Dear Will - Nine Months Old

Dear Will,

This morning at 6:45, I heard you talking in your crib. It's your morning routine these days. You start stirring around 6:30, and by 6:45, you are ready to come out and greet the day. So I went downstairs to get your bottle and then came to get you. I brought you into my room and you laid on my bed and fed yourself while I finished getting dressed. Every now and then you took a break from the bottle and you chattered to yourself while you looked around my room, happy with yourself and with things in general.

That's you these days. Happy and smiley and thrilled with all the new things that you are discovering. 

And lately, there has been a whole lot of new. Last week we packed up and moved to our new house. It was a little sad for me, leaving the house where we lived when we were waiting for you to be born, the house we first brought you home to. I remember that day so well. I sat in the backseat next to you for the thirty minute drive and I was more tired than I have ever been in my life, but I was afraid to fall asleep because the nurses and doctors in the hospital just let me leave with you and now it was my job to keep you safe. Grandma and Poppy were waiting in the driveway when we pulled in. They helped us bring everything inside, and then I sat with you on the couch in the family room and you were so impossibly tiny and it was hard for me to imagine you ever getting big.

But you did, of course. You are.

Our new house might not be the house that we brought you home to, but it is the house that you will grow up in. And it seems like you have already done so much growing up in the week that we have been there. You love playing in your new playroom, and you figured out quickly that our wood floors work really well for scooting. You sit up now, and use your left leg to motor yourself wherever you want to go, instead of crawling. It's surprisingly efficient and as a side benefit for us, really funny to watch. Before we all know it you'll be walking, and when I look out at our backyard I can practically see you running around, playing on the swing set we will definitely buy next year, and I know without hesitation that this house was exactly the right choice. 

Once day when you're older I'll drive you past our old house. I'll show you the place where I used to spread your baby blanket so we could lay outside in the sun together, and I'll show you the place on the deck where you would sleep in your chair while we ate dinner, barely taking our eyes off of you. I'll show you the place where we stumbled our way through the early months of parenthood, making mistakes but loving you in all the ways we knew how. I'll show you the place where we became a family. You won't remember it, so I'll tell you and then you'll know.

Sometimes at night I come into your room and for a minute or two I watch you while you sleep, always on your tummy with your arms tucked underneath you. You barely stir when I put my hand gently on your back and that's my favorite time of the day to offer up a prayer for you. Thank you for my baby, I say. Help me keep him happy and safe. And standing there in the dark while you're fast asleep in your crib I feel the full weight of motherhood, with all of its complexity and the startlingly simple well of love that runs through its core. 

Nine months old, my sweet Will. I know I say this all the time, but I can hardly believe it. You're getting bigger and sturdier every day and it's so much fun to watch you grow and change. But no matter what happens, you'll still be my baby.

Always, ok?

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letters:

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months

Six Months

Seven Months

Eight Months

Empty Rooms, Moving On

I surprised myself over the past couple of weeks. Going through all of the motions to get our old house packed and moved, all of the details involved in moving a whole life from one place to another, I was surprisingly unsentimental and not at all anxious about it. Maybe it was the fact that we are moving less than a mile away or my level of excitement about the new house, but my reaction was markedly different from the first time we moved when I wanted to stake a for sale sign in the front lawn and go reclaim my old life as soon as possible.

It's no secret that change is not easy for me. And yet, in the face of this one, my attitude was less "what in the world are we doing?" and more "this is great, bring it on."

Even when I stood in the new house surrounded by boxes, holding my almost nine month old baby because there was not a single dust and dirt free surface on which to put him down to play, and texting my family pictures of the chaos with captions like "send Xanax," I was feeling pretty good about it all. I just put the baby to bed early, rolled up my metaphorical sleeves, and dove in.

Sure, we still have boxes all over the place, the movers did a crappy job, my whole lower level is basically an unusable dumping ground for another week or so until we finish up some work on the basement, and there are currently three TVs in my living room. But I love this house so much, and I can see past all of this, a couple of weeks into the future, when all of the odds and ends are finished and we get down to the business of living here - my little family, making this place our own.

But the thing about being excited to move forward is that it's better not to look back, at least for a little while. And for a couple of days, I did a pretty good job of that. Having to work all week meant I didn't have a front-row seat to the actual business of moving. I didn't watch the movers put my life into boxes, and I didn't see then haul those boxes away. I didn't see the moving truck and I didn't see the slowly emptying rooms.

Until I did. 

Wednesday night I went back to the house to do a quick walk-through, to make sure that nothing was left behind and that things were clean for the new owners. I went in through the front door and my footsteps echoed as I walked through the rooms, assaulted by memories, vaguely unsettled by the spackled holes on the wall where the TV once hung, the empty blue room where my tiny baby slept, and my beloved bookshelves empty of their usual abundance of romance novels. And for the first time, I was sad.

My job done, I walked out of the house for the last time and locked the door behind me, but I left something in that house. I understand now that when we live well we leave pieces of ourselves behind in the place where all the living happens. Behind that red door of 26 Overlook Road is where I brought a baby home and learned how to be a mom. It's where I felt for the first time the kind of grief that brings you to your knees and breaks you into pieces. It's where we loved and laughed and planned and made memories. The walls of the house tell our stories. We are there, even once we have moved on.

It's strange to think about a new family living in my old house, making memories that will exist alongside mine. But this, I suppose, is life. Change, moving on, looking back. Moments that are exciting and sad at the same time. Because there is also a new red door now and a new blue room where a not-so-little anymore baby sleeps, and other rooms that are just starting to fill up, where we will make our memories and leave pieces of ourselves. 

Where we will be at home.

A Kind Of New Beginning

Once upon a time, about three and a half years ago, we bought a house. After a seemingly endless round of construction and a hurricane that derailed our plans for a couple of days, we packed up the life we had made on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I said goodbye to the city that - in a very real way - grew me up and shaped me, and we drove twenty miles north, to our new home in the Westchester County suburb of White Plains.

It was rocky at first, as new beginnings tend to be, and it took some time before I felt like I was finally home. In my new house I turned thirty and thirty-one. I went through some very tough stuff. I turned thirty-two poised on the brink of enormous change. This past June, that change arrived in the form of a tiny little boy, and I turned thirty-three as the mom of that boy who is sweet and silly and smiley and not so very tiny anymore.

The walls of our house that were once a blank slate now hold a canvas of memories of the past three and a half years. Some good, some bad, all ours. Just the way it's supposed to be.

A few months ago we decided it was time to start thinking about doing the construction on our house that we had always known we would have do someday in the nebulous future. With a baby and out-of-town family, we needed more space, but when we started talking to the people who could make what we needed a reality, we realized it would be more difficult and expensive than we ever imagined to do what we needed to do, and it might make more sense to consider moving. So we started poking around the neighborhood to see if there was a house that might be better for us.

The thought of moving to a new house though, right on the heels of a new baby, filled me with horror. The whole process - offers, negotiation, mortgage, selling a house, packing, actually moving - seemed overwhelming enough to reconsider just staying put. 

But then I saw it. That house up there. It was a gorgeous fall Sunday when we went to look at it, and when I walked through, I knew I wanted it to be mine. I could see us there. I could see my baby growing up there, running around outside and playing on the swing-set that will undoubtedly grace the backyard one day. I could see how this could and would be our forever home. That this would be the place where we would raise our family. It was perfect for us, and I fiercely wanted it to be ours.

And now, it is.

As I made some calls this morning to book movers and plan the other odds and ends that go along with moving a life from one place to another, I thought I would feel sad, and a little nostalgic. But I don't. Not this time. What I feel, is happy. Happy to be making this move - undoubtedly one that is good and right for my little family. Happy to still be living in this beautiful community that we have made ours. Happy to be selling our house to a family that I know will love it as much as we have. Happy to know that the memories we have made will follow us home, and happy to know how many new memories live in the house that we are just about to make our own.

Big change is just over the horizon and for the first time, maybe ever, I can hardly wait.

Giving Thanks

I remember the day before Thanksgiving last year, vividly. It was snowing; the very first snow of the year. I got up early to go get bagels before we got on the road to spend the holiday with my family in Pittsburgh. I was eight weeks pregnant and we hadn't told a single person. Not my parents, not my sisters, not my in-laws, not our friends. No one.

I drove through the quiet, snowy street of my neighborhood feeling a heady combination of emotions. Excited that we were going to have a baby. Worry that something would go wrong or had already gone wrong and maybe we weren't. Wonder at the surprise of it all.

It's terribly cliche of me to say, but I can hardly believe that it has been a year.

Having a baby - becoming a mom - has been nothing at all like I thought it was going to be. And yet, almost five months removed from those first turbulent, emotional, terror and tear-filled weeks, I think that maybe, just maybe, I am starting to feel steady and solid again.

At first I wanted to write that I am feeling like myself again, but that's not quite right. Because I am not the same person I used to be; I won't ever be that person again. Becoming a mom changed me in ways that I am just beginning to understand and appreciate. But I think that the most important parts of me are still in there, intertwined with the parts of me that are now charged with keeping another human being that I created happy and healthy and safe. And he is.

Life. It is complex and tricky and things don't always go the way we want them to or the way that we planned. I think that what I have learned most of all over the past five months is to be gentle with myself, and to embrace the not-knowing and just forge on ahead because motherhood is the steepest learning curve there is. I have made mistakes, both big and small, and I will undoubtedly make more.

But every night when I put my thriving, happy baby to sleep and sit on the couch with my man and a glass of wine, enveloped in the quiet of my house after a day filled with noise, I realize that I am doing as good a job as I know how to do, and really, that's the most that any of us can ask of ourselves. And I understand now more than ever that I have a life that's good. A life that is happy and rich and layered with beauty. And all of this? It's kind of miraculous.

So on this Thanksgiving-eve, as the sun starts to set over my little slice of the world and as I get ready to head for home, I am feeling a heaping dose of gratitude for the path I find myself on, for the people who walk it with me, and for this life. Exactly the way it is supposed to be.

And I am thankful.

For a growing family.

And my own little one.

For this smiley little boy. The one who was meant to be mine.

For sisters.

And for the kiddos who come from them.

For best friends.

For home.

For this life. Mine.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Three Weeks In

For three weeks, we've been a family of three. In a way it seems like forever, and also two minutes that this tiny creature has been in our lives. The past three weeks have been a blur of feedings, diaper changes, snatches of sleep, tears (mine more than the baby's), and complex emotions. 

The day I got home from the hospital I was a soggy mess of hormones, anxiety, and utter terror that I had no idea how to be a parent to this brand new baby. I walked into my house to a kitchen table covered in baby clothes, cases of diapers and wipes in the middle of my living room, and a baby bath tub on the counter next to the kitchen sink. As my wild and exhausted eyes took in the chaos that had replaced my formerly organized house, it occurred to me that barely anyone talks about this part of becoming a mother.

They talk about the euphoria and the happiness and the oh my god you've never felt a love like this. And maybe some new mothers feel like that. But not everyone. So it hit me hard that first day home from the hospital that no one talks about the other side of becoming a mother. The fear and the confusion, the tears for every reason and no reason at all, the feeling that a torpedo just exploded in the center of your life, and the guilt that you are not positively over the moon about this baby that you wished for for such a long time and that sometimes, in your lowest moments, you wish just a tiny bit that you could reverse course and go back to the way things were. No one talks about these things. We should.

Honestly, I'm still sort of sorting through it all.

Thankfully, for me, all of this complexity has been interspersed with moments where I am in awe of what we have created, and grateful that this baby is here and that he is mine. And as we settle in and form some semblance of a routine and figure out how to be parents, every day I feel a little more like myself. A little happier. A little more normal even if that normal isn't the same as it used to be.

Since this blog is a time capsule of sorts, I feel strongly about documenting both sides of the story, especially now, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here is a little snapshot of our first three weeks as parents, a terribly cute baby, and our brand new life that we are slowly learning to navigate.

Ready or Not

The clutter had been bothering me for weeks. Months, even. If you want to get technical about it, it had actually been bothering me since the week we moved into our house almost three years ago. That week where I unpacked boxes, putting away stuff that we use and wear all the time in its proper place, and tossing everything else into empty closets and drawers in spare rooms that I quickly designated as "someday." 

Most of the time I didn't think about closets and drawers filled with clothes that neither of us wore or boxes I never quite figured out what to do with but when I did my fingers got itchy and I started thinking about all the things I could do with the space but I could never figure out where to start so I ended up starting nowhere and doing something else instead, like binge watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights, or re-reading my favorite romance novel for the tenth time.

One weekend this past October I dug in and transformed the useless room downstairs into a home office, but that was about as far as I got, until last weekend.

I have been spending some time over the past couple of weeks making lists of all of the things that we'll need for the baby - things like clothes and diapers and wipes and bottles and receiving blankets and a million other things that I probably haven't thought of yet. 

Thinking about all the new stuff that we have to bring into the house made me anxious enough to remember all the stuff that is currently in the house that we don't need or use, and was enough to send me diving into those long-forgotten closets and drawers, making frantic piles of clothes to give and throw away, and using enough Stop and Shop brand heavy duty trash bags to make me wish I owned stock in the company.

On Sunday I took thirty bags to Goodwill to donate, and came home to a house that was as clutter free and as organized as mine has ever been. I sat my pregnancy-afflicted aching back on the couch, determined to do as little as possible for the rest of the day, and it occurred to me that it was a good thing I got this all taken care of, because my due date was about three weeks away.

And how the hell did that happen?

Somewhere between doctor's appointments, and my disappearing feet, and my inability to bend over and the frenzy to get everything done at work before I go out on leave and the end of my morning commute, April turned into June and then all of a sudden June is half over and the big event seems like it's minutes away.

And while practically, the end of the aforementioned back pain and inability to bend over or to sleep for more than an hour at a time or to turn over in bed without assistance makes me pretty happy, in actuality, the haste with which time is passing leaves me a little breathless. I feel unprepared. Like I am hurtling at full speed down a highway without directions and with no idea what awaits me at my destination or even, actually, what my destination is.

With three weeks to go I have this overwhelming urge to memorialize this slice of time. To somehow document the things that I am feeling and thinking in the short days before my world changes and cracks opens to welcome another human into it. Before everything is different. Before I become a mother.

But the truth is, I can't seem to grab on to any singular thought or feeling long enough to give it a name and put it into words. I suspect that one day, with the privilege of time and a little distance, I'll be able to look back on these weeks "before" with a little more clarity and some understanding, but today, it all seems to be packed tightly together and lodged somewhere deep inside of me, held down by the frenzy to prepare for the unknown and the stroller and carseat currently sitting in two massive boxes in my living room.

I also suspect that the way I feel is blessedly normal, and aside from the quick and intense desires to clean out a closet or organize a drawer, I have been spending these last few weeks enjoying the summer and doing the things that I do best: reading my books, watching lots of TV, baking my way through Smitten Kitchen's archive of desserts, and eating the delicious results.

Because ultimately, though all this newness is big and intimidating and coming faster than I ever could have imagined it would, it is a brand new chapter that we wanted and hoped for and waited for for a long time. And even though we have no idea what we're in for or what we're doing, we are determined to get this right, this making of a family, to be good at it, to enjoy it, and to figure it out together as we go.

And it's a good thing.

Because ready or not, here it comes.

Moments

I was greeted with this sky when I left my house this morning. It was early and after a night where I couldn't fall asleep to save my life, I was tired, my only thought was putting one foot in front of the other long enough to get into my car and stop for coffee before I got on the train. 

But the sky just stopped me in my tracks. After a few cloudy, muggy mornings in a row that felt more like August than May, today was clear, cool, and exactly the way that mid-May is supposed to feel.

So I took a minute, and snapped this picture even though I was running late and still had to take the cardboard boxes that have been cluttering up my entryway for the better part of a week out to the curb.

Because two minutes ago it was December and we were getting ready for a new year and shoveling snow and wondering if we would ever be warm again. But now all of a sudden it's May and I put away all of our jackets last weekend in a cleaning frenzy and our outdoor furniture is all set up and our lawn needs mowing and everything is coming back to life.

It's a funny thing, time. It just keeps on moving and there is nothing I can do to stop it or slow it down. It's a wild privilege to be living this life that I have worked for and built and nurtured. This life I am proud of and that I am excited to have unfold in front of me. But sometimes it seems like it's flying by. So I think what I can do is notice. Notice the moments - small and big - and to maybe take a minute to document them every now and then

Like a beautiful blue sky on a cool spring morning.

(Almost) Summer Afternoons Are the Best of All

I've been a little bit absent these past couple months from these pages. There has been a lot going on and the truth is, I needed a little break, mostly to breathe and to process all the craziness and change and things that have been happening in my life. I'm not sure exactly how many different things one person can work with before it's just too much, but I'll tell you that I have come awfully close to figuring it out over the past bunch of weeks. 

But it's a brand new month now and I've shed most of the things and kept the important stuff like, you know, the growing of a baby, I have things to say and stories to tell.

But first this.

This was the first really beautiful, feels almost like summer weekend in New York. So we spent most of the weekend outside. We did some gardening (and by we did some gardening, I mean, David blew the leaves and mowed the lawn and seeded and fertilized and all that jazz while I sat on the deck with a book and a drink), we cleaned up from a freezing cold winter, and we set up out outdoor couch which has been sadly cushionless and snow covered for the past five months.

And then we spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on it, while I took pictures of my most favorite view: pretty much whatever I can see from under my giant umbrella.

Simple afternoons, the ones that remind you that summer is just around the corner, where there is sun and books and drinks and birds and nothing to do but sit and take it all in, are the best afternoons of all.

Winter, We Just Can't Quit You

Even when it's March.

A Winter to Remember

Last night, we took a walk outside. It had been snowing pretty seriously since early afternoon, and while what we really wanted to do was stay on the couch and finish our House of Cards season 3 marathon, I'm co-chair of a project at my synagogue and had to be there for a couple of hours last night. With six inches and counting of snow on the streets and no plows in sight, driving there was out of the question and it was just around the corner, so I had to walk. After blasting a path out of our house with the snow-blower, David decided to make the trek with me.

My street was completely snow-covered and utterly deserted. It's not a busy street to begin with, but with the thickly-falling snow, it was like a fluffy white blanket had been thrown over my neighborhood, and we were living in the silence beneath it.

We picked our way down the street hand-in-hand, sliding a little bit here and there and laughing while the fat flakes coated our eyelashes, slapped our cheeks, and swirled around us.

I guess I could say that I'm sick of winter. That I'm tired of cleaning off my car in the morning and of wiping up my salt-stained entry-way floors and of being so cold all the time and of snow in general. But last night when we were walking through our quiet, snowy neighborhood it occurred to me that I'm not really all that sick of it at all. In actuality, I'm kind of grateful for it.

Because this year, winter is an interesting time in our lives. In October, I found out I was pregnant, which was the beginning of a flurry of morning-sickness filled days and nights, anxiety filled doctors appointments where we sat in silence and hoped that we would still see a beating heart on the fuzzy ultrasound screen, and with each passing week a fascinating brand of hope and anticipation that this was, in fact, the baby that would be ours.

And then it got colder and the snow started to fall and we started sharing our news - first with family and then with everyone. And we started to feel more confident too. But the first half of pregnancy is a funny thing. Because even though the news was out and I was finally - mercifully - feeling better, there were still all the tests to contend with. The ones that every woman gets, that are completely routine, but that seek to unearth every single thing that could possibly be wrong with the baby you've been growing for months. And well, who can relax completely with all of that uncertainty going on?

But then the test results came back and everything is exactly the way it should be and now we find ourselves in what I have come to think of as the middle place. There are hard things behind us, and serious, life-altering change ahead, but right now, it is just us and the snow, and cold nights under blankets in front of a fireplace, and dinner together on the couch in front of the TV, and winter walks through our quiet neighborhood with red cheeks and frosty eyelashes.

Spring will be here before we know it, and then summer will come roaring in on its heels, and I'm looking forward to all of that, and everything that comes with it. But I know that, years from now, when I look back on this time, it's going to be the winter that I remember. Those days when anxiety was replaced by anticipation, and when we were still just two, living in this amazing now and dreaming and planning for the days to come, with the snow-blower growling in the background.

And I'm thinking about the days behind us and wondering how the ones to come will look, but more than anything, I am living here, right now. Because even in the face of the monster change coming in just a few months, these moments right now are still the ones that matter. And this is exactly where I want to be.

Snow, Rivers and Family: A Pittsburgh Weekend

The House At the Bottom of the Hill

I take this picture at least a few times every year. 

It's morning. Early. I pull out of my driveway, my mind solely focused on my daily trip to Dunkin Donuts for a caffeine hit before I start my commute to work. But then I glance to the right at my house, and I stop.

Since the day I moved into my house, I've have loved taking pictures of my house. Even  during those first few months when I wasn't particularly interested in living in the house, I still had pictures of it. In rain and snow, under sunshine and clouds, and in all seasons, I have stopped on my way to work and snapped away.

At first I took pictures because it was especially fascinating to me that, after eight years of renting Manhattan apartments with rooms literally the size of closets and tiny storage spaces that could only charitably be described as closets, I actually owned a house with appropriately sized rooms more than enough closet space to accommodate my needs. But after awhile, I started actually living in my house and stopped being fascinated by it. After awhile, it just became home.

It became the place where I woke up in the morning and the place I returned to at night. It because the place where we laughed and planned and made memories to fill the previously empty spaces. It became a safe place for wishes and dreams.

In short, it became home.

But I still take pictures. All the time.

They don't look much different from each other. The pictures, I mean. The picture I took on Friday morning after an unexpected snow is exactly the same as the one I took last January at the beginning of the first of many, many snowstorms we had last winter. The picture I took at the beginning of November features the same fall-colored leaves as the one I took at the beginning of November last year. 

But I like them, these pictures look alike. Because they remind me that even when everything around me is changing, my house still stands there, strong and sturdy and the same as it always was. For almost one hundred years my house has sat right on that lawn at the bottom of that hill and kept watch as my street changed with the times.

Things change so fast. Sometimes it seems like we are all hurtling through life at a breakneck pace, just trying to keep up with each other and with ourselves. And frankly, it can be flat out exhausting sometimes. So it's nice - and even comforting - to know that there are some things that don't change. That will always stay just as they are.

Like my house at the bottom of the hill, waiting to welcome me home.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Winter, we're coming for you.

Friday Fall Color

Finally, some color on a street that has been far too 

green so far this seasons for my fall-loving tastes