Just when you thought your life was crazy.....

Bravo (my fave channel) has introduced "9 By Design," a docu-drama about Cortney & Robert Novogratz who have, get this, seven children, and a fabulous design/house-flipping business in NYC. Why so many kids I wondered? I gather they're both from big southern families and just think that's how you do it. They have two sets of twins in the bunch, and a new baby.

The Novogratz kids include Wolfgang, 12; twins Bellamy and Tallulah, 11; Breaker, 9; twins Five and Holleder, 4, and Major, 1. Did you notice that Five is #5? I love it!

The homes they design are fabulous, and have sold for record prices even by NY standards. But I really love their parenting style. In the first episode, Cortney sends the 4-year-old twins into a hall closet to play.

It seems they live in the houses for a while before they sell, and keep moving into two-bedroom apartments. At nearly nine-months pregnant Cortney also appears to pack her own house and move all in one day. I'm so impressed by this superwoman.

Watch it on Tuesdays at 10pm on Bravo. http://www.bravotv.com/9-by-design

I Should Be Dancing

I've loved this photo of a dancing Brigitte Bardot since I saw it on another blog over a year ago. I actually wish I owned it so that I could frame it and hang it on a wall somewhere in my house. Yes, it makes me that happy. She's so young, beautiful, carefree, and epitomizes "the look" of the moment" in her miniskirt, boots, and straight long hair. Although I share zero resemblence to Lady B, it reminds of me when I was fun. More than likely, however, I was dancing and embarrassing myself, but that's okay too.

Now I wait until weddings and other major life events to embarrass myself (I mean, dance) in public.

Sleeping Like Gypsies

Our family of four sleeps together. This statement elicits different responses from different people. Some are horrified, and say “get those kids out of your bed ASAP,” while others think it’s completely normal usually because they shared a bed with their children (co-slept) at some point. Recently a Ukrainian woman informed me that my family sleeps like gypsies! I think she meant that as a not-so-great-thing, but I have a mild obsession with gypsies so I thought it was fantastic.

It wasn’t always this way. In preparation for the girls I read “Babywise: Giving your baby the gift of nighttime sleep” like it was the bible. I was convinced that if I did everything this book said, my girls would sleep through the night on their own. They did not.

When the nurses at Beth Israel instructed us to swaddle the girls, always put them to sleep in separate cribs, and NEVER let them sleep with us or on us (for their own safety), we complied. I thought it made sense since they were so little it would have been too easy to suffocate them. But at about 5 months-old, we realized that they would sleep infinitely longer if they were cuddled in bed with us, and so it began. We tried a handful of times to sleep train them in their cribs, patting their backs without picking them while they wailed, making our way closer and closer to the door, was torture for my husband and me. So we moved a queen-sized mattress to the floor of the nursery so they could sleep there without risk of falling out of our high bed (my dad's idea), and they could come find us if they woke up in the middle of the night. This worked for a time.

Basically I think we’re too lazy to start a sleep battle with the kids. I asked a friend with pre-teens what she thought and she confessed that she’d done the same thing. I love the advice she received from her pediatrician. He told her that these years (infant through pre-school) are the “comfort years” and it was completely natural. I'm embarrassed to confess that I lied to our last pediatrician. She adamantly believed the kids needed to learn to soothe themselves and sleep in their own cribs, and was pretty inflexible on this point, so I lied, so that I wouldn't have to be lectured by her. Needless to say, she's no longer our doctor and I promise not to lie to a physician again.

I envy mothers whose babies sleep in their cribs and had the backbone to sleep-train their little ones. If I had it to do over again, I probably would let them cry-it-out at 6 months-old, and they’d never have know any differently. But I am now a defacto “attachment” parenting mom, and I’m okay with it. Sophie and Sienna may be the only children I have, and eventually they won’t want to sleep with me (they probably won’t even want to talk to me when they’re teenagers), so I’ll keep them close to me as long as possible.

Great Style

Trying to distract my toddlers as I checked my emails, I grabbed the box of Warhol Red Books on the shelf and let them go through the photos. I guess I'd forgotten that there was some pretty raunchy stuff in there! (Don't worry, they're too little to understand.) What I did notice as I was cleaning up, was a few unbelievably gorgeous images of 70s icon Marisa Berenson, looking Bain de Soleil tan somewhere on the Mediterranean, I presume. Now this is how I want to look this summer.

I'm baaaaack....and with a new drink

It's been months since my last entry, but since I only have a handful of friends who read my blog updates, I'm quite sure that I haven't been missed! I've been inspired by the movie "Julie & Julia" (as background noise) as I continuously run in to coax my sad, sick twins back to sleep every time they wake up crying. I think the character in the movie might have taken her blog a little too seriously, but she didn't have sick twins (or twins at all for that matter), but did wind up with a job or a book deal or something I predict. I have no such ambitions.

With the advent of my darling husband finishing our basement renovation which includes a face lifted bedroom, bathroom, playroom, and bar/second kitchen, I have some wonderful news: I've rediscovered a CLASSIC COCKTAIL!

Here's the recipe:
Vodka Gimlet II
1.5oz Vodka
1oz fresh lime juice
.5oz simple sugar syrup

Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker with ice. Shake. Strain into chilled martini glass.

Clearly there's a Vodka Gimlet I as well, that substitutes Rose's Lime for the fresh stuff, but don't even bother with that!

I've heard the martini saying that one's not enough and two's too many, and it's almost true for this treat as well. I find that one's not enough, two's not quite enough, and three's pretty much too many. I say: Have fun and enjoy responsibly.