NYC Moms

Forever Fifteen

So, I'm in the schoolyard and my friend comes running up to me because her friend texted her and told her that her guy's ex-girlfriend was checking out her pictures on Facebook.  OMG.  Now she had to go and change her privacy settings, but not before she checked out the ex-girlfriends' pictures which were all bikini pictures.  Like, all of them.  Who does that?

"What are you talking about?" I asked her, looking at her like she was speaking another language.  "You gotta get on Facebook," she says to me.  "EVERYBODY is on Facebook."  Now I find this hard to believe, because despite the fact that this seems like a scene out of Gossip Girl, we are in fact 36 years old, my friend is pregnant with her third child, and the schoolyard we're in - well, its kindergarten pick up at my daughters' public school.  How can this be true?  Can Facebook now be populated by thirty-something moms and dads trying to sneak peeks at their old high school flames?

Turns out that's exactly who's on Facebook.  And now I'm one of them.  When I first logged on it was with trepidation and a feeling of venturing outside of my comfort zone.  Despite being a blogger, I am not the kind of person who posts her pictures on flikr.  I shudder at the very thought of filling out my favorite

Admissions of an Admissions Survivor

I would like to think that if Dante wrote The Inferno today there would be a special circle of hell just for Kindergarten admissions in NYC.  And within that level there would be a VIP room for those of us with twins.  When I explain the process to friends and family living outside of NYC they look at me like I have 5 heads.  There were times during the process when I felt like I had five heads.  Between both of my daughters they took four IQ tests, for both private and public schools, a "School Readiness Assessment" for more public schools, went on four private school interview/play-dates, and 2 second round playdates at the specialized public schools.  We also entered 2 public school lotteries for the schools within our district that we were not zoned for.  Did I mention that my daughters were 4 years old at the time?

In the end we ended up at the out of zone public school that we most wanted from the beginning. Ironically enough, it is an all gen-ed school meaning that they do not separate out or track the students based on scores.  So, after all that testing what we realized was that we didn't want our daughters at a school where they would be segregated based on their scores.  Whether we feel this way later on in our daughters' education life I don't know.  But, for now, we like the "all one family" vibe at our public school.

Not Really Rosie

This past weekend I took my daughters to the Atlantic Theater Company's production of Really Rosie.  It was one of those moments you look forward to as a mother, when you get to take your kids to something that you loved as a kid and watch them fall in love with it too.  They'd listened to the CD of Really Rosie hundreds of times, one of my daughters had been studying Maurice Sendak's  "Chicken Soup with Rice" poems at school and even cooked up a pot at a big chicken soup celebration.  So, when I saw this rare revival advertised in New York Magazine I jumped at the chance.  Well, it didn't go as well as I had planned.

First of all poor Rosie seemed to be the victim of gentrification.  See, Rosie is a little girl with a huge personality, chutzpah, delusions of grandeur and above all a mop of dark, unruly hair which exemplifies her eccentric, Flatbush, Brooklyn Jewish self.  Think of a young Bette Midler.  However, this Rosie had straight blond hair and was about as Flatbush as Paris Hilton.   And then to make matters worse she wasn't dressed like she threw on her mother's, or better yet, grandmother's fancy-schmancy clothes, she looked more like Cyndi Lauper in the 80s - purposefully mismatched and a little kooky, but certainly not charmingly fabulous.

Street Smarts

On a recent Sunday afternoon as we were weaving our way through the crowds on our way to see a matinee of Mary Poppins one of my five year old daughters casually asked, "what are XXX live nude girls?"  The tourists huddled on the corner around us laughed.  Yes, some pre-Disney vestiges of old Times Square do still exist.  "Well, um, nude means naked," I replied.  My daughter's eyes widened as she tried to make sense of this and I braced myself for the inevitable follow up question.  Instead she and her sister started laughing.  "Naked girls?  That's so silly.  Why would girls want to be naked in a theater?"   And, I wimped out and pointed across the street excitedly, "Look girls M&M World!  Let's get some for the show!"  Naked girls soon forgotten.    No where in my "You-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up" speech  is there a section for pole dancing.  But, still these kinds of questions are inevitable when you live in a walking city like New York.

The biggest cliché one hears when raising kids in the city is that they grow up too fast.  People are referring of course to sex and drugs - the Gossip Girl paradigm.  But, more to the point is that kids in the