September took as much out of me as it gave right back.
September used to feel like a soft landing, the final stretch of summer before everything turned cozy. These days, it may be the busiest month of the year in our house. Labor Day closes out the summer. Margaux has a birthday. Charlie has a birthday. At work, we close Q3 and host our biggest virtual summit of the year, which, for a work nerd like me, feels a little like Christmas morning, the corporate edition. This particular September also included work travel three weeks in a row.
It was a month of waking my girls with cuddles and kisses, negotiating deals, smiling at daycare videos of them running around with their friends, and then trying to make dinner while tying up the final loose ends of the workday.
When I talk about building a life where ambition meets delicious living, this is what I mean.
The internet tends to offer working mothers two competing narratives: Either we can “have it all,” or we are constantly failing someone. But I’m increasingly convinced there’s another option:
What if we simply let ourselves enjoy it all, without manufacturing guilt about the work we love or the life we love?
I don’t want to give up my work. I don’t want to give up my life. I am willing to hold both. And I trust myself enough to know that if this life ever stopped working for me or my family, I would change it. That trust is my pressure-release valve.
I don’t need to solve tomorrow’s problems today. I just need to savor all the goodness of the work and the life I get to experience right now, and then wake up tomorrow, grateful that I get to do it all again.
So today, I’m closing the chapter on a very full September: what we celebrated, what I discovered, what I loved, and what I’m looking forward to in October.
September Highlights
September started with Labor Day weekend in New Buffalo. At the last minute, my mom offered to take the girls two days early, which meant Ronnie and I got to be home, alone, in our own house. This has not happened since practically December 2022, when I got pregnant with Charlie. Imagine going nearly three years without being alone together in your own home. I didn’t know what to do with my hands!
I wrote. I cleaned. I took a two-hour walk along the river. Ronnie and I decided at the last minute that we didn’t want to cook, so we got dressed and just…went to dinner. No logistics. No babysitter coordination. We simply left the house, sat at the bar, ate oysters, and drank dirty martinis. It was incredible.
On Saturday morning, we joined our littles at Yaya and Papa’s house in New Buffalo. We shopped, played at the pool, and visited both the farmers market and Farmette, an outing that has quickly become one of Charlie’s favorite rituals.
The following week, our sweet Margaux turned one. My baby is one! I took a few hours off that afternoon so we could make the day feel special. We picked the girls up from school early and took Charlie shopping for a birthday gift for her sister. Charlie wanted to buy everything in the store, naturally, but we eventually settled on the sweetest little stuffed ballerina doll from Mon Ami. Then we went to choose Margaux’s birthday cake, which Charlie also thoroughly enjoyed. We finished the day at home with taco night, Margaux’s favorite. She loves beans and rice so much that she practically turns into beans and rice while eating them, which meant the evening inevitably ended with bath time. Afterward, I had two incredible-smelling babies who wanted to snuggle before bed.
If I could have made one wish that night, it would have been to bottle up every sensory detail of holding Margaux on her first birthday: the weight of her body in my arms, the smell of her skin, the plumpness of her cheeks against my lips, the scent of her wet hair after a bath, and the way her delicious little thighs squish outward when she sits on my lap. When I am eighty and my girls are off living big lives of their own, this is where I will go in my dreams. Back to moments like this one, desperately wishing I could live them for real just one more time. Nights like that remind me how often I wish time away, and how much better I want to become at savoring it while I’m still inside it.
The next week was the girls’ birthday party. We did a theme because ya girl loves a theme, and this year’s was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. The party started with a craft: Each kid made a pair of binoculars before heading out on a scavenger hunt to find the bear. Their hard work paid off when they discovered a 93-inch stuffed bear waiting at the end. Our enormous new roommate has been lovingly named Ghosty, and he is, hands down, Charlie’s favorite new member of the household. We ate hot dogs and s’mores and let the kids party until 10 p.m. Watching them organize their own fun, coloring, playing Duck, Duck, Goose, running up and down the hill, holding hands, and dancing in circles, was truly the best.
Charlie has the greatest group of friends at school, and it was so much fun to connect with their parents outside the chaos of pickup and drop-off, when we’re all shifting from the end-of-the-workday mental load into the beginning-of-the-evening-parenting mental load. Saturday has a certain “take a load off” energy. It was lovely to watch everyone smile, connect, and finally let their shoulders drop away from their ears.
Then came Charlie’s birthday. Our little mama is three! Or, as she will tell you, three and a half, or sometimes eighteen, depending on the day. I wish I were joking. She is such a vibe. I cannot wait to meet her at eighteen. I can absolutely wait to meet her at eighteen. She was overjoyed by all the gifts she got to open, and keep opening, for the week following her party. We started this tradition last year and decided to bring it back: Instead of opening every present during the party, she chooses a few each day afterward. Mom hack worth noting: There’s less chaos for me because I’m not managing twenty presents’ worth of wrapping paper all at once, but it also extends the joy of each individual gift. She gets SO excited about whatever she opens, plays with it for a while, and only moves on when she’s ready. It’s a much better experience than opening twenty presents in a row and becoming overwhelmed by what to play with first.
I guess it wasn’t all just kids birthday parties, we also had a moment away from the girls to see the hilarious Jared Friedman at our local comedy joint. He is one of a kind funny. What a guy! 10/10 recommend putting him on your list of comics to see. I won’t be surprised when he pops off after his first Netflix special. To that end, Jo Koy also has a new standup out on Netflix!!! I haven’t watched it yet, but typing this reminds me that I need to.
September is ending with a work trip to Asheville, followed by a flight to New York to meet Tasha for her birthday and our little girls’ weekend away. Because I wanted to be present for both trips, I wrote and scheduled this edition before either one happened. More on those adventures next month!
Favorite Discoveries of September
I know I wrote about Le Labo in my August note, but I’ve continued working my way through the City Exclusives collection, and I have officially found my favorites.
Tabac 28 is the winner. It’s the Miami scent, and it has so much depth and texture: musky, smoky, and almost chocolatey, with this incredible tobacco note running through it. Tubereuse 40, the New York scent, is my other winner. I can’t choose between them. I love them equally and differently. A few other things I loved this month:
Minneapolis in a day. I met my team here for meeting prep and coffee, and here for debriefing and focaccia sammies, and the city did not disappoint.
These Italian import ceramic plates from Lakeside Goods in New Buffalo.
The Five-Star Weekend on Apple TV. Jennifer Garner is so cute in it.
The return of The goop Podcast!
Away backpacks for kids. Freaking adorable. The girls both got one for their bdays.
These Mon Ami Ballerinas. This is what Charlie picked out for Margaux for her birthday (and she picked one out for herself too LOL).
This super chic hairbrush. I now have two. Hate to admit!
Looking Ahead to October
The house is officially dressed for spooky season. The Halloween pillows, pumpkins, skeletons, and mugs are out, and we’re welcoming the return of chilly mornings and moonlit evenings.
After celebrating with Tasha in New York, because girls’ trips are good for the soul, and so is New York in the fall, the Caldwell family is heading to Clearwater for vacation. We rented a killer Airbnb and will be traveling with two other families, all with little kids. I cannot wait for the sun-soaked days in the pool and humid evenings spent bopping around on the golf cart. We also decided to fly our Sunday nanny down with us, so I’m looking forward to enjoying a few breaks from the kids during vacation, too. I will report back!
Once we return from our travels, I am going full-send pumpkin mode. There will be pumpkin patches. There will be pumpkin carving. I hear pumpkin bedazzling is a thing this year, so there will be that, too. You can’t stop me, and I don’t care. We’re going as “the Moanas” for Halloween, and I am quite literally the most excited person on Earth. Ronnie is Maui. I’m Moana’s mom. Charlie is Moana. And Margaux is Hei Hei. I hope the days of full-send family costumes never end. Give me all the trunk-or-treats, Halloween parties, and trick-or-treating.
I also cannot freaking wait for The Kardashians to return on October 8 and Nobody Wants This on October 22. October is the month that keeps on giving. How exciting!
All right…here’s some cuteness for the core-memory archives.
