New beginnings

I’ve been away a long time. Not physically, just internet-ly. But perhaps it’s time to return. I won’t make firm promises about writing every day or even every week. But I’ll try to keep things current about the most important stuff.

So… here’s the gist.

Early last October we moved to Manhattan, through a stroke of good fortune so huge that I still spend at least a few minutes of every day marveling at it and just… enjoying it. As best I can tell, one should enjoy the things one loves when one is right there with them, not least because everything can be gone in an instant. I don’t sit here anticipating that instant, of course.

I love city life. Adore city life. And I can’t even participate in it as much as I would like right now, for reasons I will get to in a moment. I love that we have neighbors we can be friends with because we live in SUCH a wonderful building. I love that A’s daily commute to his studio has gone from 3 hours by train and car to 3 minutes on foot. This, possibly, is the very, very best part. I love that if ever I feel a tiny bit gloomy, all I have to do is take a quick walk outside and it’s all better right away.

Walking has also become one of Z’s favorite things to do: like me, she LOVES the city’s hustle and bustle. Luckily we live on a block that gets real quiet at night and on weekends. Although… I have to confess that most city noises don’t bother me. On that note: bizarrely, Z sleeps better than ever. Though Z’s also had a cold lasting a month-ish, or perhaps several colds one on top of the other, because she goes to an indoor playground every day, one it’s really hard to drag her away from.

There’s a new kitty in our household: we adopted a lovely, very dog-like cat from a shelter this Christmas. His name is Cinco, because he’s the fifth member of our household. Cinco and our dog get along shockingly well, aside from a few spats about who gets to sleep where and a decided preference for the other animal’s food on both their parts.

We also have a Hungarian-speaking nanny a few mornings a week, partly because this way Z can practice her Hungarian and partly because, at the moment, I can’t do some of the things with Z that she needs someone to do with her.

Which brings me to the biggest news of all: I am pregnant with our second daughter. Sadly, I have a touch of placenta previa that may yet resolve but that’s caused my doctor to bar me from a fair amount of physical activity. I vacillate between thinking she’s overly cautious and believing I really need to be super-careful. And then I end up being super-careful anyway. So I need help with Z on playgrounds because I’m not supposed to do any exercise, and taking a toddler to the playground is, I think, a fair amount of exercise – hence the nanny. But I’ve slowed down a great deal also just on account of being pregnant. I get tired very quickly, just like I did when I was pregnant with Z. It’s starting to be painful to walk because, like with Z, I’m carrying on the low side. There’s a bit less than four months left that this baby needs to stay in me and, besides envisioning that goal quite frequently and refusing to contemplate the alternative, I really just hope I don’t have bedrest in my future.

I won’t write about A’s car being nearly totaled by a particularly able-bodied deer, or my car being difficult to sell, or almost having to sue our old landlord to get any part of our deposit back, or my having eight colds since getting pregnant because all of those things are kind of yucky and I don’t feel yucky so why write about yucky things?