World City – An Escape to an Urban Oasis with Music, Dance, and Art

This Saturday I woke up early and rushed to make breakfast, go for a run and get the girls ready for another treat at the W.M. Keck Foundation Children’s Amphitheater at Walt Disney Concert Hall. World City — a free event for families with an international roster of performers and artists — is the type…More

Little Barn’s Play Space for Kids Opens Downtown

Downtown Los Angeles might not immediately spring forth images of the Brady Bunch, but if you go to Grand Hope Park on Saturday mornings you will see a group of parents that refuse to move to the suburbs just because children joined the family portrait. The conversations range from scoring tickets to the Yo Gabba…More

School Search: Solano Elementary

It seems like I have been looking for a school since Bella and Iza were kicking in my belly: first there was the traumatic daycare hunt that aged me five years, then the pre-school stressor and now the hovering animal called Kindergarten. To keep other Downtown parents from my fate, this series will showcase schools…More

Baby oil, barbies, and purging

Do you think the mind has selective memory? The electrician that wired my nervous system must have been a self-taught handy man because he got everything backwards. Every now and then I concentrate on my younger years and I try to summon a pleasant memory but only flashes of scenes appear; so briefly that I…More

Raw Feelings

My grandma died this week and my feelings are in a hell of a mess; I can’t seem to focus on anything without thinking about the next task, the next thought, the next pain. My abuelita was one of the sweetest characters you would ever want to meet, she was like the old school madres…More

Iza, cupcakes, and coffee

For any parent that has had to take goodies to school for a class party, birthday, or potluck- this story is for you- I’m sure you can relate. I found out I had to take some sort of snack for Bella’s Valentine’s party two days ago.  Snack for Bella, snack for party, for Bella, for snack-…More

Winter makes me lazy

I woke up at 5 a.m. today and it took me about 15 minutes to roll out of bed.  I couldn’t find my work out clothes and my throat was dry.  I was about to go back to bed when I remembered that I can’t give up so easily so I looked some more and…More

Running and Walking

So here is my daily dose of exercise- give or take a few. I wake up at 5 a.m. and go down to our gym and run 20 minutes.  It’s harder to run right after you woke up because your body is still half asleep so I only recommend it if there is absolutely no…More

I love my neighborhood

How awesome is it when you live in a neighborhood that people are learning to love and yet it is still underappreciated.  It means that you enjoy the growing number of restaurants that have sprouted throughout downtown’s micro-neighborhoods without reservations (except for that darn delicious Church and State – you always have to call a…More