Getting out of the house

When you’re home all day with two kids, it’s easy to feel like you’re losing your mind. To avoid that horrible stretch of time between 3:30 and YES! THANK GOD IT’S ALMOST 5:30 MATT IS COMING HOME, we’ve been taking lots of day trips. To the Aquarium in Norwalk, the beach in Westport, Yale campus in New Haven. Now that Maddie is getting bigger, she can ride in her car seat without complaining and it’s easier to go places. We all appreciate going on little adventures.

Don't feed the sharks.

The second kid has it better than the first, in my opinion. Maddie gets to play with Nina all day long, the house is full of noise and laughs and big kid toys, and we parents have had time to practice and know what we’re doing. For a long time after Nina was born, we were sure she would be an only child. Doing it all once was hard enough. But as Nina grew up, everything got easier and having another one seemed like a good idea. And it is. Lately Nina has been showering Maddie with love and affection. Before bed the other night, Nina said, “Maddie is sweeter than any candy. I even love her more than watching movies.” Does it get any better than that?

Buy Your Weekndr Schwag!

We’ve officially gone commercial!

Today we launched the Weekndr.com store on CafePress where you can buy greeting cards, T-shrts, post cards, mugs, and more featuring hand drawn illustrations by not-so-well-known artists from the Weekndr family.

If you’re not familiar with CafePress, it’s an on-demand printer that sells merchandise of all sorts, from greeting cards to mugs, which can be customized with your images. When you order an item from the Weekndr store that product is printed just for you. That means no inventory. What a concept.

Show your support for Weekndr and struggling artists everywhere, shop now.

Video: Life in slow motion

Life in slow motion
video produced by Weekndr on Vimeo.

Playing around with the Casio EX-F1 slow motion video. This is what it looks like to have a lot of fun at one-tenth the speed!

Buy It On Layaway

Kmart economics: Buy it on layaway.

 

I saw a commercial last night in which Kmart touted its layaway plan for this year’s holiday shopping season. Layaway is not a new concept at Kmart, but the idea of paying in installments for something before you get to own it does seem revolutionary in this age of the credit card.

Thanks to the current economic woes, the pay-to-own model seems to be making a comeback. In fact, several retailers are embracing the concept in a renewed way (see the short list). I think it’s time the Weekndr family did too.

Layaway seems so old fashioned, but that’s only because we’ve been living through an economy that encourages buy-now-pay-later. And why not? Credit card companies saturate us with gift offers and low interest rates. In college, I applied for credit cards mostly as a means to avoid doing laundry: I got a free T-shirt, they got my obligation of debt.  

I don’t expect we’ll become Kmart shoppers anytime soon, but it might be time to stop spending money before we have it. 

– Mr. Weekndr

Barack the vote!

We’ve been alternating between giddy highs and despair, thinking about the possible results of this election. So we voted early, as a family. There were no lines at our polling place, a middle school, and we sailed right through. It seemed too easy, and I felt almost paranoid afterwards (what if I filled in the ovals too much, and they throw away my ballot?) 

 

You can bring your kids into the voting booth, but they are not allowed to touch your ballot.

Afterwards I drove the girls to New Haven, where we wandered the streets of Yale’s campus, me admiring the cast of autumn shadows on the gothic brick buildings and Nina jumping over sidewalk cracks as the day of treats unfolded (a Hello Kitty doll at Urban Outfitters, chocolate covered graham crackers at Starbucks, a postcard at the Yale University Art Gallery).

I’m awaiting news of the best treat of all: an Obama win.

-Mrs. Weekndr