#newtonewyork

[tiarocker]

Exploring the city like a tourist with this cutie 🥰💕 #newtoNewYork #lookylooky #exploremore #momlife #daughtertime (at New York Waterwy-Battery Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CSrvY5sggUG/?utm_medium=tumblr

[corneleouspopnfresh]

👑 king of NYC (in training) 👑 #newtonewyork #wanderlust #streetart #unfilteredlife #l4ms #lmbl (at Manhattan, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgZ-iM7uUg2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[scotts-in-the-city]

Genius holiday plan!

What’s makes me very happy at the moment; more than a few hours of consecutive sleep, looking at a pavement and not thinking that it would be nice to lie down and have a little sleep on it, family time and, thinking about our upcoming holiday.  This is a holiday that we’ve been talking about for months and are badly in need of.  

So, after we spent A LOT of precious time on the computer scrolling and scrolling, having 1 million tabs open and giving myself numb figures, where did we decide to go?  ….. Absolutely nowhere.  We think this is actually quite a genius plan and we’re quite chuffed with ourselves.  So why did we decide this?

- Let’s be realistic, when you go on holiday with children it’s a bit of a hard slog.  Baby Sas currently just wants to crawl on the floor and eat everything in her path; she’s basically a very cute hoover.  And Scarlett has decided that she doesn't want to sleep.  So how do you find somewhere that caters to a hoover and an insomniac?  Sas smiles at everyone but as soon as you hand her over she screams quite dramatically, so creches probably aren’t going to work.  Then the idea of, trying to all sleep in the so-called ‘family room’,  trying to work out how to feed them dinner when dinner starts well after their bedtime, carrying ten thousand bags with you so you have everything you need etc.. just isn’t particularly appealing.  Or, if you do an airbnb style hols, you still have the endless rounds of cleaning, cooking and tidying up as you would at home.  In the nicest possible way what’s the point of spending $$$ when really it’s the same old shit just with a different view? 

- It’s also bit overwhelming deciding where to go because this country is bloody big and is also near lots of other places like the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada etc.. Every time you hone in on an option another 50 pop up.  There are people we want to see which makes making plans even more complicated!  How do you decide what to do and who to see?

So, apart from a couple of day trips, we’re super excited to instead spend the time at ‘home’ and take it in turns to take time off ALL TO OURSELVES.  I have no idea what i’ll do yet but it’s pretty thrilling.  I could perhaps do a spa afternoon (holy crap!), a trip to the shops, a museum visit (less excited about this one), catch a show, a daytime sleep (the dream!), some kind of exercise (…nice in theory), or SIT in a cafe for more than five minutes and slowly drink a drink.  I think that’s going to be so much better than going away somewhere.  Just saying that word makes me want to lie down and sleep for a hundred years.

So what’s been good about NYC these past few weeks?  

The fall

27C in October.  Ok so that was a particularly hot day but generally it’s still been pretty warm.  I haven’t seen the picture postcard fall trees yet but we have gone apple and pumpkin picking (we’re still working our way through the four bowls of apples we picked).  And halloween is definitely on its way which makes me happy.  I love this time of year back home but over here it’s like it’s on steroids. 

Polite pot people

There’s A LOT of weed that gets smoked in our neighbourhood; did it get legalised without me noticing?  Pretty much every day we breathe in wafts of it which makes me pretty mad especially because it’s often in the playground.  WHY, WHY, WHY??!  But I have started noticing that sometimes someone will say ‘sorry’ when we walk past them.  You don’t really expect someone sitting around smoking in a sort of ‘gang’ to say that.  It’s not ok for my children to be breathing it in everyday and getting high (?) but at least they’re being polite about it I guess.

Getting fit

I’m an expert at getting the bus.  It’s really bloody hard when they're often very busy and you have to collapse the pram and carry it while holding onto two children.  I really feel it’s a bit of an achievement.  I might not be able to say I climbed the career ladder over here but I can say I managed to ride NYC buses with little children.  I think that should be something I can put on my cv.  But, what i’ve realised (after quite a few very bad journeys) is that getting any kind of transport after 3 pm is a no-go.  It’s just too packed.  So unless I want to be trapped in ‘pot-ville’ I’m going to have to walk to get back from anywhere.  Today I walked 60 blocks to get home.  I’m going to get very, very fit.  And sore feet.  And possibly also a tonned bum :) 

[genesis43ver]

Hey Good morning ladies and gentlemen!!! Be sure to book your session via iamnoahlove.com Made the move to NY and now you want to walk in the industry and not sure where to start will here it is, your chance!! Follow @iamnoahlove for booking and more information #IamNoahLove #FashionWeek #TopModel #NewToNewYork #runwaymodel (at New York, New York)

[bojantercon]

a week with no cash

I survived my first week in #newyork with no cash!

I survived my first week in NY without cash!!  This city is run by consumerism – spend, spend, spend – and they make it so easy.  You can pay everything by credit card, so that you have absolutely no idea how much you’re spending.  Till.  You get your monthly statement.  Which I haven’t received yet.

[shellyflashme-blog]

#GoodWords repost from @lanabanaluva #NYCGoal #NewToNewYork #LetsGo #ShellyFlashMe #FoodMe

[scotts-in-the-city]

Making new friends; do children help or hinder?

It feels like a long three months since we got here (how can it only be three months) but we’re still smiling.  Sort of :)  I know there’s a lot to still discover and good stuff to look forward to like the beautiful fall, halloween, thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  We also have a bunch of visitors coming which is the best; we’ve never been so popular!

Making friends

Everyone said it would be so easy to make friends over here because you meet people through your children.  This is sort of true and it’s been really nice meeting new people but it’s also had its challenges because you’re not just trying to find friends for you, you’re trying to find friends for them too.  As much as you might like a mum who has a little newborn it’s really hard hanging out.  While they can sit about and snuggle with their babe, if you have a crawler or a walker your conversations go along the lines of, ‘hi!’, ‘wait a minute I have to go fetch..’, ‘what were you saying?’, ‘don’t throw yourself off the climbing frame!’, ‘don’t put the dirty plaster you just found on the floor in your mouth!’, ‘oh wait what were you saying?’.  And then even if they do have children/child roughly the same age, do they like your child/children?  Scarlett is going through a phase of wanting to choose her own clothes and the other day for a new playdate she decided to wear a pink sparkly fancy-dress dress, pink shoes and a pink hair band.  This was after she’d stained her whole face with some red lip stick she’d found.  And then she had a tantrum when I tried to take her previously pretty much unloved doll away from her.  Her new playmate, who’d turned up in cool monochrome clothes and a sassy haircut, was unsurprisingly totally unimpressed.  She was too cool for me let alone for little Miss Barbara Cartland look-a-like.  When you don’t hear from that person again does that mean that they didn't like you or your daughter?  In this instance I’m going to blame it on little miss crazy .. I was on my A-game on that playdate!  Not a twitchy eye in sight and I managed to avoid talking about prams or bus routes the entire time.

Bus routes

Talking of bus routes….(I have great bus chat).  I’ve found a good one and it’s been the excitement of the week.  It gets me to good places within 30 minutes and it’s opened up new playgrounds and new museums.  Life changing!  I love you M5 bus route!  

Awesome DUMBO - ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’

The best thing about Manhattan is leaving Manhattan and looking back at the view.  I don’t know why lots of tall buildings together makes such an impressive sight but it really does.  We had a lovely day out (except for the bit when I lost Angus and his phone stopped working and I had to walk round and round pram-less holding a screaming baby.  That bit wasn't fun.  At all).  It’s definitely somewhere we’ll be visiting again though.  It feels very Manhattan..even though you’re not in Manhattan.  

WTF

Cold brew.  I thought i’d found the perfect drink.  You don't have to have milk in it (so avoided the problem of there being a lack of alternatives to cows milk) and it didn’t make you overheat in the boiling weather.  But then I got the shakes, the eye twitching got a bit out of control and I started being slightly more weird and wired than normal, (I really got into role play in the fire engine in the children’s museum;  wasn’t until I heard another parent telling her kid that ‘the lady will be finished soon’ that I realised that there were no children actually playing with me anymore).  I thought perhaps I’d reached another level of sleep deprivation but it turns out cold brew is actually 2.5 times stronger than normal coffee.  So i’ve had to ditch it to avoid becoming a bit scary.  Any crazy behaviour from now on is just down to lack of sleep (thank you Scarlett for developing some cruel sleep phobia just as baby Sas starts to sleep through), and also to spending all day everyday with two small people whose interests are eating their own poo and dancing to ‘wiggly woo’ over and over and over and over ….

[scotts-in-the-city]

hello from Harlem!

I’m going to attempt to write about our family’s time in NY, partly so I can look back and remember it, but also to try and slow the spread of mum fluff by vaguely engaging brain.  I will probably write sentences twice.  I probably won’t any sense make.  I’ll definitely make alot of grammatical and spelllling mistakes.  For the last couple of months I’ve mainly been talking to a toddler, so my conversation has centred around poo, wee, Peppa Pig and bottom farts.  Plus all I really know about using social media is how to scroll down through lots of pretty pictures. This may be my only post ..

So what’s so frickin good about NY?? In an effort to be slightly concise, here are my three favourite things about the City so far … and one wtf!

People have a lot to say for themselves

At first this was annoying.  Wasn’t sure why people would point out to me that my baby was crying (no shit Sherlock really?!).  But i’m actually now finding it pretty helpful; it’s sort of like everyone’s looking out for each other.  For instance, people walk past and tell me that Saskia’s hat is over her face, that she has a hair wrapped round her finger (how do they see this?!), that she’s thrown up all over my shoes, that I left Scarlett behind two blocks ago (how does she walk that slowly!?). The other day I had a stressful time getting off the bus and was swearing pretty aggressively at the easy open pram which wasn't being very easy to open.  This lady came up to me and told me to ‘get a grip momma’.  She picked Scarlett up and strapped her into her pram, patted me on my slightly shaky hand and said ‘good to go!’.  Thank you nice lady.

I can go anywhere!  Sort of.  

At home i’d get lost ALL the time.  I have a crapey sense of direction/am incredibly stupid.  But here it’s all in a grid system.  I've got north and south mixed up a couple of times and walked very confidently in the wrong direction for a few blocks but even I managed to figure it out and put us right. It makes you feel like you could go anywhere and do anything and discover the amaziness of Manhattan.  Until that is you remember you have two little children and can only go a few blocks before one of them has a meltdown and needs food, bed or nappy changed.  But it’s nice knowing the potential is there!

Playground heaven

There are playgrounds everywhere.  It’s amazing.  There's one on nearly every street.  There’s one over the road from us.  There are playgrounds when you look up at the roofs of buildings.  And they’re pretty impressive too.  They have fountains and sand pits and swings and climbing frames.  The downside of this is that I spend at least five hours everyday in a playground pushing swings and sliding down slides (Scarlett likes me to participate).  But I do have fairly impressive arm muscles.  If I wanted to get high I also probably could if I breathed in really deeply because next to a lot of these playgrounds are basketball courts and that’s also where a lot of pot gets smoked.  But still NY I bloomin love your playgrounds!

WTF

Tipping.  At home tipping was confined to the hairdressers and restaurants and the later was pretty easy to navigate.  The hairdressers was another story and i’d sit in the chair worrying about how much to leave for most of the appointment.  Here it’s on a whole different level.  You tip EVERYONE.  And you have to work out what to tip.  Too little and it’s an insult, too much and i’ll use up all our money in the space of a day.  It’s exhausting and my maths ain’t good. And how do you hand over the money?  Do I need to learn to do the shaking hand/ slipping note into hand.  Do I confidently say ‘Thank you for your service please take this as a sign of my appreciation!’, or do you throw the money at the person and run away in embarrassment?!  Tempted to do the later.  Note to self: buy a dummies guide on tipping and figure this shit out.

[scotts-in-the-city]

It’s too soon to say ‘I love you’..

But I think I can almost say ‘I like you NY’.  Progress!  When I first got here I didn't just not like it, I HATED it.  There was some pretty pathetic sobbing that took place on the High Line on day two.  And possibly some indecipherable words blurted out in between sniffing that went something along the lines of ‘why the fxck did you make me come here?’.  There may have also been some theatrical howling when I discovered our bathrooms were beige.  I feel bad about the dramatics of the first few days.. ok weeks.  Except for the bathroom episode.  I don’t feel bad about that one.  There is NOTHING worse than a beige bathroom.  I still have a little weep about that from time to time.  But generally I’m totally over the crying /sulking phase.  I’ve even stopped asking Angus if we can go home yet.  And there has been lots more good things discovered this week..

You can get to the beach within an hour!

I don’t think I need to say anything else on this.  You can get to frickin beach!  On the subway!  Ok so we were only sitting on Rockaway beach for 5 minutes before Scarlett asked if we could go home but still.  I sat on the beach. I smelt the sea.  I ate an ice cream!  And on the boardwalk there were mini Peckham Levels-type places with cool food and drinks and even more amazingly they sold water in BOXES rather than plastic bottles.  Since when was the seaside so progressive?!  Angus and I were beside ourselves with excitement … (we don’t get out much these days).

Farewell stuff; farewell Amazon Prime

Back home I probably got an Amazon package at least every other day.  I know that’s bad right!  I was a little bit addicted.  I liked having someone come to my door with a package; even if it was just a duck shaped bog brush.  Amazon Prime is well and truly alive and well in NY but I’ve had to do the unthinkable and end the relationship.*  Reason one, Angus found out about the extent of my habit since I’m now only able to use the joint account.  He was a bit shocked.  Reason two, NY apartments ain’t that big and we just can’t fit anything else in ours.  The closets and drawers are maxed out.  Reason three, the thought of having to pack up again and transport it all has turned me into a die-hard minimalist.  This is a very good thing.  No more stuff!  No more bog brushes, random kitchen gadgets or ‘must-have’ children’s toys.  NY you’ve liberated me!  Death to stuff!

* since I wrote this I’ve had a little relapse.  But I really feel that Scarlett needed the pink wiggly straws.  What kind of mom deprives their toddler of such an essential item?

WTF

I’ve almost nailed riding the bus without having a wobbly chin incident but it’s taken a while.  You have to be on your A-game big time.  Bus drivers don’t take kindly to passengers who don’t obey bus etiquette.  And they don’t just shout at you, it’s a full-on blow your hair back off your face roar.  So don’t ever put luggage in the area that looks suspiciously like a luggage rack.  It’s not for luggage and you will get shouted at if you attempt this.  Perhaps it’s reserved for VIP luggage?  Also, don’t ever try to get off the bus through the back doors if you’re not nearby as they will close before you get there and it’s then impossible to open them without throwing your entire body weight against them and you will end up running backwards and forwards between both sets of doors trying to get the hell off the bus.  You will then get shouted at.    But the worst crime of all crimes is to let your toddler walk up the wheelchair ramp.  Cue bus driver apoplexy.  It’s much better to let them fall over trying to jump up the step while their mum struggles carrying the pram, bags and other child.  I’m growing a thicker skin but it’s not NY bus driver proof just yet.   

Having said all this i’ve met some of the friendliest people on the bus.  There’s a grandma I often see who is just the sweetest lady.  She gives a running commentary when I feed Saskia, ‘my just look at the milk coming out of your titty’, ‘oh lord! I’d never let anyone feed from my titties!’, ‘look she’s going in for more!’ etc..  A little weird yes but there’s something nice about someone being so titillated by my feeding my baby ;)

Bring on week 10 NY!

[shellyflashme-blog]

Feeling Focused #NYCGoal #NewToNewYork #NewYork #LetsGo #ShellyFlashMe #Me

[shellyflashme-blog]

Just ran 3.5 miles and I feel, in the words of @chefroble #Swerve - it ain't easy but I did it! On #Flatbush #30daycc @mrshutupandtrain #Brooklyn #NewToNewYork #Workout #LookGreatNaked #BlackGirlsRun #NewYork (at Flatbush)

[shellyflashme-blog]

I love this. Free #Street #Library #NewToNewYork #Brooklyn #ProspectHeights #NewYork #Books #Reading (at Prospect Heights)

[shellyflashme-blog]

Doing my #Cardio - #GrandArmyPlaza to #TheJunction #Brooklyn #NewYork #30DayCC #Walk #MrShutUpAndTrain #NewToNewYork #LookGreatNaked #Exercise (at Flatbush)

[shellyflashme-blog]

It feels like #fall in #Brooklyn #NewToNewYork #Seasons

[shellyflashme-blog]

Silk Blazer by @hm - $10 Dollar#Shoe Store Flats and Multi Chain from @forever21 #Fashion #CityLife #NewToNewYork #Brooklyn #MyLife

[shellyflashme-blog]

Purple is her (@JataunSean ) favorite color! #KidFashion A little @hm & @nike on her feet finishes the outfit off right. #Fashion #NewYork #NewToNewYork #CityKid