My Game Plan in the New Year

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to a new year of Apparently! I took a little break from posting because we went on a three week trip to Australia and New Zealand where I did not open my laptop once, except to do some last minute high school application stuff. Then I got home and caught the COVID (they really make us pay for our vacations in 2023!), so I did not exactly get to hit the ground running. But now I’m negative, high school applications are officially complete (as of today!) and I’m excited to be back home and writing on a regular schedule again.

Last fall was probably one of the hardest seasons of my life (not bad hard, just busy hard) with both Mazzy’s Bat Mitzvah and high school applications pretty much taking over our lives. I don’t really want to answer any questions until Mazzy is accepted somewhere and enrolled (fingers crossed), so I’ll just leave you with two good things that came out of the whole ordeal. 1) We learned a lot about the schools (our order of preference is not what we expected going in and we also withdrew applications from a few schools we didn’t feel were a good fit). Before we started, I was questioning whether high school in NYC was a good thing, but now that we’ve gotten an in-depth look at each school, I feel like Mazzy would be so lucky to attend any one of our choices. I’m excited for her. 2) We learned a lot about Mazzy. What she’s passionate about, how she learns best, what’s most important to her going forward. Some of it was obvious, but a lot of it was new (like her desire to join the debate team and her interest in student government) and I feel like there was a great deal of maturation throughout the process, which was a pleasure to witness.

As for the Bat Mitzvah (which is also over, thank god), I still have so much to tell you guys. I wrote about how Mazzy did at the service (which is arguably the more important part), but I still want to share all the details about the party. We finally got all our pictures and videos back while we were on break, so I am excited to go through everything, relive the day and share more. Before the holidays, I posted Mazzy’s Bat Mitzvah montage for paid subscribers and one of the things I’m currently working on is editing it down so I can share a version with my free subscribers too.

Here are a few more things I have in the works for this year…

Apparently in my Instagram story highlights.

It’s a stupid thing that I should have done ages ago, but somehow it didn’t occur to me. Starting tomorrow, there will be a dedicated story highlight with my most popular posts from Apparently for easy referral. That way when someone inevitably asks, “can you explain what you did to your eyes?” again, I can send them straight there instead of going back to search every time. I’ll also stick Harlow’s pancake recipe in there! God knows how many times I’ve searched for that one.

The return of the Big Kid Support Group.

These are anonymous questions open for discussion for paid subscribers only. I like it this way because some topics are sensitive and more comfortably discussed in a smaller safer space. So far, there have been some really helpful threads on topics like how to talk about puberty, sending your child to see a therapist, and whether to police your daughter’s clothing choices. The next topic is going to be about helping your child navigate “mean girl” dynamics, so make sure to look for it, if you are interested. The threads used to just get sent out to paid subscribers, but now they will go out to everyone with a paywall after the question. You will need to be a paying subscriber to see the discussion underneath.

The NYC Guide.

Leah and I started creating a NYC guide right after my Iceland guide got such a positive response, but due to everything going on, I could not focus on it. I plan to go back to finish it this year. I also want to do a guide specific to the East Village with a focus on the area around the March Hare. A lot of you have been coming by the shop, particularly those who are traveling to NYC, so I would love to give you guys a plan to build a whole day or half day around the shop and really make it worth your time. Plus, highlighting the surrounding stores and restaurants would be a great way for me to continue to give back to my community.

The March Hare Valentine’s Day Box.

We had great feedback from our holiday box and I’m excited to announce the March Hare Valentine’s Day Surprise Box is now available for pre-order! We’ll be placing our order on Friday (1/13) to get everything shipped and delivered by February 14th. There is a kid box and an adult/teen box. For the kid box, you can choose from 6 main gifts (look through the drop down) and each option will come with 3-4 Valentine’s Day themed surprises buried in the crinkle paper for the recipient to find, along with a Valentine from the March Hare Fairy (who personally selected each item, obviously). Please make sure to look at the age recommendation for the main gift. We will try to tailor the surprises based on the toy you select (for instance the Ice Cream Playdough will get younger themed toys than the Carve a Stamp Kit), but for safety purposes I will say that no boxes should be purchased for kids under age 3. For the adult/teen box, you will get to choose between 3 main items and get 3 surprises. We wanted to offer the rainbow balloon as one of the options, but unfortunately, they are not available, but we do have an adorable heart balloon in its place. FYI, if you got the rainbow balloon in the holiday box, I think the two balloons would look great hanging together! We are charging a little bit more than last time because we didn’t take packaging into account when we priced it out originally, but please know, that you are getting everything at a much lower price than if you bought all the items individually at the shop. Pre-order is available for the next 24 hours only, so order now!

Experimenting with video formats.

I don’t hate tiktok anymore. Actually, since I wrote the post on how to control your social media feed, I used my own advice and manifested an algorithm that I really enjoy watching. I still think tiktok is potentially dangerous (especially if you are not aware of where it can lead you and how susceptible we all are to propaganda), so I’m not suggesting anyone join, but if you are already there, come follow me, because I do plan on experimenting with new formats and posting a lot more video content in 2023. Whether or not these videos will find their way to Instagram, I’m not sure. For the moment, I’m still posting mainly photos on Instagram and feel like that’s going very well for me, so I don’t want to change it. I imagine I have you guys to thank for that!

More than anything, I am looking forward to writing on a regular schedule again. Over the last few months, the topics I want to cover have been building up! Our New Zealand trip, Mazzy’s Bat Mitzvah party, Harlow’s reading progress, my sister’s decision to move out of the city and our decision to stay, how to focus on health and fitness as we age without reverting to old school diet culture, my favorite (possibly inappropriate) TV shows to watch with my kids, taking notes from Gen Z style, how it feels to be part of an aging generation, etc.

Please let me know what you are interested in hearing more about in 2023! This could be stuff about my life or parenting topics in general. Non parenting topics are on the table too!