10 Things That Happened in January

Harlow's first vlog, Mazzy becoming my biggest word game competitor, Frankie becoming an old lady... and more

Remember when I said I wanted to start using my Substack more like an old school newsletter? This is me actually doing the thing I said I was going to do! Welcome to my monthly wrap-up, in which I write about all the things that happened to me in January! Except our ski vacation, because I posted more than enough about that on Instagram.

I’ll start with the biggest news first…

1. Mazzy is suddenly good at word games! I don’t know exactly how this happened but it is quite honestly one of the best possible outcomes for me as a parent. I am a word game fanatic, as I think you all know (special shout out to all my fellow Connections players) and up until this point, I have not really had anyone in my life who is that competitive with me. Like, I don’t think I’ve lost a game of Boggle in 20 years. Within the last month, Mazzy has not only become equally obsessed with all the word games in the NYT app (we compare stats daily), she also started to send me all different word games from Game Center over text, where you compete against the other person, and she is REALLY good at them. There are two word games that I usually beat her at, but then another game where she consistently beats me about 90% of the time and I COULD NOT BE PROUDER. Also, it is so awesome to just sit there on the couch and play these text games with her for like a solid hour. Your brain is working, it’s mother daughter bonding and it feels like time well spent!

2. Harlow made her first vlog! Did everyone see Harlow’s vlog about going to a chocolate restaurant named Mariebelle in SoHo? We had a random Sunday with nothing to do and she suggested doing a food tour for a video. I thought I would just record and make a video like normal (which would’ve been easy because she was super animated at the shop and we had the best time), but then she said she wanted to do the voiceover herself too.

   

   I wasn’t sure how it was all going to come together, because my voiceover videos are not off the cuff. I write them to fit the timing of the video exactly and then read them super fast. Harlow is dyslexic and reading is still a bit of a struggle for her, so I was a little afraid she was going to trip herself up on the words and get super frustrated if I asked her to read something again. But she did amazing. I told her if she flubbed a sentence to just pause and reread it, and then I would edit out the mistake, which is exactly how I do it for myself. Harlow said okay and then did exactly as instructed, like a true professional. She knocked it out in ten minutes. Easy peasy. I can’t wait to do another! Our trip to Koreatown is coming up next.

3. Harlow got a palette expander. The one thing that could get in the way of Harlow’s Koreatown vlog voiceover (which we already filmed) is her new palette expander. She got it last week and so far, it gives her a bit of a lisp. Boy, that thing is a monster. Mazzy never had one, so this is my first experience with it. You have to tighten it yourself with a little key at home and that has become my least favorite part of the day. Mike had been doing it and then he went away on a trip with his college friends, so I had to take over, and it almost killed me. If you ever want to see your child completely lose their patience with you, try watching YouTube videos from an orthodontist, while standing over your child’s open mouth with a camera flashlight and a sharp metal object, and that should do the trick.

4. My kids like awards shows now! I feel like this newsletter was supposed to be random but there is a common theme developing, which is that as the kids get older, there is more and more stuff that we like to do in common. The Oscars have always been my Super Bowl and as of late, with the Golden Globes and the Emmy’s last month, my kids are super interested in them too. I guess awards shows are the perfect blend of entertainment, fashion and pop culture that make them appealing across generations, once you get to a certain age, which in my house appears to be eleven. My kids love watching the pre-show, judging the dresses, rooting for their favorites and guessing the winners right before they are announced, just like me. I even let them stay up super late so they can watch them until the end. After the Emmy’s, Mazzy said, “Do they do these every year?” And when I said “yes,” she said, “I feel like they will be a much bigger deal now!” And I was like, “Why? Because now YOU are aware of them???” We had a good laugh over that.

5. Hello, PG-13 and R-rated Movies! Okay, keeping to the theme, I think my family unlocked a whole new category of movies to watch together. Actually two new categories. The first is the (semi) raunchy comedy genre. It all started when I saw 21 Jump Street on a plane (the Jonah Hill one) and laughed my ass off. My first thought was— I bet Mazzy would find this really funny. It’s got a lot of drug related jokes (but definitely in the “drugs are bad” camp) and one half-a-second shot of a threesome, but other than that, it’s pretty tame. Well, there is also a shot of a bloody severed penis on the ground, but well, you can make your own judgement about whether it is right for your family. We watched it with the kids during our ski trip and they LOVED it. Harlow could not believe we were letting her watch and laughed so hard at a joke about balls. Then when we laughed at her laughing about balls, she said she was actually laughing at how the character over explained the joke about balls, and now every time she laughs about something not appropriate, we say, “oh are you laughing about the explaining?” Say what you will about our parenting, but I think this was a win. Now I’m just counting down the days before it’s semi-appropriate to show them Stepbrothers, perhaps the funniest movie of all time. We also decided to watch 500 Days of Summer with the kids on that ski trip and they loved that as well, which I think opens up the door for a whole other movie genre— indie rom coms. Any suggestions? Leave them in the comments.

6. Mazzy started raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! Please note, she is standing over me as I write this. Last year, Mazzy was invited to an event with her friend Ava where student teams competed over the course of 7 weeks to raise money for LLS, a non-profit which uses their funds for research, advocacy and patient support in the fight against blood cancer. This year, Ava is leading a team and invited Mazzy to join. We went to their kick off event last week.

   

   Their team goal is to raise $50K and Mazzy set her personal goal at $5K. This is her first time doing anything like this and it’s fun to see her step up and get excited about the impact she could make. Instead of trying to explain it myself, I’ll just use a quote from the email Mazzy sent to all our friends and family members:

   “LLS’s work is changing the lives of 1.2 million Americans living with blood cancer. High school students like me, from across the country, are joining the fight against blood cancer by signing up to participate in the Student Visionaries of the Year program. It’s an honor to be a part of such an outstanding group of fellow students, but an even larger honor to be able to work for the patients, survivors and their families.”

   If you would like to donate to help Mazzy reach her goal, you can do it in one of two ways. You can venmo ilana-wiles a small donation ($2-5) and I will contribute it all together as one donation from the Mommy Shorts community, or you can donate directly to Mazzy’s personal fundraising page, which has the added benefit of being able to leave her a personal message. She is refreshing that page constantly so it will be really fun for her to see the new donations coming in. Mazzy thanks you for your generosity and support! She told me to include that!

7. We launched our Valentine’s Day Surprise Boxes! You can order them on The March Hare website, where you can also shop for toys in general. Please order by February 7th to make sure to receive it by the 14th.

8. There’s a new perk for the Shorties! If you are new around here, the Shorties is what I call my paid subscribers. By becoming a paid subscriber ($6 a month), you get access to all my locked posts and you’ll get added to my Close Friends list on Instagram where I post additional stories, polls, Q&As and things I’d like to share but not with a few hundred thousand people. Lately, I've gotten a lot of messages from Shorties saying that they feel like they are missing out on the videos that I post solely on TikTok. The reason I don't post all my Tiktoks on Instagram is because I personally prefer old school Instagram with less noise and more still images, and based on how my videos perform, I think most of my followers feel the same. BUT, I do like the idea of posting them on stories for close friends only. So that will officially be a new Shorties Perk! I have a backlog of quite a few that never made it to Instagram, so I will be posting them pretty regularly. If you’d like to become a paying subscriber, you can upgrade your subscription here.

9. It was Frankie’s birthday on January 22nd. We forgot.

   

   She’s four! A happy 4th birthday to all your pandemic puppies as well.

10. Speaking of old ladies, I’m getting a colonoscopy on Tuesday. Technically, that’s something that will happen in February. Good times!

Alright, that’s it for my January wrap up. Gonna try to do a recap like this at the end of every month, in addition to whatever else I feel like writing about. By the way, I loved answering all your questions about my job last week, and plan to answer more Q&A questions next week.

Have a great weekend!
xo, Ilana