The second time around

It's official. I'll never be a surrogate. The other day I told Dave that even if someone offered me $1 million, I wouldn't carry their baby. Pregnancy, in all its excitement and miraculousness, just doesn't agree with me. Or maybe I don't agree with pregnancy. As I've told many people throughout this pregnancy, "I love the end product, but not the process."

Today I am 33 weeks pregnant. The home stretch, so to speak. Just seven weeks to go. That's 49 days, 1,176 hours, or 70,560 minutes, depending on how you measure it. But who's counting? Lots of people have asked me how this pregnancy has been different than my pregnancy with Owen. For starters, I've written a lot fewer blog posts. I've even left a few unfinished. I'd be typing away, inspired by a good idea, but then the phone would ring or Owen would wake up from his nap and Poof! the spell would be broken. I still have those half written posts in draft. This from someone who takes great pride in crossing off everything on her to-do list.

One of the biggest differences this time has been going through pregnancy with a toddler around. An increasingly active, talkative toddler. One who loves to dance, wave at buses, point out airplanes overhead and run up and down our hallway at full speed, which I'm sure our downstairs neighbors love. He's at a really sweet age now at 22 months. He gives me spontaneous hugs and points at me from across the room saying, "Mama, mama, mama, mama," as if we're all in danger of forgetting who I am.

Pregnant with Owen (Sorry, no pics of the current bump)

It's because of him that I'm doing the whole pregnancy thing again. I knew it would be tough, even though everyone says, "Every pregnancy is different." But I wanted him to have a sibling. I wanted to round out our family. I wanted to have another little person around that I loved as much as him. I heard a quote the other day that having a child is like having your heart run around in another person. Blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but when I heard that during a radio interview, I teared up and cried.

The other day Dave and I watched the movie, "Gravity," the space odyssey starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. When it first came out I didn't have much interest in seeing it. I'm not one for sci-fi and outer space. I don't care how good the special effects are or how many times Dave tries to tell me a movie is "critically acclaimed," I'm not interested if there's no human interest story to draw me in. But then my friend Erin told me that it was about much more than an accident in space. She said Sandra Bullock's character goes through an emotional journey and suddenly I was in.

If you haven't seen the movie but plan to, then stop reading right here, because I'm about to give away a major plot point. Halfway through the movie you find out that Sandra Bullock's character is not just a scientist up in space, but a mother grieving the loss of her 4-year-old daughter who died in a freak accident. The rest of the movie is not just a story of survival, but of choosing life despite the heartbreak, despite the seemingly unbearable pain. As the credits rolled, I sat on our couch and cried.

"What's going on, babe?" Dave asked gently.

"If anything ever happened to Owen, I would just die," I sobbed.

It's something I've heard my mom say about me and my brother. And until I had my own child, never completely understood.

"I know," Dave said quietly. "I know."

Being a parent makes you vulnerable. For me, that starts in pregnancy. The nausea, the headaches, the fatigue, the crabbiness, the dry heaves, the shortness of breath and all the anxiety. During my first trimester I caught Owen in our bathroom standing over the toilet pretending to spit into it over and over again. Our nanny saw him doing the same thing and we both came to the same conclusion: he was imitating me throwing up. It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen and for a moment, I smiled, feeling a little less green.

One thing I've noticed during this pregnancy is that I've gained a new understanding of acceptance. During my pregnancy with Owen, I was so blindsided by how terrible I felt and how long it lasted (way into my second trimester), that I just struggled to make it through. During this pregnancy I find myself forging a new relationship with discomfort, the intensity of which fluctuates from day to day. These days, as my belly gets bigger and pushes my internal organs into pancakes, the discomfort tends to be indigestion and feeling like I can barely breathe. Sometimes it's so intense that all I can do is choke down a peanut butter sandwich for dinner and go straight to bed. Other days I feel fine and it's not so bad.

On one particularly nauseating day a few weeks ago, Dave picked me up from work. We drove home together and parked in our space in the alley behind our apartment building and started walking toward the front.

"Maybe there is something to learning to live with a discomfort," I told him as we walked single file on the path along the side of our house.

Dave stopped and looked at me.

"That is something I never thought I'd hear you say," he said.

He says that because I'm a fighter, someone who thinks that if you remain quiet in the face of injustice, no matter how small, you let the bad guys win. You're telling the world, "Hey world, I'm a doormat, come walk all over me, hurt me and treat me however you want." Thus, I've spent much of my life being the outspoken one, the one who clenches her fists and marches down the hallway to speak to the man in charge. The one who complains loudly about the smallest of physical or emotional pain.

Over the years I've heard that the quickest, easiest way to get through difficulty is to accept it. Feel the anger, sit with the sadness, embrace the fear. But that is so much easier said than done. And I've always secretly worried that by doing so, accepting things as they are instead of how I think they should be, I'm endorsing whatever is happening. That I'm saying it's okay. That I'm left with sighing and shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Nothing we can do about it. That's just the way it is."

Nothing is farther from the truth. Acceptance doesn't make me a victim of circumstances, it allows me to see more clearly what is happening, experience what is going on. It's not a matter or liking or disliking it, but seeing it for what it is, then deciding how to respond. I know this sounds awfully Buddhist of me and I'll admit, much of this thinking is the result of mindfulness classes I've taken, meditation exercises I've been doing and a Wednesday night women's group I regularly attend.

Today I still feel the heartburn, the lack of oxygen and the tightness in my chest. I still complain (a little) and blow up at those I love (but less and less). But I also feel an underlying calmness, a greater willingness to say, "Okay, I feel like shit today, so what?" Then go about my day. It helps that this is a temporary state, that it will all be over soon. Did I mention I only have seven more weeks?

Despite my knowledge of that time frame, I know there will be many more discomforts even after the pregnancy, because that's a part of life. I'm so glad that I've finally stopped fighting so much, not just for my well-being, but for the benefit of my kids.

Twirling towards happiness

Yesterday Dave, Owen and I were in the living room playing. Dave was sitting on the floor propped up on his elbows with his legs splayed and I was sitting cross-legged on the couch. In between us, Owen was twirling in circles with his arms straight out, then lurching side to side trying to regain his balance. I reached out to steady him and keep him from falling. He giggled at his dizziness, then started twirling again. 

"Have you ever been to a Grateful Dead concert?" I asked Dave. "He reminds me of the spinners."

"No, but I've been to a Phish concert, which is basically the same," Dave said. "Probably even more drugs."

"I doubt it," I said, thinking of how out of my mind I was at a Grateful Dead concert I'd attended in Las Vegas with two sorority sisters during college.

Owen stopped spinning and started dancing along to one of the children's folk songs on our Pandora playlist. He shuffled his shoulders from side to side and moved his head like he was working out a kink in his neck. He's been doing this a lot lately, spontaneously breaking into dance whenever he hears music, even the electronic tunes that play when you push the buttons on his ride-a-long car. Sitting in the seat of his plastic car, he'll look at me as a tune begins to play, smile, and start shuffling his shoulders side to side, like a white boy's overbite.

I love seeing Owen dance, so free and expressive. I've spent one too many dates with men who'd rather be at the bar than on the dance floor, so I hope we can nurture this instinct and help him hold onto it long enough to become a boyfriend and later, husband, who will dance unabashedly with his partner.

Boy joy

As Jane Fonda said so eloquently in a video that recently made the rounds on Facebook, we have to do a better job of raising emotionally literate sons, boys who aren't bifurcated at their heads and hearts — no small feat in a society that will call them "sissies" or "mama's boys" if they show any emotion besides being steady and strong. It's not just crying that will get them in trouble, but playfulness and joy, like the kind you'd let loose on the dance floor. 

"Did your parents ever sit together and play with you like this?" I asked Dave. "I know your dad worked a lot."

"I don't remember," Dave said. "We had a finished basement and I remember spending a lot of time down there with my brothers. I think my parents were pretty exhausted by the time I came around."

"Yeah, I don't remember my parents playing together with me either," I said. "I remember my dad roughhousing with Eric and me on the living room floor but my mom was off doing something in the other room, probably glad for the break. I'm sure my mom played peek-a-boo and stuff with us as babies but then my dad would be at work."

"I have a hard time remembering anything from when I was really little," Dave said. "It's all kind of blurry. One of my first memories was being at the Kennedy Space Center but I don't remember how old I was."

Owen stopped dancing and hurled himself at Dave, grabbing a wad of his hair, another one of his recently acquired hobbies.

"Ow!" Dave said. "Soft touches, buddy, soft touches."

"Owen, let go!" I said sternly. "Let go!"

Owen looked at me, smiling and looking just a little uncertain as he maintained his death grip on Dave's hair.

"Owen, that hurts daddy, let go!" I repeated, as Dave peeled off Owen's fingers and finally broke free. 

Owen lunged at Dave again, who caught him at the waist and hoisted him up in the air out of reach from his head. Owen giggled as he dangled above Dave. Dave set him down on his feet and Owen ran over to me on the couch, his arms outstretched. I folded him into my lap and kissed his winter-chapped cheek.

"Hi, baby," I said, stroking his hair and feeling something sticky, like yogurt, above his right ear. Sometimes Owen pushes my hand away when I stroke his hair or rub his back or legs. This time he didn't.

"I mean, it makes sense that parents would mostly play with their kids one-on-one, because it gives the other parent a break," I continued to Dave. "But I think he really likes it when we're both here together."

"Yeah, he does seem to like it," Dave said.

Sitting there bookending Owen as he ping ponged back and forth between us, I felt happy watching him twirl and shoulder shuffle and yes, even pull hair. I couldn't help but think that we were providing him the kind of safe space and security that was enabling him to be silly and free, knowing that mom and dad were right there.

Maybe I was projecting my own sense of security in that moment onto him. Who knows? I'm just grateful that sometimes, amid the stress of juggling daily life and parenting, I get a glimpse of the true meaning of family. It can make you feel a little dizzy, but there are always plenty of hands to keep you from falling down.

Santa's lap: A story in five pictures

This holiday season we engaged in the time-honored tradition of forcing our child to sit on a stranger's lap. Not just any stranger, but a stranger with a long, scraggly beard, beady eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, a pillow strapped to his mid-section and spiked eggnog on his breath. Now don't be scared!

I don't know why we didn't impose this ritual on Owen last year, when he was 6 months old and much more likely to scream his head off. The only reason I can think of is that we spent last Christmas with my family in Los Angeles, where the North Pole seems much farther away than Chicago. It reminds me of a scene from "Annie Hall," when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are driving through the sun-baked, palm tree-lined streets of L.A. in December in their friend, Rob's convertible, while visiting from Brooklyn. As they pass by plastic Santa and reindeer ornaments on the houses' clean, manicured lawns, Woody Allen's character remarks that it doesn't feel like Christmas and that Santa would never come to Southern California because surely "he'd get sunstroke."

So yeah, maybe Santa had stayed away.

But this year we spent the first weekend of December celebrating Dave's parents 40th wedding anniversary at the Wisconsin Dells, where it was 14 degrees outside, but at least 84 degrees inside the steamy, domed water park where we spent most of our time. Just walking around, I could taste the hot chlorine fumes in the back of my throat.

The Wisconsin Dells are kid-friendly, to say the least. So of course Santa was there. When we introduced Owen to him during visiting hours in the hotel lobby, I was struck by how his reaction was so typical of how he approaches all new situations, a personality trait I've watched emerge since he was really little. Here goes:

Stage 1: The blank stare

When Owen encounters a new environment or person, his first reaction is to get quiet, look around and stare. Never do his eyes looks so serious or so brown. He doesn't smile on cue or high-five like strangers wish he would. At least, not right off the bat. He is a person who, as my former NJ roommate Lori would say, "you have to earn." And I like that about him. He's willing to jump into the deep end of the pool, but first he needs to take it all in.

Stage 2: The quivering chin

The first sign that Owen has surveyed a new situation and found it disconcerting is that his chin starts to quiver. It's the same look he gets when I take him into the toddler room at day care, where we are in the process of transitioning him to after spending four days a week with a nanny. He looks at the tiny furniture and the other tiny people reading board books and playing with cars and looks at me like, "No, no, this was not our deal." It breaks my heart every time and I leave wiping away my own tears. The teachers tell me he recovers his composure just minutes after I'm gone and joins right in at Circle Time. I have to believe that's true.

Stage 3: Wait, who are you again?  

One of the best things about Owen is that he's curious, which often means he'll give things a second chance. It also means that I spend my days trying to get him to stop pulling plugs in and out of electrical outlets, grabbing knives from the counter top or trying to stick his hand in the oven. Even when he's throwing a tantrum, I've noticed that it's not long before something will distract him, whether it's a kid playing with a toy nearby or a dog walking by. I try not to force a distraction on him, but wait for his natural instincts to kick in. 

Stage 4: Okay, maybe this is just a little fun. 

As Owen starts to feel more comfortable, his eyes brighten and I can see the edges of his mouth begin to curl up into a knowing smile. I have no idea how much he can really "know" after just 18 months in the world, but it's a knowing smile all the same. He looks at me like, "Mom, I get it. It's all going to be okay." I feel connected to him, like we're sharing a special secret. And that it really is going to be okay.   

Stage 5: Alright, alright, I'll smile.

Once he really feels safe, Owen jumps in with the best of them. He runs as fast as he can, climbs on everything in sight and squeals at the top of his lungs. He claps his hands and does a happy dance. At the water park, his first time being deluged by so much loud, liquid fun, I swear he drank half the pool going down the slides over and over again and sticking his face in the bubblers as tall as him. He'd sputter, gasp for breath, give me a knowing smile, a gleeful squeal and do it all over again.

Number 2

When you become a parent, you talk a lot about Number 2. As in, "Did you go poo poo?" "I smell poo poo" and "Don't put your hands in the poo poo!"

This time, however, I'm not talking about poop. This time I'm talking about a child. Yes, for those of you who didn't see my big announcement on Facebook (where have you been?), we're going for No. 2. I'm about 13 weeks along, due on June 6th. And...it's a girl.

As my friend, Nancy, said when I told her, "Congratulations! You're officially insane." And as other people have said when I told them, "One of each! How perfect!"

It is both. Perfect and insane.

Insane because we can barely keep track of the one we already have and parenting is a relentless amount of work, something no one can really prepare you for unless you were the eldest of 12 who was forced to help raise your siblings since you were ten years old. Insane because as my Dad so kindly reminded me, "One plus one doesn't equal two" and recounted just how much money he had spent on my brother and me from when my parents split when I was 10, through college, according to his Quicken file called "Laurie and Eric."

Insane because Owen has been sleeping through the night for more than a year now, going down at about 7 p.m. and yelling for us at 6:30 a.m. He walks (runs, really), feeds himself (when he isn't throwing it on the floor) and points to what he wants (to be lifted up to push elevator buttons and flip light switches). After the first year, it has gotten easier in many ways (minus the tantrums), so why ruin a good thing?

Me and Eric

Perfect because both Dave and I have siblings and like having siblings. You have someone to commiserate with about your embarrassing, perplexing parents. You have someone to help you take care of them when they become old and feeble (or at least someone to push the responsibility on to). You have someone to play with, when you're not beating the crap out of each other. You have someone to blame things on and a constant reminder that the center of the universe is not you.

Perfect because Dave and I would like the life experience of raising a boy and a girl. As my friend, Julie, observed during a play date while Owen hurled wooden trains across the room and her 2-year-old daughter, Sylvie, sat quietly on her lap watching him, "Boys and girls really are different." And I think there is something to the mama's boy, daddy's girl phenomenon that in many ways, it's easier to bond with a child of the opposite gender. Now that I've got my mama's boy, it's only fair that Dave get his daddy's girl.

I realize that personalities also come into play and as far as siblings are concerned, just because you share a fair amount of DNA doesn't guarantee you'll be best friends forever. I don't think I liked Eric, three years my junior, until I was in college. Only then did I realize that he was actually a smart, funny, talented human being with underarm hair and a world perspective. He was more than a peon of a roommate who hogged the TV watching episodes of "He-Man" and "Scooby Doo" with his Legos strewn all over the family room floor. He was no longer the little brother I feared would embarrass me because he listened to Christian rock, didn't surf and couldn't find the down beat to save his life. I was sure he was destined to be a geek.

Now the joke's on me. He's the hip, LA architect who wears Liverpool soccer jerseys and newsboy caps (if you don't know what they are, you're just not cool enough), drives a silver Mini Cooper and has such a large, diverse music library that I had him make the play list for my wedding. I'm the more conventional, Jetta-driving writer living in the Midwest with my Nordstrom credit card and (now) Gap maternity clothes. He beat me to getting married and having kids by about 10 years as I appeared destined to a life filled with weekly coffee dates with suitors who overused emoticons and exclamation marks in their Match.com profiles. Who was the geek now?

So yeah, I'm a little nervous about playing referee to sibling rivalry while trying to meet the needs of two little people. Eric and I used to fight in the car so often that my Mom resorted to playing John Denver at top volume until we begged for mercy and promised to settle down. Who knew that "Rocky Mountain High" had such power? At home, Eric hit me in the shin with a wooden 2 X 4 because I changed the channel he was watching, stabbed me in the palm with a pencil for reasons I don't remember and slammed closed the books I was trying to read with my legs curled under me on the family room couch. In return, I split his lip, pinned him down and spit in his face and taunted him about his dyslexia: "At least I don't read backwards."

Lovely. No wonder my mom looked haggard and frustrated so much of the time. What does a woman have to do for a little peace and quiet?

Not have two children, for starters.

Who knows, maybe Owen and his little sister will be more playmates and confidantes than wrestling opponents and tattlers. Maybe like me and Eric, it will be a stage they eventually, thankfully grow out of only to appreciate each other's existence. Or maybe like Liz and Mary Cheney, one will publicly humiliate the other and Thanksgiving together will be off the table for the indefinite future.

In the end, you just roll the dice, hope for the best and get ready to face the somewhat messy, often heartwarming, in-the-end-it-was-worth-it procreation reality. Isn't that the definition of family?

Anne Lamott and ten silver dollars

Lately I've been on an Anne Lamott kick. It started a week or so ago after we moved into our new two-bedroom apartment and I was struck by the idea that I could grab a book, any book, and read it in bed. That's because Owen has his own bedroom now and I no longer have to tiptoe into our bedroom in the dark and tangle myself up in headphones while listening to a podcast before bed. Now, I can do the real thing. Every night.

So Anne Lamott. As I said, we've just moved so I reached into one of the many boxes stacked in the dining room and grabbed a book from the top. It happened to be "Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year." I couldn't have asked for a better selection. Owen is 17 months old now, months beyond the one-year mark, but so much of what Anne wrote about in her first year as a new mom, both the good and the ugly, struck a cord. She writes with so much heart and humor that I would find myself laughing every couple of pages. Not just laughing, laughing, but laughing in recognition. Like this passage:

I wish he could take longer naps in the afternoon. He falls asleep and I feel I could die of love when I watch him, and I think to myself that he is what angels look like. Then I doze off, too, and it's like heaven, but sometimes only twenty minutes later he wakes up and begins to make gritchy rodent noises, scanning the room wildly. I look blearily over at him in the bassinet, and think, with great hostility, Oh, God, he's raising his loathsome reptilian head again.

Loathsome reptilian head? I laughed aloud at that one. I know that feeling so well as Owen would stir in his crib beside us in the middle of the night, sometimes multiple times, making scratching, whimpering noises as I braced myself, holding my breath, as I waited to see whether he would settle back down or escalate his cries into a wail that would require me getting my weary ass up out of bed.

I also loved how she would describe her son, Sam's attempts at talking as "babbling in Urdu" or "speaking Serbo-Croatian," which is exactly what it sounds like. Owen does that all of the time now. He points at something and looks at me so earnestly as he goes on and on in a flood of incomprehensible sentences. Lately, he's had a lot to say about ceiling fans. He points to them, looks me in the eye and launches into an impassioned diatribe.

I can only imagine what he's saying to me: "Look Mom, see the fan go round and round? That's fascinating to me because it's moving and it's so high. How does it do that? It makes me want to get on my tippy toes and touch it. Did you know that there are buttons on the wall that make it go faster and slower? I love those. Will you lift me up again to play with them? I know it's the 47th time today and it makes your arms ache because I weigh 27 pounds now but nothing brings me such joy. I don't know what it is about making something twirl faster, then slower, but it's just so thrilling. It really fills me with a sincere appreciation for life and all the amazing things that surround us."

After finishing "Operating Instructions," I felt inspired to re-read my copy of "Bird by Bird," Anne's famous book about the writing life. She tells this great anecdote about her brother at age 10 sitting at their kitchen table surrounded with piles and piles of books about birds that he's supposed to have read for a big report he had due for school the next day, looking completely overwhelmed, like he is about to cry. Anne's father, also a writer, sits down next to him, puts his arm around his shoulder, and says: "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

I always appreciate her chapter, "Shitty First Drafts," as it reminds me how important it is to write without censoring myself or listening to the voices in my head that make comments as I type like, "This is so boring," and "Who cares?" and "This is taking forever." You just get on with it, she says, knowing you'll go back and edit and revise until it says what you really mean to communicate to a general audience. But first you have to get it down, without second guessing, because that is where inspiration and creativity come from: messiness.

In her chapter, "Getting Starting," she gives some advice about what to write about. One of the things she suggests is a Christmas gift you remember or a special birthday party when you were a child, which got me thinking about my tenth birthday party. I don't know why we have years and years of birthday parties and years and years of receiving gifts and some we remember and some pass by like they never happened, but I remember turning 10.

My birthday is in June, just after school gets out and I typically had a pool or beach party. But that year I wanted a soccer party. I had been big into soccer ever since my mom signed me up for AYSO when I was seven. I still remember the name of my first team: The Grasshoppers. Our jerseys were green with white numbers and I was in heaven running up and down the field in shin guards and green socks pulled up to my knees, my hair in French braids to keep it off my face.

I loved sucking on oranges at half time and gulping down lemon-lime Gatorade, something Eric and I were never allowed to drink in our sugar-free home. I loved that my coaches called me, "Cunningham" and yelled instructions to me from the sidelines as I ran side to side, back and forth with so much energy, focus and enthusiasm that I wish I still had one-tenth of today. I remember one coach, Coach Norton, was known as a screamer. "Get over there, Johnson, what are you, waiting for a bus?" "Keep your eye on the ball, Hartling, not the boys on the sideline!"

Coach Norton sometimes reduced my teammates to tears with his rants and parents complained he was too hard on us. But I liked Coach Norton. There was something about him I respected, and I ran harder and kicked farther for him as he yelled to critique, motivate and validate us (he was an equal-opportunity screamer.) "Great pass, Cunningham!" he'd bellow through cupped hands.

So at my tenth birthday party, we picked teams and scrimmaged at the soccer field two blocks from my house, then went back to have cake and ice cream in my backyard. I was popular at the time, the second most popular girl in the fourth grade because I was best friends with Jody Budge, the most popular girl in the fourth grade (fifth grade was a completely different story after Jody dumped me one day for unexplained reasons.)

Jody lived in Emerald Bay, an exclusive, gated community in Laguna Beach, Calif., with a private beach. My mom used to drop me off at Jody's house and we would body surf for hours, waiting for just the right wave, then turning towards shore and swimming as fast as we could until the force of the wave overtook us, pulling us up and then under in a swirl of white foam. We'd emerge sputtering with wild, salty hair and readjust the straps on our one-pieces, which always seems to collect wads of sand in the crotch. We called this whole endeavor, "getting munched."

Then we'd lie in the sand on our bellies to get warm, the wet sand coating the outline of our swimsuits. We'd eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which always tasted sweet and delicious and just a little gritty. At bedtime, lying in the dark in the pop-up twin of Jody's trundle bed, I distinctly remember feeling waves wash over me, like I was still in the ocean, the residual effect of our hours and hours of bobbing around like porpoises.

At my tenth birthday party, I was still queen bee and my classmates treated me accordingly. I don't remember much about the party besides playing soccer and sitting in my backyard except for a very special gift that my grandma gave me. As I sat opening gifts on the lawn surrounded by my friends, someone handed me a small square box that was flat, like the kind you'd open to find a bracelet or earrings. But this square box was heavy and made lots of noise when I shook it. I opened the box, removing the cotton padding to reveal ten silver dollars, so shiny I swear I could see my reflection.

I was rich, I just knew it.

Later when I asked my mom how much they were worth, I was crestfallen when she told me, "Ten dollars." I couldn't believe something so beautiful and heavy could be worth the same as a green, wrinkly old 10-dollar bill with Alexander Hamilton's mug on it.

I kept that box of silver dollars in my closet for months, not wanting to spend them on anything mundane like candy bars or colored string to make friendship bracelets. I don't remember what I ended up doing with them, but there was something about them that seemed to mark the one-decade milestone I had reached so appropriately. I hadn't thought about them in a long time, not until reading "Bird by Bird" this morning while Owen was napping.

Thank you, Grandma. And thank you, Anne, for helping me remember.

Moving on

In two weeks, we'll be moving to a new two-bedroom apartment about one mile from where we live now. As I've written about before, buying our place was one of the first times in my life I truly felt like an adult. So moving our small family from our one-bedroom condo, although necessary, will be somewhat bittersweet.

I've lived in this condo for nearly seven years -- the longest I've lived anywhere since the house I grew up in at 1847 Port Margate in Newport Beach (I still remember that phone number, the only phone number I still know by heart.) I've been a single, hard-charging career woman, a fiancee planning her wedding, a newlywed and new mom in this place. Since everything has pros and cons, I can't help but run through them in my head.

Here is what we're gaining by moving: Central air, washer/dryer in unit, two parking spots, a large back deck, our own bedroom and an extra bathroom.

Here is what we're losing: View of Lake Michigan, hearing the ducks from North Pond from our window, walking two blocks to the nature museum, Lincoln Park Zoo and the lake, my 12-minute door-to-door commute to work.

We're renting our new place (not buying yet) and renting out this one to a US diplomat. For the first time in my life, I will become a landlord. And from what I can decipher from her rental application, our new tenant is much like me when I moved in here: mid-30s, single, worldly, career-minded. She was recently assigned to the Chicago office (to do what, I don't know) after four years in Budapest.

Our current living room (let there be light!)

When we were apartment hunting, I felt like Goldilocks. This one is too cold, this one is too hot. It's funny how with so many apartments in the world, it's hard to find one that feels just right. It's also a process that reveals what's truly important to you and what you're willing to do without. For me, one of the most important things is light. Our current place has big Southern-facing windows, which means we get tons of sunlight in our living room, dining area and kitchen. So many places have dark living rooms because they're facing away from the sun or are on a heavily tree-lined street. I don't know how people living in those units don't get claustrophobic and depressed. I feel that way just thinking about it.

Our new place is the second floor of a charming, three-story gray stone. The front door opens right into the kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a huge granite island with bar stools, a built-in wooden hutch and windows that face south (light!) The living room has arts-and-crafts style bay windows that look out at big trees. Behind the living room is a large area perfect for a dining room table or home office, something I've been wanting for years. The bathrooms are cramped, although at least there are two and the bedrooms are average size. Not nearly the palatial proportions of our bedroom now, but we'll do just fine.

The neighborhood has a 20ish professional vibe, not the family-friendly feel of a few other places we looked at, where it seemed couples totting Starbucks lattes, pushing strollers and walking Golden Retrievers passed by every 2 minutes. Our new place is on Belmont and Clifton, about three blocks west of the Vic Theater, a beer-soaked concert venue I haven't been to since I took my Aunt Cathy to see the singing comedian Stephen Lynch five years ago and saw Big Head Todd and the Monsters with some college friends 10 years before that.

The problem with the more family friendly places we liked was that they were too far from public transportation and I would have had to walk almost a mile to the nearest L stop to get to work, which Dave determined was a deal breaker, particularly in the winter.

"I'm worried about your commute," he said.

"You're not worried about my commute," I said. "You're worried about me complaining about my commute."

He didn't say anything, an indication that I was right.

A long commute is a deal breaker for me, too. I'm not one for long car rides, plane rides or even long lines. Waiting is not my strength. I remember my dad used to tell me growing up, "It's the journey, not the destination" and I used to feel annoyed. Every winter we used to do these epic 15-hour drives from Southern California to Utah, Colorado or Idaho to go skiing. I remember sitting in the back of our Suburban with my Sony Walkman and books, a cooler or soft drinks at my feet, feeling supremely bored as the endless winter landscape passed by outside the window.

"Are we there yet?" I'd ask over and over. "Why can't we just fly?"

The only benefit of these trips was it was one of the few times we got to eat at McDonald's. But even a Big Mac and large order of fries couldn't take away the empty feeling I had when staring out at the dark sky from the backseat, my faint reflection in the window staring back at me, knowing we had at least 10 more hours to go.

I understand now the exorbitant amount of money it would have cost my dad to fly a family of four to these ski resorts and then rent a car for the week. But at the time, it felt like cruel and unusual punishment. To this day, I'm not a big fan of road trips (although audiobooks makes them 1,000 times more bearable) and I never do layovers if I can help it.

My commute from work to our new place will be 35 minutes. Not ideal, but doable. Some of my colleagues commute more than an hour from the suburbs, which sounds soul-crushing to me. We spend so much of our lives in transit, which is probably a good reason to make peace with it. I remember a conversation with Dave early on when we were dating when he told me he loved long plane rides. He loved being suspended in space with free, uninterrupted time to journal, listen to music and watch all the movies he wanted.

Not me. If I were ever given the chance to pick a super power, I've want to be Sabrina from "Bewitched." She could just wiggle her nose and be anywhere in the world in two seconds. That's way more my speed.

So anyway, we're moving. We're moving up, on and beyond to the next stage of our life. One of the biggest things I'm looking forward to is being able to read again before bed. For the 16 months that Owen has been in our bedroom, we've had to tiptoe into the dark room, quietly undress and slip into bed without making too many floor boards creak. Letting light flood our bedroom past 7 p.m. will be heavenly. So will knowing we're taking the next right step for our family. You'll have to come and visit.

How to walk like a toddler

Owen and I took such a delicious walk around the pond near our house the other day that I thought I would give you instructions in case you want to replicate it for yourself. Here we go:

1. Walk really fast. But remember that your legs are only a foot long so you'll actually be moving quite slowly by world standards.
2. As you walk, swing your arms back and forth and clap your hands in front. 
3. Pick up every stick you find along the way. Put it in your mouth. Suck on it. 
4. Fidget when someone gets worried about you sucking on the stick and tries to fish the pieces of bark out of your mouth. Clench your teeth. Don't let them get it.
5. Take a perverse interest in the goose poop that litters the path. Stop and reach down to touch it, like it would be the most delicious paté you've ever tasted, until someone moves your hand away. 
6. Walk over to the homeless man sleeping on the park bench. Stare at him. Keep staring at him. 
7. Smile whenever your see a doggie approaching. Stop and pet the doggie. Let him (or her) lick your nose. Scrunch up your nose and giggle when they do. Pat their back. Nice doggie.
8. Babble as you keep walking. Tug at your diaper. Make up riddles and songs that nobody understands but you. 
9. Stop whenever a bus goes by. Watch the people get off the bus wearing their work clothes. Watch them look both ways for traffic, then walk across the cross walk and head for home.
10. Stare at every jogger that approaches. Study their stride. Slowly rotate 180 degrees as they pass by. Watch them go until they're just a tiny speck on the horizon.
11. Walk up to a bush of flowers. Pull off a leaf. Stick it in your mouth. Suck on it. Clench your teeth when someone tries to fish it out. Don't let them get it. 
12. Run when you see a fountain in the distance. Put your hand in the water. Lean over so far that you're about to fall in. Sit on the side and put your feet in the water. Kick hard until you and everyone around you are soaking wet. 
13. Get excited about another doggie and misjudge an incline on the path. Trip over your feet and fall flat on your face. Cry really hard. Feel yourself get picked up. Listen to the person crooning in your ear that you're okay. 
14. When you are done crying, wiggle until you are set down on the ground and run ahead. Ignore that annoying person who keeps calling your name. Stop whenever you come upon a group of people. Stare blankly when they tell you how cute you are. Don't smile, no matter how much they try to cajole you to. 
15. When you get tired, stop and put your arms up. Someone bigger than you will scoop you up and carry you the rest of the way home.