in the past, but we have these gingham blackout shades in mini’s nursery (in pink) and I can’t believe how long I waited to install them. They instantly extended mini’s nightly sleeptime — she used to wake up at 5:30 and, ever since these have been in place, she nearly always sleeps until 7 or 7:30.
2 // Concealer: Cle de Peau concealer in ivory. (Homechild has dark under-eye circles. Concealer is a non-negotiable.)
3 // Bronzer: Guerlain bronzing powder in 03. If I must choose, I’d opt for bronzer over blush, though I usually layer both. I love this Guerlain formula. It goes on very naturally and is less about achieving a sunkissed look than it is about achieving a kind of healthy balance with my complexion — I apply it on my cheekbones, the tip of my nose, and along my hairline. Also, one palette lasts a REALLY long time; the formula is excellent and I’ve never had an issue with the bronzer cracking and dissolving everywhere, which seemed to happen consistently back when I was a Nars Laguna girl.
4 // Mascara: It Cosmetics Superhero Mascara. I freaking love this mascara. I was a Diorshow gal for about a decade, but I’ve fully converted to this formula. It’s thick, goopy, dramatic, and yet I feel as though it separates the lashes. I love a dramatic lashline. The only mascara I’ve ever found that makes me feel like I’m wearing false lashes.
5 // Lip Color: Fresh lip treatment in sugar rose. Just the best. Moisturizing and deposits the lightest slick of tint-enhancing color.
The above are MUSTS on a daily basis. Three other products I use most days aside the above: Smashbox Always Sharp Eyeliner (the easiest eyeliner to apply — I usually wear it in brown for daytime, which somehow brings out the blue in my eyes), Chantecaille HD Perfecting Powder (this stuff is pure magic: you literally cannot see it when it’s on, but it balances and glow-ifies (???) your skin), and RMS Living Luminizer, a clear balm that adds just the right amount of glimmer and glow to your skin.
For skincare, my current regimen, which I’ve been perfecting for the last two years and am extremely pleased with (and I apply the products in this order):
2 // Serum: Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum. Smells like a heady bouquet of flowers and brings life to my skin — it has completely evened out my complexion. An amazing product.
3 // Eye cream: It Cosmetics Bye Bye Undereye Brightening Cream. I’m constantly playing around with eye creams. I’m into this one at the moment — it has a kind of whipped consistency, glides into the skin, and does actually brighten the undereye area. I alternate between more affordable eye creams (also love Ole Henriksen’s Banana Bright Eye Cream in this category) and La Mer’s eye concentrate. I go in and out of seasons of being adamant about using La Mer and wanting to test more wallet-friendly formulas.
5 // Moisturizer: Belif The True Cream Aqua Bomb. As with eye cream, I tend to vacillate between La Mer and more affordable versions when it comes to moisturizers. I fell hard for Belif’s formula this winter when my skin was super-dry: it boasts a gel-like consistency that seriously hydrates skin.
I will also usually spritz on Caudalie’s Beauty Elixir at some point in this routine — sometimes on my just-cleaned skin, sometimes after I’ve applied my makeup.
What about you? Share your top fives pls and thank you — I always get good recommendations on beauty products from my Magpie Tribe.
P.P.S. I still stand by my love of all of the products listed here, with the possible upgrade of my handheld steamer to the Rowenta I bought earlier this year. I still think the Joy Mangano one is an excellent, inexpensive pick and easy to travel with/use, but I did find that the interior molded and eventually it just puttered out. The Rowenta is more powerful and better-made, but then there’s the tradeoff of price. Both are good picks!
Just old, anticipatory me over here, already eagerly mapping out plans for the next big holiday. Memorial Day is kind of a wash because…BABY! — so I’ve already been plotting outfits for the Fourth of July, when we’ll be staying in East Hampton for a full week (!) with our best friends and my sister and brother-in-law. I’ll do a more complete post on my vacation wardrobe at some point, though it may be a bit disappointing for those of you not in the throes of nursing. (For those of you in my cart: some thoughts on what to wear while breastfeeding here. Incidentally, this was the most popular top I featured in the roundup and would be a great pick for FOJ festivities, paired with white skinnies!)
Also, for a coordinating (but not matching) family vibe: this dress for mama (love those bows!), these shorts (on sale!) for dad, this for mini (she already owns this dress), these for micro (or these for older boys).
More matching family looks here, if you’re on the hunt.
