weston john mulroy

here was kevin's announcement to friends and family:

"At exactly 9:59 am this morning, Weston "Wes" John Mulroy karate kicked his way into the world, kissed both biceps, drank a cup of nails, and wrestled a small boar.

He's 7.4 ounces, has a clearly defined chin dimple, and is currently accepting feats of strength requests."

and up above is a pic of the little guy taken yesterday, almost 6 weeks later!

Life in Brooklyn

I guess we’re not doing a very good job of convincing the Brooklynphobes that we didn’t go off the grid when we moved to Brooklyn Heights. We were back home recently when a family member asked, “So does that mean you live with the Puerto Ricans now?” Not exactly.

Our landlords in Brooklyn live in the apartment above us. Ed is a shuffling, nebbish ex–lawyer in his early eighties with coke-bottle glasses and an endless supply of slow-to-develop stories. Anne is a scrappy, 70-something, sharp-faced woman who writes instructions and emergency phone numbers with perfect penmanship. They are very nice people who, once we declined multiple invitations to Sunday mass, decided to stop letting us use their over-sized washing machine.

Ed told us his family has owned the building since it was built in 1902, and informed us that he was born in the very room that we’re planning on turning into the nursery. I tried not to think of Ed in diapers, and failed. Crissy responded politely.

As for the neighborhood, it’s a lot like Sesame Street, if Sesame Street were gentrified by young urban professionals and old Jewish retirees, and invaded by a nation of baby strollers and dogs. For some reason, our street turns into the Bourbon St of trick-or-treating on Halloween, with considerably less boobs.





I think I mentioned that our place is far bigger than the shoebox we left behind in Tribeca. Which meant that we had to buy new furniture to fill up the extra space. Thankfully, Crissy and I don’t argue very often. Apparently, we like to save it all up for IKEA.

So to avoid clawing each other’s eyes out over particleboard dressers and rice paper lamps, I dragged Crissy into a series of filthy, asthma-inspiring furniture stores all over Brooklyn to look for “deals” on old furniture. We flirted with hepatitis at least ten times before settling on a couple chairs from Urban Outfitters and calling it a day.

So here we are, just a few months away from the must-have Brooklyn Heights accessory: Baby #1. Our place is really coming along and starting to feel like home. The nursery is beginning to fill up with boxes of baby furniture that I’ll have to get off my ass and put together one of these days. Which is fine. It’s the thought of future trips to IKEA that’s making my back sweat.

The official announcement

So it’s been nearly two months since we moved to Brooklyn Heights. Highlights of the move included the previous tenant’s shit all over the apartment the day we moved in, resulting in our 80 year old landlord’s inability to get inside to clean the place, resulting in eight years worth of refracted pee on the wall next to the toilet.

But that’s ancient history now. Our place is big and clean and (mostly) pee-free.

Then there’s our neighborhood. In Tribeca, our window was right at the intersection of two one-way streets and a dead end. Nearly everyone driving down our street discovered this fact 10 feet below our window, and decided that the most effective way to correct the problem was to hold the horn. Not honk. Hold.

Now? The silence is almost holy. It’s angelic. Now when I walk Franny at midnight in my underpants, there are no homeless people to scoff at how slovenly I’m dressed, no blacked out strip club patrons, no Fresh Direct trucks idling outside our bedroom window, no dim-witted protesters, no sketchy Fox news vans, no quote unquote mosques as a next door neighbor.

It’s nothing but tree lined streets and brownstones and dogs and babies. In short, people just like us…

Well, almost like us.

Our baby boy isn't due until May.

change of pace

Well, we did it. We found a new apartment. After a monthlong search, Crissy’s organizational booster rockets exploded out of her eyeballs, and she rode both of our brokers’ lazy nutsacks right into a beautiful three flat in Brooklyn Heights.

It was really impressive the way she pitted these bastards against each other, ramping up the competition, and lighting a fire under both of their asses by doing our own simultaneous Craigslist search. If we’re paying these sons of bitches six thousand dollars to find us a god damn rental unit, Crissy was gonna make them work for their money.

We haven’t covered this much in the blog yet, but we decided to move to Brooklyn almost a year ago. Since then, everyone in Manhattan has been trying to give us a big city pep talk, like moving to Brooklyn means we’re throwing in the towel and moving to South Dakota.

Have you looked on the Lower East Side?? Have you considered the Upper West Side?? Have you considered a refrigerator box alongside the West Side Highway?

The answer is yes, we have. We’d love to stay in Manhattan. But we want more space, and last I checked, we don’t manage hedge funds. Because the starting rent for a clean, bedbug-free 2 bedroom in any decent neighborhood is just over four grand a month. That’s if your broker is lucky enough to find you one, after you’ve been anal raped by…er…paid them their fifteen percent cut.

On top of that, it’s starting to feel like TriBeCa is conspiring to drive us out of the city. The anti-Park51 community center demonstrations are heating up (the loudest and dumbest was this past weekend on September 11th), the sound of the construction surrounding our building can only be described as warlike, and NYC’s hottest summer on record served up every foul, repulsive, soul-melting stench this city has to offer.

Don’t get us wrong. We love you Manhattan. But we’re ready.

P.S. Here's a pic of some of the horses asses parked outside our apartment this past weekend. More on that later...

details, details

They had to go there, didn't they.

curve-breakin'

A lot of people ask for money on the subway. All of those people should be pissed at this guy's group of curve-busting panhandlers, who bust out full-on breakdancing routines on moving trains.

I'm not talking about some half-assed robot either. I'm talking backspins, handstands, backflips.

Yes, backflips.

all fun and games till dad gets gunned with a hose