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

a little more new york

...slowly but surely i will finish our fantastic new york trip!

carrying our delightful treats from milk bar, we headed to central park!

we found a cozy spot right inside the park and settled in to have our snack.

matt takes his first bite of cinnamon bun pie. oh yes, you read that right.

ooey, gooey and in pie form.

and here is the aforementioned candy bar pie.

it was so yummy that i included two photos. 

chocolate cookie crust, caramel, peanut butter nougat & pretzel? 

as i may have said before, hello amazingness!

seriously, i savored every single bite and crumb.

it was so peaceful and so relaxing to hang out, talk, 

and just enjoy such a beautiful spot in this vast city.

ruby looks upset, but i promise she was mostly content-

i think she's just said here because she wanted to nurse some more. 

(can i say that this trip could also be called "susannah nurses at every spot in nyc, especially in locations at which young children rarely never set foot")

(see? look how delighted ruby looks just moments later)

we then proceeded to walk about 60 blocks worth of central park for over an hour. it was perfect weather, and so beautiful as we wandered along paths and through different areas of the park.

(image from yelp)

we headed to a spot we've gone before when visiting new york, that our friends brandon, steve & renetta had told us about, the hungarian pastry shop. 

lest you think ALL we did was eat treats, we went to get some cappuccinos. (promise)

although i won't lie- they do have tons of delicious baked goods there (see below.) 

it was jam packed with people studying (it's right by columbia university), pretending to study, waxing philosophical, flirting, reading and hanging out. 

we stayed for a while until ruby was over it and headed to the subway 

(our feet were tired after so much walking!)

(image from myplaceinthecity.com)

my friend rachel & her husband joseph ever so kindly offered to watch ruby for matt & i so that we could go out to dinner sans kidlet. it was so generous and thoughtful of them! we got to stop by their very cute and very new york sized apartment before going out to dinner at the spotted pig (which had just happened to get a michelin star that very week!) it had a new york sized wait of 2 + hours, so we went up to the bar and ate there.

(image from wallpaper.com)

how cute is it? the bar was slammed and such a scene. we did lots of people watching and then matt got the pig eared salad (yes! he did-and i tasted it. it was actually incredible.)

(image from unbreaded.com)

...while i got the burger. (2 burgers in one day! the burger had gotten rave reviews in one of my favorite imported magazines-jamie oliver's magazine. he'd done an article on new york restaurants & included spotted pig's burger. so, i tried it.) it was amazing. yum. yum. yum.

we headed home to rachel's to get ruby (you can see the awesome baby fort she made for ruby to sleep in on her blog) and alas, poor rachel was outside holding a not very happy baby ruby. apparently she didn't want to sleep; instead she wanted to troll the streets of new york looking for new places that i could nurse her. rachel and joseph lived close enough to the apartment we were renting that we took the half hour walk home to soak up some more of the city.

(& more to come as long as you are game for more nyc play by play)

new york...(part 1)

oh new york. i really like you.

(cue alicia keys singing...)

i flew back last thursday to meet up with matt in new york city. he was back working for the week and then we spent the weekend together. i took baby ruby along with me, and matt's mom came up for the long weekend to stay with little m.

as we waited to board the plane, my normally mellow ruby started screaming. i was trying to balance my coffee in one hand & my yogurt in the other without dropping either on ruby-who i was wearing, my carry on and laptop. i totally looked like crazy bag lady mom i'm sure. miraculously (or maybe because whoever was supposed to sit next to me fled in fear after they heard ruby's lung capacity), on a jam packed flight with no empty seats? the seat next to me was the only empty one on our plane. ruby promptly calmed down & long story short (with some amazing mom move's thrown in over the next 6 hours) we survived the flight.

we got off the plane to absolutely beautiful fall-ish weather. it was a perfect & warm evening, and my husband was waiting for me. we were staying in the lower east side, so we headed to the apartment we rented through airbnb and once we decided the street wasn't as sketchy as we originally thought we grabbed a couple of slices (yum) and crashed early.

first thing friday morning, after sleeping super soundly, we began exploring...

we passed magnolia bakery & decided to stop.

who says you can't have a cupcake at 10 a.m.?

matt had a s'mores cupcake & i had a caramel cupcake.

i think my friend renetta makes way better cupcakes 

(perhaps more humble in appearance but more delicious in taste), 

although the frosting was amazing & glorious, and really- isn't a cupcake just a vehicle for frosting?

ruby was crashed out while i savored every bite.

cupcakes-breakfast of champions, my friends.

i am a total sucker for cakestands & cute bakery displays.

we headed to moma (museum of modern art) to soak up some art...

ruby decided to wake up
(she's very culturally aware, my 5 month old)

there was some pretty amazing work there by yoko ono

(here matt watches a piece by her from the 70's)

i love looking at art. it made me want to rush home and paint all day and night. so many ideas and thinkers and makers in one place-it is pretty incredible to get to see it all in the space of a few hours.

do you recognize this popsicle mold? 

if this was facebook i'd tag my mom in this photo. 

there was an exhibit of the evolution of the modern kitchen 

and this was one of the pieces included in a display. 

hello, 1982. this tupperware mold instantly brought back lots of memories. (remember sticking your tongue through the holes of the stick? well, maybe you don't, but both matt & i did...)

a view from one of the rooms in moma.

ruby was all about it. (see her intently taking in this painting?)

she especially (and rightly so) loved the abstract expressionist show that is up right now. 

it was a fantastic show, and so great to see so much work from mid-century artists all together. 

loved it. did my soul good.

yoko ono's wish tree where you can write a wish/hope/prayer and hang it from the tree. 

(what would you write?)

post moma we were starving so we went to the hotel le parker meridien, where a burger joint is hidden inside the lobby. oh my deliciousness.

exhibit a

exhibit b

does this look like it's inside a swanky hotel? 

oh, but it is. just follow the teensy neon sign of a burger back in the corner of the lobby.

just like her sister, ruby does not pose.

what should you do after eating cupcakes, burgers and fries?
why, eat treats of course.

i promise we were walking for hours and hours in between all of these eating adventures
(but it wouldn't be a trip with matt without eating adventures, right?)

we went to momofuku's milk bar.
now, don't get confused. i, myself, am not a fan of milk.
nope. never have, never will like it.
(sidebar: don't try to convince me how awesome cold milk is with a cookie-it is about as futile as trying to convince me that smoothies with a bit of banana hidden inside don't taste like banana.)
milk bar should actually be called treat heaven.

this is the cake my daughter would eat if she was choosing: it has rainbow sprinkles all over it.

apple pie cake? yes please... but actually, that isn't what i picked. so many treats, so little time.

treats packed up we headed on another lengthy walk to find a spot in central park to lounge around, soak up the amazing weather, and eat our sweets.

ruby was feeling quite cosmopolitan as she hit the streets of new york. (doesn't she look streetwise?)

you'll have to wait for my next post for pics of the aforementioned treat...let's just say it was called candy bar pie. (how can you go wrong with a name like that?)

for now, i'm off to snuggle into bed before it's time for ruby to wake up for a midnight snack.

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.