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I wake up at seven when Mr. Magpie springs out of bed. We take turns “getting up with the kids” — two days on, two days off — and this is one of my “sleep-in” mornings, which feel deliciously slow during the summer, as we have nowhere to be until we leave for the children’s camp drop-off at 8:30 a.m. It’s astonishing how baggy an extra forty-five minutes feels in the morning. I send off a praying hands emoji to the digital prayer circle (text thread) my mother, sister, and I participate in daily, and then check my emails. Then I’m up for my A.M. skincare regimen. I get dressed (today: Sezane button-down, Madewell shorts – go one size down; run big, Hermes Orans, By Pariah earrings), put on makeup and perfume, and head downstairs for the day. My children greet me the same way they always do as I descend: “The. great. mamooooo!!!!”, as though tiny announcers for WWE. (If it’s Landon coming downstairs, it’s: “The. great. dadoooo!”) I ask how they’ve slept, ruffle their hair, and assess how much they’ve eaten of their breakfasts. Then Mr. Magpie hands me a green smoothie (kale, banana, avocado, OJ) and we slip outside to the back porch to have an impromptu huddle about whether we’re going to send our son into camp today. (These deliberations must be kept out of earshot to a) complete the conversation without immediate interruption and b) prevent little ears from taking information and using it against us. My daughter is an expert litigator at age 7 and will use any “but what about…” musings as incontrovertible evidence to be lobbed against us.) My son was under the weather over the weekend, and here is one of the ongoing shocks of parenthood: that no one is going to tell you what to do with your kids in these situations. I still find those calls complex, even 7.5 years into the practice of motherhood. He seems better today (eating a full breakfast, chipper!), but do we keep him home just in case? As always, I err on the side of “keep him home” and Mr. Magpie on the side of “send him in,” but we both agree it’s better to let him rest. Immediately after announcing he won’t be going to camp, my daughter demands to stay home, and my son starts ping-ponging around the house, all traces of illness absent. Onward.
I manage to settle my son into an armchair with a stack of books while accommodating my daughter’s hair style request (a braid today; space buns yesterday). I submit an absentee form for my son online, pack my daughter’s water and snacks for the day (lunch provided at camp — praise be), supervise her shoe-tying (a new skill), finish my smoothie, send off a few texts to one of my Magpie team members (I have a few contractors who help with various aspects of my blog), and then we scurry out the door. I placate her huffiness (“it’s so unfair he gets to stay home”) with “you can pick whatever music you’d like in the car ride.” (A constant battle site between the two of them.) She requests Family Dance Party Playlist and off we go, blasting “Cake By the Ocean” at 8:33 a.m. After drop off, I switch to “Fleetwood Mac” and collect myself on the short ride home.
Back home, Mr. Magpie and I launch into a few urgent STPs (Shoop Talking Points) we’d been putting off, mainly around travel logistics for two upcoming trips, over coffee. It’s like threading a moving needle as we evaluate his remaining PTO, flights, credit card points, loyalty programs at various airlines, other happenings on our calendar, etc. My son chirps interruptions every 3-4 minutes. “Can I have a coloring page?” “Can I have Cheetohs?” “This is what a polar bear looks like,” “Remember that time on the ride?” At a good breaking point, we pause our conversation so I can go down to the basement to focus on him for a little bit. “Let’s play a game. It’s called family,” he announces. He’s arranged various stations around the basement — magnatiles in one part (“the restaurant”), a tent with Go Fish in another, a pile of “snacks” (more magnatiles) guarded by a tiny Buzz Lightyear figurine, and a big map spread out on the ground that he in turn uses to guide our movements on an imaginary plane. I love the idea that “family” to him is one big adventure: the two of us moving around from station to station, seeing alligators, eating magnatile hamburgers, and then playing a full round of Go Fish in a tent. I am so deeply relieved that he seems to feel better today, and I interrupt his imagination several times to squeeze him. “Mamaaaa,” he protests. I spiral when my children are unwell, worrying about having missed a symptom, anxious to make them comfortable, and can’t suppress my relief at his rebound.
I then go upstairs with my boy at my heels to finish the travel logistics conversation with Mr. Magpie and get some of the details off to our travel agent. This is the first time we’ve ever used a travel agent and her counsel has been welcome and relieving — Landon and I are heading to Italy in the fall and there are so many moving parts that it’s been wonderful to have someone advising us on where to fly into (and why), how many days to stay, handling hotel reservations, etc. I am pinching myself as we have these conversations. This will be our first long trip abroad in a decade, and the longest we’ve ever spent away from our children. Even during this brief exchange, my son steadily drops his own requests and commentary every 30 seconds. It can be very challenging to complete a single sentence in our home.
Then Mr. Magpie digs into his work day (he is more or less on the phone at all hours of the day — the life of a remote senior leader!) and I situate my son with some coloring pages and activity books and get to my desk. I will admit I am relieved when he announces he’d prefer to work in his room than at my feet, where he normally stations himself during “sick days.” Even with him in the other room, I already anticipate today will be a choppy day of half-productivity with my little shadow at my side, and that’s OK. It’s all about headspace.
I text my mother and then clip into my workday. I write first, and then consult my ticklist of action items — interacting with brands, working with my consultants on various aspects of the blog business, and a few personal items (appointments, returns, etc). I am always the most limber and creative first thing in the morning — my mind slowly turns to rock over the course of the day. I’ve learned to carve out the early hours for “maker’s time.”
We break for lunch at noon. A year or two ago, I promised myself I’d never eat lunch at my desk again. This is one of the glorious allowances of working for myself: I can make such declarations, and see it through. I find taking a proper break for lunch sets a gracious pace for my day and introduces a needed pause at midday. It’s also a way of drawing my stated values into alignment with my actions: philosophically, I am in search of whole numbers and wider margins in my life. I don’t want to be busy. So here we are, breaking for lunch on a daily basis. We eat leftover Greek pasta salad — I used Caroline Chambers’ delicious recipe — and my son has a leftover slice of pizza, cucumbers and peppers, a few rounds of salami, and a big serving of fruit. He’s still a year or two away (in my calculus) from willingly eating a mixed pasta salad. We’ve finally crossed that threshold with mini, but are still in the “separate foods and general pickiness” phase with him. I’ve made peace with this. (If you’re in the weeds with this, you might find comfort in the wise comments and suggestions in response to my post titled: “How do you get your children to eat?“)
Midway through lunch, my son notices a red-bellied hummingbird in the kiwi vines behind us. Incredible how children are naturally adept at things like noticing birds. I have been making a mild study of birding myself (with this book and this one) and some of the literature is almost embarrassingly basic in the sense that my son could teach me this: to be a good birder, you must stay still and watch, with no sudden movements. I text my sister-in-law, a more advanced birder, because she’d just messaged me about the hummingbirds in her mother’s garden the night before, and here one is, at my porch, reminding yet again me that our lives become mosaics of the people we love.
After lunch, I clean the dishes and eat one of the black and white cookies from the brand Oh My God that my girlfriend brought by the other day. They’re shockingly good — fresh, and just like the ones we used to get in NYC — and I will be ordering them as gifts. Then I retreat to my office to edit an essay and adapt some of my writings to share them on Instagram in appropriately-sized slides. (I use Canva.) Somehow, my son entertains himself quietly with Legos for most of this period. Then I pack up my daughter’s bathing suit and goggles in my new Bogg bag and make her a snack — a mini bagel and cream cheese alongside some cut fruit; these are my favorite little post-camp snack containers as they feel like the perfect size and I like the way it invites me to serve her fruit or veg alongside something with protein — as she is routinely ravenous after camp, and will need the sustenance before swim team starts at 4. As I walk out the door, I learn swim practice has been canceled owing to rain, so I pick her up and take her with me to the grocery for a few ingredients Mr. Magpie needs for dinner. More Family Dance Party, several dispatches from my daughter’s day at camp, then home. I make my daughter and son yet another snack, as both insist they are starving, and then negotiate with them about getting into the bath. One of my biggest parenting “hacks” (hate that word) is to bathe them before dinner. One less hurdle at the day’s finish line. Both routinely protest getting in and then promptly refuse to get out. I am happy to acquiesce on the latter. I let both of them prune in the tub. After, I permit them time on their iPads. My daughter is still patching for her amblyopia, and we find it’s easiest to let her ease into her two hour patch session with iPad, especially after a long day of camp and swim.
I return to my desk to edit a few photos and work on a shopping blog post before “closing up shop.” I close most tabs, clear my desktop, turn off the lights, stack my notepads. Then, I switch into a Mirth Caftan dress (past-season print, but I think this is the current version). One thing I’ve noticed about their dresses is that they pay a lot of attention to fabric — I find I want to live in them in the evening hours. They are all soft, brushed cottons in loose and drapey fits. I also own and love this striped style I just received a few weeks ago — it’s almost like a triple gauze robe material? Absolutely divine. I touch up my makeup and spritz on some perfume. I normally do this little refresh around this time as a way to toggle between my writer self and my mom self — a way to buffer! — even though the summer’s schedule has been more mottled than usual. It feels nice to officially mark the end of the day, or the start of the evening wind-down, by switching into something else.
Back downstairs, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Well, technically, it’s 6:05, and we mix up a batch of La Bombas as a prelude to the the absolute feast Mr. Magpie has been working on for several days now. He purchased the Maydan cookbook during Prime Day and has been speaking in exclamation points about it as he’s pored over it since receiving. (If you’re local to DC, you must visit Maydan — one of our top five favorite DC restaurants.) We have the music going — right now, the routine seems to be Carly Rae Jepsen (or other female pop) while prepping dinner, and then a fade into Frank Sinatra during dinner. Around 6:30, we decide that dinner is going to be too late to serve the children, so I make some buttered noodles, freezer meatballs, and edamame and cut up some fruit alongside. We try to eat the same meal, all together, as often as possible, but sometimes it’s too difficult to get the meal on the table by the time Mr. Magpie finishes his workday. So the children eat separately while Mr. Magpie mans the grill and I work on cleaning the kitchen, which is a Thanksgiving Dinner-grade amount of bowls, tools, and cutting boards owing to the massive undertaking happening in our kitchen. Mr. Magpie apologizes for this, saying “I know your time is occasionally collateral damage when I get into these cooking moods,” but I am quick to wave him off. I do close to zero cooking and meal planning thanks to him; cleaning is a lean pittance given how well I eat.
Normally, we have this system we love where one of us is “on” for two days with wake ups and bedtimes, and then “off” for two days while the other spouse handles those parts of the day. This enables us to both take breaks and also have one-on-one QT with the children. We love the feel of this. On a logistical level, since it’s one parent on deck at bedtime each night, this means he or I put down our son first and our daughter next, separately and in tandem — which also works with their ages / bedtimes and prevents them from squabbling at a time when everyone is already a bit over-tired. My son has not napped since he was three on the dot and he is still (at just-five) exhausted by seven p.m. My daughter routinely stays up reading until 8 or 8:30. We are pretty lax with her about bedtime, and generally give her the responsibility of putting herself to bed when she feels ready. This occasionally backfires but has been a great way to teach her to listen to her body and to give her a long leash in a low risk area. (Independence goals!)
Tonight, given that Mr. Magpie is at the grill, I tap in for bedtime. We generally follow the two-nights-on-two-nights-off pattern but are fluid with it depending on what’s happening. When my son is “down” and my daughter is nestled in her room with her audiobook on, we plate up the Maydan Feast and sit at the kitchen counter to eat and digest our day together. We sometimes watch TV after or during dinner, but tonight, we linger over our plates before deciding, around 9:15, it’s time to turn in.
We put the house to sleep — lock all doors, turn off all lights, turn on the dishwasher — and run through our nighttime skincare routines. I read a few pages of my book on Kindle and fall asleep immediately.
Post-Scripts.
SWEATER // DRESS // GOYARD BAG // ERES SUIT // PINK SWEATSUIT // BODY WASH // LOEWE-ESQUE HAIR CLIP
+Just ordered several of these Loewe-inspired hair clips (a few to give as gifts, the pearl and tortoise for myself).
+I’m telling you, this is the best sweatshirt for lounging on a Friday night — feels vintage right out of the box and has a perfect loose boxy fit with the unrolled hem. This is one of those products I 100% know you will write to me about after receiving.
+This dress arrived and OMG. The fit is insanely good. You can see me trying it (in motion!) on here. I have this set aside for an event I’m attending in a few weeks!
+We met up with some friends at the adult pool last Friday and my girlfriend was wearing one of these iconic Eres suits. Incredibly chic. I wore my Follow Suit Flora (in this exact color combo) — these sell out SO fast and have sold through multiple times this summer. You can find a few more here and here. Run TTS and I find very flattering — a perfect fit. Full coverage in rear, a little saucier at the bust. You can see me in it here.
+I can never have enough striped sweaters — these are on super sale at J. Crew and come in the best colors! Love the navy and especially that athletic green!
+Updated my Shopbop hearts! My $42 earrings arrived and they look much more expensive than they are (and are lighter weight than anticipated), and I’m loving these striped lounge pants (La Ligne vibes).
+My sister brought me this lip balm from her recent trip to France and I know have it sitting on my desktop — great moisture and also a sweet reminder of my thoughtful sister. More of my European pharmacy favorites here.
+Great finds that haven’t yet sold out at the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale: this Osea set (truly the body oil is diviiiine, you won’t go back); a chic quilted Barbour (the longer length feels very Toteme / trend-forward); my favorite travel day duffel; and THE best makeup setting spray.
+Emese Gormley just bought one of these Goyard bucket crossbodies while in Europe and now it’s all I can think about…
+While we’re talking bags: a REALLY good deal on a classic straw bag. It’s almost 70% off!
+Dorsey’s turquoise Bennington necklace just launched and wow. Would look so epic layered with a simple white dress.
+Have been using this body wash and it smells absolutely divine.