ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Congrats to you and your lovely wife :)

Thank you, and happy birthday Ivy.

Happy birthdays, Ivy and Nora!

Congrats SM!

^the same things all these guys said! Such good news.

Nice, one, scik! Congratulations!

Nora's a lovely name, congratulations!

congratulations nick, that's awesome. happy birthday ivy!

Congrats!

I can't believe Ivy's been here a year. Ridic.

Nice, one, scik! Congratulations!

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Tuesday, November 18, 2014 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can't help but hear this to the tune of 311's Down: "It's your mix/Congratulations!"

Thanks all.

oh cool now every single member of my family is sick (V was the last holdout, but now she has a fever of 103)

this oughta be fun

oh and congrats scik! so much to look forward to

J is sick, my wife is sick, and i have been trying to ward it off but i'm still having a beer every night and i don't imagine that's helping. man parenting J when he is sick, it's like all bets are off. totally unpredictable. is he going to eat? maybe. sleep? nap? not sure. will he be up from 4:30am-5:30am? sure! will he take a 40 minute nap or a 3 hour nap? let's see! any waking hours he is cranky as fuck. this blows.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to learn to do a little girl's hair, being as I'm the one dressing her every morning? I've actually found trying to make K look nice (buying stuff for her, choosing outfits) to be an unexpected pleasure of dadhood, but I have no idea what the hell to do with her hair -- it's sort of medium length and a little bit frizzy/curly. In order to brush it without it getting blown out I find I have to wet it down slightly. Sometimes I put little clips in it but the placement often winds up looking funny to me.

Feeling this - http://streetsblog.net/2014/11/20/the-idea-that-families-dont-belong-in-the-city-is-antiquated-and-harmful/

(courtesy of Jeff)

sometimes when people say "in cities you have to watch out for the schools" they mean "they don't have enough of the kinds of parents with whom I want to associate"

and sometimes not

eh sometimes the schools are just shitty too

True, and sometimes people are just racist.

ha, that's fair.

we'd love to stay in boston. i love my job, our neighborhood is great, we have friends here, boston is a great city and it's super fun to live in the city. but the schools are pretty shitty and while there's a chance that J could get into one of the better public schools a lot of the process is fairly random afaik. we could take that chance but we might not get what we'd ideally want. private school is just too expensive too.

but tbh though i think one of the main reasons we probably won't stay here is the price of housing. we'd probably have to continue renting forever, and i guess that's an option, but there is something about the lack of stability that is somewhat scray. we simply can't afford a $400,000 home, and that seems like it's as good as it gets. for what we want (a modest 3 bedroom) it's more like $500,000 or $600,000. we could live in a shitty 2br condo for $300,000 but that's not super appealing.

feeling pretty much everything about marcos' post and we aren't anywhere near the school decision atm. trying to figure out how much we reasonably have to spend to get into a Newton starter house and hoping we can find something under $500K

I'm all for urban living with kids, but it seems like most people who do it still prefer low-rise/rowhousish neighborhoods that are closer to walkable suburbs. And I think that's understandable -- there's a certain constrained feeling you get walking around a very dense urban area that also has heavy car traffic (e.g. many manhattan neighborhoods), like you almost have to have a small child on a leash. There is something to be said for yards, woods, space, also for having a place on your own property where your child can play outside unattended. Whatever though, I mean, obviously lots more people ARE choosing to live in cities with kids than a couple decades ago, it's a widely noted trend.

The other thing is that certain cities (NYC, SF etc.) are getting very expensive to live in with kids -- choosing a neighborhood for us felt like this insane and exhaustive process of matrixing various factors and it really felt like there was only one neighborhood we could find that was within a good commute of our jobs, relatively safe, with good schools, and affordable to us, and it lacks a lot of other things we'd like.

eh sometimes the schools are just shitty too

― marcos, Thursday, November 20, 2014 1:45 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, and sometimes people are just racist.

― carl agatha, Thursday, November 20, 2014 1:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you send your kids to school in a newly gentrifying area where most of the students are low-income, whatever race, they are probably gonna deal with some shit that they wouldn't deal with in an affluent school. I say this as someone who went to a totally affluent public elementary, a "mixed" jr. high with lots of bussing, and a magnet high school with pretty much everything from all over the city, and also from my wife's experience teaching in both in one of the poorest neighborhoods in America and in a slightly less poor(and now starting to gentrify) neighborhood. This can vary widely in what it means, and it in no way means you should never do this, but I think it's a bad idea to put on blinders about it.

There is something to be said for yards, woods, space, also for having a place on your own property where your child can play outside unattended

seriously. i mean in nice weather we basically just to playgrounds and parks, all we do is spend time outside w/ J.

In regards to school, as long as it is average to good, I'm fine with it. Any school that my daughter goes to in the city will be many times better than the elementary and high school I went to. And she'll probably be smart enough to figure everything out.

Yeah my baseline is not super high, it's mostly "Is she going to feel physically safe?" "Does orderly learning take place in the classrooms?" "Do they have adequate supplies and equipment?" "Will she not have to feel like the only ___ kid in the school?" "Are the teachers mostly competent, and are the classes not so large that she'll get lost in them?"

WE ARE IN THE NINE-MONTHS SHOUTY PHASE AND HAVE JUST THIS WEEK MOVED FROM A HOUSE TO A FLAT AND OUR NEW NEIGHBOURS MUST REALLY LOVE US KILL ME NOW

Anyone have any suggestions on how to learn to do a little girl's hair, being as I'm the one dressing her every morning? I've actually found trying to make K look nice (buying stuff for her, choosing outfits) to be an unexpected pleasure of dadhood,

Yes! Obviously i missed out not playing with dolls. But Ella won't let us tie her increasingly long hear back. "No ponytail!"

I find myself actually taking a bunch of items out and laying them against each other, trying to find the very ensemble. Maybe some of it is just a matter of not understanding girls clothes as well but I get sort of perfectionist about it. I even look at daycare photos to make sure she is the most stylin kid.

Awww so sweet!, Hurting! I wish I could dress August and fix her hair but it's a fight. Trying to explain dressing for colder weather. Last week was bad. This week she actually puts on outfits I put together and I have hidden some her favorite warmer weather clothing. The kid has strong opinions about what she wears and has for awhile now. She screams and cries if you try to put her in something she does not approve of. What does she approve of? A witches hat and a Disney/Cinderella pj top over purple pants that are a bit to big still. What she doesn't approve of: gorgeous red flannel shirt over tiny skinny jeans with a terrific sweater that looks like it cost a small fortune that knitted for her with lil cowboy boots. I got her to finally sign off on that and she had a good experience in it so hope she will wear it again. I was looking forward to dressing my child until she was at least five.

Jeff otm re schools

I love livin in the city, haven't regretted it yet. I'm fortunate that my wife hates the suburbs as much as I do, every time we have to spend more than a day in one we start to go a little crazy

somehow managed to get our oldest in to our first choice of schools. it's had it's drawbacks (ie a crappy kindergarten teacher with old-timers syndrome) but nothing that is specifically rooted in its urban milieu. I mean, she hasn't been stabbed by a crackhead yet.

protip: Uniqlo is great for little kid clothing -- stylish, cheap, quality doesn't matter too much bc they outgrow it so quick, and the "heattech" stuff is great for winter.

I didn't know Uniqlo had kids' clothes!

Man they have great cheap socks.

Congratulations scik.

I am currently holding the recently born 9lb 12oz Cecil

OMG!

That's a huge baby!

But that's not what the OMG was for - that was my EXCITEMENT about CECIL and YOU and THE MRS.! This is such great news!

Thanks. It's been a crazy day; birth mom is spent, adoptive mom and dad are realizing that we spent 10 years trying to have a baby and suddenly have to figure out what to actually do with one.

ime right now feed, change, and hold him a lot.

When does he get to go home?

We've got to be in the hospital for 24 hours. Gonna hang around for a couple days at least until the legal stuff clears on Monday

yay joygoat!! so exciting for u!!

This is great news to wake up to, congratulations! My grandad was called Cecil - he'd have been 102 in four days' time.

!

Yaay congratulations!
I didn't know all that much about taking care of a baby either but it's amazing how many people who love you do and will offer you many pro tips :)

Congrats joygoat! Cecil is a great name.

WELCOME TO THE CLUB

Awesome. An already-epic journey now begins for real.