Miss us last week? Jamie spent Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, eating mussels at a country club, and making eye contact with Andy Cohen at a children's museum. We are still figuring out how he ended up with a more exciting social life than us at age two, but here we are.
We were out on Long Island with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and their two kids for the long weekend. It was cold and rainy the whole time and we did not care even a little. Jamie came out of his shell around his cousins in a way I was not expecting, and I got extra hands at 28 weeks pregnant, which is its own form of luxury.
He also took his first flight, and I wrote up the full breakdown below. He was a gem. David and I caught a stomach bug at the end of the trip. Jamie was unbothered. Honestly on brand for a kid who spent the weekend in the Hamptons.
All that to say - we are back, and there is a lot going on this week.
🌱 What We’re Doing
Your week in Charlotte, planned.
The Armenian Food Festival starts Friday and that alone is enough to anchor the weekend. Three days, free to get in, and St. Sarkis does it right: beef and chicken kebabs, homemade pastries, live music, desserts that don't exist at any restaurant in Charlotte.
Beyond that: the Knights are doing a full SpongeBob takeover Friday night with a Krabby Patty on the actual menu and post-game fireworks, which is a better reason to go to a minor league game than I usually have. And if you haven't heard of KiddieCade Happy Hour, Thursday is a good time to try it: $35 for two supervised hours of play while you sit in lounge seating with Wi-Fi and a real cup of coffee. Book ahead, it fills fast.
✨ A few other standouts:
Neighborhood Ballet: Frozen: Park Ballet dancers doing Frozen outdoors in Plaza Midwood. Byrum's Florist is on-site selling flowers to hand the dancers, which your kid will absolutely want to do.
Birkdale Buds: Weekly preschool play series with different interactive events each week. No registration, just show up.
Tiny & Large: BIG Friends: 35-minute children's theater at ImaginOn. That runtime is not an accident. They know their audience.
Pineville Regional Library Update: The Pineville Regional Library is still closed due to damage from a car crash. Please be sure to check the library’s website for updates on their reopening before you plan a visit
Today is the last day to enter the Grandfather Mountain firefly lottery. Three nights this summer, they open the mountain after dark to watch synchronous fireflies, blue ghosts, and glowworms do their thing in the forest. Entry is $5, one per email address, and the window closes tonight at 11:59 PM. First round of winners gets notified Friday. Worth five bucks.
Capishe in Dilworth closes on Sunday and Ardente Kitchen by Mano Bella Artisan Foods will take its place this summer. The new concept is focused on Rome and central Italy: handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, meats cooked over fire, local produce, and flour sourced directly from Italy. There will also be a market with imported pantry staples and prepared foods.
Three baby product recalls worth checking before summer gets going.
"Relaxing Baby" Swim Floats: Blue and green inflatable floats for ages 3 to 36 months, sold on Amazon and eBay. They can flip over and submerge the child underwater. One 2-year-old drowning death has been reported. Puncture and throw it away. Do not resell or give it away. cpsc
PandaEar Portable Hook-On Chairs (Models BTC-51 and C2102): The crotch restraint can be removed without a tool, which means an infant can fall through the opening. cpsc
Guidecraft Kitchen Helper Towers: Over 25,000 recalled because the platform inside can loosen over time and detach, posing a fall hazard. There have been 11 reports of children falling. Consumer Reports
Inizio 🍕 just opened their fifth Charlotte location in Cotswold Village this week, at 2026 Providence Rd. Same deal as the others: wood-fired Neapolitan pizza, gelato, cannolis, salads, wine and cocktails. If you live in that pocket of town and have been making the drive to another location, you no longer have to.
🌳 Where We're Playing
One place we loved this week.
Splash pad season is officially here! Most of the Charlotte-area spots turned on Memorial Day weekend, which means you now have roughly 14 weekends to make the rounds before they shut off again in September. I put together a full index organized by neighborhood, with hours, fencing notes, and a few reviews.
Did you know you can fly nonstop from Concord to Long Island for around $49? We just did it with Jamie for the first time, and I have been texting people about it ever since. The Concord airport is 30 minutes from south Charlotte, has one security line, and takes about 20 minutes from curb to gate. We flew it at 28 weeks pregnant with a toddler on a late evening flight, and it went better than I had any right to expect. I broke down the whole experience on the blog: what the Concord airport is actually like, the row-blocking trick that got us a full three-seat row without buying a third ticket, and one parking deck detail that nobody warned me about.
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