Although I’ve obviously dined in the West Village more times than I can count, I have never really thought much about the fact that when I went, I rarely saw strollers in the area, especially when you compare the volume of strollers seen on the Upper West and Upper East Sides. You mostly see younger people with their partners, their friends, dining out, brunching. And then, when we went to have a late lunch at a spot known for its burgers in the area, I was reminded of why this is likely the case.

The further downtown you go, the more you realize how tight and cramped all the restaurants are. The tables are typically smaller and closer together. There are usually very narrow aisles to get from one part of the restaurant to the next. And the bathrooms are usually ridiculously small. You are lucky if there’s even a full sized sink. There is usually a half sized sink with a side faucet (always the worst because those get water EVERYWHERE), a toilet, and potentially a paper towel dispenser and/or a hand dryer, all in less than five feet of space. I am 5’3″ and about 117 lb now, and if someone MY size finds these bathrooms tiny and cramped, then I cannot even imagine what a slightly larger, wider person would think.

Right before our burgers came, Kaia was happily sitting in her high chair, and Chris noticed she smelled, so I took her diaper change items and carried her into the bathroom after I scoped it out. I had JUST enough space to change her on the floor (where else was I supposed to do it? I’ve gotten used to this across all our Saturday outings from when she was four months old onward). Of course, she had a poop. She screamed and cried, as she always does in dark, cramped bathrooms on the floor in scary New York City restaurant bathrooms. Multiple people tried to open the locked door into our bathroom. But we got through it. I brought her back to our table, and we finished lunch. And because she really wanted to get yet more poop out of her… well, she had yet another bowel movement before we left. So for the first time, I had to change her diaper, a SECOND poop diaper, at the same restaurant… ON A TINY FLOOR. At least this time, she was in a much better mood and even babbling as I put her new diaper on and washed my hands.

It would be so, so nice if restaurants were mandated to have real changing tables in their bathrooms in this city. I’d feel less miserable in situations like this, as would my baby. But then again, more space typically means a higher price for rent… which then means…. well, we’ll all pay more for our food. But it’s not like these spaces are getting bigger overall. At least she didn’t have a blowout like she did last weekend.

This time last year, I was surprised when I went to Whole Foods to see that the champagne/ataulfo mangoes from Mexico were on sale, which means they were available and plentiful. It made me excited because a) I obviously love mangoes, and b) when mangoes are in season, you know warmth is right around the corner. So Chris bought six, and then I went back to Whole Foods to look for other things and also picked up five more. So now, we have 11 mangoes sitting by our window sill, waiting to ripen and be eaten. And because our nanny also loves mangoes, she’s been looking at and monitoring our mangoes to see if they ripen and if they turn out to be any good. She reminded me that if it weren’t for working here and for me, she never would have started buying the ataulfo mangoes. She was always used to buying the Haitian mangoes, which I personally find a bit too stringy. Now, she’s addicted and prefers the ataulfos while in the U.S.

I hope Kaia enjoys them this time around. It was a bit weird that she didn’t seem too fond of any of the mango varieties other than one in Australia when we were there in December.

Today, we went up to Banh on the Upper West Side to have a late lunch. The last time I ate there was by myself in 2021, when I was very pregnant and testing out strollers at a nearby shop, and off work for a company-wide wellness day. The food and drinks there have always been delicious, and they are very well known for their weekend specials, which they change every week. Unfortunately, we got there too late today, so all of the specials they had that we were interested in getting were out except for one. It was pretty disappointing, especially since we don’t go there often at all, but at least it was fun to see Kaia enjoy the food: she slurped up her fresh rice noodles and was obsessed with the lemongrass grilled beef we cut up for her.

The visit ended with a bit of a bang. Chris suggested that I check her diaper since Kaia had had a lot to drink. And as I took her with all the changing materials to the bathroom, I realized that her bottom felt like there was a leak. As soon as I opened her onesie, I knew it was trouble: a big pile of poop was in the left leg of the onesie, and Kaia cried and cried. I smeared poop on the changing pad, the floor, and even my pant leg. It was… quite the spectacle. I had to rub off excess poop on her onesie and flush it down the toilet and get her diaper changed quickly. I took her out of the bathroom with Kaia just wearing her diaper. People were probably wondering why I was carrying a nearly naked baby as I walked back to our table. Luckily, we still had a second change of clothes for her in her diaper, so Chris got her into those.

Chris was reflecting on Kaia’s output history. In the beginning as a newborn, Kaia struggled to poop and would get backed up. A couple times, our night nurse even had to stimulate her to get the poop out. Now, Kaia has zero difficulties pooping: in fact, now she poops so often and so big that Chris has already ordered the next size diaper for her, even though those diapers are meant for toddlers who are 2+ in age! That’s how big her poops are now – they’re like explosions every time!

Our nanny took Kaia out to the library earlier today, and it was raining, so she put the rain cover over the stroller. She saw it was quite wet coming in, so she dropped the stroller cover off in front of our apartment in the hallway today and then made her way down to the playroom for a couple hours before dinner. When she came back, the stroller cover was missing. She just assumed I had taken it in at some point, but I never did. I never saw the stroller cover out at all, even when I went out that afternoon. We asked the security and porters. We asked our doorman. I went to the manager twice to see if there was any way to find out where the cover had gone. But it’s nowhere. Someone actually SWIPED it??

The stupidest thing about the stroller rain cover going missing is that it would be pretty much worthless to almost anyone. It is fitted to the exact measurements of our Nuna Triv stroller. It’s just a piece of plastic to someone else. So it infuriates me that someone just took it.. if they actually did and the nanny is actually telling the truth. We’ve never had anything in front of our apartment unit disappear until today – no shoes, no umbrellas, nothing. And on a rainy day, wouldn’t it make more sense to steal someone’s umbrella?

In the end, we didn’t trust our nanny. I think she probably lost it or even purposely threw it out given we had a mini tiff earlier in the day, and she probably did it to spite us. It’s a good thing I got her sweating when I told her that I’d get management to show me video footage of the floor to see if anyone HAD actually taken it.

Ever since we have come back from Australia, I have been feeling like everything is just kind of mundane and uneventful. Nothing really seems that exciting or worth looking forward to. While the highlights of my day are seeing and spending time with Kaia, those moments only last so long until she has to go down for a nap, for sleep, or suddenly gets fussy while eating with her “toddler selectivity” phase that she’s in. Every day I hear news of more layoffs and more companies threatening to take away more jobs. Every day, another black man is getting needlessly and brutally killed by the police, a natural disaster is happening that is decimating populations, Kevin McCarthy is House Speaker. Work feels like the same thing every day with the same problems that I can’t seem to fix because they’re beyond me or even my company. Everything either feels “ugh” or like it just sucks. Even when there are things that I am supposed to look forward to, like lunch with a friend, a facial, an upcoming personal trip — it doesn’t make me feel as happy or as eager as I used to be. I feel bored and exhausted at the same time.

Hopefully this is just a temporary slump. It’s not like anything is actually wrong with my life; everything is really as good as it can be. I think I just need to reframe my attitude and the way I look at things… I think.

I woke up this morning at around 2am from stomach pain. I wasn’t sure what was causing it. I just knew it bothered me enough to wake me up. I tried going back to sleep, but I never did. Around 6:30am, I got out of bed to use the bathroom, and I realized that my entire body was aching. And 30 minutes later, it erupted into a full on, pounding headache.

UGHHHHHHHH.

I decided to skip the gym and see if I could still get through the workday and sleep a bit. I still never fell back asleep but laid there on the bed, resting. When 9:30am rolled around, I still felt miserable. The pain in my stomach and body weren’t going away, so I took the day off.

I tried to think about what was new that I ate yesterday, and I thought… was it really the crispy pork that Chris brought back from Chinatown? We’d gotten roasted meats from this restaurant countless times, and it was extremely popular with high turnover. It was the only new thing I ate the previous day. Either way, I still felt awful. I managed to go out for my scheduled eye appointment and to buy a few things at Whole Foods, but it was a huge struggle. I felt super heavy, extremely lethargic, and pretty useless.

Woe was definitely me today. And then because I forgot that if I eat less, I pump less milk… I barely pumped any milk today. Or, maybe it was just because my body knew I was sick. Either way, I was screwed.

One of the items I had put on our baby registry when expecting Kaia was a Baby Bjorn bouncer. Based on all the types of baby seats/baby activity centers out there, this seemed to have had the best reviews, and on top of that, it also seemed to last the longest. Based on the description, it is supposed to last until your baby is about 30 lb, which is approximately 2 years of age. So I added it, and lucky me, some good friends were generous enough to get it for us.

Well, by the time she was 8-9 months of age, we had already lessened our use of it. She didn’t like to be sitting in one place for too long, as she far preferred crawling and climbing on everything. I had forgotten that I hadn’t put it on the highest (toddler seat) setting, so when we got back from Australia, her weight was really pushing it to floor level, which didn’t seem good or safe at all. She definitely was not comfortable sitting in it. So Chris decided to post it for sale on Facebook Marketplace.

He told me this morning that someone was coming to buy it from us today. So I went to the Amazon site to review the description one last time, when I saw a photo of a toddler age child sitting on the chair, in a higher position. I realized we hadn’t increased the setting, so I did it after he told me and put Kaia in it. And I realized… weee, this actually looks like it’s fine again! She was giggling a bit as she bounced in it, though at this time, she has a hard time understanding how to get out given the way the seat is positioned. But I insisted to Chris that we keep it for at least one more week to see if she enjoys sitting in it. We already have it, so why rush to get rid of what we already have if the Pookster can still get use out of it? It’s further ROI on our friend’s investment, so why not?

It has been interesting to see her in the bouncer on the toddler seat position because it makes it more obvious and apparent to me how much she has grown in the last year. It was literally around this time last year, at the end of January, when I first took the bouncer out of its box and strapped her in it. She was once so tiny in this bouncer, wondering what the hell kind of contraption she was placed in. And now, she’s sitting in it almost like a tiny adult. The weeks have passed way too quickly with my sweet Pookie Pie.

When we first moved into this building about 6.5 years ago, we had to buy all the furniture in our old unit for a lump sum to take the apartment, and since we had no attachment to our old furniture, and we also hate shopping for furniture, it seemed like a good idea. One of the items that I really liked that we got was our glass coffee table. It’s a bit asymmetrical. It’s not a design that you see that often. And I’ve always loved glass coffee tables. But once Kaia arrived, it wasn’t really the smartest thing for us to own a glass coffee table anymore, especially once she started crawling and becoming more mobile. Plus, when I was under the age of 4, I smashed my parents’ glass coffee table top with Ed’s bat, so… I know karma has it in for me, and if we were to keep this coffee table, Kaia would remind me how mischievous I was when I was her age. And I’d prefer not to let that moment, in that form, come.

So Chris posted our coffee table on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, and a serious buyer came today to pick it up and take it off our hands. I dusted it off and we moved it out from behind the sectional couch to our front entrance. And Chris helped him carry it downstairs into the station wagon he apparently borrowed from a friend. I gave a short little speech to the table, letting it know how much I appreciated it, how I enjoyed it the last 6.5 years we had it, how we got great use out of it. But now, it was time to go. Because now, we had actively made a choice: we were choosing our baby over this glass coffee table, and the decision was made, final, done. Goodbye, glass coffee table. We enjoyed you and got great use out of you the last 6.5 years, and now, you will go off to another person’s home, where hopefully you will be loved and appreciated just as much, if not more. We hope you have a good, long life, and get lots of good use. Goodbye, old friend.