hey, cupcake

it was this little one's birthday party on saturday.
i can't believe it has been a year already!

(great party-super mellow in the park. if i have a chance i'll post more pictures later)

but in the meantime, let's stick with what's important: treats.

rebecca and i made cupcakes,

a recipe i'd had at a friend's birthday party a few months ago.

they were more brownie-like

(which i like, since i am not really a huge cake fan; i see cake more as a vehicle for frosting)

and delicious.

yummy yummy.

the recipe for both the cupcakes & frosting come from martha stewart.

(i say bookmark this one because a good cupcake is hard to find!)

here is the cupcake recipe at the source

Chocolate cupcakes

Makes 12

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sour cream

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Into a medium bowl, sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each, then beat in vanilla. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with sour cream and beginning and ending with flour.
3. Pour batter into cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.
4. Cool in pan 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then spread with Easy White Icing using a table knife or small offset spatula. Decorate with sprinkles, if desired.

you can find the buttercream frosting recipe here,

or here if you are too lazy to hop over to her site:

Basic Buttercream Frosting
INGREDIENTS
3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 pound confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Food coloring (optional)

PREPARATION

1. Beat butter with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium. Add sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating after each addition, about 5 minutes. (After every 2 additions, increase speed to high, and beat for 10 seconds, then reduce speed to medium-high).
2. Add vanilla, and beat until buttercream is smooth. Use immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days. (If refrigerated before using, bring to room temperature, and beat on low speed until smooth.)

(as you can see my daughter was a big fan)

choose your own adventure, after all

(i should preface this post by saying that a friend asked me to write a guest post on her blog; we ended up going in another direction, but i'd written the following post about how life doesn't always turn out the way you anticipate. i write about m's deafness, and especially those early days of finding out her diagnosis, but we all have these moments-don't we?-when life doesn't go the way we expect.)

When I was a kid I wasn’t the most discerning literary critic. I’d read the back of the shampoo bottle when I was taking a bath or the cereal box when I was eating breakfast; I would read anything; I loved escaping into stories (or even just words, since a shampoo bottle doesn’t exactly transport you very far.)

(reading with my great aunt orpha)

Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? You’d read a chapter and then get to decide if you wanted to go to page 26 or page 83. Depending on which page you picked, the plot would go in completely different directions. Then twenty pages later you’d get to pick the direction of your story again. Of course, I kind of cheated choosing my own adventure and just chose all of them. I’d read all of the possible storylines and then decide which one was my favorite instead of just picking one.

Here’s the thing – in real life you don’t always get to pick your storyline. Stuff happens that you can’t change. The trajectory of your life doesn’t always line up with your expectations, and you can’t go back to the last chapter and choose a different plot direction. You have to learn how to live into the narrative you are given and make it your own.

When M was born into a world of complete silence, deafness wasn’t on our radar. At all. Maybe other stuff, but deafness, not so much. I still can’t quite explain the feelings that I had in those earliest days. I was in a very dark and lonely place. I felt emotionally paralyzed. This completely dependent, beautiful baby needed to eat every two hours and all I wanted to do was hide in my bed. My husband would come into our room and say, “You need to go pick her up. You need to feed her and snuggle her.” I would resist. I didn’t want to hold her or look into her big eyes. I didn't want to snap out of the sadness I was in- and when I actually made contact with her, it was impossible to feel completely broken because she was this amazing little being looking up at me. Finally I would give in because she needed to eat every two hours, and then moments into cradling her in my arms she would somehow, inexplicably, cut through my grief. The deep sadness still sat in me, but there were moments of reprieve as I held her.

In those very early days I felt so empty and lost. I didn’t really know how to proceed. It was as if I was treading water and no matter how hard I pushed my arms through the water I was sinking deeper and deeper into grief. I didn't want to be around anyone- even my dearest and closest friends and family. I (briefly, like for a nano-nanosecond) considered giving my daughter up for adoption. It was maybe one of my more dramatic plans. I thought of running away. I honestly felt like I didn’t even know how to be a parent, much less a parent of a child with special needs. I already loved this three-week-old baby, so it wasn’t that I wanted to get rid of her or that I wanted another baby who could hear instead. It was just that I was incredibly scared of messing up, and when it came down to it, this wasn’t the way I’d anticipated my story going. I felt like I was broken in a way that couldn't be fixed.

When I spent time in West Africa right out of college, part of the time was in Monrovia, the capitol city of Liberia, which had been completely devastated because of the tragic Liberian civil war. Driving through Monrovia at the time, buildings were decimated, roads pocked and unusable, neighborhoods gutted. My Liberian friends would always describe how beautiful the city of Monrovia had once been, and would speak with hope of what the city could become, even though it literally was falling apart. That image, of having great hope despite the surrounding and immediate circumstances, resonated with Matt and me. We wanted our child to be a person of hope and beauty even when that wasn't what life or the world looked like at the moment. In retrospect I think I romanticized the actual grief those Liberians must have felt as they longed for their beautiful old city which was now in shambles, with no tangible proof that their city would one day be a place of beauty. I fast forwarded through the deep woundedness they must have been living. (That is what we usually do - right? Minimize grief and fast forward to something more comfortable.) Even though we were naming her for such a specific reason, I didn't really think our daughter's name would be appropriate in her very first days of life. But here we were, with a circumstance that was out of our control, heavy laden with grief and loss, feeling like we were in the midst of a destroyed city.

M’s deafness wasn’t going away. I couldn’t change the basic narrative structure for our family. She was deaf at birth, she is deaf now, and she will be deaf when she has children of her own. But I could affect who I was and how I lived out this storyline. The grief was still there, the deafness was still there, but at some point I chose to crawl out of my bed.

I've blogged about points of joy before. My mom, who herself has had some pretty significantly painful chapter in her life, is the person who raised me with points of joy and then who forced me to recount daily points of joy during an extremely hard season of my life. She believes that we can always find little moments in each day that are glimmers of joy. This isn't coming from someone who has been immune to grief and loss. Points of joy come from someone who has had to chose joy when life was often quite bleak and broken. 

We all have these circumstances-they may be huge things, they may be little things- that we wish looked a little different. Sometimes I think the first step is realizing that the actual circumstance may not change. Ever. We don't always get a do-over. I had to authentically grieve M’s deafness (and every so often, I have to grieve it again) before I could move on towards healing. Life may never look exactly the way we want it to. And so this is the part of the adventure that we get to choose: bitterness and stagnation, or hope, which grows and deepens us despite our circumstances.

happy friday and...

happy first birthday to sadie, my niece!

here's to many new adventures in the new year: 

walking, jumping, talking, singing & adventuring with your cousins!

we love you sadie fern!

and happy friday 

to the rest of us!

take some time to rest & soak up the day around you, my friends.

Give and Get is Here!

i almost lost one of my dearest and longest friends to leukemia. you can read more about that journey here.

5 years later she is thriving and cancer free! (see how saucy she is? the sauce runs deep in that girl)

ran into this promo, and i couldn't resist...

if you go happen to go shopping between now and sunday, you'll get 30% off, 

and the leukemia and lymphoma society will get 5%.

every bit helps towards curing this (and other blood cancers) awful disease.

click on the link for the coupon:

Give and Get is Here!: "Enjoy 30% off from November 11-14 at Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy plus we'll make a 5% donation to a non-profit."

the absolutely no-mention-of-my children-post

i know they are delightful and all, but last night my husband requested a post about other, non offspring related aspects of life-art, friends, culture, etc.

your wish is my command, husband. (well, at least in this case)

i love to dance. i love my friend amy. i love strings of white lights. i love top-40 hip-hop/pop music. (hey-don't judge.) i love sangria. i love my friends. i remember back in my early 20's, when my friends and i would go to weddings and there would always be the freaker middle aged or older people whooping it up on the dance floor, who couldn't care less what anyone else thought of their crazy dance moves. and hello, now that is me. crank up some justin timberlake or black eyed peas and i'll boogie all night, just like your crazy uncle from the midwest who you only see at weddings.

it was my friend amy's birthday, so we had a dance party in her backyard. it was amazing. you should've been there (but only if you danced. no time for chit chat when there is dancing to do)

amy & david, our hosts in celebrating someone's birth on october 5th thirtysome years ago!

 sangria, anyone?

 (yes please)

 our dance floor in their backyard

 david is the king of finding odds & ends and refurbishing them into cuteness

i love that chair. i want it.

 me + birthday girl, aka my roommate. 

in case you were wondering, i will always think of amy as my rooommate. 

roommate in this case is in between friend and sister on the spectrum of personal history and importance-i'm not talking about some random you picked up on craigslist to fill that spot in your post-college house.

 love.

 um, i have no idea what we are doing here. or let me rephrase- i have no idea what that weird pose is that i am making. meanwhile, keith has his mid-80's brooding alternative band expression on.

 this is amy explaining, "i know this song is about shorties and pimps, but it's really good to dance to!"

 adriane brings back some old moves

 nancy gets saucy

 don't you want to invite us to your next party?

my sister rebecca gets her groove on

 amy has the longest wingspan of a human being ever

 matt & i are so fast that the camera can't quite capture our awesomeness

 (sweet moment)

 who needs more than 10 people at a dance party?

finally, as it got late, my feet were tired and it was time to head home.

loved every minute.

my new plan is to have a dance party every month.

who's in?

today

my friend nicole introduced me to the simple woman's daybook. i like the format because it allows me to slow down and think about my day, but it is also essentially fill-in-the-blank. perfect for a day when i am weary after a long day of traffic (hours of it today between going to and from school! so over traffic), two girls who refused to sleep at the same times, a potential ear infection, and a freelance deadline. i am so grateful for life, really, even with all of the little things that can make a day hard.

Outside my window...it is quiet, dark, cold, and the street is wet with rain.

I am thinking...about this season of life as a mom, a parent of a deaf child, and an artist, and how i can make more art while still being a good mother.

I am thankful for...every single time my daughter turns to my voice and hears me; for ruby's contagious smile and snuggliness; for matt loving his dramatic wife; for our newly instated family dinners at my mom's house; for a new day every time the sun rises.

From the kitchen...some of matt's pinto beans, fresh tortillas, roasted broccoli, and a reese's cup left over from halloween.

I am wearing...black jeans, cozy sweater and a tank top.

I am creating...new potential card designs for papyrus and in my mind- very large, beautiful oil paintings (soon & very soon)

I am going...to soak up as much as possible of this season. as much as i struggle to wake up so much in the middle of the night to feed ruby, or to be patient when my girls are being difficult, i remember that time passes so quickly- and someday i will long for a baby to hold, or a toddler to chase.

I am reading...a gardening book on planting succulents. exciting, i know. i put our book club book down fro a while because it was depressing me.

I am hoping...that the fluid in m's ears disappears so she doesn't get yet another ear infection; for time to think about art tomorrow.

I am hearing...silence from upstairs (finally!) as my girls are both asleep after a long day of needing mommy. and...listening to mumford  & sons. deep down in my bones good for me to listen to their music.

Around the house...so much to do, but it will still be there for me to do later, and so i am sitting and resting.

One of my favorite things (actually a few of my favorite things)...the sound of my husband's voice calling for me when he gets home; getting love in the mail; all white bedding; diet coke; when my daughter wants to hold my hand; nursing ruby.

A few plans for the rest of the week: get more than 4 consecutive hours of sleep; write long overdue thank you notes; organize my girls' clothes and swap them out for larger sizes; celebrate my niece sadie's birthday with treats and a party in the park; kick out a bunch of amazing artwork

a picture of one of these moments: 

(matt putting up with a dramatic moment on my part)

and now, my job as a parent is done.

these sentences came out of my daughter's mouth on monday. 

promise, i did not lead the witness or edit them. 

• "mommy, i want to hear bono singing." (be still my beating heart.)
• "i'm really glad ruby [is] in our family." (someday when ruby thinks her sister doesn't love her, i will have proof)
• (as she walked by one of my paintings on the wall, she pointed and said) "i like your paintings. that is beautiful right there." (who needs a gallery show when your daughter likes your paintings? ok, well, maybe i wouldn't mind a gallery show, but in the meantime, that makes my heart swell.)

true story.

♥

one of my favorite moments.

it's moments like this when i think my heart just might burst.

this moment isn't bad either.

rock n' roll...

...stops the traffic

(extra credit if you can name where that quote comes from)

i decided this will be our album cover when my girls and i put out our collection of chart topping hits.

it's been a long week and i am completely exhausted.

grateful for an extra hour to sleep tonight,

even if i don't get it thanks to two little ones who will wake up

bright and early.

off to sleep and soak up what sleep i can.

(boo)

here's my two little munchkins in their costumes!

someone wanted to be a purple bumblebee.

thanks to some maternal ingenuity, 

$7 (for the purple dress on clearance), 

some black paint & glitter squirreled away in my miscellaneous art supplies bin, 

a pair of silver antenna, 

and a leftover pair of purple wings given as a favor at a recent birthday party...

we got ourselves a purple bumblebee who was quite delighted to fly around.

piglet was a little more low key, 

although the purple bumblebee insisted that ruby also wanted to be a purple bumblebee.

hmm. maybe.

gold stars all around

storytime with uncle aaron & aunt sarah

i just wanted to brag a little bit.

my newest sister-in-law, sarah, is finishing up her final year of residency as a doctor at children's hospital. besides being way more legit than internet research for my countless medical theories and questions, she is for reals. as in, not just a play-one-on-tv kind of doctor, but a real actual doctor. we just found out that she has been awarded one of the positions as chief resident next year! yup, she's pretty great, and now i'm related to her.

(meanwhile, across the atlantic, my other sister-in-law, who works for the state department, was promoted! all i know is that this probably means her security clearance is even higher than it is already & she'll get to run an embassy even sooner. can you imagine? uh, her boss is the secretary of state. you may have heard of her. yes, hillary clinton.)

i better step up my game!

until we meet again, new york

we had great intentions to get up and go every day in new york, but thanks to the east coast time difference, ruby woke up much later than her typical 5:30-6 am wake up time. if you had told me 10 years ago that i would consider 7:30 am sleeping in? i would've laughed at you.

 

on our last day in new york we started off at a great breakfast spot 

that was tucked down a nondescript alley.

 (image from here)
it was so cute inside. loved it. 
it kind of reminded me of a mashup between domino magazine and a hipster's hunting lodge.
our food was super good too.
it was too hipster in there, and i was already getting looks for having a baby (again, a spot where i think babies rarely show up), so i kept my camera stashed in my bag.

(image from here)

we sat right next to this bar, although because it was sunday,
new york's blue laws mean that they can't serve alcohol before noon.
not that i normally imbibe at that time of day,
but a couple of those brunchy adult drinks looked very tasty to this mama!
alas, i settled for a fantastic cappuccino instead.

it was another day of good food and art, so we headed to ps1 to see the greater new york show,
which was a bunch of contemporary work by artist's living in the new york area.
(we took a crazy, circuitous route involving the subway, walking, wandering,
and ultimately a taxi ride)

we sat outside of the cafe for a while enjoying some coffee and the perfect weather.

don't worry, i nursed ruby here too.

ps1 is in a massive old public school building, with art in every room

ruby and i outside of ps1.

art saturated, we hopped on a subway back to manhatten, where i grabbed a sandwich at one of tom colicchio's wichcraft sandwich shops. 

(maybe you know tom from one of my favorite shows...top chef!) 

after my late lunch we walked to greenwich village to meet up with our friend nick to hang out and get a drink before going to an early dinner.

(image from here)

we went to minetta tavern in greenwich village, where i finished off my burger tour of new york with the delicious black label burger. it was delicious, but the experience was less than stellar. first of all, ruby was fussy, hungry, tired and totally being a normal 5 month old in a restaurant that is more suited for people of the adult variety. i tried to take her into the bathroom to nurse or change her, but i swear the it was smaller than our bathroom at home. then there was a super high maintenance woman at the table next to us who was wreaking all of this havoc. 

add in lame waitstaff, and sadly, it wasn't that great. (but our food was good!)

we went home early, walking the streets of new york a final time before our flight the next morning.

even ruby was tired, so she conked out on our flight home (in between being squirrely and nursing)

goodbye for now new york!

we loved you!

xo

be kind, rewind (or the day that i was awesome, nyc version)

so, i haven't quite finished up our long weekend in new york, so bear with me as i rewind to three weeks ago! saturday in new york was another day of perfect weather. we started out by going to the union square farmer's market. we got some amazing fresh yogurt, baked treats (of course), and apples! i love apples on the east coast-such different varieties, and they remind me of my childhood in philadelphia. i wanted to buy my mom a bag so she could make herself an apple pie.

busy saturday morning farmer's market action

i was sad we didn't live close by to buy lots of fresh, local-ness!

so fun to visit farmer's markets in other areas to see how they differ.

ruby enjoyed the market by snuggling up

aforementioned delicious, sweet apples.

so good.

...and also yarn! 

i loved this rainbow.

(& it made me think of knitters dear to me: my aunt fern emma and rose! wish i could've carried a bunch home for you both!)

someday my daughter will hate all of these pictures 

because in each of them she is essentially zoning out, chewing on her carrier, or asleep.

i needed some coffee so we stopped at a coffee truck.

then, we headed to 2 stores i've always wanted to go to!

first, abc carpet & home. so many floors of amazing. 

i want to live there, 

or at least have enough money to buy a bunch of the stuff & then transform my home.
both of these options are likely not going to happen, so i soaked up as much wonderful as i could.

(image from here)

(image from here)

then i wanted to go to topshop, but trying to shop there with a 5 month old attached to me was, well, not very successful so i left empty handed.

oh, to have wandered without a baby...

we called home to check in on how m was faring with the grandparents

(she was happy as can be)

and then, because i apparently was on the burger tour of new york, 

we headed to the shake shack for lunch. 

matt claimed a spot in the veeeeeery long line, and ruby and i claimed a table.

oh sweet girl.

so here's the thing. look at this picture. how delicious & perfect does it look?

it tasted just. that. good.

the cheese fries had this completely non-nacho-y-cheese taste. 

it tasted real and completely incredible, topping off crisp fries.

and my coffee milkshake? 

let's just say that i am so glad that i live 2000+ miles away from the ability to buy one.

ruby is a smart girl - she wanted some shake action too.

i know, lots of ruby pictures, but just love this one of them.

post-lunch we walked to chelsea where we gallery hopped for a few hours.
ruby was the only baby around,
so she melted those gallerinas manning the front desks' hearts with her big eyes and cute knitted shrug.

this is at the behemoth gagosian gallery where we saw art by dan colen (shocking: a young white male making huge art and showing at a moneypants gallery for bazillion dollars.) 

in the foreground is a huge skateboard ramp that was in use during the opening and then flipped over.

we went to a beautiful show by pipoletti rist.

it was pretty mesmerizing.

looking at art makes me want to make more art.

ruby was all about it.

(i love watching my girls look at art)

after a ton of galleries we hit art saturation point and headed up to high line park. 

freight trains used to run along the tracks up there, so that they were not running on the city streets. 

it is being transformed into an elevated park, with beautiful design, and such an image of rebirth and renewal in a place that was once overgrown, forgotten and ugly.

so peaceful.

as we looked out at the cityscape from the high line, 

i saw a bunch of artist jenny holzer's work on the nearby buildings and parking lots.

so much walking and art absorbing makes one famished, so we walked to dinner!

as an aside, my feet were killing. i thought they would fall off, they hurt so much.

we went to momofuku noodle bar, which matt had been dying to go to.

miraculously we only waited 5 minutes! later in the evening the wait was over 2 hours.

and...good thing we got in, because matt was in food heaven. 

 (image from here)

(i don't think babies go there very much, from the looks people were giving ruby.)

steamed pork belly buns

the most incredible roasted corn i have ever had in my whole life. with little fingerling potatoes snuck in. oh my. i basically ate the entire bowl.

homemade pickled treats to start

matt's pork noodle ramen with a perfectly poached egg in the center

my ginger mushroom noodle bowl

super delish.

apple pie truffles for dessert.

imagine apple pie flavored donut holes, if you can.

and then, we headed home with our tired feet and our tired baby.

oh, and were you wondering about why this was the day i was awesome?

because i nursed my baby in the following locations:

union square market, abc carpet & home, topshop, our table by shake shack, on a grungy stairway outside of a gallery, in high line park, oh and yes, on one of those bar stools you see in that photo of the noodle bar. 

in short, i was pretty awesome when it came to sustaining my daughter's life throughout the city of new york. humbling, yes. but kind of rockstar too.