Let's Start the Year with an Actual Newsletter

Happy New Year everyone! We just got back from a ski vacation in Vail, Colorado (although we are still there on Instagram) and like usual, I am both sad that our winter break is over and excited to get back to my daily routine. Namely, this newsletter, which I feel like I have been semi-neglecting over the past few months. I think I neglected it for three reasons:

1) There is a lot going on in the world that I don’t feel comfortable writing about, and when that happens, I often get stuck and feel like I’m not allowed to write about anything else. Silence is like my punishment for not positively contributing.

2) Since last March, when I went viral on Tiktok, I have really been focusing on creating my “day in the life” videos, which unfortunately, take up a considerable amount of time. I know that not all of my old school followers like them, but they are really working for me at the moment. Not just in terms of sponsored opportunities and what’s performing well on social media, but even more importantly, what feels right in my current stage of parenthood. Before the DITLs went viral, I was struggling with where to take my platform, as I tried to respect my kids privacy and make my content more about my life rather than theirs. Tiktok threw me into a NYC algorithm, as opposed to a parenting vertical, which has honestly been life-changing for me in the best way.

3) When I first started this newsletter, I had this idea that I would write posts about important topics in a format more like long form journalism, and then somewhere along the way, I realized I am not a journalist, that’s it’s own full-time job and trying to pretend otherwise is actually really hard.

So, one of my resolutions this year is to use this newsletter to get back to the simplicity of old school blogging. Personal stories, musings and community building. Important topics are still out there for the taking when I’m feeling it. And photos, of course! Substack has just launched a gallery option that I’m super excited about. You can even click the individual pictures to enlarge and have more of a slideshow experience. Wheeeee!!!! Here’s a sampler platter of how my family celebrated the holidays:

It has also come to my attention that most people on Substack use their newsletters like actual newsletters, with a list of life updates, recommendations, links, etc. so I think for my first newsletter of 2024, I’m going to give that a try and see how it feels.

Let’s start with a family update!

Mazzy has now been in high school for four months and I know many of you are curious how it is going. The answer is great! She’s got a bunch of new friends, she’s currently playing on the JV basketball team, and she’s doing really well in all her classes. I have never seen her work so hard in her life, but in like, a good, manageable way. I feel like the workload is challenging but also achievable, which is perfect. The school puts out really clear expectations for students, and Mazzy, who has never had real grades until now (she went to a very progressive K-8 school) is rising to the occasion. I honestly could not be prouder. Her high school experience is also giving me newfound appreciation for her K-8 education which I previously had doubts about. I can talk about that more in a follow up post!

Harlow is also doing awesome. She is now in her third year at a school for kids with language based differences (she was diagnosed with dyslexia back in 2nd grade) and is reading like a champ. She is still behind grade level wise, but catching up, with a much smaller gap than ever before. Before the break, she got the part of Matilda in the school play (they do more of a musical revue than the whole show, with three different Matildas, but she does have her own solo song) and she was one of four students in her grade elected to the school council! Our next decision will be whether to keep her at this school because she is having so much success there, or deciding that she is ready to go back to a mainstream environment. But we probably won’t make any changes until high school.

Apartment update:

Can you believe that it will be two years in February since we moved to Tribeca? I can’t either! But the good news is, we are very happy here and we have decided to renew our lease for another year. I imagined that we would be buying something at this point, but apartment prices and interest rates are out of control, so at the moment, unfortunately, it just doesn’t make sense.

House update:

In lieu of purchasing an apartment, we have decided to finally renovate the interior of our house on Long Island. Gonna get rid of that cat cabinet in the kitchen for good! I am incredibly nervous and have a lot of complex feelings about this (as I’m sure longtime followers understand), so I’m going to table this discussion for now. But it is happening. We have our first call with our designer (we went with someone local) on Thursday.

Book update:

Last year, I wrote the first draft of a children’s book, which has been a personal goal of mine for years. Based on several of your recommendations (thank you!), I submitted it to a literary agent who specializes in children’s books and she signed me toward the end of 2023! Now we are working on fine tuning the rhyming pattern before submitting to publishers, which is a larger task than you would think. All children’s books are judged on “readability” which means that anyone who picks the book up will know how to read it aloud with the correct intonations, and what I have come to understand is that the way I read something out loud is different than how most people read things out loud… so a rhyming pattern that sounds good to me, doesn’t necessarily work if I’m not the one reading it. Does that make sense? Anyway, we will chalk this one up to a work in progress.

March Hare update:

About a year and a half ago, Mike and I, along with our friends Karen and Andrew, bought a tiny toy shop in the East Village called The March Hare, to save it from going out of business. There was a learning curve in figuring out how and who was going to run the place and now that we have most of that down, we need to focus on how to make it more profitable. The shop on it’s own breaks even (thanks in part to a ton of good local press from big media outlets like NBC News, the Strategist and Secret NYC), but this year, we want to figure out how to better leverage our online presence.

We had a lot of online success initially with our holiday boxes (with repeat buyers for Christmas and Hanukkah last year, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Passover), but did not have nearly as many sales with our summer boxes or this year’s Christmas and Hanukkah boxes. I’m not sure if this is because we promoted too early (since Hanukkah was early this year) or because interested customers have already bought several boxes and don’t feel the need to buy another one, or if we just made poor choices for the main toy options this holiday season. I’m also wondering if the surprise aspect of the box is working for us or not. For those unfamiliar, the holiday boxes include a main item you can choose (we usually have 5-6 options) and 4-5 smaller classic toy surprises as well. They are good surprises but you don’t know what they are until you purchase and open your box. For instance, for Christmas this year, the surprise toys were a slinky, a Smurf figurine, a wooden yellow taxi from Candy Lab and a holiday themed wind-up toy. FYI, we change the surprises every holiday, so there is never a repeat. We are currently deciding whether to do a Valentine’s Day box this year, so I would love your opinions in the comments!

The other area we did really well with was our t-shirt sales, but that’s obviously hard to replicate with the same audience. A lot of people requested totes, so we made totes, but I feel like the algorithm did not work in our favor when I promoted them, so the sales weren’t as strong. Our next piece of merch will be crewneck sweatshirts with a hot air balloon design (also based on many requests), so please keep your eye out for them!

In addition, we’ve been steadily building up our online inventory so we can sell more toys via our website, although the site itself has limited functionality and sometimes it’s hard to see everything that’s on there. If you go to the site, be sure to click “categories” for the best way to sort through everything that’s available for online purchase.

Okay, I have a much longer list of smaller updates I wanted to get to, but I think I’m going to save them for the next newsletter. One of my Substack issues is that I often try to do too much at once and then get overwhelmed. Like, did you know that most Substack articles are 2-4 minute reads and mine clock in at closer to 12? And I wonder why I have a hard time keeping up!

Here’s to a steady drip in 2024.

I love you all and thank you for following!

xoxo, Ilana (aka Mommy Shorts)