Sitting Outside My House on the Phone with Monroe Alvarez

On self-publishing, just doing the thing and learning to love being in the kitchen (even if your kid doesn't eat your food) 🥕🍓

Sitting Outside My House on the Phone is a monthly interview series featuring moms doing cool things, their stories, what they’re into and resources for moms!

---

Monroe Alvarez is an L.A. based photographer, author, co-founder of Grlswrl, a community for women and skateboarding, and founder of the kids clothing line, Koko Momo (“Koko” being her 4 year old son, Koa, and “Momo,” being herself 🥹). Her book, The Kids Table, which is part cookbook, part photo book, part journal, came to be after Monroe started talking with friends about the challenge of feeding young kids. As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy preparing food, Monroe got the idea to photograph families within her community cooking together, collecting their easy, tried-and-true recipes along the way. What transpired is a no muss, no fuss book made up of real families sharing simple food that, fingers crossed, your kids (and you!) will love.

I think the concept is genius and the book itself is a true testament to who Monroe is, thoughtful, intentional and endlessly creative. Not to mention that The Kids Table was self-published, something that I’m sure many of you are curious about. I loved getting to know Monroe, so let’s go ahead and jump right in!

Monroe with her book, The Kids Table!

C: What does a typical day look like for you and your family?

M: It depends on the day. I wake up, it’s always a struggle to make breakfast because the kid just wants to play and won't let me do the thing in the kitchen. But, we play in the morning, take him off to school and then I’m either in a photo shoot all day or I’m driving from warehouse to warehouse to warehouse to deal with Koko Momo stuff or I'm at home doing computer work. My husband's at his office in Venice. When we pick up Koa we always like to do something fun, whether that’s going to the office because the office is on the beach or getting ice cream or going to Jiu Jitsu. We come home. His whole world right now is Ninja Turtles, so we play Ninja Turtles. We have our swords, we have our katanas, we've got our bo staffs. At night we either try to make dinner or we order in and then go to sleep and do it all over again, right?

C: Sounds about right. How do you organize your days across the different things that you do?

M: Girl, if you could figure that out for me. I'm so ADHD. I’m working on one thing, then I think of something and I go do that thing and then I think of something else and I'm just all over the fucking place. I have a very scrambled mind, but I'm so addicted to working that even if I am all over the place, I'm still getting the work done.

There are days where I legit can't focus. I struggle. I'll stare at a computer screen for 10 minutes reading the same thing over and over and over again and it's not processing. On those days I have to go on a walk or check out for a minute. The worst thing for me is just sitting at my house. I can't function like that. I have to get out and work somewhere else or work at my husband's office or work at a coffee shop. I don't even know if I answered that question.

C: No, you did. I work the same way and sometimes I’ll get down on myself and think I need to make a better schedule. I have a thought and I'm like, “Oh, I have to go do this.” If you're working from home, my kid is here, and yesterday he wouldn't take a nap and I was just like, “Oh my God.” So, it's nice to relate.

Koko and Momo 💘

M: Sleeping in before a kid was not acceptable for me. My body would feel gross. Just the idea that I was in bed past 7:30 AM, I was like, “Oh, I got shit to do.” I would always work from 7:30 in the morning to 10:30 AM. From 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM, something about that block, my brain doesn't work. My best working hours were always 7 pm to midnight, but I can't do that anymore. My kid doesn't even fucking go to sleep - sorry for all the swearing, I swear like a sailor - he doesn't go to sleep until 10 o'clock. It's a nightmare because at school he still naps and if it were up to me, he wouldn't be napping anymore. On the weekends he doesn't nap, so he goes to sleep at 7, but since he still naps at school, he's not going to bed till 10 pm and we go to sleep together. We co-sleep. I lay with him until he falls asleep and half the time I fall asleep. If I don't, then I'm too fucking tired to work after that. That whole peak brain hour for me is gone now.

C: It's so tough because you figure these things out about yourself, right? Where you’re like, “Okay, I know that these are the hours that I'm the most creative and I can get stuff done.” It's just interesting how many ways having a kid changes things.

M: I was thinking on the car ride home from dropping off Koa, it's incredible how adaptable humans are. We're so adaptable. Especially moms, we just fucking figure it out.

C: I wrote about this the other week, that I didn't realize how resilient I am until I became a mom. That resilience piece for me was really big. What are you currently loving about being a mom and what are you finding the most challenging?

M: I'm at a really fun age right now. Koa is my best friend. We can talk about our feelings. If we yell at each other, we apologize. Even him, he'll say, “I'm sorry I yelled,” and it's really nice to be able to communicate like that.

We'll walk down the street and hang out and talk about life and school. What was hard about ages 12 to 24 months for me was that we didn't have that communication. He wanted to tell me everything, but he couldn't. Now we're at that fun place where he can. That's what I'm loving. We cook together, even though he doesn't eat any of my food, it's still fun to do those things together.

Koa and Monroe in their Koko Momo. Beware: If you like matching with your kid, Koko Momo will have you by the throat with their actually cute t-shirts.

The hardest thing for me, and I don't know what it is about me, I’m sure it’s the same for a lot of people, but I get so easily triggered with whining and tantrums. I'm learning as a human to just breathe through it. It's a control thing, too. I have control issues. Flying in a plane, scariest thing in the world for me because I can't control it. When he's having those meltdowns, I can't control that. That stuff is really hard for me.

C: Yeah, I totally relate. I think the newborn phase was really hard for me because, exactly what you're saying, I didn't know what I needed to do. He couldn't tell me what was going on. But, now we're really entering the tantrum age -

M: - How do you handle it? What do you do?

C: (takes a breath) I've been crowdsourcing. Like, what do you do? (laughs). I do the same thing. I take a breath. The other day I could feel myself getting triggered because, I don't remember what he was…oh, we were supposed to pick up my husband from the airport and he woke up from his nap freaking out, like, so upset. I had to step out of the room for a second and just take a breath. Then I went back and I got him. We couldn't go pick up my husband because it took him a long time to calm down. But, yeah, sometimes I have to step away and take a minute because I don't want to yell and that definitely has happened.

M: It’s so hard.

C: It’s so hard!

M: Sometimes it just vomits out of you and I'm like, “Oh, I didn't mean to say that!”

C: I know, I know. But I do really value what you said: you repair, you apologize. I think that that's something that our generation specifically has really been big on.

M: Just being accountable for your actions.

C: Exactly.

M: I love my parents, but I didn't grow up in a family of communication. It's still hard for me, but it's easier for me to communicate with Koa versus anyone else and for me to apologize for things which is great. I want that for us.

Fam bam.

C: How do you think motherhood has impacted you creatively?

M: I always say that babies bring abundance and it's so true. It just propels you. I want him to have people to look up to and I really want those people to not be random. I just want to make sure I show up and have him be proud of me and I want him to have memories of me working and of him working with me.

I started Koko Momo when I was ten months pregnant. I'm so inspired now by families and kids and there's so much more meaning to life and creativity with a little human who lets you see life all over again for the first time.

C: It's really inspiring talking to you because you're someone who has an idea and they just do the thing and I don't think a lot of people have the courage to do that. It's really awesome.

M: Thanks. Yeah, I used to be that person, too. When I was 26 or something, I started making leather camera straps just for fun. I saw how interested people were and how they were wanting to buy them and that moment changed everything for me. I thought, “Okay, if you build it, they will come.” I know that I'm my biggest enemy, so if I'm overthinking shit, it's never going to happen. If I don't do it right now, it's not going to happen and that's with everything. It's almost like being in your own naivety bubble and just going for it. I'd rather try and fail than just never try at all because that's the biggest form of failure for me.

C: When you said the thing about being in your own naivety bubble, that resonated with me because we’re very similar in the overthinking piece of it. I've realized that if I'm going to do something, I really do have to put blinders on and be like, “I can't care about what other people think.” I have to just do the thing. I feel like I gained a lot of that through having my son and for all the reasons that you said, like you want them to be proud of you. But, let's talk about The Kids Table. How did it come about?

Banana muffins from The Kids Table (I’ve made these and can confirm they’re 💯)

M: I've never been one to enjoy kitchen life. Having a kid has really made me face that and I wanted to change it. He’s a picky eater and I think that’s who he is, but I wanted to know how other families were doing it. I would have conversations and ask, “How does your kid eat? How do you get them to eat?” Even if I knew that they were also picky eaters, that just made me feel better. We’re in the same boat. I noticed a lot of families were struggling or food was a huge pain point in the family dynamic or it was the most beautiful thing, one of the two.

I know that I'm my biggest enemy, so if I'm overthinking shit, it's never gonna happen. It's almost like being in your own naivety bubble and just going for it.

I wanted to dive into that conversation a little bit more. I asked one of my friends, “Hey, can I come over and shoot you and your kids cooking?” I did that and I thought, “Oh my god, this is so cool and so fun.” Cookbooks for me are so intimidating. I think that's why I never really dove into the kitchen that much because it's this professional chef who has all these beautiful recipes and all these special ingredients that I don't have. It felt like a lot. I wanted to know how normal people were cooking. I don't want to learn from a chef. I want to know how my neighbor is cooking. What are they doing for their kids? That's how it started. It took two years to complete the whole thing.

C: I wanted to ask you about that because when I was looking through it, the photos are so beautiful, the questions that you ask the families are so thoughtful and then you have the recipes. There are 22 families?

M: Yeah.

C: That makes sense that it took that long.

M: It’s tough when you're balancing kid life and work life and asking someone to shoot with their kid in the kitchen. The scheduling is hard. So, it took a long time. But, I've never worked that hard at something or to complete something. I need an immediate result. With this, I really took my time and spent a year and a half shooting and then six months designing the book. As a photographer and a creative, when I shoot something and look at it a week later, I hate it. I don't want to look at it again. I don't want to see my work. It was cool in the moment, but I don't want to look at it again. With this, I'm so proud of it and I can look at the pictures in the book all day long and still love it just as much.

C: That's a great feeling. On your Instagram, I read that you self published, and considering this is Substack, I think everyone would be really interested to know what that journey was like.

Hoping this was taken at 7 pm and not 10 pm for Monroe’s sake. Either way bedtime cuddles are the best.

M: Because I’m not a chef, I don't have a following in the food world. It would have been a really hard sell for a publisher to take this on, especially when this book is 500 pages. It's not necessarily a cookbook. It's so many things. There's no direct avenue for this book. I knew it would be hard to pitch, so I didn't even bother. I’d heard from so many people that it could take years to publish a book and that they can just buy the idea from you and you don't own any of it. I wanted my control over it and to put it out right away. I have all these families in the book, their kids are getting older. I didn't want to wait.

I found a printer - it was such a nightmare - I found a printer and six weeks into it I was confirming that I was going to go with them. I got the sample done and they ghosted me. I was emailing them saying, “Okay, I'm ready to put in my order.” Oh my God, their website didn't exist anymore. The emails started bouncing back. I wanted this out for Christmas. I wanted this to be a holiday book, people buying it for their families and that happened. Then I found a printer overseas and it worked out great because it ended up being a little bit cheaper. It's more upfront cost, obviously, as a self publisher. But anyone can self publish. It's easy, especially if you're just writing a normal book without pictures, you could publish through Amazon.

I bought a certain amount of books and that's it. That's all you do. I highly recommend it for a lot of people, unless they're trying to become authors, which I'm not. This is just for my community. This is for the people that I love. But if I want to do volume two and someone wants to pick it up, great!

C: We're at the rapid fires. Finish this sentence, “Motherhood is…”

M: Wild.

C: Accurate. What is your craziest mom moment in one sentence?

M: One sentence?

C: Fine, you can elaborate.

M: This isn’t the craziest moment, but it’s a crazy mom thing. I swear me and Koa are telepathic. We can read each other's minds, we're that linked. That's a crazy mom thing for me. I know exactly what he's going to say and sometimes, I bet it. I place a bet in my own head with myself. Sometimes I'm like, “Okay, we're talking about this. I bet he's gonna say this” or if we have things he can choose, “I bet he's gonna choose this, but then change to this,” and he does it. It’s just wild to be that connected to a human, you know?

C: That's so cool. I mean, the mother/child connection, I don't think there's anything like it. What is your current motto?

M: Don't overthink it.

C: Mine too. What is, this one might be hard, well, these next two might be hard, but what is your favorite The Kids Table recipe?

M: Oh, that's easy. It's the one that we do the most. It's Elena's recipe for the banana muffins.

C: Actually, I have a bunch of overripe bananas and I was thinking of making those muffins.

M: They’re so easy to make.

C: Okay, that's good to know. What is your favorite Koko Momo piece that you make right now?

M: I'm obsessed with all the tie dye, it's so fun. I have a whole new tie dye collection coming out in two months.

C: That's exciting. We're gonna watch this space!

That’s all for now. See you next week!

xx

C

You can find Monroe on Instagram and her Substack

Monroe Alvarez

. All photos courtesy of Monroe Alvarez.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.