Thanx, Spanx

My husband accompanies me to my post-partum appointment two and a half weeks after Peanut is born.  Peanut's delivery was a complicated one, and the doctor has a lot of serious information to convey to us.  After he has finished talking, he asks if we have any questions.  I do, but it feels silly and slightly inappropriate in light of what we've just discussed.  I ask it anyway.

"Any idea how long it will take for my stomach to go down?"

Sure, I am currently wearing last summer's jean cut-offs, but there is a conspicuous muffin top pouring over the snug band.  A week earlier, at the CVS, I was stocking up on diaper wipes and infant vitamins when a checkout clerk asked if I was "gearing up for the delivery."

"No," I replied angrily, "because I already delivered her."

Really CVS check-out guy?  Really?!  Give a mom a chance to deflate!

A few days after that my husband and I were at the Italian restaurant in town for our first post-delivery date night.  Our table wasn't ready, so we stood at the bar and ordered some drinks: A Manhattan for my husband and a refreshing glass of club soda for me.  A man seated beside where I was standing got up and offered me his stool.  "You look like you're going to give birth any day now," he explained.

"Well, I'm not, because I gave birth ten days ago," I grumbled.

I waited until my husband and I were seated at our table before I burst into tears.  When the bread basket arrived, I refused to tear into it with my typical gusto.  "I mean, am I that big?" I cried.

"He was just trying to be nice," my husband offered weakly.

Thanks for ruining date night, considerate man at the bar.

Even my mom was concerned about my round post-partum belly.  Then she saw the footage of Princess Kate leaving the hospital the day after the royal baby was born.  "She still has a little bump, too!" my mom exclaimed over the phone.  "That made me feel much better about your tummy."

Personally, I think it's a travesty that the media has manufactured a news story out of Kate Middleton's post-partum belly.  The woman is a real-life princess, not a Disney one.  An animator doesn't redraw her body moments after she pushes out a baby.  I was watching a television program (okay, it was Extra!, but- in all fairness- I was at the nail salon) in which someone asked J. Lo to comment on the royal new mom's post-baby appearance.  J. Lo's advice: It will take two or three days before her stomach returns to normal.

"Days?"

Don't get me wrong, I'd hardly consider J. Lo to be an expert in anything, much less obstetrics and gynecology.  Still, her words made me question my own post-partum recovery.  It is taking my uterus ten times longer than what J. Lo deems reasonable to shrink to its normal size.  There is quite obviously something wrong with me.

Now my doctor looks at me incredulously.

"Let me guess," he says.  "You're one of those people who 'bounced right back' after your first baby."

"Yes! I said.  "Minnow came out and I wore my skinny jeans home from the hospital."

"Well, second pregnancies are a little different," he explains.  "You probably started showing much earlier with this pregnancy because your abs are stretched out.  It will take time to get back into shape."

My husband, sensing my dissatisfaction with the doctor's response, elaborates.

"Her thirtieth birthday is tomorrow, and she's worried that she won't look hot in the new dress she bought for dinner."

"Oh!" the doctor replies.  "Well do you have Spanx?"

This is a good time to mention that my doctor is at least in his mid-fifties and looks like a devoutly Jewish John Goodman.  "Spanx" is not a word I'd expect to hear from him.

"Yes..."

"Well!  Problem solved!"

The following day- my thirtieth birthday- I pull the Spanx I last wore when I was four months pregnant from the back of my lingerie drawer.

"Here goes nothing," I say aloud, because my life is a sitcom in which I mutter trite phrases to myself.

I can't believe it: Not only can I slip on my brand-new, non-returnable Rebecca Taylor dress, but it zips up the back with hardly any resistance.  And- bonus!- with my oversize nursing boobs, the dress looks even better than I'd imagined.  I can't wait to meet my husband in Penn Station that evening for my birthday dinner.

After a crazy-good meal at Union Square Cafe (where no one offers me their bar stool, thank you very much), my husband and I meet up with some friends at a speakeasy in the Flatiron District.  I've never been, and one of our friends insists on introducing me to the bartender.  He walks me back to where the bartender is busy muddling mint and limes.

"This is C," my friend says to the bartender.  "Today is her birthday."

"Happy birthday!  How old are you?"

"It's a big one," I reply.  "Thirty."

"You don't look thirty," the bartender says, and I decide he means it in a good way.

"And she has two kids!" my friend chimes in.

"How old?"  asks the bartender.

"One of them is only two-and-a-half weeks!" my friend continues.

Now the bartender looks at me incredulously.

"Wow!" the bartender says.  "You could never tell."

Isn't elastic amazing?  

Before and After: The Nursery

During my recent hiatus from blogging (almost a full month since my last post) a miraculous and life-changing event took place here in the C household: Peanut was born!  She was eight days late and weighed over nine pounds, and her delivery was a rather complicated one, which all adds up to an extended recovery period for Mommy.  Now that I am well and our family of four is settling into a routine at home, I am back and ready to introduce a new segment on the blog called "Before and After."

After two full months of around-the-clock labor, I am relieved to announce that the first phase of our home renovation is complete.  Our house is still very much a work in progress, and probably will be for as long as we live here, but I am pleased with what we have accomplished thus far.  The walls are painted, the light fixtures are hung, the floors are refinished, and the carpet is laid.  In honor of Peanut, the first "Before and After" installment is her room, the nursery.

To refresh your memory, this is what the nursery looked like before we moved in:

The space was overwhelmed by dark wallpaper, a mismatched border, and faded, rose-hued carpet.  The bare windows provided no privacy or insulation.

There was no lighting in the room besides the small lantern to the right of the door.  The doors and trim cried out for a fresh coat of paint.

This is what the nursery looks like now:

I've always dreamed of having a cheerful, gender-neutral nursery, so we painted the walls a sunshine yellow (Benjamin Moore, Golden Honey) and the moldings and cutouts surrounding the window a soft white (Benjamin Moore, White Dove).  The cutouts surrounding the window are perfect for displaying favorite books, small toys, and framed pictures.

We installed a ceiling fan with lamp to provide overhead lighting in the room.  Because I am a window-treatment minimalist and deeply concerned with blind cord safety, we opted for these Hunter Douglas Duette cordless accordion blackout shades to keep the room cool during the day and extra-dark at night.

The carpet is an ivory wool, and if you think I'm crazy for putting light-colored carpet in a nursery then you share something in common with my husband, but you didn't have to pay for it.

The design inspiration for the nursery stemmed from this print of The Velveteen Rabbit- my favorite children's book- that my Godmother gave to me for my twelfth birthday.  The quote reads, "When a child loves you for a long, long time... then you become Real."  Below the quote is a picture of the anxious Velveteen Rabbit conversing with the wise Skin Horse in the boy's nursery.

Our own "Skin Horse," (i.e., a Melissa and Doug rocking horse) stands guard beside the dresser that my husband refinished in a walnut stain to match our crib and changing table.  I added the green knobs, from Anthropologie, to the drawers for extra pizzaz.

These cards, a sprinkling of the well-wishes we've received, represent just how loved Peanut already is.  We found the soft white lamp on the dresser at a shop called Filaments in Greenwich Village.

We bought this oval crib- by Stokke- three years ago when we were expecting Minnow.  Its shape and size were ideal for our tight New York City bedroom.  Unfortunately, finding bedding for an oval-shaped crib is virtually impossible.  This ivory organic-cotton circle bedding, which I purchased from Dwell Studio three years ago, has been discontinued.  Good thing I registered for lots and lots of fitted sheets the first time around!  The sweet lamb mobile hanging above the crib, a gift from one of my oldest friends, is from Pottery Barn Kids.  The oval green accent rug is also PBK.

Our changing table is also by Stokke.  What I like most about it is that it is forward-facing, so baby faces you as you clean and change her.  The two canvas storage bins provide ample space for diapers (for Peanut), Pull-Ups (for Minnow), wipes, burp cloths, blankets, bathing supplies, and pretty much anything else you can think of to care for a newborn (and/or stubborn toddler).

It may surprise you that Peanut's name is not actually Peanut.  The custom-painted chevron monogram letters that hang above the changing table were designed by Maureen Pawlowski at MP Creations.

One of my favorite things in the nursery is this set of French alphabet cards, which we found in a vintage housewares shop on Block Island two summers ago.  We had them affixed to a green mat and framed as a Christmas gift to Minnow.  Minnow generously (unwittingly) agreed to share this one-of-a-kind wall-hanging with her sister.

When I was pregnant with Minnow, I desperately wanted a slipcovered glider in which to nurse, cuddle, and rock the baby to sleep every night.  Of course, space was limited in our Manhattan apartment, so the glider got pushed to the wish list for Baby #2.  This was literally the first piece of furniture I bought after we closed on our house.  It was a steal on clearance from Pottery Barn Kids, and is white canvas with apple-green piping.  The chevron throw, also in apple-green, is by Serena and Lily.  My own Velveteen Rabbit from childhood keeps the seat warm between feedings.  

Shades of yellow, ivory, white, green, and walnut: a serene retreat for both Peanut and Mommy.  

The Nicest Neighbors on the Block

The day after we close, we go to the house early in the morning to meet with our prospective contractors.  The doorbell rings and I think it’s one of the painters we are considering hiring, but when I open the door, a lanky man wearing thick canvas gloves and a wide smile is standing on the stoop. 

“Hi!  I’m Jim, the garbage man.”  Jim thumbs toward the green refuse truck on the street.  “I’d shake your hand, but I’ve got my work gloves on.  Anyway, I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood and let you know that your trash days are Tuesdays and Fridays.  Recycling on Thursdays.”

I am speechless.  In the roughly thirty years I’ve been alive, I don’t think I’ve ever had a garbage man come to my door and introduce himself to me.   In the weeks that follow, our mail carrier and our UPS man will also introduce themselves, and compliment us on the work we are doing to the house.

A few days after we meet Jim, we are pulling into our driveway when we notice that the family next door- a mom, a dad, and three children- are playing together in the front yard.  When they see our car, they wave vigorously, as if they have been awaiting our arrival all day.  The kids run over to the Jeep and clamor over one another to introduce themselves.  There is an eight-year-old girl, a six-year-old boy, and another boy who is just about the same age as Minnow. 

“Do you have any kids?” the six-year old boy asks eagerly.  After living next to an elderly couple all his life, it is evident that he is hopeful for some new playmates. 

“Yes,” I say.  “We have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and,” I point to my belly, “another girl on the way.”

The kids are overwhelmed by this news.  The eight-year-old girl volunteers to babysit for me when she gets a little older and her mom lets her.  The six-year-old boy vows to let our girls come into his yard and play in his playhouse whenever they want.  The three-year-old boy smiles shyly and digs a toe into the grass.  Then the three of them run into their house.

The parents come over to say hello and we can tell right away that these are the type of people others dream of having next door.  The husband gives us their home phone number and insists we call them whenever we need a hand.  The wife rattles off the names of the best pediatricians, grocery stores, and soccer programs in the village. 

The kids bound out the front door carrying a stack of children’s books, including Pinkalicious and Fancy Nancy.  On top of the stack is a handmade card.  The six-year-old boy hands the books and card to me.    

“These are for Minnow,” he explains. 

“We know it’s expensive to buy a house,” the eight-year-old girl adds, “so we don’t want you to have to buy books, too.”

I am blown away by these young children’s thoughtfulness and generosity, let alone their mature-beyond-years sympathy.  They haven’t even met our daughter and already they are willing to share with her.

Not to be outdone, when our neighbors across the street hear that we have a toddler girl, they leave a mint-condition toddler-sized scooter on our stoop with a note that reads, “Welcome to the neighborhood!  Our girls have outgrown this and we thought you could use it.”

“What is going on around here?” I ask my husband.  I don’t mean to be skeptical, but, generally, I haven’t had many positive experiences with neighbors.  My parents’ next-door-neighbors in Northeast Philadelphia literally throw dog shit in my parents’ swimming pool for sport.  In Manhattan, our neighbors didn’t take much interest in us, and we didn’t take much interest in them, because Manhattanites are, as a rule, not interested in anyone but themselves.  When we moved to Bronxville we encountered some really great neighbors, and some challenging ones.  The man who lived directly below us waited all of two weeks before knocking on our door one afternoon and requesting that we all start walking on the balls of our feet, to reduce the noise on the hardwoods.  I told him that I would happily walk on the balls of my feet, and I would relay the message to my husband.  Then I pointed to Minnow.

“But…she’s fifteen-months-old, so….” 

In the weeks following our move to the new house, various neighbors come by to greet us.  Mrs. McConnell, our other next-door neighbor, tells us that she is available for late-night babysitting.   She is approximately 94-years-old.

“I’m lucky if I get three or four hours of sleep per night,” she explains.  “So if you go into labor in the middle of the night and you need someone to watch the little one, I’d be happy to.”

“Wow, thank you,” I reply graciously.  I do not intend to take her up on her offer, given her advanced age and the fact that we met twelve seconds ago, but what a neighborly thing to say.

After I meet another neighbor across the street, she drops by that very afternoon to present me with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and a warm welcome note.  The flowers, in cheerful shades of pink, purple, and yellow, last nearly two weeks in our ugly blue kitchen.

The neighbor who lives behind us, whose name I cannot recall but whose dog’s name is “Eddie,” stops outside our house one afternoon so Minnow can pet the dog and smother him with hugs.

“We moved to the village about thirty years ago, when we were about your age,” he says.  “Once you move here, you don’t leave.”  He says that last part in an almost Stepford-ish way, and I can’t decide whether I am comforted or minorly disturbed by his words.  I mean, we moved to Long Island, not joined a cult.  Right?

Then there is the party.  Last week as my husband is tending to our vegetable garden, a neighbor from down the block, whom we hadn’t yet met, hands my husband an invitation to a party she and her husband are throwing to welcome all the newcomers on the block.  We feel obligated to go, so that Friday night we nervously process to her house, where about forty other neighbors have gathered, with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails in hand to, in one neighbor’s words, “initiate us.” 

It is one of the most splendid summer parties I’ve ever attended.  Every neighbor we meet is down-to-earth and intent on making us feel welcome in our new town.  I discover that around here, friendliness isn’t an anomaly; it’s a lifestyle.  Neighbors are, for better or worse, genuinely interested in one another’s lives.  If, God forbid, tragedy were to ever strike our block and the local news came to interview some of the neighbors, you would never hear someone say, “We didn’t really know the family.  They kept to themselves.”

One afternoon I am chit-chatting with my neighbor across the street- the one who gave Minnow the scooter- when her next-door-neighbor exits her house and approaches us. 

“Have you met the new neighbor?” the woman with whom I’m chatting asks.

I don’t answer because I assume she is talking to her next-door-neighbor, who has joined us on the sidewalk.

“C, have you met the new neighbor?” she asks again.

“What are you talking about?” I respond.  “I’m the new neighbor.”

“No!  This is Kristy.  She and her family are from Mississippi and just moved in on Saturday.  She’s even newer than you.”

“I just can’t get over how nice everyone is around here!” Kristy drawls.  “Down South New Yorkers get a bad rap, but we are so impressed with everyone’s hospitality.”

As she continues I wonder whether we- no longer the new family on the block- ought to bake Kristy and her kids a batch of cookies. 

Closing Time

I knew I would marry my husband the moment I met him on a dance floor in South Padre Island, Texas.  It was an inconvenient realization; I was a senior in college, on spring break with my girlfriends, and in a satisfactory relationship with a good guy at home.  But when this stranger in pink began singing “Summer Nights” to me as if he were John Travolta himself, our future nuptials were a foregone conclusion. 

“I like you!  Where do you go to school?” I shouted over the cast of Grease’s urging to “Tell me more, tell me more…”

“I go to school with you,” he replied.

“Tell me everything you know about C.B.C.,” I demanded of a friend the following morning as we sat dangling our sun-ripened legs in the hotel pool. 

“I think he’s from Long Island,” she began.

“Long Island?” I repeated, crinkling my nose. 

At the time my knowledge of Long Island consisted of the following: The Great Gatsby, Joey Buttafouco, Long Island iced teas. 

“Well, is he staying in Philly after graduation?”

“No.  I think he accepted a job in New York.”

This was getting more complicated.  As a native Philadelphian already enrolled at a Philadelphia law school for the fall, I had aspirations of eventually becoming the District Attorney and owning a big, historic home on the Main Line.  For this inevitable marriage to work, I would have to persuade C.B.C. to return to Pennsylvania someday.

For the three years that I attended law school, C.B.C. and I carried on a long-distance relationship.  Every two weeks, either I would board a train to visit his dingy first apartment above a Turkish restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, or he would commute to the Main Line, where I shared a spacious, neutral-smelling two-bedroom apartment with a good friend from college. 

On the weekends we spent in Pennsylvania, we’d follow the same routine every Sunday: 10 a.m. mass at St. Matthias and brunch at Hymie’s followed by a winding walk through the neighborhoods of Merion, Narberth, and Bala Cynwyd.  As we walked, we’d admire and discuss the many magnificent homes lining the sidewalks: Stone farmhouses, exquisite Tudors, and- my personal favorites- brick colonials. 

“I can’t even imagine how much money it takes to own one of theses homes,” I’d say.

“We’ll do it someday,” he’d reply.

“Own a home in Pennsylvania?” I’d ask, hopefully.

“No. But someday we’ll own a home.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe Long Island.”

I’d crinkle my nose.  The breadth of my knowledge of Long Island had expanded since dating C.B.C.; I now knew that it was also heavily congested. 

“But Long Island isn’t home,” I’d protest.  “Long Island doesn’t have good soft pretzels, and Tasty Kakes, and Wawa.”

“Everything you love about Philadelphia has to do with food,” my husband would observe.

“No.  I also like how everyone on the Main Line puts electric candles in their windows year-round.”

Putting white candles in the window is an old Pennsylvania-Dutch custom.  As far as I had seen, it was not observed on Long Island.

“We’ll put candles in our windows,” C.B.C. would assure me.

The worst part about Sundays was driving C.B.C. to Suburban Station so he could catch a train back to New York.  I’d cry as I took I-76 back to my apartment.  One night, while I was struggling to get through some case law reading, C.B.C. sent me the lyrics to the Coldplay song, “Swallowed in the Sea.”

The streets you’re walking on,

A thousand houses long,

Well that’s where I belong,

And you belong with me. 

“This song reminds me of you,” he said.  “I promise you some day we will live in the same state, the same city, the same house.”

A year after I graduated from law school, C.B.C. and I married, as I’d predicted, and moved to New York City.  I was surprised by how quickly I adjusted to life in a new city, and how quickly it felt like home to me.  Within weeks I was fearlessly navigating the subway, taking solo runs through Central Park, and carping on slow-moving tourists like a true New Yorker.  I forgot all about living in Pennsylvania (though I still missed Wawa) and living in a traditional home.  But after Minnow was born, the desire for a grassy yard, a formal dining room, and little white candles in the windows began to resurface. 

Our home search began in earnest in 2011, when Minnow was about six months old.  We found a beautiful town on Long Island with paved sidewalks, tall trees, and excellent schools.  It reminded me of the Main Line, so we decided to concentrate our search there.  Almost immediately we made an offer on a center-hall colonial, which the owners accepted.  The house was charming, but not perfect.  It had aluminum siding, which my husband didn’t like; only one full bathroom, which I didn’t like; and a sagging roof, which our inspector didn’t like.  After the homeowners refused to split the cost to replace the roof, we were forced to walk away from the deal.  I was devastated.  Our daughter’s toys and accessories were prevailing over the rapidly dwindling space in our one-bedroom apartment, and we needed a solution.

We relocated to a two-bedroom apartment in Bronxville and signed an 18-month lease to give us time to continue the search for our dream starter home.  We downloaded the Trulia, Zillow, and New York Times Real Estate apps to give us a head’s up on the housing market.   We attended open houses almost every weekend.

In July of last year we saw a whitewashed brick colonial on a manicured street in our preferred town.   It looked exactly like the homes I used to draw as a child: Square body, triangular roof, chimney, symmetrical windows, attached garage.  It was breathtaking but, unfortunately, its appeal ended at the curb.  The interior was wrapped from floor to ceiling in bold, botanical-print wallpapers.  The carpets were fit for a cat, and no one else.  The kitchen cabinets, painted sky blue, were original to the house and dated back to the 1930s. 

It was absolutely perfect and I knew, as much as I knew about my husband the first time we met: It would be mine someday.

“I don’t see it,” my husband said after we left the open house.  “It needs a lot of work.”

“So did you,” I quipped.

We didn’t make an offer on the house and it sat on the market for several months.  The homeowners bumped the price down a few times, but it didn’t sell.  Each time the price was reduced I would inform my husband, and each time he would voice his doubts.  One day in late November the house was no longer listed for sale on any of my real estate apps.  I was, again, devastated.  I called the seller’s agent and she gave me some encouraging news: The owners had decided to take the house off the market during the holidays, but intended on relisting it after Christmas.

The weekend after Christmas we walked through the white brick house for a second time.  This time my husband was more open to the idea of living there because this time I had a special ally: Peanut.  She’s coming, and she needs a bedroom!  We made an offer on January 2^nd.  Our offer was accepted on January 4^th.  We signed a sales contract on January 13^th.  The dream of owning a home appeared to be within reach.

And then, for lack of a better term, a lot of shit went down.  Our home inspection revealed that the house was missing several roof shingles, presumably from Super Storm Sandy, and exhibited evidence of termite damage in the basement.  The sellers, at first, refused to fix either problem.  Then it took them six weeks to sign the sales contract because they didn’t want to represent that all of the appliances were in working condition ("an ambiguous phrase," they said) and wanted us to agree that they could leave “any an all personal property on the premises after closing and title [would] automatically pass from sellers to buyers.”  (That’s a literal line from the original contract.  If you had seen the state of their garage and basement, you would understand why we couldn’t sign off on that.) 

Then the 86-year-old seller husband had an emergency appendectomy, from which he had to recover in the hospital for six weeks.

Then we were constructively evicted from our apartment, and moved in with my in-laws. 

Then the sellers (again) asked me if we would mind if they left their pool table in the basement.  (We minded).

It took over four months, but on Monday, the guy I met on spring break and I became the owners of our very first home:

As we walked through the house after closing, my husband stopped at the living room window and began scanning the wall below it.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He pointed to an outlet to the left of the window.  “And that’s where you’ll plug in your candle,” he said.

What Not to Say to a Pregnant Woman

Two Saturdays ago, my husband and I had dinner with my good friend and her husband at our favorite Thai restaurant in the West Village.  After the meal, we decided to hop around to some of our old favorite bars.  As we walked along West 4th, a homeless man approached us and asked for cash with a very clever sign.  Dutifully, my friend’s husband forked over a dollar.  The man was grateful.  Just before we walked away, he pointed at my protruding belly. 

“Boy!” he declared.

“No,” I replied. “It’s a girl.”

“Oh…. Twin girls?”

“Nope. Just one girl.”  I gave him a smoldering glare and silently hoped my friend’s husband would ask for his dollar back.

I tried to dismiss the man’s comment as the deranged ramblings of a street person, but a few days later, while Minnow and I were at the Long Island Children’s Museum (we have an annual membership, in case you’re wondering), a pregnant mother came up to me and, without introduction, asked when I was due.

“June,” I replied simply.

The pregnant mother walked away, but felt compelled to return a couple minutes later. 

“Early or late?”

“What?”

“Are you due in early June or late June?”

“Late June,” I said.  “June 29^th.”

“Wow!” she exclaimed.  “You’re huge!”

Minnow and I promptly relocated to a different area of the museum.  We started playing with the telephones in the telecommunications exhibit, alongside a mother and her two sons.  The mother looked over at me. 

“Any day now,” she said with a wink.

“No.  Ten weeks from now,” I replied testily. 

I had thought I looked pretty good for thirty weeks pregnant.  Now I started to wonder.

The following Monday, after dropping Minnow off at school in Bronxville, I went to Slave to the Grind for my usual vanilla chai latte.  As I stood in line, a woman greeted me from behind.

“There you are!”

I turned to face her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.  “I thought you were my friend, but-" she glanced at my stomach- “clearly, you’re not.”

A few awkward moments passed and then she added, “Well they better hurry up with your order or you might go into labor before you get it!”

Ok, lady.  Now I’m really not your friend.

To understand what these people were seeing, I had my husband take pictures.  To illustrate, this is what people see when they approach me from behind:

And this is they see when I turn to face them:

There’s no getting around it (literally and figuratively): My stomach is enormous.  As one person put it, I look like a python who swallowed a pumpkin.  And in a cruel twist of fate, while the rest of my body expands, my boobs stubbornly remain the same size. 

I’m not really sure why I look like this.  I carried Minnow so compactly, I could suspend reality long enough to actually believe some of the dramatizations on the TLC show I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.  Maybe those women really didn’t notice any changes to their bodies!  Now I know: Those stories were all false. 

In ordinary times I have high (some might say over-the-top) self-esteem.  But these are not ordinary times.  I am a walking hormone who is making settlement on her house on Monday.  My emotions are in free-fall.  Peanut is due in nine weeks and I don’t know how my body can continue to accommodate her growth.  I’m no biology major, but I just don’t think skin stretches that much.  I’m in distress.

So, as a public service announcement, if you find yourself in conversation with a pregnant woman, please observe the following guidelines:

1. While it’s okay to try and guess the gender of the baby, it is not okay to try and guess how many babies are inhabiting the pregnant woman’s uterus.  Assume it’s one, unless she tells you otherwise.

2. While it’s okay to ask a pregnant woman when she is due, it is not okay to react with anything other than a smile and a sincere "Congratulations!" at whatever she replies.  When she walks away you can remark under your breath that she is a house.

3. Don’t assume that the person in front of you at the coffee shop is your friend until you’ve seen her face.  This applies for pregnant and non-pregnant women.  And if she does turn out to be pregnant, don't suggest that she is on the brink of going into labor.  If that were the case, she probably wouldn't be hanging around waiting for a latte.  

Over the Bridge, Pt. 1: Home Is Wherever I'm with You

We’re halfway across the Throgs Neck when I catch a glimpse of Minnow, quietly cuddling her favorite purple dog in the backseat, and burst into tears.

“What’s that noise?” she asks, craning her neck to see around the boxes and mounds of clothing we’ve loaded into the car. 

My husband shoots me a reproachful look.  I’ve made it a rule to never let my children see me cry, but the events of the past month have tested that rule’s durability.  “Mommy is sad,” he states simply. 

“I didn’t even let her say goodbye,” I emit between sobs.  “She has no idea that she’s never going back.”  In our haste to pack the car and beat the late-day traffic, I had completely forgotten to ceremoniously mark Minnow’s last exit from our apartment by having her wave bye-bye to each room, as I'd planned.  It was, in my hormone-fueled estimation, an epic mom-fail.

“She’s two,” my husband reminds me.  “She’s already over it.”

To prove his point he addresses our daughter through the rearview mirror.  “Minnow, you know we’re not going to live in A7 anymore, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Because Mommy and Daddy bought a bigger, better house.”

“Yeah.”

“But that house isn’t ready yet, so we’re going to stay with Mimi and Grandpa for a little while.”

Minnow doesn’t respond.

“Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah.”

As we continue across the bridge, wisps of doubt swirl through my mind.  This is what I wanted, right?  To be pregnant with our second child.  It was all I could think about in the months before we conceived, but now that we’re nearing my due date, our old life- the three of us living in a rented two-bedroom walk-up in Bronxville, New York- feels just right.  Peanut is changing everything, and I struggle against so much change at once like an overturned tortoise seeking solid ground.

As a mother, I also worry about what all this change will do to Minnow and her fragile, two-year-old psyche.  The Bronxville apartment is the second in which Minnow has lived, and the first that she has truly known but will probably not remember, in her short twenty-nine months.  We moved to Bronxville eighteen months ago after we outgrew our majestic one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  What that apartment lacked in space it made up for in charm and convenience, with its sweeping vistas of the American Museum of Natural History and one-block walk to the 77^th Street entrance of Central Park.  On Thanksgiving mornings my husband and I could watch the Macy’s Day Parade balloons bob by our windows minutes before we’d see them appear on the live television broadcast.   It was a matchless home with a Shake Shack on the corner.  We were going to live there forever, or at least until we had our first child. 

But our first child, Minnow, came unexpectedly- a few months after our first wedding anniversary- and because we weren’t yet ready to shed our Manhattan skins, the three of us toughed it out in our shared bedroom for as long as we could muster.  Three weeks after celebrating Minnow’s first birthday- in true Upper West Side fashion, with afternoon tea at Alice’s Tea Cup, a picnic supper in Sheep’s Meadow, and cupcakes by Magnolia Bakery- we boxed up the life we had crammed into 600 square feet and headed north to Westchester County, where, for the same rent, we could afford an extra bedroom, a formal dining room, and double the square footage.

The Bronxville apartment was the perfect transitional residence for a family reluctant to part with the allures of city life.  The 25-minute morning commute into Grand Central on the Metro North was easier on my husband than his former indefinite sojourns underground, waiting for the B or C trains to materialize.  The Bronx River Pathway proved to be a suitable, if not wholly comparable, substitute running route for the Central Park Loop.  And although, in solidarity with our suburban neighbors, we bought a Jeep, I still preferred to do my errands the Manhattan way: By buckling Minnow into the UPPABaby and high-tailing it to the post office, cheese shop, wine store, and children’s boutique, collecting bulky packages in the undercarriage as I went.

Although I missed Manhattan terribly, the Bronxville apartment gradually grew on me.  It was there that Minnow mastered the art of toddling, and then walking, and then, to our downstairs neighbors’ chagrin, the art of galloping at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning while pulling a plastic toy tow truck behind her.  It was there that Minnow jubilantly used the potty for the first time, before steadfastly refusing to do so again for several months.  And it was there that I discovered our cozy little family would soon be expanding. 

I will miss the mornings spent eating sliced banana and watching Sesame Street with Minnow in the sun-drenched living room perched high in the treetops.  I will miss the afternoons spent trailing Minnow as she scoots around the playground adjacent to our building in a plastic canopied car, loading invisible groceries into its trunk.   I will not miss the minutes spent pleading with Minnow to climb the 53 steps to our apartment on her own because my belly is swelling and my doctor says I can no longer carry her.  Simply put, I will miss the days spent together, just the two of us.

Like I said, Peanut is changing everything.  When we learned about this pregnancy, we knew our days of living in a spacious but inconvenient fourth-floor walk-up with no overnight parking and shared laundry facilities were dwindling.  After almost four years of renting, it was time to buy a house.

And buy a house we did, with its own driveway and washer and dryer.  It’s an old, four-bedroom, side-hall colonial with a whitewashed brick façade and impeccably manicured lawn in an excellent school district on Long Island, my husband’s native land.  I couldn’t have dreamed up a better house for our family.  When we close in three weeks, it will, without a doubt, be one of the happiest days of my life.  But right now, as we prepare to plunk all our well-loved belongings into storage and temporarily move in with my in-laws on the North Shore, I have never felt farther from that first apartment on the Upper West Side, farther from that transitional apartment in Bronxville, farther from home.  

We finish crossing the bridge and merge onto the Cross Island Parkway.  I wipe away the tears blurring my vision with a glove-compartment napkin and glance at my husband, deeply focused on the road ahead, and my daughter, drinking in the view of the Long Island Sound from the security of her car seat, and am reminded of the chorus of the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes song “Home:”

Ahh, Home

Let me come Home

Home is wherever I’m with you;

Ahh, Home

Yes I am Home

Home is whenever I’m with you.

If home is a state of mind, rather than a place, then I am determined to make this next episode of my life the homiest yet.