2,208th post in New York City.

We will have been New Yorkers for 6 years, 2 months & 29 days. That's 2,281 days. 

Or, in blogger language: 2,208 posts.

Quinn will have been a resident New Yorker for the first 333 days of his life. It makes my heart hurt to think about him not growing up here, not remembering his very first friends, & not having the truly unique experience of getting to live here.

I'm trying really hard to be grateful (& failing miserably). Grateful for good opportunities in a terrible economy, grateful for experiences that will stretch me, grateful for friends who have been so wonderful & especially grateful that I have gotten to experience New York for the past six years. To say that I grew up here would be an understatement. We started our marriage here. We had Quinn here. First jobs. The foundations of what will certainly be lifetime friendships. The city has been so good to us, & it will always be home. 

The other day while we were at the park, Q discovered blades of grass for the very first time. He was completely mesmerized by them, & could have played uninterrupted for hours minutes. We sat there on a quilt by ourselves just enjoying a quiet afternoon at the park. Lots of birds, lots of people walking by, & a perfect breeze. I felt a profound love for my city in that moment. I also felt peaceful, hopeful & almost a bit excited for the things to come.

(Honestly though, I'm really scared. I've cried 17 times today. I don't want to make new friends - I really love the ones that I have. I don't want to get to know a new city, because how could anything compare? I prefer being driven vs. driving & cabs are just perfect! I almost don't even care that for the first time in my married life, I will be able to do laundry without hauling it 30 floors down & paying $5 per load. Because right now, my tummy hurts, & my heart hurts, & I'm just really, really sad.)

Our doorman will call up in 8 hours letting us know that there are movers here to pack us up.

Deep breaths.

We love you, New York.

(Blog, we'll see you in Texas.)

One hundred & eighty six.

I have 186 photos flagged in my iPhoto, which means that I'm 186 photos behind in blogging (!!). I realize that I take (& post) an excessive number of photos, & I'm trying not to stress out about this, but anyone who knows me well knows that I just stress out about these things. I've got to go through them!! Really though, we've just been BUSY. Really, really incredibly busy. For now, I just have to be content with the fact that I'm a little bit behind on life in general, & at some point I'll catch up. 

Updates: 

Q has been busy growing! Kind of. Not exactly like a weed, but he's squishy & healthy & perfectly happy. He had his 9 month appointment the other week & is a whopping 17 pounds 3 oz (about 20th percentile) & is 27 inches long. He's getting really great use out of all of the clothes that we've purchased for him, so we can't complain. And teeth! He has two! They've totally changed his smile & he's got this new cheesy expression that makes me laugh every time. Love (although I don't love when his teeth popping through make him a little bit sad). 

The Great State of Texas. We have a place to live, & buying a house all by ourselves will bring us one step closer to becoming real + independent adults (or at least to falling into the stereotypical trap of the American Dream). We close at the end of August, & we're really, really excited about it. But a house?! It's just crazy. I keep looking at photos of it because probably in part to being so far away, it just doesn't seem real (all of it, really - the moving part & also the new home part). After a four day trip to Houston was extended to seven day trip, & realizing that city living outside of New York City is not the city living we know & love, we settled on The Woodlands. The big city to suburban utopia. It's going to be a shock, but so many people had suggested that we look there, & while it took some convincing, we think it's going to be a great spot for us. It's really beautiful, the sky is huge & wide open, Q will have lots of room to run (once he learns how) & I'll finally have that washer & dryer that I've been dreaming about for so many years. 

So, we've got a lot on our plate. Even just figuring out the travel logistics of our summer is a little bit complicated (at various points, we need to be at Priest Lake, Hilton Head & Houston - & also on our own vacation with just our family), not to mention sorting out moving dates & logistics, figuring out insurance, buying cars, & planning for the furnishing of our house, etc. I'm sure I'm missing a zillion things, but lists & spreadsheets have already been created so that we can keep track of all of the things that are up in the air. Overwhelming! But exciting, & when I start getting really sad (because leaving our home here will be heartbreaking), I try to keep myself focused on the things that matter most. If you're a New Yorker, you'll understand it when I say that these things are a) a washer & dryer & b) a garbage disposal. 

We went to the park this afternoon with Q. Mike got a little quiet & said something about how he was already starting to feel nostalgic. It's hard to avoid the feeling of maybe it's the last time when we're out in our neighborhood, & I know these next several weeks will just zoom by. But we're not gone yet, & we're New Yorkers until the middle of August.  

Photos:

Carl Shurz Park.

Cannot believe that I have a baby old enough to swing at the park.

Park Avenue tulips.

And his first Central Park picnic.

Sunday afternoon.

I realize that Q is in the same shoes just about every single day. The poor boy's feet just won't grow any faster, & so he's getting really great use out of his sneakers. Luckily they're cute, but seriously. He's got a great shoe collection just waiting for him to grow a bit. 

Spring hit New York on Sunday, & oh my goodness are we happy about it. I think I finally have the confidence to pack up our down coats (in April!!).

PS: Grant me patience while I attempt to grow out my bangs. Eek.

Hello, Spring.

Nice of you to finally show up.

Today is sort of a bust.

In no particular order: Raining (it's still winter?). Sick baby. Hair falling out. Stuck inside. Blah blah blah.

The weekend (even though it's already Wednesday).

I forgot what this is called, & I'm too lazy to find it on The Met's site, but it was fun + made us dizzy.

I always tell Mike that my life feels a little bit like groundhog day. I've said this before, right? Monday through Friday give me an almost identical daily routine, with only small variations sometimes breaking up the predictable sequence of events throughout the day. But Saturdays! Saturdays are the day that Mike is home. Just the variation of having another person around is enough to make both of us giddy! Quinn loves it & I love it.  Saturdays are a good day. I get a little bit of a break, & we get to do things together. It makes all the difference.

We had a little tease of spring last week (lovely!) followed by bone-chilling wind & cold again. Figures. 20˚ with 40mph winds is always a terrible combination. But, fresh air does wonders, & staying inside all day is depressing, so we got out on Saturday. Lunch at Shake Shack (thin mint custard - everything I hoped & dreamed it would be), followed by wandering around The Met. It kept us out of the cold & also out of the apartment. We walked through Between Here & There: Passages in Contemporary Photography (mildly interesting), & browsed through a few other areas that we like. Quinn mostly napped. He's been to The Met a dozen times by now, I think & was generally unimpressed, & frustrated that he couldn't chew on anything outside of his stroller. We stopped by Lady M for some hot chocolate (my new favorite, I think), ran a few errands & made our way back home.

The rest of our afternoon was spent doing some of those things that I want to do but can't seem to find the time to do. Like vacuuming every single inch of our apartment (which admittedly isn't very many inches) - using all of the attachments. There's something really refreshing & wonderful about knowing that all of the corners of our home are totally clean, as is under the couch & behind the desk. Putting clean sheets on our bed! I did that too, even though I HATE making a new bed, which is a travesty since clean sheets are one of my very favorite things. However, doing six loads of laundry is not, & I did that as well. We took a rain check on our planned Saturday night out because we couldn't get the reservation we wanted - & despite our +1 to our  couple status now, & more nights in than out, we're still foodies at heart & aren't going to waste a precious date night going to a place that we're not really excited about. So, we ordered sushi from our favorite place instead, watched a movie (Waiting for Superman - interesting + incredibly frustrating), & that was just fine by us. 

Church on Sunday. The same song & dance of rushing to get out the door, lots of bouncing trying to get Quinn to sleep in the Ergo, & hanging out in the mother's lounge. Friends Suzi & Steve blessed Baby Ben, & that was sweet. We love our friends.

Monday night gave us our first night out together - just the two of us - in weeks. It was really, really nice to be out with Mike, especially since our day together had been a little miserable (think a sick /+ potentially teething baby, & an incident that questioned my ability to be a mother in the first place - definitely not my favorite day, & our worst in many months). We went to dinner at Market Table in the West Village, where after a few deep breaths, we talked about mostly adult things, & never once about baby poo. I had two diet Cokes, & we shared enough food to feed a small family (I still feel starving about 98% of my day - nursing will do that, I suppose). We took our time, shared two desserts & were reminded that we do in fact find each other really interesting. Everything was just amazing & it further convinced us that nights out are necessary. As Mike said, babysitters are less expensive than marriage counseling. Nice friends who will swap with you are even better. Thanks, Amy.

(Another) Snowstorm.

The 10 minute walk to Shake Shack took twice as long this afternoon, in part due to the 19 or so inches of snow on the ground & in part due to the two crazy men that (separately) insisted on talking to me on my way there. Why is it that babies (+ being pregnant) are an open invitation for conversations with strangers?!

Crazy #1 - immediately after I left our building & was walking down our street - suggested that I pull Quinn out of his stroller so that he could take a photo of us (I had my camera slung over my shoulder). Um, no thank you, he's sleeping. The man again suggested that we should take a photo. No thank you (keep walking). So, naturally, of course he kept walking alongside us & attempted to get into a conversation about whether or not he should buy my camera, or some other camera that he also knew nothing about (he was admittedly not a photographer & just wanted something to take snapshots with). I was only able to lose him once I got to 85th Street & had to turn west, where of course another kind gentleman immediately informed me that city moms don't know how to handle winter (excuse me?!) & he was an expert since he raised his kids in Boston. Please. I was out with my child in 19 inches of fresh snow, navigating rather successfully through foot-deep puddles & snowdrifts quite fine. I'd say that city mom's are actually quite sturdy & resourceful, & also have extra-tough skins thanks to needing to deal with obnoxious people such as he. Crazy #2 then proceeded to give me several minutes of unsolicited parenting advice (such as never, ever tell your children what to do - that sounds perfectly sensible, no?) before I told him that I had to go & meet my friends, managing to make him finally go away.

The snow! Oh my gosh, it's everywhere. Piles & piles of it. I like how it muffles the city & how everything is so quiet. I also like how going outside is kind of like going to the circus. I could have just sat on the sidewalk & watched people - people with strollers, kids with sleds, cars buried under enough snow to be stuck for days, sidewalks reduced to a fourth of their normal width, everyone slipping & sliding. No one seemed to be at work today. It was a mess out there, but it was pretty!

Note to self: Never go to Shake Shack when it's a snow day for all of the students on the Upper East Side. Julie, Kelsey & I managed to get a table, but it was a battleground of mothers & children in that place today. 

Park Avenue Tree Lighting.

One of our favorite Upper East Side Christmas traditions - the Park Avenue tree lighting, with lots of traditional carol singing beforehand. Last night was cold. I guess it's officially winter (+ hat head season) - & Christmas!

On our street.

I walked past Bendel's on 5th Avenue yesterday & they had their holiday displays up. The tree at Rockefeller Center is up. The big star at the intersection by Tiffany on 59th? It's up. And the holiday markets? Up!

How can it already be Christmas?! We haven't even had Thanksgiving yet, & I feel like I totally missed autumn. That's what having a baby mid-September will do to you, I suppose. And now, the last leaves have been virtually blown away, thanks to rain & then yesterday's 20+ mph winds. By evening, they were even blown off of the sidewalks. It was so beautiful... for the day. Which, by the way, I'm an expert on - the beautifulness of the day, that is - since I carried Q around in the Bjorn all morning while doing errands in midtown (ouch - time to move on to the Ergo, I think) & then pushed him around in his stroller for the afternoon so that I could have lunch with Kelsey (an adult! real conversation! I've felt a bit isolated) & go get another cupcake.

Anyway. Winter. I've resigned myself to the fact that it is coming, & New York City winters are special in both good & bad ways. I love Christmas in the city - it's magical, really - but hate that any exposed skin will generally immediately freeze because it gets so frigid. Adding an infant to the mix only complicates things (I just bought another winter suit for him). Here we go.

Snippets (+ sleep makes me sparkle!).

No time for real writing these days. But snippets. I can do snippets, albeit disjointed ones.

(I kind of don't feel like doing real writing on the blog these days, anyway. I don't know. I kind of feel like if people really want to know how we're doing, they should call me! Or talk to me in person! And it's irritating when people don't, because reading a blog / social networking does not equal relationship maintenance nor is it a substitute for actual communication, right? It's filtered, as genuine as I try do be. It's kind of like when people wish you happy birthday on Facebook only because Facebook told them it was your birthday, but they'd never know otherwise. Anyway. A random subject I've been thinking about as I try to maintain this little space for our own personal documentation.)

Anyway. To document, without any profound or even organized prose:

We've discovered that Q likes to have quiet time in his crib. We like this too, especially when he is eschewing the idea of naps. Music + his mobile will keep him content long enough that I'm able to unload the dishwasher & get a few quick things done. And he's so happy & content doing it, just staring & cooing at the bright birds. 

Mike has come home the past few nights & said that he's looking like such a boy. He is, & the speed with which this has happened is kind of unbelievable. Sometimes, when I'm putting him back down to sleep at night after I've fed him, I hold him just a few minutes longer. Because of this so big, so fast phenomenon that is taking place.

But the last two nights - I've only had to put him back down once. This makes me happy, because it means that I've had 6+ hour stretches of straight sleep each night. Amazing. Fingers crossed that it continues, although documenting it likely means jinxing it, right?  

(Never mind. I said nothing.) 

Today - I ran into the broker that we signed our apartment through. Have I mentioned her before? She's great, & she happens to look like the prettier version of Heidi Klum. She's the tallest, most thin, nicest woman you'll ever meet. I love her, except that I sort of hate myself when she's around because I look like a plump midget in comparison. But anyway. She loves Quinn & always wants to stare at him for 20 minutes every time I run into her in our lobby (& I'm always running somewhere). Today - she said, Your eyes are sparkling! What happened?! I said maybe it was the eyeliner that I managed to smear on that morning, but she said no. Sleep! That's it, & I told her so. It makes me sparkle! 6 hours! Amazing. 

We discovered a new place for pizza on the Upper East Side, run by real fresh off the boat Italians. Farinella Italian Bakery. My favorite was topped with artichoke hearts & green olives, but the options are endless, & fresh, & delicious. We snagged a menu & it will be our new go-to for delivery, I think. Fresh pizza, breads, pastas. Yum. 

And cupcakes! Purple Elephant Cake Boutique was an accidental find yesterday as Q & I were walking home from the pediatrician. I bought the sweet & salty + the red velvet on a whim & was converted right then & there. Another spot for Mormon girl dates always makes me happy, especially without having to trek to the East Village. 

My sister Tara sent along this beautiful copy of Peter Pan for Quinn. The most thoughtful gift & so pretty (like the Clothbound Penguin Classics friend Lindsey brought over for me from London a few years ago). It's on his shelf with the copy of The Secret Garden that I picked up shortly after. My dad read that to us when we were little, & I remember our copy being so beautiful, too. 

Sur la Table opened up a new location just a few blocks away. This is more dangerous than I could have ever imagined. It's like Anthropologie for my kitchen. Love. Yesterday - Le Creuset on sale! A lovely find, but carrying my 11+ pound child and Le Creuset home proved to be a very bad decision. And really, I think this coupled with the amount of rocking + bouncing I've been doing lately... we need to have an arm wrestling competition & see who wins (me).  

Quinn has kind of forgotten how nice it is to have closed eyelids during the day. We were doing so well for a stretch, & now - we've regressed a bit in the napping department. It's the saddest thing to watch because he's so tired & his eyes are half open & he gets so sleepy & sad. He needs to sleep. I'm sure he wants to sleep, kind of. But more than that, I think he just wants to hang out with his mama. This makes me feel warm & fuzzy because I know that he loves me, but sleeping makes me sparkle, so I'll resort to the Bjorn & really long walks (think several hours), or like today - letting him just sleep on my chest for an hour & a half leaving me unable to accomplish anything except using my thumb on my iPhone (which I had to grab from the ottoman using my toes - talent!). Sometimes, when I'm trying to help him go to sleep in his crib, I stroke his forehead in a downward motion which helps his eyes to clothes a little bit, & then it's like he remembers how nice it is to not have his eyes open ALL. THE. TIME. But really, I think he just forgets sometimes that they can actually close. Anyway. I suppose I'll take night sleeping over day sleeping, but still. I'm anxious for the day when these naps sort themselves out a bit.

We bought tickets for Christmas! We'll be in Portland this year, at Tara's house. It's not the cabin, but Tara's house is beautiful during the holidays & it will be so fun to be with her family + my parents. I haven't spent a real holiday with my family in several years (I'm discounting last Thanksgiving in Mexico since it was a total not for the www bust), so that will just be nice. Tara + my mom are both fabulous cooks. The food alone will be worth the trip, although the flight is already giving me anxiety. 

Speaking of tickets - Letterman! We finally got tickets! For January. Although we were talking & decided that we're excited, but slightly under-whelemed. Because we've seen SNL, & Jimmy Falon, & Stephen Colbert, & The Daily Show, & Martha... & they're all kind of the same. But still. It will be fun. Now I just have to find a babysitter.

Quinn is smiling all the time. He has dimples, like me. And sure enough - it validates me as his mother. I love it. Totally makes my day. And - he's looking more & more like a Hudson. As Kera said, we have dominant genes (go figure).

Baby is sleeping so I must sleep. 

Started this post: 8am

Finally published, without any really necessary proofreading: 9:54pm

Wafels & Dinges.

(First of all, don't judge my spelling. It's Wafels. Not waffles, which kind of drives me nuts, but that's how they spell it.)

Wafels & Dinges is one of my favorite NYC treat spots. Hot Belgian waffles + sweet toppings.  Delicious. The truck travels, & sadly, it's always on 86th Street on Sundays. Cruel, yes. Attempting to be Sabbath-Day-Keepers, we have to walk by it on our way home from church week after week. Kind of like during the summer when there is apparently a street fair on 3rd Avenue EVERY. SINGLE. SUNDAY. & the smell of elephant ears taunts me all the way home. 

Anyway.

They have mini-trucks now! Multiple! Well, they aren't actually trucks. They're carts, I suppose. But they still have the same wafels with the same toppings. Mike had never had it before, & when Facebook told me that their cart was at the Guggenheim on Saturday (& every Saturday!), I jumped at the chance. A perfect excuse for a walk.

After some shopping (I went to Yummy Mummy - nursing bras are so fun - & Mike went to the JCrew men's shop), we walked up to 88th & 5th Avenue. Perfect fall weather, two perfect wafels & some hot chocolate with my little family. It was nice. 

Oh - & Zagat recently rated Wafles & Dinges #1 in the sweet category for food trucks. Hooray for them (& for Zagat for finally rating food trucks in the city!).

(PS - it turns out that they have a permanent mini truck now at 60th & 5th. I'm thinking that this needs to be a weekly outing, at least. Friends? The schedule is here.)

Before the sleeping giant awoke.