Urban Mama

A Year In the Life

We moved to the DC burbs one year ago last week. Here's a quick look at the past year in Urban Mama land:

• April  2007: We tearily bid farewell to our Brooklyn home, our New York lives, family and friends and move to downtown Silver Spring, Md. Our new apartment is 300 square-feet larger but 300 times more boring than our former place. The kids go to a cooperative preschool in DC; The husband starts working at his new lawfirm, and I deal with navigating life as a freelancer in DC.
• May 2007: I make my first return trip to NYC for the Tribeca Film Festival.The husband and kids join me, and we visit many friends in Brooklyn and my brother's family in Queens. I cry through the streets of Tribeca wondering why we moved.
• June  2007: We discover a family friend's niece is a realtor down here and start looking for a house. The husband and I celebrate our sixth anniversary. The kids and I enjoy going to the apartment building's pool most afternoons. We return to NYC a second time to house and dog-sit for an acquaintance in Brooklyn. We once again feel seriously homesick.
• July 2007: We find a house we really like but by the time we're ready to to bid, someone else has already put in a contract. The following week, I find a newly listed home, and my awesome realtor gets me a preview. After the husband visits during the Open House, we decide to put in a contract the following day. The contract is accepted, and the closing is set for August. We go to NYC a third time and live it up once again. The husband and I go on our one and only flight of the year -- at trip to New Mexico for our dear friend Elizabeth's wedding.
  
• Aug. 2007: I quickly realize the "flu" I think I have feels eerily like first-trimester symptoms. But surely that's not it, since I have an IUD. The husband remembers we have an old, unopened pregnancy test I can take. There's a faint, faint, barely-there line. After four more tests and a trip to the hospital, we come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, pregnant. We close on our house, and I nearly vomit at the proceedings. The Schmoop starts kindergarten.
  
• Sept. 2007: We move into our new house, and I realize that there is no way I can unpack while still having the actue pukeyness of first trimester life. I decide to have a homebirth and meet my amazing midwife for the first time. We rack up a lot of new-homeowner expenses. My mom comes to visit for the first time since we moved. I turn 31.
  
• Oct. 2007: No more morning, noon & night sickness. I start getting to know my neighbors and realize this suburbs thing isn't as bad as it first seemed. We celebrate our first Halloween (as parents) outside of Brooklyn. Despite missing the crowded streets of NYC, we're delighted not to have to deal with mobs of kids outside of every stoop.
• Nov. 2007: We go back to New York for the Marathon, where we stay directly on the marathon's path at our friends' brownstone.The Schmoopette turns three! We host our first holiday -- Thanksgiving with 2/3rds of my siblings and their families. The cousins have a ball running around the house. I cry when my last sibling leaves town and wish we all lived in the same city.
• Dec. 2007: We host our second holiday -- Christmas with my mom, my in-laws and one of the husband's aunts and her family of three. For New Year's, my oldest brother comes down with his brood and we thank God for my mom making it another year with cancer.
• Jan. 2008: My mom has to have surgery that leaves her with a colostomy. My siblings and I are on the phone with each other several times a day. She pulls through and stays at my sister's in Central Florida. I feel helpless being 30+ weeks pregnant and unable to go down and help.
• Feb. 2008: The Schmoop, our Superbowl Sunday 2001 baby, turns six on Superbowl Sunday. The husband turns 33 three days later. We have an un-Valentine's Day "Lost" celebration, but our plans for a last-hurrah weekend away go to pot when the husband's case schedule interferes. I have early contractions and am advised to stay on modified bedrest for a few days. No baby, though.
• March 2008: We (well, OK, *I*) have our third child in a birthtub in our basement rec-room. It's my most fulfilling, empowering birth experience. Life with a newborn begins again after a three year and four month break. We all fall in love with our new itty bitty boy. Our family feels complete, but I still yearn for another birth and a baby sister for the Schmoopette. The husband feels quite differently and schedules a vasectomy.
• April 2008: Here we are one year later, and although we still (and maybe will always) miss living in New York, we have grown to love our little butter-yellow home with the white picket fence. We have many blessings to count down here -- our neighbors, our old friends, our new friends. And our family is larger by one tiny person we all adore.

In Praise of Good Neighbors

Since moving to our new home six months ago, we've become close to two sets of neighbors. One family has four girls, ranging from almost seven-year-old twins to a 15-year-old. The mom is an awesome baker with a small dessert catering business. The other family has two girls: one in elementary school and one in middle school. Both families have been a godsend since we moved -- lending us household appliances, helping the husband move furniture, providing much-needed "new homeowner" advice and, most importantly, babysitting the kids. They are very different families -- the one with two girls are fellow Obama supporters, the one with four girls are apolitical; the two girls go to a posh DC private school, while the four girls all attend public school, etc -- but they are all amazingly caring and generous, and they have made me (especially since the husband works long lawfirm hours) feel at home on this block.

Twice a week, my neighbor L -- the baker -- has her 15-year-old daughter pick up the kids and walk them across the street for dinner and a playdate. It's not only a two-hour break for mama, but it's a great time for the kids, who are quite attached to the twins. One of the twins has even decided she and E are a "prince and princess." The regular visits often end in a doggy bag of food for the husband and me and home-made treats by a professional baker. What could be better?

My other neighbor, M, was so concerned about me one day she brought me a take-out dinner. When I called her later on to ask how much I owed her, she shushed me and said "Don't even think about it. We're neighbors!" Since I'm usually on the receiving end of the favors, I was thrilled when in one week M and L needed to borrow sugar and milk, respectively, for recipes. A couple of afternoons later, when I was feeling particularly energetic, I hosted the twins for a playdate while L delivered desserts to a VIP client. The girls were great, and it was good to repay the generosity.

As much as I loved living in New York, we never had the stereotypical "cup of sugar" relationship  with our apartment neighbors. We were friends with various building mates, but we didn't rely on each other on a regular basis, so this sense of community is all new to us. What I love about my neighbors is that they aren't necessarily people we would've seen ourselves bonding with, but here we are, forever in debt to the way they've treated us since the day we moved in!

Do you have amazing neighbors? Tell me about them.

The Flying Tent

This morning I was oddly interrupted while making the kids oatmeal for breakfast. Someone was the door. I assumed it was DHL or FedEx delivery. But when I opened the door, I realized it was a bundled mom I couldn't quite recognize.

"Hi, I live in the block behind you. Do you have a blue tent?" she asked.
"Yes, I do," I replied.
"The wind blew it into my backyard, and before I could grab it, it flew into my front yard."
"Omigosh, really? My tent is in your yard?"
[Looks at my belly] "I'd help you get it, but it could be in the street by now, and it's too big to just drag into my house. And, I don't know how to take a tent down.
"Yeah, my husband put it up, but I'll go get it right away. Thanks for letting me know."
"No problem"

So I scooped up the oatmeal into the kids' bowls and quickly assessed the situation. Bundling them up and getting them buckled in the car would take another 10 minutes. And if the tent was in the street, that could mean disaster. I told the Schmoop, who was home sick due to an overnight asthma attack, to watch his little sister, turned on my alarm, switched on the TV to Noggin and did the unthinkable -- left the kids alone in the house. I raced to the street behind ours, and thank God, the tent was still in the neighbor's front yard. It had gotten stuck between a tree and a street sign.

I don't know how I got the tent down. I called the husband to whine about the situation (read: blame him for not taking down the tent despite the ubiquitous weather reports of record-high winds). I was angry, frustrated, worried about the kids, and filled with an adrenaline rush to just get the damn thing down. While I was hustling with the tent, I actually fell (the neighbor's front yard is on an incline). At one point a mother and toddler who live across the street opened their door and stared at me but said and did nothing (what could a mom with a barely-walking toddler do, I guess). The whole thing took less than 10 minutes, which is miraculous as I have never, ever taken a tent down before! I managed to shove everything in my trunk, get back in the car, and rush right back to the house.

The kids were exactly where I left them -- eating their oatmeal at the breakfast counter. Now, I know many of you have zero-tolerance for what I did. But I had images of this huge tent -- my huge tent! -- causing a multi-car pileup on the curvy avenue we live off of... I just had to get it ASAP, and looking back on the morning felt like I had no choice but to put on a coat (over my pajama pants and maternity sweatshirt) and secure that tent!

So we won't be leaving the tent out in crazy weather anymore. And I won't be leaving the kids home alone again. And lastly, I can't help but add that Eureka! makes one helluva sturdy six-person tent! Despite it's little cross-street trip, the tent is perfectly fine.

Giveaway update: Last week's holiday giveaway winner is Christina. Please email me with your home address, Christina, so I can send you your prize

Class Meme

From Deirdre

“Devise a list of 5-10 courses you would take to fix your life. It’s more fun to be in classes with friends, so include one class from the person who tagged you that you’d also like to take. Tag five.”

1. Organizational & cleaning skills (with Deirdre): I am clueless as a housekeeper, and I know it drives the husband batty. I wish I could pretend it's cathartic or fun the way some of my friends feel, but I just don't like to clean or organize. I have a high tolerance for messy surroundings.
2. Cooking for idiots: I can bake and follow a recipe, but I don't really know pretty basic things about cooking, like how certain vegetables should be stored, what ingredients can act as substitutes for each other, how to properly chop, etc. I wish I could take some sort of Home Ec. course for adults.
3. Interior design (another Deirdre pick): Other than tearing out pages from catalogs, I don't know how to put furniture together so rooms look good. We haven't graduated from the grad-school look of hand-me-downs, Ikea and the occasional higher-priced item.
4. Sewing: Several of my close friends are amazing seamstresses. They sew, crochet, knit, etc. I never learned how to do any of those crafts. My mom is to blame: she doesn't sew either, so there was no one to teach me!
5. Playful Parenting: I love hanging out with my kids, but I don't always know what fun projects to do with them if they're not in a creativity kids set. I wish I could be more like my old friend Kindness Girl, for whom playful parenting comes so naturally. I have to work at it.

House Hunting Take 1

Today was my first official day of househunting with my realtor, Cecilia, who is the niece of my late aunt's best friend. Got it? Yeah, it took me a while too, but Mami assured me she'd treat me better than a stranger, and I think she was right. Cecilia and I saw seven homes, and I could only really see us living in three of them. It was surprisingly entertaining to walk around and imagine whether a particular space would make a good office or playroom or secret sitting & reading nook. Of course none of my daydreaming included our actual stuff -- I was thinking more along the lines of the Thomas Moser showroom: handcrafted rocking chair, benches, perhaps even a swing. Who cares if most of our real furnishings will come from Ikea or Crate & Barrel -- it was my daydream, dammit!

Two houses were eh. Two houses were *nearly* perfect (one was farther away from downtown than we want to live, the other had a smallish and enclosed kitchen). Two others had a lot of charm and history but needed too much work to be feasible. The last one was huge and old and lovely, despite needing a laundry list of updates. I wish I could be like Chris and renovate an amazing old home, but right now we just want a place that will suit us without bankrupting us. I'm optimistic it will happen in the next few months (keeping fingers crossed that we stay in a buyers' market a bit longer!). Then feeling rooted will just come naturally. I hope.