Half Dot Brooklyn

At the Museum of the City of New York, we managed to catch the Eero Saarinen exhibit before it closed. And one floor above, a collection of pieces from MoMA’s Low Cost Furniture Competition with a chair by Saarinen and Charles Eames. Ah yes, their much coveted designs really weren’t supposed to cost as much as they do now.

Waiting for his dad inside Bergen Street Comics before we head over to Brooklyn Larder to get some incredibly delicious baked goods.

A couple of new (to me) places I’ve started tuning into recently:

Ink+Wit, for a good dose of letterpress and the goings-on in the world of print design

Junior Society – not your typical pretty-designy-children’s-products blog, this is a great place to go for ideas about things to do with the kids, and the vintage old school illustration bent to it definitely makes it easy on the eyes.

Recently confirmed things about kids:

They are naturally helpful beings, contrary to what Hobbes and Machiavelli thought.

According to the marshmallow experiment (reenacted here), there’s some direct link between a kid’s ability to sit in a room unattended with a big fat marshmallow and his or her future academic achievements.

And most recently from the NY Times’ 9th Annual Year in Ideas, that infant sleep is destiny – good sleeping habits in babies lead to better executive-funtion abilities in childhood. Hm, alright, that seems to be aiming a bit high. My son sleeps about 11 hours a night (and my husband and I thank our lucky stars for that) and all that I expect is he’ll have lots of energy to play when he wakes up.

And onward we go, a whole new year of possibilities just waiting for us discover. Cheers!

A few of the places online that I often like to stop by: scout holiday for a good dose of high fashion, minor details for designer baby things, lunch to see what my friends are eating, and camilla engman for a glimpse into life as a swedish artist.

I wonder what our kiddo thinks as he looks around at the blanket of snow around him.

In shop news, the winter sale continues (and certain sizes in our most popular styles are almost sold out). And we are shipping throughout the holidays so your little ones can start off the new year wearing Half Dot!

A warm afternoon in the kitchen, we baked strawberry shortcakes, the kiddo ate his first strawberries curiously. Happy birthday little man!

My little son is one!

It’s been such a crazy and exciting year, watching our little baby grow into a fiesty kiddo with spikey hair, and such a delight to finally fit him in the Half Dot coats that I designed before he was born.

It has also taken one whole year for me to reflect and begin to talk about how I was afflicted with hyperemesis gravidarium (HG) for the eight months I was pregnant. HG often gets misdiagnosed as a bad case of morning sickness, but it is a debilitating and life-threatening disease for both the mother and baby that if left untreated leads to weight loss, malnutrition and dehydration due to unrelenting nausea and vomiting. HG is like morning sickness gone wrong – intensified exponentially with no end in sight.

It’s hard to be a happy mama when you’re that sick, but thanks to the support of loving family, optimistic friends, and careful doctors, I did alright. When we didn’t have visitors coming over to cheer me up, I kept myself busy with work. I was just starting Half Dot at the time, and I really have it to thank for helping me not fall into a hole of misery and self-pity. Each morning I’d wake up hoping to get a few things done. Each completed task – a design drawn, a fabric purchased, a sample sewn – was a small and proud victory. And as Half Dot grew from an idea into real little plaid coats, I started thinking ahead, imagining my first trade show, Half Dot’s webshop debut, and a healthy happy little son running around in a Half Dot coat.

A year has gone by, I am fortunate and blessed, because all these things have happened.

Now I’m thinking ahead again, to next year when I will link Half Dot to the HER foundation to help increase HG awareness and funding for research, to my new line of spring/summer outerwear, and to many more adventures in the city with my husband and little son.

It finally feels like winter here in New York City.

When it’s so cold outside your ears hurt, it’s time to look for things to do with the family indoors: see Beetlejuice, Batman, and the rest of Tim Burton’s original cast of characters, stop by the Bauhaus labs so the little ones can create their own Bauhaus-inspired masterpieces, and if you happen to be downtown, head over to Moomah for warm meal in an arts-and-crafts haven for kids.