New Year, New Baby

Bo, 2015

We had a few people over for New Year's Eve last night, the last in a series of festive holiday dinners (fortunately, they were the kind of friends who arrive with four bottles of Champagne and a feast of Portuguese seafood stew and don't mind stepping around a wooden train set to get to the dining table...)

Bo and I even made it up 'til midnight and watched the countdown, heading to bed to the sound of cheers from the street and fireworks going off across Brooklyn.

I was looking back at my last post and it nearly blows my mind to think that last year we celebrated Oscar's first birthday and welcomed a brand new baby. Wow. How did that happen?

And there are just two days until Axel heads back to school, Will heads back to work, and we get down to the business of figuring out what normal life looks like as a family of five. I will be sad to say goodbye to this month of days with everyone at home and lunches out with the baby, but I'm also eager for everyone to get back to their routines. Whatever that may mean!

2015

2015

It's been quite the year; I can't even imagine what's in store for 2016. A Happy New Year's from all of us!

2014

Williamsburg, 2013

Last night, I barely kept my eyes open long enough to see the ball drop in Times Square (on our TV, clearly.) 2013 has been a jam-packed, wonderful year. Although Axel was born in 2012, in 2013 it really felt like we became parents, somehow. Maybe because the newborn days are such a blurry, happy shock to the system...it only really started to sink in this past year.

Here's a look back at some of the moments that I'll remember most.

In January, Axel turned five months old and we rang in the New Year in England. We were a little bedraggled from so much travel, but we had a good time exploring London and seeing family.

We came home to blue skies and a lot of work. It was good to get back into a routine, but February and March were challenging months. Axel had an MRI for the cyst on the back of his head. I worked (and pumped) almost constantly, and it felt like I had to steal every minute I could with him in the early mornings and evenings. I spent a lot of time wondering if working with a young baby was worth it, and feeling torn in a million directions. Axel was sick on and off from Christmas through mid-March, and it often felt like a grind, especially the weeks leading up to his surgery and during his recovery. We sort of held our breath through Easter, when it felt like the clouds had truly lifted.

In April we took a lot of long walks around Brooklyn and started to grapple with an increasingly mobile eight month old. Suddenly I understood why mothers of older children described the first six months or so as "easy." I got into more of a groove at work and made peace (ish) with my work-life balance, and we made it to Maine several times over the spring.

In June, I found out I was expecting baby number two and we took our first big solo trip as a family of three (and a half), to France for our friends' son's christening.

New Year's Eve

London, 2012

On a very rainy and blustery New Year's Eve day, we decided to scope out the Saatchi Gallery and a few of the shops along the King's Road.

Axel took an extra long nap in his stroller and we were able to have a leisurely lunch out, perusing silly British magazines like Country Life over tartines, wine, and lattes at Poilane.

New Year's Eve itself was marked by a big roast beef (and the requisite Yorkshire puddings) in Surrey. I can hardly believe it's 2013...doesn't that sound like the future?