We all made it through a full week of living in NYC…!!!

And for me, it marks my first full 5 day week in 4 years, having been fortunate enough to have worked part-time in between kids, and after Eli for nearly 2 years…

So, we made it.
Somehow we managed to go out for supper. The four of us. Functional and happy and enjoying ourselves and our awesome surroundings. A girl at work heard where we were living and immediately insisted that we go to .Bubby’s

And it did not disappoint. Loud enough that we didn’t worry about the maniacs being too loud and crazy. Cool enough that we felt like ‘we were really doing this. We got it. We’re cool.’ And all local, fresh and delicious food. With kick ass cocktails and beers.

There were weaker moments this week where we wondered when the reward would outweigh the effort. And that’ll keep happening. As will the moments where we ask ourselves how in the hell we were so fortunate to arrive for now in the middle of this crazy adventure…

Either way, it’s new. And for where we were, that was what we’d been looking for.
Ups, downs, bumps, bruises, wins, losses, and everything in between…!

Either way- we know where we can score a good piece of American pie…

Probably a lot of pictures of this being posted today.
I’d visited the memorial site on previous trips, and still don’t think I’ll ever really grasp the horror of what something like this represents to human nature…
We are capable of amazing and horrendous acts…

Walking the dog on our new ( not sure how permanent) early morning walk/run routine, I stopped in front of the Freedom Tower- it’s in our new backyard.
I tried to imagine what had really been there, tried to imagine the shock, the confusion, the hurt, the anger, the fear, and the dust that must have consumed the entire city, let alone our new neighbourhood.
I tried. But I still don’t have the capacity to really understand it.
There were police and firefighters everywhere already at 6am… I’ve done this walk now 4 times, and haven’t seen that presence, but maybe I wasn’t aware or looking for it.
I’ve lived in this city for 5 minutes, and already I feel a millionth of the protective nature proper New York natives must feel for this crazy place.
I’m not too naive to suggest that this was an act against a purely benevolent, innocent nation. But many of the real people affected by this act were exactly that. Doing their thing. Living in their city. Being citizens with their heads down.
And their world was rocked.

It’s gross and it’s sad.
And it’s complicated.
But you see people moving and building and repairing.
From my 5 minutes it here seems like that anyway.

So- we all arrived where we needed to this morning. Somehow.
I got up extra early to take the dog for a nice stroll on the esplanade and was again amazed at how busy it already was at 6am. Adjusting to the fact that we will really not have alone time outside for a few years could take a bit…! I don’t mind having company at all times- it’s just different.

The kids took the drop-offs today harder than we’d hoped, and I did the classic cheese-ball 50’s housewife move and included a smiley-face heart-filled picture in each of their lunch boxes last night, with the hopes that that might provide a bit of a lift at lunch time today….

We were really worried about Eli as he was pretty upset, even after riding his strider bike to school today (which Brett had to carry back to the apartment as there’s not storage space there either. damn).
He emailed the director and she wrote back this heart-wrenching, but appreciated note. I’ve read it about 86 times and it still gets me…

“Eli is doing well today. Tomorrow he will probably be extremely upset when he realizes he has to stay here without you again. Day by day the center will look better and better though. I’ll try to be in Eli’s class in the mornings to help him transition more easily.

We acknowledged that he is sad and told him that it is alright to feel that way. He drew a picture with a sad face for you, but he said he will draw a picture with a happy face before you return because he is feeling better. We told him that you are sad also because you miss him and that made him feel better.

This is the tough part, but soon he’ll be really enthusiastic about coming! Check in anytime you would like, I hope this report was helpful!”

Milestone milestone milestone.

Our stuff arrived Saturday and my amazing Aunt and Uncle spent the day with us. Not only was it helpful, but it was comforting to have their familiar faces here with us, so quickly after we’ve moved here.

We’ve got the apartment at 85% functionality (the last 15% is reserved until our damn bikes have storage outside of the living room and the remaining 3 cupboards that are overflowing can be properly ‘container store’ organized by me….

Last night we celebrated (maybe we’re rewarding ourselves too much for these little milestones- i’m not sure) by ordering in Lomardi’s pizza and watching Muppets Take Manhattan. That is still a quality movie, i insist. Pretty neat watching it IN Manhattan.

And now- we are at work. Real live work.
We likely will be fairly nomadic in here until we move to the new office space in November, so this week I’m camped at someone’s desk who likes Vans, Scotch, and Costa Rica. It’ll work…

Feels a bit like a calm before the storm of work once people realize we are here for real and functioning, so trying to brace for that…:)

And repeating the mantra ‘I can do this.’ A lot. To silence the ‘WTF are we doing?’…

Pretty sure that my first exposure to a full on legit PTA in Calgary would have been enough. But no- it happened here today in Manhattan, and it was intense. A letter was sent home in the folder. And I thought I needed to do what it said and join the ‘welcome back’ meeting hosted by the PTA.

I shuffled down from kid drop-off too awkwardly early. Surveyed the tables to find out where the front of the cafeteria would actually be, and then sat at the back.
It was actually generally informative and again encouraging, but intense for me. No longer is parenting just something that Brett and I will manage , sometimes well, sometimes actively, sometimes with enthusiasm when we are properly focused and motivated and responsible… With this transition to the age where our first child enters the school community , we too enter this community. From this community we get support and guidance and encouragement. And to this community we now must be accountable in some way…
We’re exposed in a whole new way… Nothing unique, I realize that. But it’s a big transition in my mothering head…
Exposed and challenged and accountable.
So that was this mornings’ realization. Along with Eli adjusting initially much more positively to his new preschool than we’d thought… He continues to surprise us…

This afternoon- the final mission before starting work was to find out how New Yorkers really grocery shop.
I do a full head shake in dismay and take absolute responsibility for this afternoon’s fail…when every article I’ve read talks about this cheese shop, this bakery, this produce market, this butcher… and doesn’t talk about hauling the entire family to Trader Joes’ in the UWS to compare against our neighbourhood Whole Foods ( which is going to bankrupt us), it’s a bad, bad idea. But I was panicked to get kid lunch supplies sorted and dinners for next week sorted. Kid lunches- a new thing, but manageable. Dinners for next week- an entirely un-New York thing to do. I realized both after our disastrous journey. Sigh.

Upon arriving with TWO stupid strollers, because Nora wanted one to push her stuffie and we agreed to it, we found the line up to be an hour long to check out. An hour.

Brett took Eli back on the subway and I decided to walk to another trader joes in Chelsea with Nora in her stroller. 50 blocks. Read- we all needed some space. In NYC. Wow.

I ended up buying beer and wine and mint chocolate ice cream at the original Whole Foods, and we are all on speaking terms again.
Ups and downs…:)

This whole experience has been like a series of hurdles. And that’s not meant to suggest that hurdles in this context are entirely bad. Sometimes they are. Sometimes you bang your shin or your toe and you fall hard. Sometimes the hurdles seem endless and frustrating.
But keeping things in perspective, more often than not the hurdles are expected and laid out in a pretty decent order, easily enough to navigate with focus, precision, and calm. Run, run, jump. Run, run, jump. Go, go, go. We can DO this!
We ARE doing this!
But they’re still hurdles… And maybe some days they truly feel like hurdles ( in the shitty sense), and on better days, or better moments, for that matter, they feel like milestones.

Yesterday we met two big milestones.
Both kids were registered for their new schools, Nora at the public school on our same block, PS89, and Eli at a preschool a 10 minute walk from our place called Bright Horizons.
Again, having not seen either facility or met anyone in person had me very, very anxious.
I knew Brett would have made a good choice, but I had the gross ‘first day of school jitters’ but in an insanely maternal way for the first time…
Upon walking into Nora’s school, I was overcome… Thankfully I held it together in front of the amazingly warm and welcoming principle, but I was on the verge of cracking the entire time…. Overcome with relief. Relief that my kid would be in a safe place. A happy place. A really, really great place!
Neither kid was thrilled during their visits, but since then they’ve each talked excitedly about tomorrow, their first official day….
We’ll see…

So we’ve been in our new home now for 2 nights, and the kids are tucked in for their 3rd while we prepare to decompress, pour ourselves a drink, and shake our heads yet again at the good fortune we’ve had to arrive our sorry asses here, in Manhattan, with our kids and dog on this amazing adventure.
We ventured north today, walking to the base of the Highline, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to take the dog with us up there, but wanting to test it out to see how far of a jaunt it would be when we returned dog-free eventually. We were again amazed at how dog and kid-friendly our walk was, presenting awesome splash pads, both for the 2-legged and 4-legged variety, shaded tables for people-watching and not-so-shaded views of lady liberty… There goes the head shake again.

We nearly melted though, and within 2 hours needed to retreat back to the air conditioned safety of our apartment, our bodies just not acclimatized for the heat and the humidity.

But back ‘home’, while we know very quickly it will be comfortable, doesn’t really offer the rest we look for after a busy time out in the city. We have 1 proper bed, 1 air mattress, and a bed box for a dining room table. And that’s it. So recharging with a rest at home isn’t really in the cards. It will be. And that will be nice. And I think important once we really get into the pace of what city life promises to challenge us with soon.
But for now, we’ll enjoy the open floor, and space to run, and the time we have to be out and about before the routine kicks in…:)

Still a sh*t tonne to do to settle in to the new life here obviously, but we’re taking today to celebrate a fairly sizeable milestone in this process and toasting arriving at our apartment finally all in one piece.
Brett actually chose this place on his own on our Hail Mary trip back here, and I’m happy to say that we’re still on speaking terms. He did really well, and I think our gang is going to do ok here:)

Driving down here from our hotel this morning I was frantically looking out the window to try to translate the google map I’ve been obsessively scouring for 3 weeks, trying to imagine exactly where we were and what everything looked like as we approached our new neighbourhood. I then saw the curve in the road that id associated with the ‘top of our street’ on the map, and instantly felt relieved. ‘Oh, thank god it doesn’t suck here! ‘

I’ll take some time to digest things further, but for now I will celebrate 3 trips to bed, bath and beyond and one life altering trip to whole foods with a yuengling.
And here’s my grocery list for anyone setting up in a new place. I am list obsessed.

Garbage bags
Toilet paper
Paper towel
Ground coffee
Coffee filters

Beer
Wine
Milk
Cheese
Bread
Sandwich meat
Mustard
Fruit
Veggies
Yogurt
Cottage cheese
Hot sauce
Pasta
Pasta sauce
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, every time.
It’s remarkable what moving homes unearths. In an old suitcase. In an infrequently visited drawer. In last season’s purse.
Last weekend I found a truly remarkable ( with the right intoxicated lenses) souvenir picture from my stagette in Vegas. Perfectly timed with our 8th wedding anniversary.
Tonight I found a ticket stub from an event that we still talk about.
Nora was 3 months old and we bundled her into the Bjorn and headed out to listen to His Holiness the Dali Lama. It was amazing, as you’d expect.
We still talk about the closing advice he gave to new parents. (He’s totally talking to US!)
In his incomparably gentle and knowing voice he suggested that parents set aside the worries about what lessons we ought to teach our children first. What absolutes we needed to expose them to before all others.
He suggested that we think about our biggest responsibility as a new parent- to hug, and cuddle and kiss and hold this new baby as much as we could . To make this our single ‘job’. To do our best, in busy and complicated and difficult days, to really enjoy this. Kids can’t be loved too much, he said .

If signing a relocation agreement, fire-saling a vast majority of your possessions, and putting your house on the rental market didn’t make it feel real, beginning the unspoken, but actual ‘Farewell Dinners’ with friends has certainly made this whole adventure real.

Sure, sure- there are no longer any more real ‘farewells’, but rather ‘until next times’. And that’s ok. And I’m sure that with many of these friends we will evolve our friendship.

It is making ‘real’ the fact that life is about to change for us in a dramatic way. That’s the part that is hitting today.
With a move like this, you tend to get immediately consumed by all of the logistics. You have to be, or it will be infinitely more stressful than it already is. You are absorbed by the sequencing of the shut-down of your current life, and the set-up of your new life, from schools, jobs, homes, dog crates, flights, furniture, and little things called Work Visas.

It is a tornado of details. Of taking blind leaps in one direction, because you simply have no choice but to keep things moving in SOME direction. Only to then have to climb back up the hill, and jump off the other side of the cliff. Numbers. Letters. Applications. Approvals. Submissions. Call-backs. Messages. Confirmations. Keep. Things. Moving.

And then all of a sudden you really are moving in less than 2 weeks.
And you see some of your nearest and dearest friends who’s mind and understanding of the situation lay back 4 weeks ago when they first heard about this change; they are still waiting to hear about where you’re actually going, what you’ll be doing, wondering if everyone is ok with everything. And you’re moving in 2 weeks and have moved well beyond this point.

Queue the scratch of a record.

Changes like this in your life allows you to pause, ironically enough. To reflect on what your friendships have survived- some good, some difficult, some exciting, some terrifying, and some disappointing moments. To reflect on the unwavering support these friendships have provided. True, genuine, loving support. Not always in the most conventional of ways. But true and sincere and well-intentioned support nonetheless.

While I look forward to the new friendships I will make with this move, I am comforted with the strength and encouragement that my special friendships thus far have given me. Enough to make me even consider taking this next leap…

I’ll miss all of these a*&holes. Deeply. But, despite Brett’s groan, I will also have an air mattress available for any lucky visitors…

😉

I’ve tried doing research on the best ways to move your kids… Should I be involving you in every stage, or just making decisions and trusting that I am the mom and I know best? Or is that going to break your trust because I’m not including you? Or is including you overwhelming your sweet little selves?

And am I being hasty in deciding what to bring vs store vs toss?

I wish there was a guide, but I’ve also learned that every situation is unique and every family is going to respond differently … So guides are kind of irrelevant…

Anyway- we love you. We hope we’re doing the right thing, and I am certain that we’ll have a fantastic time at FAO…

Xoxoxo

-Sara