Author: danielle.aquiline@yahoo.com

Elias’s Birth Story

As of right now, Elias is just 6 hours and 10 minutes old, and he’s spent most of that time asleep. (Fingers crossed that his early sleepiness bodes well for good sleep habits later on!)

Sona had been having irregular contractions for several days, but they became more regular on Sunday night, and she contracted every 7-8 minutes all day on Sunday.

Still, when things didn’t seem to be progressing quickly, she decided to go to work yesterday morning. After talking with her OB, though, she scheduled a mid-day appointment to check on the size of the baby, as there was some concern about him getting too large for delivery. (Finn got stuck for quite a bit.)

Sona was so convinced that she was in labor that we approached the OB appointment like the real deal, getting the house ready, loading the car with our hospital bags, and dropping off Sona’s car to our long-time babysitter, who would be responsible for bringing Finn home from school. We also told my mom, Mimi, to get on an airplane.

The OB agreed and, after seeing that Sona was steadily contracting and that her water was so close to bursting that our OB was fearful she’d break the bag by checking dilation, she told us to go across the street and check into labor and delivery–we were having a baby!

We checked in at around 2:30 and immediately got placed into a room. They hooked Sona up to monitors and, not long after, the on-call OB came in to game-plan. Sona was steadily contracting, but the contractions weren’t as regular as they would have liked. Still, the fact that the water was about to break any second (which the on-call doc confirmed, too) and the fact that there were already concerns about baby getting too big was enough to convince the doctor to move forward with labor. She mentioned starting Pitocin, but we decided to hold off.

At around 7:00, Sona went ahead and got her epidural and, because it became clear that contractions weren’t progressing quickly enough, and we decided to go ahead and start Pitocin not long after. Luckily, Sona never really experienced any extreme discomfort. We expected that the water would break quickly, per the doctors’ warnings, and we didn’t want to be in the position of not having time to do an epidural before pushing, so we took the doc’s advice and did it early enough to curtail any discomfort.

The waiting was tough, but the labor wasn’t particularly bad. Once again, Sona never made a peep. Honestly, if you watched the whole thing, you wouldn’t even know that she felt one second of discomfort. She was a total champ.

Luckily, we got to sleep from around 10:00-3:00. At that point, the baby’s heart rate became slightly irregular, and there were a few tense moments when you could tell that the doctor was debating whether or not to take action. Luckily, Elias rallied, and, at 3:30, Sona started pushing.

The whole process was so quiet, calm, and peaceful. I held her leg, took pictures when I could, and did my best to make sure she was okay. I kept thinking, “Are we really having a baby right now?”

Once again, like Finn, Elias’s shoulders had a hard time coming through Sona’s pelvis, but they found their way at 4:03, and he was born pink and screaming–unlike Finn, who was blue and had to be resuscitated.

The docs wanted to get him straight into the hands of the pediatricians, as they were still a little concerned about how much his heart-rate dipped. They cut the cord quickly and whisked him into the little neonatal room adjacent to the birthing suite, where we watched as they checked every finger and toe. Meanwhile, Sona didn’t have a single bead of sweat on her.

After a bit of assessment, they declared Elias healthy and CHUNKY–8.12 pounds and 22”. He’s a big, big boy! He had some limited movement in his left arm, which they think is likely due to his shoulder getting slightly stuck; it already seems to be improving.

Mommy and baby are happy and healthy, and we all feel–for now–surprisingly well-rested. Our little chunky nugget is starting to squirm, and I want to go scoop him up.

I’m so proud of my wife, who is a beast, and I’m so in love with our little piglet. I can’t wait until he meets his big brother. I’ve already told him how much they will love each other–and how much we love them both.

 

Dear Sona, You’re In Labor

Dear Sona:

It’s 10:49 PM. Today, at around 2:00, while at an OB appointment, our doctor told us to go across the street and check into labor and delivery. “Let’s have a baby!” she said. So, here we are.

You’re sleeping a bit, while you can, and you told me to get some sleep, too. I probably should, but I can’t. Instead, I’m writing to you.

This afternoon, at 2:30, we got placed into a room. At around 3:00, the resident confirmed that your “bag was about to burst.” At 7:45, you got an epidural. Now, you’ve been on a Pitocin drip for nearly an hour in hopes that this whole thing moves along.

It looks like we’re going to have a 7/31 baby. Since that’s the birthday of one of my favorite people in the whole world (shout out, Stephanie!) and Harry Potter, too, apparently, I think that sounds pretty dang good.

But for the past 8 hours, we’ve been in this little hospital room, waiting for our second little boy. Judging by your on-again, off-again labor, he’s clearly going to be another stubborn Leo, but we’ve grown to love that characteristic in our first Leo boy, and I’m sure we’ll love it in this one, too.

While we’ve sat here, waiting, we haven’t turned on the TV or watched videos on our phones, we’ve just talked. We’ve been so calm. You’ve been so calm. (Before we got here, we weren’t so calm. I was frustrated that we had decided to wash all of the couch cushion covers the night before we thought you might go into labor, and you were vacuuming furiously–right up until the second we had to leave the house.) We need to be better about that.

But since we’ve been here, we’ve been a team; we’ve been at our very best. “I don’t think we’ve talked this much in years,” you said a little earlier. “And we probably won’t ever get the chance to talk this much again,” I replied.

I’ll do better with that, I promise.

Right now, though, before life gets really busy and we are so tired that we can’t even function and before you feel like a “milk cow” and we are both completely overwhelmed with caring for our newborn and our toddler and juggling the 10,000 things that all moms have to juggle, I just want to say: thank you for being my partner throughout all of this, and thank you for giving me these boys.

I love you–and our little Leos–more than you will ever, ever know. I wouldn’t want to do this life with anyone else.

xox–D

 

Baby Deux: What We’ll Do Again & What We Won’t

We’ve scheduled an induction for August 3. If Elias doesn’t make an appearance before his due date, he will be making an appearance on it. Sona is past the point of discomfort and, since Finn had shoulder dystocia, making his delivery a little difficult, we don’t want to wait for Elias to get bigger.

It’s strange to think that, at this time next week, we will very likely be a family of four. I am ready for a new baby. We worked especially hard for this one, and we know it is going to be our last. So, we’re romanticizing Elias’s newborn days in a way that, perhaps, we won’t once we’re ragged and tired.

Of course, because time is a thief, I’ve also been thinking a lot about Finn’s newborn days, which seem impossibly long ago. If you weren’t with us then, you can look back at some of my older posts, detailing that time, like this one, about the first day of his life.

I am so glad I have dozens of blog posts from Finn’s first year, as they not only help me relive that time, but they also remind me of what life was like for us as parents of a wee one. I’ve already been re-reading blog posts as a way to remind myself of some of the practical things: how we got Finn to be such a good sleeper, when we introduced solids, what our daily routine was in the first few weeks, etc. I know this stuff will come back to us naturally–like riding a bike–but it’s also nice to have record of the fact that we’ve already done this, and we all survived.

There are some things, though, that we are approaching differently with Elias. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and we definitely feel like we learned some things with Finn that will lead us to change things up a bit with Elias.

So, I thought I’d write a bit about what we will do the same–and what we won’t. Here it goes:

We will follow the exact same “sleep training” program. “Sleep training program” sounds a bit more rigid than what we did, actually. Still, there’s a reason this is first on the list: Finn is, and always has been, an amazing sleeper. He regularly sleeps past 8:30, goes to bed without a fuss, doesn’t wake in the night, and still takes 3-4 hour naps. We got very lucky in this regard, and folks are quick to remind us like Elias will likely be the exact opposite. Still, I’m going to follow the same protocol, which actually isn’t any formal protocol at all. We did a mix of “le pause,” from Bringing Up Bebe, starting when Finn was first born, and incremental night weaning, necessitated by Sona returning to work at eight weeks, and a tiny little bit of cry-it-out–but not until he was several months old. The fact is, Finn slept 3-4 hour stretches from the get-go, and he was sleeping through the night in his own crib, pretty much unassisted, by 7 weeks. It will be a bit trickier this time, as Finn and Elias will be sharing a room, but I plan to do things as similarly to what we did with Finn as possible. I talk a bit more about his transition to STTN here, and I’m happy to share more, if anyone wants to chat.

I will not stress as much about “connecting” with Elias in the first few days. With Finn, I struggled a lot with insecurities about whether or not, as the non-bio mom, I’d connect with him easily. That stress overshadowed some of my interactions with him in the days when we were at the hospital, which I wrote about here. I also spent a lot of time running around, checking on the pets and taking care of out-of-town guests, in those first couple of days, which meant that I missed out on some hospital time. All of that got me pretty down, and I had more than a few good cries. What I now know is that I will love Elias to the ends of the world and back again, and our relationship doesn’t hinge on how much time we get together in the first 48 hours, though, of course, I want all of the time. With Elias, I’ll be more confident that things will progress naturally, and I won’t let worry about that interfere with the birth.

I will not wear an ugly grandma bra for my first skin-to-skin interaction. Okay, this is silly, but really: LOOK AT THIS PHOTO. Don’t worry. I already bought a simple black sports bra for the occasion.

Sona will be better at self-monitoring her emotions. This is a biggie. Sona is, now, quick to say that she didn’t enjoy her maternity leave with Finn. She struggled a lot as a new mom, and, looking back, I think we both wonder whether she had post-partum depression. Anxiety and fear overtook her ability to experience much joy at having a newborn, and as a result, she doesn’t remember much of that time–and she has a whole lot of regret about that. This time around, she wants to be more proactive about her emotions. That means a lot of things: seeing a therapist regularly, checking in with herself about how it’s going, and acting quickly when she feels like something is off. She wants to enjoy Elias in a way that she wasn’t able to enjoy Finn, and she knows now that she can’t get those days back.

We will try to maintain a more “normal” schedule. The luxury of only having one baby–and not a toddler–is that you can full enclose yourself in the baby bubble, which is a very real thing. Our whole lives revolved around little newborn Finn and HIS schedule. He was a night owl, and he regularly went to bed at 10-11 for the first few months. Our pediatrician actually encouraged this, saying that it’s a normal pattern for newborns, and we’d do best to let him adjust his schedule slowly. So, we did. We ate dinner at 9-10 each time, went to bed at around midnight, slept in until 10 or so, and so on. With Finn around, that just won’t be possible. If we try to do that, we aren’t going to survive.

We will shower with Elias. Finn took a couple of baths in his first week, and then I started to shower with him. In our little garden apartment, we didn’t have a large sink or much counter space, and using the big baby tub was a pain in the butt. So, showering started as a convenience, but I quickly realized that it provided the perfect opportunity to cuddle and connect. So, we kept it up. To this day, Finn showers with me every single night, and it is my favorite time together. He takes no more than 5 baths a year, usually, and I don’t plan for him–or for Elias–to begin bathing on their own anytime soon. Family showers for the win! (For what it is worth: a month ago, I showered with Finn, his BFF Veen, and Veen’s little bro, Dev–all at the same time! So, I’ve got this.)

We will try to be more protective of our family time. When Finn was born, so was Hotel Aquiline, as our tiny little garden apartment became a revolving door for out-of-town guests. The trouble is, when everyone you love lives far away, you have to host a lot of visitors, and we were so thankful that folks wanted to come meet little Finn–and we wanted them to meet him! But hosting out-of-towners is stressful, even when they say things like “you don’t have to entertain me!” That stress is compounded when you have a newborn. This time, we’re hoping that we can keep the visitors at bay, even for just a short while, so that we can really bask in the newness of our family of four.

We will not (did not) buy too many baby shoes or onesies or blankets. I mean, why didn’t anyone tell me that babies don’t wear shoes? And we were given onesies and blankets by pretty much everyone we knew.

We will take all the photos–and more. Finn is the most photographed child in human history, and I have zero regrets about that. I look at our old photos constantly, and they are our most valued possessions. I plan to photograph Elias just as much–if not more! And I hope to be in some of those photos, too, which is something I didn’t do as much with Finn. I also play to re-do my 365 day project, wherein I took a DSLR photo of Finn every single day for a year. With Elias, though, I want to do his first 365 days.

We will opt out of a nanny and into daycare. I was lucky to stay home with Finn for the first 6 months of his life, and I’ll be able to do the same with Elias. After that, Finn joined a nanny share with another little girl, which lasted about 8 months. When it was clear that wasn’t going to work out, we had to scramble to find a daycare. It was absolutely the most stressful part of Finn’s first year. In the end, I wish we would’ve just done daycare from the get-go. We absolutely LOVE where Finn is now, and we love everyone who works there. He developed so much more quickly when he was socialized with a bunch of other kids, and daycare was, for us, a thousand times more reliable and stress-free than a nanny. Elias will be starting daycare right at 6 months, and we’re super happy with that decision.

We will chill the *&$! out. Every meme you’ve ever seen about first and second babies is true. We were way too overprotective and anal about Finn, and we made the lives of grandparents and babysitters and everyone else who touched him pretty much miserable. With Elias, we will chill out. He will be fine. You want to come take my baby for a day? Go for it! I won’t give you a 10-page instructional manual, I promise.

We will be more present. Finn was our first baby, and we were so stressed out about everything (see above). My maternity leave was, to this day, the best period of my life so far. I relished every single second of being with him, but I still wish I would have paid closer attention during that time because, now, I know how quickly the baby phase passes. With Elias, I really, really hope that we can give ourselves the grace to stumble, be tired, be a little cranky, but still recognize that, once that time is gone, we will never, ever get it back. And one day, we will absolutely ache for these years. (I already ache for Finn’s baby years.) This, more than anything, is what I hope for the next few months.

 

 

Day Out with Thomas, 2018

On Saturday, we went to experience a Day Out with Thomas for the second year in a row. Finn was able to enjoy it so much more this year, and we had a great time.

The forecast said it would be 94 degrees and sunny in Union, IL, where the event took place, and so I really tried to convince Sona not to go. I didn’t want her to go into labor on Thomas–or at all. But Finn has literally been talking about this event for months, ever since we first bought the tickets in early April. So, there was no way I was going to talk Sona out of going. We both wanted to be there for our boy.

Luckily, it was cloudy for most of the morning, and it even drizzled a bit. We welcomed the mist and the cloudiness, as we were just happy to avoid full sun.

Finn was so excited to ride Thomas and Percy, and we were excited to make the most of what will likely be one of our last pre-baby weekend.

Here are a ton of picks, including some last year/this year comparisons!

When you ask a very busy toddler to smile, this is what you get…

 

Riding these little trains was also a highlight of last year’s event:

Same train last year:

He’s grown just a bit…

He is OBSESSED with this tattoo. We’ve had to be very careful not to wash it off.

What a difference a year makes:

I love this boy more than words.

Wanted a quick train “massage”…

22 Days

If we manage to keep Elias in Sona’s belly until her due date, I only have 22 days left as the momma of only one boy. And, judging by how things are progressing, I don’t think we’ll make it the full 22 days.

We are ready for Elias to be here. The house is in order. The baby clothes are washed (and soon to be put away). All of Finn’s baby gear has been pulled out of storage, reassembled, and cleaned.

I am prepared for Elias. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t feel at all prepared to share my heart with another little boy.

Please don’t write to me, telling me that your heart grows. That you find the love. That the minute Elias is born, all will be right in our family-of-four world. I know these things to be true. I believe these things will happen.

Yet, this isn’t a post about logic or reason. This is a post about how I’ve found myself in tears numerous times in the past couple of weeks, trying to imagine what life will be like when I can no longer give Finn 100% of my love and attention. I’m crying now, just thinking about it, again.

Yesterday, Sona found out she is 3cm dilated and 70% effaced. The news set us into a frenzy of anxiety and stress and excitement. And a bit of panic. The irony is that we are not at all panicked about having another baby. Some of that may stem from our naivete about just how nutty life will be with a newborn and a toddler–or from the fact that we remember Finn’s early days really fondly, and we feel like we missed out on the often fraught exhaustion that sometimes clouds the newborn weeks.

But most of that is because we are both very worried about how Finn will fare during the transition. First and foremost, we’re stressed about having to leave Finn for the delivery. Of course, these things can’t really be planned, and the uncertainty of not knowing when Sona will go into labor–and who will be around to watch our toddler–is stressful. My mom is set to arrive on our due date, and she can hop a flight as soon as we call her, should Sona go into labor sooner, but she’s still at least a day away. To complicate matters further, my parents are going to be out of the country–on a remote, isolated Bahamian island–all of next week. So, there are 7 days in which they absolutely couldn’t be here.

Because of this, we have our favorite long-time babysitter on call. She’s got a bag packed and, should we need her to, she’ll be here to stay with Finn. But he’s never done an overnight with her–and he hasn’t done an overnight without us in well over a year. When you combine that with the fear and suddenness that will certainly accompany his finding out that we’ve had to leave without warning–and possibly without saying goodbye–and this momma is a nervous wreck about how all of it will go down.

So, for many reasons–those already mentioned, along with the fact that I have 10 days left in both the class I am taking and the class I am teaching–we’re really hoping that Elias hangs on until late July.

But regardless of timing–of whether papers have been written or graded or cribs have been assembled or grandparents are on standby–I have a seismic, raw ache and a pretty deafening sense of melancholy about letting go of the past 3 years in which Finn has been the most beautiful, spirited sun around which our little lives have happily rotated.

When we were pregnant with Finn, I experienced a similar ache, bemoaning the life Sona and I had lived as a twosome for 15 years. This is more acute, though. This is also accompanied by raging mom guilt–and by the knowledge that, whereas Sona and I can still escape for a week, pretending its just the two of us again–I know that, come early August, I’ll never again be able to have my whole heart so blissfully full of just one little boy.

Here’s the thing about being a mom: it’s a very different kind of love. It’s a love that warrants a special kind of attentiveness and care. A love that is engaged and active and alert. The way I love Finn won’t fundamentally change, I know, but the way I practice my love for him will have to, especially in the beginning.

And this is all, really, good. This is a change we prayed for and worked for and welcome. A month from now, I’ll be writing a blog post admonishing the fear and trepidation and sadness I am feeling now. I do know that.

But right now, I just want to have a few more days with the little boy who is my sun and my moon and the thing I love most in the entire wide, scary, beautiful universe. We have 22 days left, hopefully, and I want to relish them as much as I can.

These photos are from a night a couple of weeks ago. It was on the cool side of warm, the sun was setting, and we decided to forgo bedtime and take an evening scooter ride to the beach. We walked the fog-draped pier, waved at kayakers as they headed towards downtown, and watched as Finn splashed around in the water, the city we love so much blurring into the background.

I stood on the beach that night and thought, “Damn, I’m so lucky.” And I am. I so, so am.

 

Pride Festin’, 2018

This past weekend was the finale in what is a multi-week Pride celebration in Chicago, and we went all in.

Sona and I haven’t actually attended a pride event in like 8 years. That’s shameful to admit, I know. Something lit a fire under us this year, though, and we wanted to show Finn all of the Pride-centric fun.

We started on Saturday morning by attending the Family Pride Fest, which takes place in our neighborhood. Finn had a blast, rocking his “Cool Like My Moms” t-shirt. They had live music, a petting zoo, some rainbow swag, face painters, and–much to Finn’s delight–hoola hoops! I think that discovering hoola hoops was the biggest win of the day.

He did manage to do his funky leg dance to some of the music.

On Sunday, we met Finn’s bestie, Darcy, for some Pride Parade fun. Luckily, Darcy lives on the parade route. So, that made the day a bit easier. Still, since the parade got a late start, we ended up being out side for over 3 hours, waiting and waiting, and then watching the parade. These two held up like rock stars!

How cute are they, navigating the parade together?

Finn is like “Mooooooom–enough already! I’m with my girl.”

I can’t even handle these two.

Once the parade finally started–and the swag started rolling in–Finn was enamored!

More funky leg shakin’.

Just eatin’ his candy necklace, watching the boyz in their Speedos, and living his best Pride life!

 

Strawberry Picking (to Escape the World)

Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
-Maggie Smith

 

There is a poem for every day, and this is the one for today.

There are times when I am especially grateful to have Finn, who serves as the consummate reminder that, even when the world seems like a sad and scary place–when I am feeling very, very low–there is always a little bit of good. Finn gives me a reason to get out of bed, when I need one, and it’s motivating to know that, if for no other reason, I have to pull myself out of the pits and be a momma.

Today, I needed to spend the day with my little guy, and I needed for us to escape the world for just a short while. So, he skipped school, and we drove 90 miles outside of the city, past lakes and small towns and Chik-fil-As, to visit a berry farm in McHenry, Illinois. “Do you want to go to school or go pick strawberries?” I asked Finn last night. The answer was obvious.

The first thing he said when he woke up this morning was, “We still going to pick strawberries?”

The two of us had a great time on our little adventure. Even though he was way more interested in eating the strawberries than picking them–something that made filling the two pre-paid buckets a bit of a challenge–we still really enjoyed our time together, and I think the little escape from reality did both of us some good.

I know we are lucky to be able to escape the world when it brings us down; this week has been a painful reminder that so many people–so many babies and kids–don’t have that same privilege. Still, even when the world is “at least fifty percent terrible,” my son is 100% goodness.

Today, I needed a day with my boy. And some fresh air. And too many strawberries.

Here are some photos from our morning together.

 

 

Live Someplace You Love–And That Loves You Back

This is really a two-for-one blog post. It’s about all of the reasons we love raising Finn in a big city like Chicago, but it is also about how important it is to live somewhere you feel loved and accepted. Originally, it was just supposed to be about the former, but I think that I’m getting all up in my Pride Month feels, and the latter crept in.

Sona and I are both, mostly, from small towns. I say “mostly” because I was actually born in Pittsburgh, PA, and I spent most summers there for my entire childhood. Though my mom and I moved to Mississippi–and then Tennessee–when I was just a toddler, all of my family remained in the ‘Burgh, including my father.

So, while I went to school among a bunch of small-town southern kids who said “ma’am” and “y’all” and thought my Jewishness was totally foreign, I spent summers roaming the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, sometimes on my own, and getting to experience what being in a city was like. I mean, I could walk to TCBY, and that alone pretty much sold me on city livin’.

Sona grew up in New Mexico and then Kentucky. Like me, she went to school in–and lived in–what we often call “one stop light towns.” The University of TN at Martin campus, where we met, was pretty much bordered by cornfields. Neither of us escaped the small-town lifestyle for college, either, but that ended up working out for us. (Cause, you know, marriage and a baby.)

There is a lot to love about small town living: wide open spaces, slow lifestyles, relative safety (we will get back to that, later), close-knit communities, wheat fields, and Chinese buffets, and high school evenings spent driving up and down Main St. just because there’s nothing else to do. Oh, and there’s the cheese dip. It all has its appeal.

But Sona and I don’t romanticize small-town living in the way that many do, and that’s because we’ve both experienced enough of it to recognize that, beneath the charm, there is something disquieting, too. When we moved to Chicago, we were both consciously making an escape.

Here’s some things I could tell you about living in a small town: How my first grade teacher spitefully refused to acknowledge that I was Jewish and my mother had to come to the school and fight for them to include Hanukkah in their holiday celebrations. How, as an A/B student, I was harassed by my high school principal during my senior year and regularly accused of being part of a “lesbian gang.” (No, I’m not kidding.) How one of my best friend’s dads, who I’d been very close with for years, once cornered me in the kitchen and told me, “In the wild, wolves who are gay are killed by the pack.” How Sona, who worked at Blockbuster during 9/11, was always asked whether she was a terrorist or knew a terrorist. How, even in 2005, her father warned us not to stop for gas on the hour-long drive between our college town and my parent’s home, noting that the KKK had been active recently. How, beneath all the small-town charm, we had to live with and carry and fear these sorts of things. Always.

“I knew that, once you left, you’d never come back,” my mom once told me. And I think she was right. As much as Sona and I are quick to admit that we don’t think we’ll live in Chicago forever, we are equally quick to say that we could never return to small-town living, again.

There are innumerable reasons why we love Chicago. As my now late idol Anthony Bourdain said, “You wake up in Chicago, pull back the curtain and you KNOW where you are. You could be nowhere else. You are in a big, brash, muscular, broad shouldered motherf****n’ city.”

I fell in love with it the second we first drove down Lake Shore Drive during a college spring break trip to visit the city. Sona and I cruised down what would become my favorite road in the world, Lake Michigan gleaming to our right and the towering city to our left, and I said, “I’m going to move here.”

Two years later, I did.

There’s a lot to say about why Chicago is the place we want to call home, and I think I’ll say it again and again in a variety of ways on this blog, but the truth is also this: as much as we wanted to be in Chicago, we also wanted to escape the oppressiveness that is a small town.

Small towns can be oppressive for anyone, really. Sure, it’s nice that Mabel, who lives around the corner, will lend you eggs and watch your house when you are away and knew your Great Aunt Sally when they were little girls, but it can also be suffocating when everyone everywhere knows your business, has very strong opinions about your business, and prefers your business to align with the usual business of small town life.

But when you are Jewish and Indian and gay–and when your business looks very different from the rest of the town’s business–that suffocation be deadening.

I’m not saying that every small town in America is xenophobic or racist or antisemetic or homophobic, but I am saying that everyone has the right to live somewhere where they can walk outside, holding the hand of the person they love–even if that person is of the same gender and a different race–and not feel the boot heel of judgement pressing down on their necks.

Chicago gave us that–and continues to give us that. Here, we know that, most of the time, no one looks twice at us when we stroll through the neighborhood, chasing our son on his scooter. When we walk down the street, we don’t think twice about exchanging a small kiss or holding hands. When we go back to Tennessee, we are very conscious of where and when we can do those things–and very aware that doing so is inviting some sort of discomfort, both for us and for others.

Here, the in-take form at Finn’s daycare asked for the names of both parents–not for the names of the mother and father. Finn is not the only kiddo with gay parents at his school–not by a long-shot. Everyone talks openly about all of the different kinds of families, and it is part of the school’s culture that all kids feel, from the very start, that there is no such thing as one kind of family.

Finn talks about having 2 mommies in a very matter-of-fact way, as do his friends in his class. “There’s Finn’s other mommy!” they will say. We have never sensed that our family unit is, within that context, atypical. And, more importantly, neither has Finn.

When we go to the park in our neighborhood, everyone looks different. Not all kids are white. Not all families have a mom and dad. Not everyone speaks English. Finn is growing up in a space where he sees himself and his family represented on a regular basis. He’s growing up in a space where he learns, innately, that people are different, and that’s okay. He is living in the kind of community that models the kind of world we want him to live in, and I can’t imagine giving him a more valuable gift than that.

For us, living here provides us with just a little bit of freedom from the kind of suffocation we experienced most of our adolescent lives. People often talk about how they “can finally breathe” when they get out of the city, but Sona and I held our breaths for our entire lives until we moved to Chicago. Even still, you can hear us audibly exhale anytime we’ve been away from Chicago for long and we first catch a glimpse of the skyline, again.

I know we can’t protect Finn from the world forever–not even for long. But I do hope that, by growing up in a city that welcomes him and his family so openly, he’ll be able to steel himself against the world a little better. He’ll be a little more prepared. I hope that when he thinks back on what it means to be home, he thinks about Chicago, and he feels only love.

And here are some photos from our weekend, where we scootered through puddles and attended the Swedish/LGBTQ streetfest in our neighborhood, Andersonville, which is currently decked out in rainbows in support of Pride.

Finn loves music more than any child I’ve ever met. He’s danced since he could move, and he had a blast at this outdoor concert on Sunday, which we happened upon in our PJs. We danced in the rain.

Summer Bucket List 2018

One of the great things about living in a city like Chicago is that there is so much to do during the summer. Chicago is a wonderful city year-round, but in the summer, it SHINES.

So, like every year, I have a list of things I’d like to do between now and summer’s end–mostly fun things and some not-so-fun obligatory things that just need to get done.

Let’s start with the fun stuff. A lot of these are carry-overs from last year, either because they are so awesome that we want to do them again or because we never got around the checking them off of our list. So, this summer, I hope to:

  • Spend more time at the beach than last year
  • Go berry-picking (may do that this weekend!)
  • Make a lot of homemade popsicles
  • Continue our summer tradition of eating outside: park dinners, farmers market meals, porch dinners, etc.
  • Get family photos taken before and after the baby comes
  • Take Finn to see Thomas the Train for a second time
  • Have Finn’s first birthday party (he’ll be 3 in August)
  • Grow our own tomatoes
  • Keep all of our outdoor plants alive
  • Do a glam overnight staycation with my gal (cause Mimi and Pops can’t come long enough for us to actually get away)
  • Relax about bedtime, allowing for more evening/after dinner scooter rides
  • Have a zoo day
  • Let Finn play hookie from daycare a few days, giving us Momma & Finn beach time
  • Take Finn to his first-ever Chicago pride parade
  • Make the rounds at our favorite farmers markets: Evanston, Green City, Andersonville, Granville
  • Visit our favorite water park
  • Walk the 606 (an elevated train track turned park/walkway)
  • Eat all the Italian ice (Mario’s, Tina’s, Miko’s…)
  • Make adult slushies
  • Spend 2-3 weeks of our maternity leave traveling with the kiddos (thinking Spain, Portugal, and maybe the Caribbean?)
  • Visit the Elkhorn antique market in WI

And the not-exactly-fun-but-it-needs-to-be-on-a-list-too stuff:

  • Get Finn’s closet professionally redone
  • Re-vamp Finn’s room in time for Elias to move in (paint, new rug, rearrange furniture)
  • Put the nail in the potty training coffin (this was on last year’s list, too–HA!)
  • Sort through–and organize–all of Finn’s old clothes
  • Successfully complete the graduate course that I’ve just started
  • Establish a gym routine… again
  • Survive the eruption of Finn’s second molars
  • Get a new HVAC system (waaaaaaaaaah!)

And, of course, there’s one thing that tops all other bucket list items: HAVE ANOTHER BABY!

Let’s do this, Summer 2018.

Two Brides, One Wedding

(I literally wrote–and then deleted–this post, thinking it’d be better if I just told you all a happy story about how perfect our wedding was and shared all of the photos, in true Insta-blogger style. But no, that’s not who I am–and that isn’t why I started this blog. So, here ya go.)

It’s kind of strange to me that, though I’ve been blogging about every possible aspect of our lives for nearly three years, I’ve never talked about our wedding day–or shared any of the photos.

I’m not really sure why that is,  really, but since our 6 year wedding anniversary is on Saturday, I thought it was a good time to break the I-have-kind-of-weird-feelings-about-our-wedding ice.

Here’s the truth: I can’t imagine our wedding having gone more perfectly. Even though Sona and I are quick to tell folks that, if given the chance for a do-over, we would have taken the money we spent on our wedding and traveled instead, I can still say that the day went off exactly as we’d hoped. And our friends and family always tell us that our wedding was one of the best they’ve ever been to.

Here’s also the truth: When I think back on our wedding, it causes me a bit of uneasiness–maybe even sadness. That has nothing to do with who I married and everything to do with how our wedding came to be.

This is something I’ve never really talked about before, but I have to believe that we’re not the only same-sex couple who have felt similarly. So, before I get to the oh-my-gosh-we-had-cotton-candy part of the post, I’ll start here: having a wedding as a same-sex couple is fraught with all sorts of emotions that, I think, are the product of constantly being reminded that you are different.

I also want to say that I’m not telling this story to shame any of our friends or family members. We have a wonderful support system, and our relationships with our families, especially, have really evolved over the years. We also have friends–and some family members–who have always supported us whole-heartedly. This is not about any of them, though. This is about what it is like to experience relationship milestones as a couple that isn’t hetero-normative, and it’s important to me that I tell the story.

Sona and I had been together for 11 years when we were married on June 2, 2012; we’d been engaged since 2006. That’s a long engagement, I know, but the reality is that our engagement, though meaningful to us, had absolutely no resonance with anyone we cared about. NONE. Our families didn’t even acknowledge it, unless we literally forced them to talk about it. Even then, the whole thing was treated as some sort of shameful secret. There were no engagement parties. No one excitedly asked us when our wedding date was. No moms clamored to take us dress shopping. It was a non-event.

In contrast, I starkly remember how, when a cousin of mine was engaged a few years later, the family celebrated with gusto. My mother excitedly exclaimed that she wanted to take the bride-to-be dress shopping. I locked myself in the bathroom of my uncle’s house and sobbed.

So, for many years, Sona and I internalized the shame over our engagement and, also, did nothing. We never really talked about a wedding. (Gay marriage wasn’t legalized then, anyway.) We remained, dutifully and somberly, silent. All the while, we watched friends and family members–many of whom had been in relationships significantly shorter than our own–get celebrated, applauded, showered, and, ultimately, married.

Each time we tried to broach the subject of a wedding with family members, the subject of the conversation suddenly changed. We were told, many times, that if we had a wedding, key members of our family wouldn’t even attend. It was always a battle, and we didn’t always have the energy to fight it.

Then, something changed. I don’t even know what, exactly, other than our own anger and resentment (and hurt, mostly) reached a fever-pitch. I remember the exact moment so precisely. We were standing in the kitchen of our Chicago garden apartment, Sona washing dishes. Civil unions had just been legalized in Illinois. So, we knew that, at least legally, our nuptials would be validated.

“If we don’t make them face it, they will never acknowledge it. They have to actually see it. They have to be forced to watch.” That’s what we said, and that’s the ball that got our wedding plans rolling. Our wedding day wasn’t forged in love and excitement and a common, convivial spirit.  It was forged in anger and resentment and pain. And that’s just the truth.

So, we set a date. We picked a venue. We told everyone it was coming like a hurricane brewing in the distance, giving ample warning, hoping they’d have time to prepare for the storm.

The planning part was pretty fun, and there were definitely moments when we morphed into the typical brides-to-be, fretting over cupcake flavors and floral arrangements. But in reality, there was always a grey cloud following our wedding date around, and we just couldn’t escape its shadow. There was always awkwardness and unease, even though people did their best to pretend otherwise.

As a result, Sona and I planned our wedding almost entirely on our own. All of the things you typically associate with the year preceding a wedding–showers, bachelorette parties, afternoons spent dress shopping and sipping champagne–didn’t materialize for us.

Still, with more than a year’s notice, our family rallied. By the time our wedding day approached, everyone had acquiesced. They did their best, and they came with bells on. They celebrated us and expressed their love and, in some cases, explicitly apologized for having taken so long to come around. There was some healing that happened–and a lot of celebrating.

This is all to say that I haven’t shared our wedding photos because I haven’t actually looked at them in years. Looking at them today, as I sorted through them for this post, I realize that a lot of the pain and anger has subsided.  Today, I can focus more on who I got to marry and not how our wedding day formed.

And despite it all, our experience of our actual wedding day was pretty dang fabulous. It was fun and easy and not-so-serious, which is exactly what we wanted.

In the moments when Sona and I were able to focus on just one another–our first look, rehearsing the vows we’d written in the basement of our venue just before the ceremony, our first dance–we were able to  bliss-out on how much we love each other. Those are my favorite memories from our day, and they were perfect.

This absolutely isn’t the blog post I expected to write when I thought, “On the occasion of our anniversary, I should blog about our wedding!” Even still, I think it’s important for us to say these things–and in doing so, to validate any other same-sex couples who have likely experienced similarly complex, less-than-perfect feelings about their own milestones.

So, while Sona and I celebrate our wedding anniversary (we’re doing mini golf and burgers on Saturday–woot!), it doesn’t hold as special a place for us as the anniversary of when we started dating. We’ve been together, now, for 17.5 years and married for 6 of those. And while I’m not sure we would do our wedding over again, if given the chance, I would do this marriage again in an instant. I’d choose Sona again and again and again, even though marriage is hard, and our relationship is (very) far from perfect.

******************************************************************************************

Phew, who is ready for some photos? Here are a TON from our day, which despite this long, kind of depressing backstory, we did enjoy.

We were married a year and a day after the state of Illinois legalized civil unions. Exactly one year later, Obama legalized gay marriage, and we went to the courthouse for an “upgrade.” Those things, alone, were worthy of a celebration!

As a wedding photog, I’m always trying to convince couples to do a first look. Our own first look, which we did after reading letters we’d written to each other, was probably my single favorite moment of the entire day. And I cried. Of course.

 

We both had our dresses custom-made. It was kind of last-minute, and I’m not sure we’d do it again, but we wanted dresses that were less formal and more tea party, and there just weren’t many plus-size options out there. (There’s a lot more good options, now!)

Of course, I live-tweeted my own wedding. You aren’t surprised, are you?

DAY-UM.

Our wedding was Hind-Jew. We had a rabbi officiate and integrated customs from both cultures, including a ketubah signing.

I loved how intimate our wedding was. It was a small-ish space, and we only had around 70 guests. Our close friends and family members stood around us for the ketubah signing and for the ceremony, and that was pretty special.

I’m not testifying. I’m trying to get through my vows without losing it.

Our wedding decor, with the help of the AMAZING Jayne Weddings, was all bunnies and pink flowers and whimsy, girly things.

          

We danced to “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes. I still can’t hear that song without crying. If you’ve never seen that music video, stop everything you’re doing and watch it NOW!