About New York City Moms Blog & Our Contributors
New York City Mom's Blog is a collaborative group of women living or working in New York City. They wrestle strollers down subway stairs and struggle with taxi cabs on every corner. But whether they're parenting without backyards, extra storage space or carpools, or enjoying their recent escapes to the suburbs in spite of their horrific commutes, these moms are living proof that "the city never sleeps".
- CONTACT US by email: info(at)svmoms(dot)com
- Our URLs: http://www.nycmomsblog.com and http://svmomblog.typepad.com/nyc_moms/
- Copyright & Permissions
- Our Legal Guru/Lawyer: Linsey Krolik
- Our OH-SO-FABULOUS Graphic Designer (banner and buttons): Kris Loew
New York City Moms Blog is a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Other blogs in the group include DC Metro Moms Blog , Chicago Moms Blog, Los Angeles Moms Blog, 50-Something Moms Blog, Silicon Valley Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog. Soon to launch: MidWest Moms Blog, Pacific North West Moms Blog, Philadelphia Moms Blog and Rocky Mountain Moms Blog.
Come and meet our fabulous New York City Moms Blog Contributors:.
Adelaide Morgan is the pen name of this mom who lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children. She blogs at oneofthosehorriblemoms.blogspot
Aimee Yoon is the proud mamma of three kids and lives on the UWS. By day she is the cofounder of a PR firm and is constantly dealing with the tugs of work/family/friends/dreams. Too often she fantasizes of running off to
St. Martin for a simpler life, but then realizes she would probably miss all the madness.
Aimee is hooked on exercise, gossip magazines, wine, chocolate chip cookies and karaoke. She hopes that one day she will get to sing the national anthem at a sporting event and that one of her kids will compete in the Olympics.
Amanda May is a WACM (Work at Coffee Shop Mom), having traded in her day job at a national woman's magazine for the freelance world. While she misses all the swag, she loves the extra time it gives her with her two young kids. Amanda's work has appeared in New York Magazine, Time Out New York, The New York Post, Redbook, and Parenting, among other print and Web publications. After over six years in Park Slope, Brooklyn (where having a child is practically a pre-requisite of residency,) Amanda is getting used to living in the 'burbs, where people will actually feed their kids sweets and people don't get into fights over whether you can assume a blue hat belongs to a boy.
Amanda's most fervent wish right now is for one night of uninterrupted sleep, but she'd take even three hours of straight snooze time if she could get it.
Amanda now divides her time between running into Manhattan for meetings and dancing to Elvis (her daughter's favorite pick for impromptu dance parties)..
.
Amy O. originally from Buffalo, settled in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn six years ago with her husband, Omer, and two kids, Jake and Fiona. Having worked previously as a McDonald's grill cook, lifeguard, campus police dispatcher, receptionist, waitress, concierge, stage actress, movie and TV extra, mad scientist, and production assistant, she is thrilled to be a stay-at-home mom. Amy and Omer are in the midst of a never-ending renovation of a brownstone that will either kill them or make them stronger, but right now it's leaning towards killing them (or them killing each other).
Amy watches too much TV, laughs at (and makes) inappropriate jokes, and secretly wishes to replace all of her friends' Veggie Booty with Cheetos. Someday she will finally arrange all of her photos into scrapbooks and learn how to knit more than scarves.
Becca Levey grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn back in the days before Starbucks and Barnes and Noble set up shop. She attended both public and private schools in Brooklyn and has a myriad of opinions on the pros and cons of both. Becca graduated from the University of Michigan where she met her midwestern husband and strong-armed him into moving to Manhattan where they have lived ever since. In her past life she was an aspiring actress and screenwriter and worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. As a stay at home mom to identical twin girls for past 6 years, she is thrilled to turn on the creative, non-playdoh centered part of her brain and get back into writing as a blogger for New York City Moms Blog.
x
Beth Feldman is the founder of Role Mommy, a website and event company dedicated to inspiring, entertaining and informing today's busy moms. Beth is also the co-author of the new laugh out loud book Peeing in Peace: Tales & Tips for Type A Moms (NK Publications, 2007). Beth was the vice president for the CBS Communications Group where she spearheaded publicity campaigns on behalf of several divisions of the company. She recently left CBS to launch BeyondPR - an entertainment public relations agency representing television projects, original programming for the web and best-selling authors.
Beth and her husband Darin live in New Rochelle, NY with their precocious, yet adorable kids Rebecca and Dylan, and their cat, Rudy, who sometimes suffers from Deli Cat reflux disorder.
Carol Cain is a native New Yorker currently living in Washington Heights with her husband and their three boys, ages 11, 3 and 2. She recently moved back to the city after a short stint at suburban living in Madison, WI. Her love for NYC couldn't keep her away and after three years they returned. This public relations professional and MBA graduate was on a straight path to professional success until the demands of raising three boys took over. And though this outspoken, adventurous Mama has enjoyed much of what her great city has to offer, from performing at The Apollo's Amateur Night to enjoying New Year's Eves running 5Ks in Central Park minutes before midnight, she is finding that her new role as stay-at-home mom and life in the city with three kids in tow, is truly her biggest adventure yet.
She blogs about her discoveries and more at The Adventures of an NYC Mama
Carolyn Edgar lives in Harlem with her 11-year-old daughter, 7-year-old son, and a cat of indeterminate age. During the day, Carolyn is a vice president and legal counsel for a leading global cosmetics company. At night, after kicking the kids and the cat out of her room, she writes about the adventures of being a single, full-time working mom in New York City.
.
.
Carolyn Pravda lives in Brooklyn in Carroll Gardens with her son (born on St. Patrick's Day 2006), daughter (born on 2/08) and her husband Adam. She is currently a stay at home mom and working on a new blog Mama Threads: Fashion for Mommies. She has lived in NYC for just under 10 years after having grown up on a working farm in Northwest Iowa. In her past life, she was Director of Marketing at Clear Channel Entertainment in the Broadway producing division and worked on shows including The Producers, Sweet Charity, La Cage Aux Folles, and All Shook Up. She got her start both in NYC and on Broadway with Disney's The Lion King during its pre-Broadway run in Minneapolis. The show swept her along in all the excitement of opening night to the Big Apple where she decided the city fit her perfectly so two days after graduating from college, she moved here to an apartment she had never seen in person. And mostly still loves it here every single day.
.
Cynthia Yahia Cynthia Yahia lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn with her husband, Matt Curinga, toddler son, Diego, and infant daughter, Fiona. She worked as an attorney for The Legal Aid Society, Juvenile Rights Division, for five years where she represented children in abuse and neglect cases as well as juvenile delinquencies in the Manhattan family court. Prior to that, she spent two years at The Family Center, providing legal services to parents with life threatening illnesses with the goal of creating a more secure future for their children. She most recently worked part-time for the New York City Bar Association as a Legal Referral Counselor offering brief legal advice, resources, and referrals to the public on a variety of legal issues. Currently, she is a stay at home mom.
.
Having always been unafraid to voice her opinion, she now has a slew of new ones about being mom who also juggles a freelance editor career and her addiction to Twitter. Passionate about advocating breastfeeding and wanting to share what she learned works and doesn’t while making sense of motherhood, she started her blog -- Dagmar’s momsense. If she doesn’t edit other people’s manuscripts or run after her three-year-old, she writes about natural birth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and green and frugal living. Her hunky carpenter husband begs her to keep him out of it. Which she doesn’t.
Deb Feyerick is an award-winning CNN journalist who specializes in crime and terrorism. The best compliment she ever received was from her kindergartener who said, "You won trophies? You must be a good reporter. But you are a great mommy." Deb believes multi-tasking, especially for moms, should qualify as an official Olympic sport. Deb is really excited to be writing about her life as a Mom since it's such a perfect complement to her life as a journalist and she could not imagine being one without the other.
.
.
Debra
Goldschmidt moved to New York with her husband in 2002 kicking and
screaming all the way. They were only going to stay for a year but
continue to reside on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with their
toddler son.
In addition to being a mom, Debra is an award-winning television news producer and freelance writer with an expertise in health and medical news. She has worked for CNN, CBS News Productions, and WNBC. Her byline has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek,and The New York Daily News, among other publications. She is a certified EMT who volunteers for the Central Park Medical Unit in her spare time.
Debra holds a Bachelor's degree from Tulane University and a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
.
.
Deborah Quinn has lived in New York for more than twenty years, which amazes her on an almost daily basis. She is, variously, an English professor, writer, blogger, wife, mother, and PTA Co-President. After twelve years in various Brooklyn neighborhoods, she moved into Manhattan, where she now lives near Union Square with two boys (4ish and 8ish), and a husband (latefortyish), two fish, several stickbugs (a science experiment run amok), and several thousand lego pieces.
Being the mother of boys means that she knows more Star Wars arcana than George Lucas; can speak fairly proficient Pokemon; and can find her way blindfolded to the wing of the Met devoted to knights, armor, and weapons - with occasional detours through the mummies. She also blogs at www.mannahattamamma.com
.
Eden Pontz is currently Executive Producer at CNN's New York Bureau in addition to her position of "Chief Mama"at home. An award-winning journalist, she's produced and reported both domestically (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York), and internationally (London, Paris, Germany, the Middle East). Sadly, she moved from London back to New York just before giving birth-totally nixing her daughter's chance for dual citizenship. She recently moved from Manhattan to what realtors refer to as "Manhattan East" Brooklyn --along with her husband and toddler daughter in order to allow their family to have a second room at home. She first came to New York for college even though her best friend's father warned her she was moving to "a den of iniquities". Eden is a graduate of NYU's Gallatin School .
Esti Berkowitzis a nice Jewish girl from the Midwest who turned around one day and noticed she had three kids under three, had moved to New York City via Jerusalem, and had become an observant Jew.
After graduating from Stephen’s College she worked as a marketing executive in the big, bad corporate world of tech. At 33, she traded in her corporate card and studied at She’arim College of Jewish Studies for Women in Israel . About a year after she returned, this time to NYC, she found herself under the Chuppah, and now, although she calls herself a SAHM, she has started a couple of widely followed blogs as well as engaged in various social media projects. Esti blogs about marriage, pregnancy, and parenting after 35 at www.primetimeparenting.com. Esti also blogs about her life as an observant Jew and her new found love for kosher food, eating matzah, and Shabbat at www.sheitelsandstrollers.wordpress.com.
Esti most recently launched Jewish Shmooz Network on blogtalkradio.com. She hosts her own radio show once a week and interviews Jewish entrepreneurs as well as mompreneurs. She also co-hosts Socialmediarap with Beth Rosen and is part of the Role Mommy Radio Network.
Helen P., an alias, dreads the question, “what do you do?” Mother of an active and fearless 13 month old with another one arriving in January, H.P. runs a small real estate management company. A freelance writer with a background in film and television, she is currently writing a novel and considering returning to school for an MFA. A resident of the West Village, she struggles to keep her daughter, dog and husband entertained. She has been known to run marathons, maintain detailed scrapbooks, cook unusual cuisines, and travel. H.P. can be found blogging about motherhood at milfalert.wordpress.com and about her writing progress at I Want A Book Deal.
xxxx
Jayne Sosland lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Prior to being a SAHM, she worked in television and in web production and was a freelance writer. Now she writes, takes care of her kids and tries to keep all balls in the air--with moderate success. Still, she considers herself extremely lucky and wouldn't trade places with anyone --except, maybe herself in a parallel universe in which she is the same but has longer legs, never smoked cigarettes and has a handsome cabinet containing beautifully labeled folders and bins.
As food editor at Working Mother magazine Jennifer Perillo is living the part. What started as a hobby in her teens, became a career more than a decade ago. Perillo began Time to Eat, a personal chef company, in 1999 in NYC. After years of catering and features in Time Out New York, the Daily News and online at CNNfn, Perillo went on to work with world reknowned chefs Tom Colicchio and Alain Ducasse.
After the birth of her first daughter in 2003, Perillo transformed her love of food into a writing career. In addition to Working Mother, her work and original recipes have been featured in Parenting and Kiwi magazines. In between recipe testing and writing, Perillo is busy shuttling her five-year-old daughter to dance, piano and playdates. The PTA also keeps her quite busy —Perillo is on the executive board as co-chair of the Wellness Committee. For a peek at her recipes and to read more about her chronicles on parenting and motherhood check out her website and other blogs The Daily Juggle and The Mama Chronicles.
Perillo lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
Jessica Ciosek lives in lower Manhattan with her family: a daughter who consistently astounds her Midwestern-bred mother with her street smarts and city savvy and a tow-headed boy who knocks Mom dead with his blue eyes and cherubic smile. She also harbors two cats though it is debatable who actually owns whom. Jess and her husband moved to New York in 1993 and intend to stay for the duration. Jess loves to write, walk, hang out with the kids and sleep among other things. She bakes at night so the kids can noâ¬â¢t help and she has successfully convinced her husband he is a better cook and therefore, should prepare all family dinners henceforth. Her goal in life is to laugh with abandon once everyday for the rest of her life and to revel in the goodness that is this life with children.
x
Judy Antell is the mother of three daughters whose ages keep changing. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with them and her husband, an overly-affectionate cat and a variety of non-working iPods. But no iPhone. Although Judy hasn’t owned a car in 10 years, she still has the occasional dream that she actually has a garage. She would fill that garage with bicycles and maybe squeeze in a Prius.
Judy was the editor of Big Apple Parent and its 5 sister pubs for 13 years and recently decided that if you are the editor-in-chief of a parenting paper and never have dinner with your kids, there is a strange work-life balance that needs to be corrected.
Karen is the mother of two sons, ages 4 years and 17 months. She moved to a tiny one bedroom in Battery Park City/Tribeca with the boys and her husband in August. Her first "welcome to the city" moment came just days after settling in the new location, when Karen realized that she had missed the boat on the preschool admissions circus by more than a year. Due to extreme luck and circumstances beyond the new-to-the-city mom's control, she was lucky to find an open spot for her son. Karen currently has a part time job as a freelancer at Conde Nast. On weekends, Karen enjoys seeing all the sights New York City has to offer, even if it means pushing around 65 pounds in a Phil&Ted's double stroller.
Kathie Horejsi lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. A
corporate relocation at the end of the dot-com boom brought the family
from Seattle to New York City just in time for 9/11. Born in Nebraska
and raised in Montana, she still stares like a tourist as she
chaperones her urban child around the city. Her husband's office is in
Rockefeller Center, her child attends an elementary school that can be
seen from the Brooklyn Bridge, and Kathie can be found on downtown
stages like La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the company of women
as part of Clowns Ex Machina. Her blog is clownmommy.com.
xxxxxx
Kelcey Kintner has worked in the White House, spent years as a local TV reporter/anchor and earned a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University. She even lived in Montana where this city girl had to drive three hours just to find sushi. But nothing has ever kicked her bum like motherhood. It's exhausting. It's frustrating. It's strangely addictive.
This West Village mama has two young daughters (Dylan and Summer) and tries to suppress their endless zest for complete chaos, while finding time for her husband, Rick Folbaum (a Fox anchor), yoga and really bad television. Kelcey is the creator and editor-in-chief of the mama bird diaries, a smart, funny and always unpredictable take on motherhood. She is also a contributor (sharing all things kid related) for the entertaining site, Notes on a Party and the contact gal for Totspot, a private social network for tots and their parents.
Though Linda and her adopted daughter now in live in downtown Manhattan, she has traveled extensively throughout Asia and Europe and has lived in several exotic locales included Florence, Italy, Okinawa, Japan and Archamp, France where she attend Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management.
In 2008, Linda started www.newyorkcitysinglemom.com, a lifestyle website devoted to the concerns, challenges and triumphs of single moms in New York City. Prior to founding the site, Linda was a marketer for several Fortune 50 companies. Most recently, she worked in the financial services and like so many others, she was laid off in December 2008.
This kicked the website into overdrive. Now her devoted fans visit her site to read about her hectic life and her many diverse interests including pop culture, politics, shopping and financial matters. Her background lends an international flair to the eclectic and irreverent website which gains popularity and followers every month.
Linda is currently writing a book focused on her experience as an African American/Japanese single woman adopting a child on her own. She hopes to share her story with others and provide some humor, insight and a very new twist on traditional adoption.
Newyorkcitysinglemom.com has even begun hosting live events like First Mondays Cocktails where moms meet, network and relax.
Linda along with being a contributor at New York City Mom Blogs and managing her own site, is off looking for next career.
Maya is married to her childhood crush, and travels to Israel frequently, as that is where the bulk of her family resides. Maya has a degree in TV/Radio and currently works for a large Media Company in NYC.
During her free time (HA!), Maya enjoys spending time with her family, fighting with her husband about money, trying to blow dry her Jew-fro hair, and laying on her comfortable bed watching DVR'd episodes of Family Guy.
.
Marinka lives in NYC's West Village with her husband and two kids and, most recently, a cat. A kitten, really. Adorable. With razor sharp claws.
Marinka loves reading, blogging, movies, Real Housewives of New York, and oh yeah, spending time with her family.
Her blogs are Motherhood in NYC and Secret Spineless Whine.
Melissa Chapman and her brood of three live in the urban concrete jungle of NYC. In addition to writing her weekly Staten Island Advance Kids in the City Column she contributes to Time Out NY Kids, WCBS-TV, She Knows ,iVillage and This mom wouldn’t be caught dead wearing mom jeans.
Nancy Rabinowitz Friedman is a married mother of boy/girl twin tweens (say that 10 times fast) living on the Upper West Side.
A
former Bar Mitzvah Band singer and television producer, she now spends
most of her time writing. Nancy has been syndicated in the online
editions of The Miami Herald,
The Sacramento Bee, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Charlotte
Observer, among others. Her work has appeared in print in Brain,Child
magazine and in the anthologies The
Knitters Gift (Avalon Press 2005), The Bigger the Better the Tighter
the Sweater (Seal Press 2007) and See Mom Run (Plain White Press 2009).
Nancy is a compulsive knitter, an avid cook, a mediocre ballroom dancer, and
a really bad athlete. She is a contributing blogger at Traveling Mom.com and she blogs about momming, aging, and her 20 year quest to lose the same ten pounds on her own blog From Hip to Housewife.
Rebecca Rodskog was born and raised in "Chicagoland" That's Chicago's euphemism for the last stop in the suburbs on the commuter train. She is the mom of two youngsters, one boy and one girl. Giving birth to and raising kids in Manhattan provided sharp contrast to all she knew about raising kids. Being a Mom is the most glorious and terrifying of jobs she has ever taken on. As an Organizational Development and Change Management Consultant, Life Coach, and Actor, she feels she should have the tools to manage this new job, but every day provides its challenges! She works from her pre-war, oh, so New York! apartment and coffee shops in Manhattan and is married to an incredibly supportive but very busy man, making childcare one of the most important discussions ongoing discussions she'll ever have. You can check out her coaching and consulting business, Rodskog Change Consulting, at http://www.rodskog.com. Rebecca, like most New Yorkers, has a true love/hate relationship with the city. However, she is consistently grateful for all that it provides to her and her family. There is nothing like New York. And she is continually in awe of all of you, the moms, who are doing it all, every day.
Willa is the pen name of this one. She grew up in a tiny village in Pennsylvania that was founded by Quakers. Being a violent sort, she moved to Los Angeles for college during the Rodney King riots and, when those were over, moved to New York City for law school. She married her college guy, Jason, and became a corporate entertainment lawyer. One day she woke up. Now she writes (a good bit, including at her new blog, swivelheader), performs (a little), lawyers (a little bit) and parents her one and a half year old twins, Bennett and Ruby, in Manhattan (a whole lot). They have a sweet black and white cat named Dolce who loves olives with a passion but who is nonetheless quite skinny.
New York City Moms Blog is a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Other blogs in the group include Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog and DC Metro Moms Blog.
The Co-Founding Team:
PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CO-FOUNDER: Jill Asher is the co-founder of Silicon Valley Moms Group. The idea came to Jill over two years ago (March 2006) to start Silicon Valley Moms Blog, after she finished her one year "Presidency" of PAMP. After inviting friend after friend to join this "crazy idea" that moms would want to write about parenting experiences in their regional area, Jill has watched Silicon Valley Moms Group blossom into over nine collaborative blogging communities.
By far, her biggest challenge and greatest joy is motherhood. Jill and her husband are the proud parents of two elementary school aged daughters. Jill admits that she is NOT A PERFECT PARENT and fears her daughter's teenage years. Her girls can be heard running around the house screaming, "Mommy is blogging again!" and she needs to bribe from time to time them with treats. Is she allowed to admit that? On the bright side, Jill really digs living in Silicon Valley and tries her best to blend in, praying that no one will hear her "New Jersey accent". Unless, of course, she is royally upset.
Jill handles PR, Marketing, Business Development and outreach for this collaborative community.
Beth Blecherman (Chief Technology Mom) is a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and development for the Silicon Valley Moms Group network. She also works on the outreach/development to obtain new bloggers and organizing events for the network. Beth started her career in application development, then system auditing and her last role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte. Beth's personal blog is on tips, tricks, and discussions about parents use of technology for their families (Techmamas). When not blogging, she can be found on Twitter, Facebook and tooling around other new online social networking sites...
MANAGING MEMBER, SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP: Tekla S. Nee, a cofounder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, serves as editor-in-chief and CFO for the network of blogs. She has been writing about parenting for more than 25 years for magazines like Parenting, BabyTalk, Working Woman, Special Reports: Family, and Better Health and Living. She blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing a weekly column about about her life with three kids for the Palo Alto Daily News. She's published three books, The Mommy Rescue Guide First Year; The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood; and The Everything Baby's First Year Book (also published in Russian and Chinese). And that's just in her spare time, during the day, she masquerades as a mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan magazine.
.gif)
Romantic Restaurants in New York | Grab this