AROUND HERE / OUR FIRST WEEK IN BROOKLYN

So today Brandon was all, Hey, you gonna blog ever? And I was all, Rude! Anyway, here I am. I can't guarantee it'll be worth it.

Incidentally and I have no idea why I just thought of this, but the other day we went to the Baskin Robbins, you know, fancy family fun and things, and... well you should just get the Oreo Nutty Salted Caramel. I guess I've been thinking about it since then. It'll randomly pop into my head as we go about doing stuff, just how good it was, and how I liked it so much, and how I want to go back for some more soon, but not too soon, because, you know how that is? Speaking of, Culture on 5th has a really good Oreo soft serve. Nice and tangy. (Uh, Culture is the beeeeeeest.) Isn't Oreo ice cream the best ice cream ever? Not the cookies, though. Not ever. The cookies completely freak me out. 

So here's what all we've been up to around here.

We went with friends Rubi + Stanton to try out some Brooklyn Farmacy over in Carroll Gardens. I'm the type of nerd to always order the most obvious thing on the menu at any place we go, so banana splits it was. There is something completely amazing about a good banana split though. We also ordered the Peter Pan doughnuts, because Tina Fey said to. 

No reason, just !!!! Also, preschool tours. All day, every day. This part of parenthood is completely nuts. 

Every remaining brain cell I got after feeding + caring for my loved ones I spend exclusively on nesting. Thinking about nesting, talking about nesting--I've discussed the conundrum of our dinner table with three of my neighbors already (should it be centered with the support beam? Or with the dining area as a whole?). Until very recently, Barry was living on the floor behind our sofa. He always looked like he'd just survived a bender and had passed out cold, half his body stuck under the couch, all glassy-eyed and dazed. Poor Barry. I also have no idea what to do with our guitars anymore. I'm trying (trying!) to avoid clutter in here as best I can while still keeping it functional + filled with all the things we need + love. So I texted this photo to Brandon the other day of poor Barry looking so creepy on the floor, and all our guitars being so haphazard in places, and this one mirror of ours that is super useful when I'm getting dressed but doesn't look very good anywhere at all, hoping that maybe he'd have some thoughts on the matter, and can you imagine? He didn't. Also yes, I did think my legs looked rather decent in the moment, and so, you know. You gotta get what you can get while you can get it. 

Guys, every night at 9:30 an ice cream truck comes jingling through our neighborhood. Why??

Here is Huck's little bedroom as of this weekend. I sort of want to change the whole thing around already. This is such a fun time to be me! Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but now that Huck has a bedroom he spends precisely zero time playing in it. I have to remind him it's there. Hey, Huck! Go play in your bedroom! You have a bedroom! He seems unfazed.

But if this doesn't melt your icy heart, all hope is lost. 

Come on.

We've enjoyed plenty of roof time doing plenty of roof-time things. Here we have "Mid-Afternoon Emails and Talks About Guinea Pigs" roof time.

And "Dinner Time with Huck the Turtle" roof time.

"S'mores Are Better With Mini Candy Bars but an Unbalanced Twix Will Break Your Graham Cracker" roof time.

Many, many "Sunset" roof times.

But speaking of sunsets.

It's not a bad way to do things, I know!

We've been going on a lot of walks too, both as a family and as "just us two, huh Mama."

When I was a kid and we'd have family reunions, my aunt Sandi and I would always go out for long walks through my grandparents' neighborhood and "get lost." We'd wander around for hours, talking about anything and everything, until we eventually found our way home. Looking back on it now, I'm sure she knew her way around the entire time. :) Those afternoons were always so special to me. I don't know if Huck enjoys it as much as I did, but these afternoons exploring our new neighborhood have been such a treat for me. And I'll say this much: it's a lot easier to hear his little voice on these quieter Brooklyn streets than it was in Manhattan. Our afternoons "getting lost" have led to conversations full of so many gems, I hope I remember this time for the rest of my life. Three-going-on-four is such a dream boat. Heart-eye emojis all day long.

Bubble tea tapioca-fishing expeditions. Huck takes it very seriously. Thank you much, Brooklyn, for your inordinate Vietnamese sandwich shops situation. 

Not to mention, very slow trains. 

I forgot about the R train. The R train is s-l-o-w. The other day we waited practically for five million years on an R train, exhausting every interesting animal factoid we knew, singing every song in our repertoire, and clearing through all our emergency lollipops in the process. So then we sharpened our selfie skills. Useful for your resumés, turkeys.

So much talent. 

Sorry, more photos from our roof now.

Did you check out the super moon? I think I was more excited than necessary over the super moon. I dragged us all up to look at it and soak up all the vibe-y things. I swear it felt very vibe-y. Also, Brandon's really upped his cell phone game lately. Please to enjoy, do consider the graininess "art." 

Our intrepid photographer in action. 

Yep, that about does it.

Thank you and goodnight!

ALL MY BEST MOVING TIPS + TRICKS

Over the weekend we moved! To Brooklyn. (Please say it like in You've Got Mail, you know what I'm referring to.) It was probably our most seamless move yet, and that is saying something--all told Brandon and I have moved... yikes, eight (!!) times in the eleven (!!!!) years we've been married. Some were cross-country, some were cross-neighborhood, some were just across the apartment complex because we'd found a better layout, every time it's always a hassle. Right? We moved around a lot when I was a kid, too. Big moves (to Connecticut, to Oregon, to South Korea), and I always thought that I hated moving, but it turns out I actually like moving. Not the packing up part. The packing up part isn't so great for those like me who are bad at Tetris-type situations, but the unpacking! Oh yes. Weirdly, unpacking totally gets me going. Over the years I've gotten to be pretty good at setting up and setting up fast. (Holy junk my first ever post was about this very thing.) (Wow I was a much better writer back then.) This weekend was like a 48-hour-long Christmas morning. It gave me a total high. And now that the dust has settled and we're square in the part of moving where you're constantly waiting around for the cable guy to show up, I figured I'd impart unto you a few of my trickiest tips picked up over our years of moving all our junk into various different places. You're so ready, Freddy.

1. GET RID OF YO JUNK

Moving gets exponentially harder the more you own, and one thing New York City has taught me that I've been so grateful to learn is how to live small. Super small. We own the barest of essentials because we just can't bear to part with the space for anything we don't absolutely love or need consistently. Moving is a great opportunity to pare down your household. Streamline your operation! I can't say enough how important it is to clear through your things before a big move. Broken mechanical pencils and kitchen appliances you never really use will take up a lot of valuable box real estate, will add five minutes to your packing time and five minutes to your unpacking time, and then you'll just have to find another place for it...  yuck. Expel the crap. I like to think of each item I own as a unit of effort. A special quilt made by my grandmother is worth a lot of my effort, but maybe not so much those throw pillows I got at T.J.Maxx or wherever that I don't really love anymore. Attack your home room by room, and be merciless. Sell or donate as much as you can. Take nothing with you you won't be thrilled to unpack. (We recently donated all the DVDs of every movie we owned that we could easily find on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Game changer.)

2. GET CREATIVE

We like a styrofoam bowl or plate stacked between each of our breakable bowls and plates. Hair ties are good for keeping your utensils together. Bottles of perfume and delicate jewelry go in your socks, fragile lamps can be wrapped inside bathroom towels. Full rolls of toilet paper + paper towels are great padding for the rest of your breakables. Same goes for throw pillows + blankets. 

3. CUT DOWN ON WASTE 

Boxes are a pain! And they're expensive. And they're a hassle to get rid of once you're in and unpacked. We try as hard as we can to reduce waste by making good use of suitcases, gym bags, tote bags, ziploc bags...  anything. Oh! Keep all your clothes in their dressers! (And then get help carrying those dressers in and out because that's heavy...) We try to save the boxes for things that actually benefit from being boxed, like books, glassware, dishes and electronics. And really, go easy on the tape. You're gonna want to be able to get in fast, and also, tape wads are way more obnoxious to deal with in my experience than newspaper piles.

4. KEEP ALL YOUR ESSENTIALS TOGETHER AND UNPACK THEM FIRST

Set aside a box or bag for all your immediate needs and mark it so you won't misplace it. Inside, pack two days' worth of clothing for everyone in your house, the entire contents of your shower, all your medications and chargers and iPads that stream Netflix, and whatever else you need to survive for two days. Pack full sets of bedding in giant trash bags--sheets, pillows, duvet--one for each bed in the house, and plan to put those together first. More than anything else you'll want a hot shower, something cozy to wear, and a nice, clean bed to sleep in at the end of your long moving day.

5. YOUR NEXT PRIORITY IS THE KITCHEN

Never enter a new home without having in your possession: 1. A 12-pack of Diet Cokes (or, you know, whatever floats your boat), 2. All the makings for an emergency PBJ (including a utensil for spreading!), 3. A bag of mini Snickers. Because. Put it in the fridge. Cold mini Snickers will save you! And, 4. Toilet paper. Okay the toilet paper isn't for the kitchen. But, really. Don't forget some TP.

6. YOU UNPACK, HE UNLOADS

Or, however. The point is: Divide and conquer! We always designate an unpacker and an unloader and I am always the unpacker, hash tag spaghetti noodle arms. I like to think of myself as a kind of drill sergeant when it's time to unload. I get very bossy. As soon as the kitchen boxes are in I take my post, unwrapping every. stinking. glass. one. at a time, while Brandon (and whatever kind souls are helping us move) finishes unloading the truck. In between stacking plates I bark at him and tell him where to put things. By the time everything's in, the kitchen's already in good shape, and you are free to move on to something else. Having an operating kitchen might be the only thing keeping you from hunger-induced tantrums every other hour, you know, or is that just me? When I get snippy I know it's time to take a quick break for a handful of mini marshmallows. Then I'm good to carry on.

7. KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM AND JUST GET IT DONE

In my experience, you're never more motivated to unpack than you are the first few days in your new home. The minute you stop, things tend to settle, and it gets pretty easy pretty quickly to just get used to living out of boxes. The longer I put something off the harder it is to get it done--are you that way too? So I try and have it all done and unpacked before the upcoming Monday. Mondays seem like a sort of a natural deadline, don't they? And it's much easier for me to feel motivated when I've set some parameters for myself. Also, the more empty boxes I get out of the way the more I feel like I'm getting somewhere and the more I'm motivated to keep going, so get it all out of the house as soon as you can so you can really see the progress you're making. (This is all easier said than done, and I'm lucky to only have 15 or so boxes to unload when we move. For a bigger home, I'm all out of ideas. My hat's off to you guys.)

8. WHEN IN DOUBT, HIRE MOVERS

We'd never hired movers before, but this time we decided to do the grown up thing and budget for a team of movers. Worth. It. Even when I was a kid I could tell that the moves we made with a team of professionals ran about fifty times more smoothly than the DIY-ers. We used FlatRate for this move, and here's my funny story about FlatRate, are you ready? On our train ride home after meeting with our broker to see what was to become our Exposed Brick Apartment of Destiny (naming your home is important, guys, and kind of hard... and I don't know if that's quite it yet...), we found ourselves a seat right across from this ad on the F train, and it was hilarious, and also, like, the fourth time the cosmos had knocked me on the head that day to say "DUMMY! PAY ATTENTION!" So, clearly I had found my moving company. (I did do my due diligence and research reviews on Yelp.) I contacted them, they sent a dude over to assess our place, he quoted me a flat rate (get it?) and then that's what I paid and not a penny more. It's common out here for movers to bill you for parking tickets or bridge tolls or unexpected extra man hours ("unexpected" being the operative word here). (I've heard of moves that came out $700 above-quote, so a flat flat rate was hugely reassuring.) First thing in the door our lead mover looked at Huck and said, Hey! I could really use your help! Huck was so thrilled he could have burst, and right there he'd already made it worth our money.)

Well, so that's all I got. 

Here are a few photos from the weekend! (I know! How could there possibly be more!?)

A final parting shot of the old hood. (Who am I kidding? It's actually quicker to get to our favorite spots downtown from here than it was from our old neighborhood, I keep reminding myself when I start to feel homesick.) (Homesick?) 

The first thing to go down was the rug. You know how you sometimes think something is bigger than it really is, and you blow it way out of proportion in your head? That's what Brandon thought was going on with me, and then the rug went down, and he was like, Oh crap. Because that rug used to take up our whole living room. We are still pinching ourselves.

Our dinner table in progress. Brandon hung our tasseltry all haphazardly on the wall like that to get it out of the way, and I liked it so much, it stayed! I haven't even straightened it out yet! But I really should straighten it out eventually.

Here comes the furniture! And Barry! Is this an exciting play by play or what!?

Child labor laws, whatever. Get up, lazy!

I rounded the corner after finishing in the kitchen to this adorable set up. The movers had done it--those plants! I never would have thought to do it this way, but I've really loved it, and it's stayed, too. Making zero decisions looks really good on me, I'm going to (not) do it more often.

We took a roof break that evening once things were settling and discovered these beehives and a small urban garden tucked away in an unexplored corner, and we were like, What is this place, Narnia!?

Oh hi, Lady Liberty. Very high quality photo, thumbs up phone.

And two quick peeks of our apartment as of Sunday night.

(top photo credit to miss Latonya)

Can't wait to show you the rest of it! Thanks for taking us, Brooklyn!

MOTHERHOOD RIGHT NOW / HUCK THE SUPERHERO

Attention, good people of New York City! Our fair metropolis has a new hero! His name is.... Spider Man! No wait--American Flag Guy! (His superpower was handing out American flags over the Fourth of July holiday, that was a fun one). No, it's Bad Guy Man! (My personal favorite.) No no, so sorry, today he is Superman. (Hard to keep up.) 

According to some up close & personal on-the-ground reporting, here is what you can expect from your new neighborhood superhero.

Cheerful patrolling of your neighborhood city streets, keeping bad guys at bay.

Nature enthusiast.

Super helpful when you need a drink of water.

Also likes apple juice.

And his side kick, Mom Girl.

OUR SPACE ON IKEA FAMILY LIVE

Welcome! To the time in my life where nothing at all is even remotely realistic. None of it! The life I am living these days, it should not be legal. This July was stupidly fun.

Over the last week and change a lot has happened at la casa del Holbrook. We had Ikea come by to shoot our home for the winter issue of their Ikea Family Live magazine, we had Brandon's parents over for a quick visit, we had packing for a move and phone calls with movers, we had brokers showing our apartment at three minutes notice... and then we moved! And then we unpacked! On the plus side, I have done practically nothing all month long but spruce up apartments, which has been heavenly. It turns out tearing up a place then putting it back together is a little bit my specialty. Who knew?! Barry's new here but already he's all, "You cats be nuts." It hasn't been the most stable environment for a new adopted... deer... I suppose. This morning Brandon set Huck up with a small bowl of mini marshmallows for breakfast, and I keep thinking today is Friday. This is how we are doing these days. Moving right along.

I want to tell you about Ikea! Did you know Ikea has a magazine? I didn't, and now I do. It's a quarterly deal, in it they profile various creative types and their spaces. Pretty nifty. They emailed out of the blue, they were going to be in the city, last minute opening, etc etc etc, could they shoot our place for the cover? And I said sure! I mean, we're moving in a week... but... sure! The deal is they come over + take a look at what you got, swap a few things out for their Ikea counterparts (you know, because this is an Ikea magazine), style it to hell and back, and then take a bunch of pictures. And then you're like, What do I do with all these throw pillows? (Fun problem to have.)

I was most excited because I was dying to see what a professional stylist could do with the space. We have (had, (wee! Brooklyn!)) a real funky layout, heaven knows I had no idea what to do with it. I like to decorate, but I have no idea what I'm doing. When the team showed up--they were the kindest, most polite group of jet-lagged Brits I've ever met--they immediately got to work taking our whole house completely apart, and ironing all our sheets. It was amazing! Having never been part of a professional interiors shoot before, I had no idea just how much crazy they involve. So much clutter just out of every frame. Four mugs of tea on the floor just left of the sofa, and out of the shot five empty cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. So cool to see it in person. And it's amazing too to see how differently a styled corner looks in real life versus on camera. What looks visually pleasing in a photo is actually quite a mess in the flesh. Soooo many throw pillows. I pretty much sat there with my mouth agape, soaking it all up while they worked, also saying Can I get you a glass of water? and Would you like a bagel? at regular intervals. What a cool experience.

A few photos of what the place looked looked like during:

(These photos were taken on my cell phone, Buster Lord Voldemort (that's his name)).

And after:

(Taken on my nice camera after they left, before we moved. Our place looked really pretty for about five minutes. :)

And now we are in Brooklyn! More on that tomorrow. Right now it is time for Neighborhood Exploratory Pizza Expedition, Part III. Important things.