Rock ‘N Roll Coochie Coo
Thank goodness, my week of rock 'n roll bachelorhood finally came to an end.
Abbi, Maggie and I were in Wilmington, DE, last weekend for The Keller's 40th anniversary. I had to get back to NYC for MTV's TJ Search Finale on Sunday. So it seemed like a perfect, logical solution. Abbi could relax with her family, and I could finish my forthcoming benefit CD, "Forever Young."
Jeff Jacobson ran my studio (aka Maggie's nursery) through. Our cover of James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James" is a melancholy, lullaby version of the tune. He laid down ...
The Velvet Hammer
Finally, I get to be the hero for once.
For two weeks running, Maggie and I had it made. I'd wake her softly at the crack of dawn, bottle feed her, then take a long, slow stroll around the neighborhood until she slipped off to sleep. Everybody won: Abbi slept, Maggie ate, and I gained QT with baby and bonus points with mommy.
For nearly two weeks now, though, she's refused the bottle. Our mornings are now a protracted battle that invariably ends in tears, frustration, and a solemn handover to Abbi. It's a heartbreaking exchange, one ...
Maggie At Ten (Days)
Maggie slept through her one week birthday (the nerve!), so I decided to celebrate ten days; seemed like a good round number. Anyway, these first few days of Maggie's life have disabused me of measurements; seconds, minutes, hours all seem to stretch and bend in this haze of feed, burp, change, repeat.
And so tonight, I made Maggie's favorite dinner, tacos, guacamole and red velvet cupcakes (ok, not really), and celebrated with my girls. As I slaved in the kitchen (ha ha), I reflected on how much I've learned in the past ten days. Take ...
Meeting Maggie
The East River isn't really a river at all, but a tidal strait between Manhattan and Long Island that, because of tides, appears to flow like one.
New York Presbyterian Hospital soars like a great, white sail over the East River. This great, granite sheet spans several blocks of Midtown East, swallowing the FDR highway whole. Looking southeast, the river below races just below, fast past Roosevelt Island and the Queensboro Bridge beyond. From inside, it's as if one is floating above the city itself, rolling along in the waves, to and fro ...
How To Change The World
If, as my former bandmate, once sang "World's change in the belly of an insect," then universes transform in a matter of years.
Little wonder, then, that I should comment to Abbi this weekend that I can't remember a period of transformation as radical as the last five years.
Five years ago, I was an Executive Producer. I lived on the Upper West Side. I played rock shows on the regular, smoked, drank, caroused, and regularly hailed cabs as dawn broke. Five years ago, I was single. Don't take my word for it, though; the archives ...
Building A Mystery
For a second there, the juxtaposition of my ragged, fourteen-foot UHaul barrelling up the well-coiffed upper reaches of Park Avenue was kind of awesome. Traffic was light. The gas pedal was heavy. Midtown was in the rear-view. And there was funk on the radio.
What's more, my heart was full of freshly-minted confidence. Overnight, I'd transformed our box-strewn, bare-windowed second bedroom into something pretty closely resembling a nursery. In some six hours of construction, I'd assembled a crib and dresser, hung a pair of blinds, and ...
To Do (Or, The New Normal)
Suffice to say that the twelve miles I ran from the base of the Manhattan Bridge to and twice-around Prospect Park was the easy part.
It dawned on me deep within the fluorescent-lit walls of Ikea just a few hours later to Tweet, "I am in hell." But I thought better of it on account of Abbi's feelings. This was, after all, a crucial shopping trip. Our goal was singular an clear: furnish the baby's room. And, maybe, get a little something for the kitchen.
In fact, the Ikea in Red Hook has its advantages, like its proximity to Park ...
Into The East
Abbi and I moved from West 56th Street and Tenth Avenue to East 71st and First this weekend. To most, this would seem a simple, two mile, two zip code, cross-town move. Which would be true. But man, what a difference two zip codes can make.
New York neighborhoods are rife with generalities, none more pronounced that the Upper West and East Sides. The Upper West is for cultural and artistic workers, the Upper East for more commercial and business types. Nothing is that simple, of course, still, it often bears out. The Upper West has ...
The Bump
These days, it takes me about one minute to tell people that Abbi and I are expecting.
Take last night for example. I walked out of my office around nine o'clock. The building was nearly empty, so my elevator went express. When the doors opened 29 floors below, I bumped into a familiar colleague. I couldn't remember her name, nor in what department she worked, but I said hello anyway. By the time we hit the escalator, I'd somehow found a contextual way to tell her the news. That lead, as always, to the following exchange:
Person: ...
Keep Breathing
Abbi and I went to our first birthing class the other night, a three-trimesters in three-hours mini-marathon spanning everything from reflexology to relaxin.
The class was held at Real Birth, a pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and new parent community center born of the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center (where Ethan was born). It's a brick-walled, hard wood-floored storefront on Eighth Avenue bookended by a laundromat one one side and sushi joint (West Side Sushi, which I've been patronizing for years) on the other. I paid special ...
