On December 6, 2021, I received an email in my inbox saying that I had been selected to purchase tickets for Adele's Las Vegas Residency, "Weekends with Adele." It was a long process which included submitting a profile to prove I was a "Verified Fan" and not a robot, winning a lottery to gain access to the Ticketmaster room in which I would have the opportunity to purchase a ticket IF THEY DIDN'T SELL OUT IMMEDIATELY.
Seeing Adele perform was on my 40 Before 40 Bucket List which I wrote on my 30th birthday, four years after Adele's previous album was released and she had no new music on the horizon. This was also before Adele damaged her vocal cords and announced she will take a break from singing. And in 2017, she said she will never tour again and had to cancel two of her shows due to a vocal cord injury. All of this to say, that if I wanted to hear Adele's voice live, it was now or probably never. I was determined to get tickets to this show because I do not live my life with regrets. The original plan was for two of my girlfriends and I to go together. But when the time came for me to enter the Ticketmaster room and purchase the tickets, they were both at work and it was difficult to coordinate the logistics and all of the tickets got snatched up within minutes. I was disappointed and heartbroken that I might not have the opportunity to go to this concert. But I had the option of staying in the Ticketmaster room for an hour. After ten minutes, some tickets started popping back up for sale (probably from expired carts). Every time a ticket popped up, I clicked on it to try to purchase it, but it would be sold already. As the minutes ticked by, so did my hope. I had nothing to lose so I stayed in the room and kept trying my luck. By some act of god, with literally one minute left until the room closed and I got kicked out, a single ticket popped up and I purchased it without a second thought.
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It's a very exciting day--the lineup for BottleRock Napa Valley has been announced! Three day tickets are already sold out and one-day tickets go on sale on 1/12/2023 at noon.
When my husband and I went to BottleRock Napa in 2017, we were thrilled to see the number of children in attendance. While we didn't have kids of our own yet, we knew that we would want to start building our family soon. It was fun to imagine one day returning to BottleRock Napa with kids of our own. Many people are surprised to learn just how family-friendly music festivals are. In fact, we took our son when he was one year old to Coachella and wrote a post about it called, "Take Your Baby: Music Festivals." At Coachella, other parents were happy to see our baby and told us that we inspired them to bring their own children to music festivals in the future. Now, with our three-year-old daughter and five-year-old son, we are planning to head to BottleRock Napa for a single day. Because the atmosphere of BottleRock is more laidback, relaxed and spread out, it is the perfect first music festival for little ones. If you are contemplating taking your children to BottleRock, here is some important information to know: When it comes to finding easy dinner ideas, it doesn't get any easier or quicker than this dinner recipe for Stir Fried Chicken, Veggies and Noodles with only three ingredients. The secrets are store-bought coleslaw mix (for example, bags of shredded cabbage and carrots from Trader's Joe's, Whole Foods or basically any grocery store), rotisserie chicken and packages of Momofuku noodles that come with their own packets of sauce.
This recipe makes 4 servings, with a cost of approximately $6 per serving (can be cheaper depending on where you shop). Shortly before my son turned four, he decided that he wanted to wear dresses. He had seen his sister wearing dresses for two years and asked to wear a dress like her. So I pulled out a larger sized dress from the garage and put it on him. He wore it for an hour or two and then asked to take it off. A few months later, he and his sister went to a Frozen themed birthday party and were requesting to watch the movie whenever they got screen time. My son asked to wear a dress so he and his sister could be Anna and Elsa. The two of them ran around in their dresses singing “Let It Go” for a good chunk of the morning. When it was time to go to school, he asked to take the dress with him so he could be Elsa with his friends. When he came home, he told me that his teacher wouldn’t let him wear the dress. That was my first glimpse into the fact that society hasn’t come as far as I had hoped in challenging traditional gender stereotypes. My second glimpse took place last night at my parents’ house. My mom was talking about which dress she was going to wear to a party and my son said he wants to wear a dress too. My mom quickly responded with, “You can’t wear a dress. Boys don’t wear dresses,” knowing that that’s not what we believe in our family and not what we’re teaching our children. Thems were fightin’ words and I had to protect my son. One of my core values and goals as a parent is to think critically about what I teach my children, not simply do things the way they’ve always been done, especially with beliefs and practices that do more harm than good. My mom and I eventually hugged it out and I saw this as the beginning of a much longer conversation, a topic that will be revisited. I know that these deeply ingrained gender norms, toxic masculinity and fears of the feminine will take a lot of time and effort to dismantle. But the work needs to start somewhere. 5 Reasons Why I “Let” My Son Wear a DressHappy New Year! This was hands-down the hardest year of my life but it taught me the truth of my own strength, the capacity of my patience and the depth of my love for my family. This was also the year I finally started going to therapy weekly and realized recently that I had lost my joie de vivre. I had put aside many of my dreams in order to survive. It was almost like I was waiting for my life to happen to me, to become a “grown up” so I could do the things I've always wanted. In 2022, I will reclaim my exuberant enjoyment of life--my joie de vivre--and to rediscover my passions and what makes me feel fulfilled. After all that’s happened in the past two years, isn't it an absolute privilege be alive right now?! My 10 New Year Resolutions for 2022
In late June 2021, I received an email from the editor of People Health, a health-focused special edition of PEOPLE that's distributed in doctors' offices around the country, with a print run of 500,000 copies. He wanted to know if I would be interested in sharing my battle with shingles and be on the magazine's cover. My initial thought was that this can't be real. I researched his email address to make sure it was from the Meredith Corporation (it checked out), reread his email a dozen times, talked it out with my husband who convinced me to take the plunge. "When else will you get a chance to be on the cover of a magazine?" He made a point. Over the course of a month and a half, I was interviewed, I scouted “shooting locations” around our home and outdoor spaces and sent photos back to the photo editor and shopped for outfits for our family. When I would have conversations about tasks with my husband, Steve, and say things like, “People magazine wants me to send over outfit options,” we would both giggle. On the day of the photoshoot, a crew of five people set up around our house, front yard and backyard. There was the hair and makeup person, the photographer, her assistant, and two guys in charge of lighting. A huge breakfast that could feed an army was delivered to our home at 7 am and set up outside. I was glammed up, Steve was helped to “look like he had slept for 15 hours.” The photographer gave a Facetime tour of our property to the photo editor who was in New York. There was a wind machine, dance music, the photographer telling me to jump and swing my arms and smile big with my chin down (which feels very unnatural to me). Every 15 minutes, my nose was powdered, lipstick reapplied, stray hairs tamed. It was all very surreal. Any latent hopes I may have had about becoming a model were quickly dashed as I exclaimed, “Modeling is too hard! I feel silly and awkward and I’m doing a terrible job.” Needless to say, I was NOT a natural. After 2 hours of taking pictures, during which time Luna was our most cooperative child, we ended the photoshoot with a water fight in the backyard and it was amazing. I finally felt comfortable and in my element. I never could have expected something as painful and terrible as Ramsay-Hunt Syndrome to happen to me and at the time, I felt like I was passing through actual hell. But I also could never have anticipated what I received in return: a much greater appreciation for my health and my incredible support system, the value of rest and self-care and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share my story and be featured in a national publication. I had to cut out all of the magazine except for the pages with my story so the file would be small enough to post on this blog, but you can read it here: ![]()
Every year as the season slowly changes from summer to autumn, as I feel the cool crispness in the morning air, I find myself craving comforting soups and all things pumpkin.
I recently signed up for a CSA produce delivery box from Farm Fresh to You which has encouraged me to cook with veggies I normally wouldn't pick out myself at the grocery store, like Lacinato kale and acorn squash. The inspiration for this stew was actually a ribollita soup because I had a big bag of ciabatta bread I needed to use up but I discovered this morning that it was already too late. What resulted instead is a creamy, hearty, and incredibly delicious stew packed with protein and veggies. I served it with garlic bread and I would highly recommend you do the same. The Take Your Baby series busts the myths and misconceptions of places and activities you aren't "supposed to take your baby." My philosophy is: if you loved to do it before having kids, you can do it now!
To many, babies and wine are like oil and water, they simply don’t mix. To others, like myself and the many kid-friendly wineries in Napa Valley, there’s no reason why you should give up the pastime of wine tasting when you add a baby or two to your family. Wine tasting with babies in Napa is one of the things I get asked about very often. Over the past three and a half years since we had our son and then our daughter, we’ve gone wine tasting with them about half a dozen times, each time to a different winery. Our most recent trip was on Memorial Day 2021 and that presented its own set of complications that stemmed from trying to explore while the world was figuring out how to return from the pandemic. Throw two toddlers into the mix who never want to sit still, and it was a recipe for a stressful afternoon. In hindsight, I would say that we were not as prepared as we should have been and we learned what to do and what not to do when wine tasting with a toddler or baby. Keep reading to learn my tips for wine tasting with a baby, toddler or kid and 15 family-friendly wineries in Napa Valley and beyond. Exactly one year ago, I vowed to spend 2020 pursuing and practicing gratitude. At the time, there was so much to look forward to: a new job, a few trips to Disneyland, the wedding of one of my dear friends and all the festivities that come with it. I thought it would be a breeze to find something to be grateful for every day.
But the universe knew better. The universe knew I needed a challenge. Shortly after January 1st, it seemed like something went wrong in big and small ways every day. I was forced to do for a year what I had once considered emotional torture. Before this year, my worst day was a day spent at home. How was I going to find gratitude for a house that seemed to be falling apart, unemployment, sick family members, isolation? Little did I know at the time, focusing on gratitude would not only be possible, it would be the thing that saved me. It’s never all bad just like it’s never all good. Even though it seemed like the world was unraveling around me, there were moments of pure joy and contentment in each day. What will I remember most from the last 365 days? The decadent meals, slowly and lovingly prepared; the giggle of an infant and a toddler; making eye contact with the love of my life when our child does something so cute my heart wants to burst; a leisurely morning with no plans that turns into a water fight; cozy movie nights cuddling under an oversized blanket; spontaneously blasting the music and dancing around the living room; making a mess while baking on Saturday mornings; impromptu FaceTime chats with friends and family at random hours of the day; cheese and bread made from scratch that we would have normally bought at the store; my kids becoming best friends little by little. Maybe deep down in my core, I knew this year would be different and that is why I didn't make a list of goals like I usually do. Because I now know that any resolution I had made would not have been fulfilled. The expectations were low so the chances of failure were also low. But oh, how I failed! This year broke me down into a million raw pieces that I sometimes didn't recognize. I felt like I failed as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a friend, as an employee. Too many evenings, I looked at the clock hoping it was my kids' bedtime. Too many nights, I slept alone in bed because my husband was awake to take care of our infant, and too many nights, I dozed off during our moments together trying to reconnect. Too many dinners, we ate frozen food or take-out because I was too burnt out from cooking every meal. Too many times, I forgot to answer a text or wish my friend a happy birthday because the day slipped away from me. Too many hours wasted being distracted with anxiety, doom scrolling the Internet, expecting to find a glimmer of hope. Too many hours my kids spent watching TV so I can catch up on laundry or use the toilet in peace. And at nights when my babies were dreaming and the house was quiet and I had plenty to do but nothing to do right now, came the Great Exhale. Breathe in deep and count to ten. Exhale. Repeat. Repeat. The pit in my stomach eases. We made it through another day, another week, another month, another ten months. We survived. I can’t believe my daughter is turning one tomorrow and I will have two toddlers. Plus, it officially feels like winter in Los Angeles so I’ve spent the past few weeks working on her winter toddler capsule wardrobe, documenting the process and now I’m ready to share it! Why Curate a Toddler Capsule Wardrobe?I’ve personally been wearing a capsule wardrobe of about 30-40 pieces for five years and can sing its praises high and low--less stress getting dressed, less laundry to do and put away, better for the environment. So when I had children, I applied the capsule wardrobe approach to my kids; I’ve done an infant capsule wardrobe for my son and daughter and a toddler capsule wardrobe for my son and now my daughter.
What do I mean by "a realistic toddler capsule wardrobe"? Too many capsule wardrobe guides for toddlers include about 15-18 pieces total (one I found had 18 pieces total, four of which were shoes and one of which were sunglasses). Other than that, they include only 3-4 shirts, 3-4 pants and 3 pajamas and assume that parents will do laundry every day. That is so not me or any other working mom or dad I know. I am able to do laundry on one day a week, two if I’m lucky, and my kids’ clothes need to last until laundry day. On top of that, toddlers are messy humans. They get food everywhere, they find and play with water any chance they get, they pee or poop through their clothes. In our house, my younger toddler goes through about 3 outfits a day plus pajamas. My older toddler is good with one outfit a day, sometimes two if we go on adventure to the dog park or beach, and a pair of pajamas. We are potty training our son and he’s been doing amazing but we’ve still allotted him two pants per day just in case. Let’s do the math for my one year old’s capsule wardrobe: 3 outfits per day x 7 days + 1 outfit so she has something to wear on laundry day = 22 outfits (this can be any combination of tops, pants, rompers, etc.) and 7 pajamas. You can even do fewer pajamas if some of your every day clothes are comfortable enough for sleep. For fall and winter capsule wardrobes, we also need to think about outerwear. I usually include three sweaters, one raincoat, and one warm jacket. Keep reading to learn about the process of curating a toddler capsule wardrobe. |
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AuthorChristina is a Los Angeles-based writer, photographer and marketing maven. |