One year in — and a proper hello

How "can I take my kid?" became something bigger

Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or just found me last week — hi. I’m Erica.

I’m a Brooklyn-based mom to a toddler named Charlie and a dog named Avery, married to my husband Steve, with a second baby coming this winter. I grew up in LA but I’ve called New York home for more than a decade now.

When Charlie was born, I became a little obsessed with figuring out which restaurants actually worked for us as a family — not just “kid-friendly” in theory, but the real stuff: was there room for a bassinet, would they warm a bottle, could we get a table without a two-hour wait with a newborn. Restaurants have always been a core part of my life and my NYC experience, and I wasn’t ready to lose that just because I had a baby. But finding real answers was harder than it should’ve been. So I started this Substack for other parents who wanted the same thing — to hold onto that part of city life instead of giving it up. That question — but can I take my kid? — became the whole reason this newsletter existed, restaurant by restaurant, answer by answer.

And for that first year, that really was most of the newsletter. I dove in headfirst — bassinet-friendly brunch spots, the best patios for a diaper bag the size of a duffel, which restaurants would seat you at 5:30pm without judgment. It was useful, it was fun to write, and honestly, it still is.

But somewhere in the last year, I noticed something: once you start asking “can I take my kid,” you end up asking a hundred other questions too.

If you’ve been reading recently, you’ve probably felt the newsletter quietly widening. I promise my content will still feature restaurants, NYC guides and tips for eating out with a baby or toddler. At its core — that’s not going anywhere. But just like New York is about so much more than its restaurants, this has grown to be about more than that too. And it’s not just NYC’s aperture that’s widened, mine has too. New parenting challenges keep surfacing new things I want to figure out and share — big moments, small wins, favorite parks and activities, travel tips, the whole fuller picture of raising a kid here. The city keeps revealing more of itself, and so does this next stage of parenting. So naturally, this newsletter is doing the same.

And that widening is exactly why I want to talk about how I’m structuring things going forward.

There’s a new chapter starting for us, too. We’re expecting our second baby this winter, and it’s already got me thinking about what I want to share here and how. A lot of what’s coming this next year — the transition, the prep, how Charlie adjusts to becoming a big brother, all of it — is exactly the kind of thing I want to write about honestly. But it’s also the kind of thing that feels different from a restaurant review or a park recommendation. It’s more personal. And the more personal this newsletter gets, the more I want to be thoughtful about who I’m sharing it with.

So here’s what’s changing:

What stays exactly the same, forever: the restaurant recs, the NYC guides, the “where do I take a toddler when I need to leave the apartment” posts — all of it stays free. That was the original promise of this newsletter and it’s not going anywhere. If you need it, it should be there for you, no barrier, whenever you need it.

What’s moving behind a paywall: the posts that go deeper than a recommendation — specific milestones, transitions, the candid and unfiltered parts of what this actually looks like day-to-day. These are the deeply personal pieces of my life, and they deserve a little more privacy than the rest of what I share here. Consider the paywall my way of reserving them for the people who are here on purpose — you get more of me, the more you show up for it.

What doesn’t change: me. Same voice, same honesty, same “don’t buy that, buy this instead” energy — just with a little more of me in the parts that matter most.

Thanks for being here — whether that’s since year one, or just since today. More soon. Some of it free, some of it earned.

xoxo,

Erica