Currently, she's implementing her ideas in her family's 1844 brownstone, just a few blocks from the shop. Mahar and her husband, architect Morris Adjmi, were in the middle of renovating their home when they learned she was pregnant with the twins. The project stalled when the babies arrived—two months early and weighing just three pounds each—and had to stay in the hospital for eight weeks. Then Eli had to have heart surgery. "The doctor still talks about how composed I was—but really, I didn't have a choice," she says. "It was like, okay, we have a problem, how do we solve it? I didn't have time to have a breakdown."
Eventually, with Eli and Miles both home and healthy, she was able to turn her attention back to the remodeling. "Morris and I are good at doing a neutral core," says Mahar, who was a partner in her husband's architecture practice before turning to retail. "Now I want to add us into it." Slowly, room by room, she's filling in the clean, stripped-down space with furnishings.
So far, she considers Emmett's "studio"—the room where the whole family tends to hang out—her biggest success. In keeping with Montessori's ideal of tidiness, the playroom is neatly lined with jars and bins full of interesting art supplies: Japanese origami paper, intensely colored Caran d'Ache crayons, big wooden paintbrushes. "I believe in giving kids tools that really work," says Mahar. And everything, from the light box Emmett uses to study veiny leaves to the low hooks where he hangs his jacket, is situated at his level.
In the twins' room, the orientation is even lower. Mahar hung mirrors and photos at baseboard height—just right for Eli and Miles, who are at the crawling stage. "Children at this age are very interested in faces," she explains. Some decorating ideas, however, haven't panned out. Mahar had vowed not to use cribs, which Montessori discouraged because they keep babies from exploring their surroundings, and instead placed a futon on the floor for the 1-year-olds to share. Everything was fine until Eli and Miles started pulling each other's hair and biting each other's toes. Reluctantly, Mahar installed two cribs. "Montessori," she says drily, "never talked about twins."
