Saying goodbye

Isn't this one of the worst parts of "moving" usually? Yes, the upcoming is always very exciting, but saying goodbye to friends, places, memories can be tough... I've learned that I am much more sentimental when it comes to this kind of stuff than S is. I'm always requesting a drive by our "first apartment" whenever we're up that way and S always gives me a look and says, "Why in the world would you want to stop by there??"

I think this move will be particularly bittersweet in this way. One of us pretty much always lived in MD during our relationship, engagement, then marriage so it really does feel like the closing of a chapter for us. In a way, it's neat to look back on everything that's happened in the 6 years since I moved down to MD, and I can see many ways that God has grown both me individually as well as S and me as a couple. We'll especially miss some dear friends that we've made here and the close proximity to my family, but we're also excited to see where the Lord is leading us. I'll admit, there is part of me that's excited that we're going to live in the city with all that comes with that (lots of cultural activities, yummy ethnic food, car-less living, etc...). There's also nervousness and apprehension since, as someone put it to me recently, living in NYC as a single person is SO different than living there as a family with young kids. Amen to that.

Speaking of young kids... Our little man A will be saying bye to all of his friends that he's "grown up" with in church nursery. We had our last ice cream date with our good friends, the Ws, whose little girl E is A's best friend, b-day twin (born exactly 5 hrs apart to the minute), and future wife (if proposals by 2yos have any predictive value) earlier this week and it occurred to us, not for the first time, that our kids' lives are about to be turned upside down. More so for A since he's at an age where he "gets" that we're not living in the only apartment he's ever known, that we won't get to see Gong-gong and Paw-paw (my parents) as much anymore, and that we don't get to see his buds anymore. And yet, we're teaching him to be flexible, to deal with change, and hopefully to become more resilient, which in the long-run I think is a good thing especially since he's quite the emotional, resistant-to-change kid. Still... goodbyes are hard.

Apartment set!

We have a place to live! We had gotten an "acceptance" from the hospital housing people about a month ago, but hadn't received our assignment or really had much information from them. Well, we officially got our assignment today! It should be a fully renovated 3BR with redone hardwood floors, kitchen, and bathroom in an elevator building with laundry in the basement. Conveniently enough, T's daycare looks like it'll be on the floor above our apartment in the same building and one of our dear friends actually works on the first floor of this building!! We'll only be a couple blocks from the hospital, subway, A's preschool, Chipotle, a diner that we like... all the important things, right? ;) 

Actually, the one thing it's not especially close to is S's hospital which is south by almost exactly 100 blocks and across pretty much the entire width of the island. Fortunately, the island isn't that wide. Unfortunately, going "crosstown" as they call it is kind of painful in NYC. Before going into what going crosstown entails, I have to say that I love the public transportation system in NYC. For ~$100/month, you can get pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Manhattan, as well as much of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn relatively efficiently. For such a complicated, busy city, I think it's a pretty amazing feat... especially compared to other public transportation systems which are much more expensive and, in my opinion, much less functional (although cleaner *ahem*). 

However, that 2 mile distance across the island through Central Park? Painful. There's no subway to take you so you have to take a crosstown bus. There are only a few places you can cross Central Park so, of course, they tend to get pretty trafficky and suddenly it takes forever for the bus to travel a measly distance. It also doesn't help that the bus stops at almost every intersection and lets people on and off. So we'll see how S's commute goes. Hopefully smoother than I'm picturing in my head...

The State of Life

Life always seems to come at us at a million miles a minute. This has pretty much been true ever since S and I got married 3.5 years ago. I did a double-take recently when I realized just how soon we're going to be packing up all of our belongings and moving to the Big City. We're basically down to 2 months. That's only ~60 days. Eeks!!

To what I'm sure will be a huge shock to my college roommate who watched me frantically pull an all-nighter the night before my parents came to pick me up every single year of college, I am actually starting to pack now. Crazy... I know. But the idea of trying to pack our entire place in a day or even several days with little kids who seem to keep me busy for every single one of their waking minutes?? Yeah, that would be even crazier :) So, here we go! I've started (mostly) on the books and boy, the boxes are multiplying!

In other news, things are starting to come together. We turned in A's preschool acceptance and a hefty check a couple weeks ago and we just heard back from T's daycare that they're holding a spot for him. The hospital housing people are pretty sure they're going to be able to accommodate us (and even our "move in early" request) since we're asking for a "larger" apartment... which is just another reminder that we're a bit of an anomaly. See, most people who are at my med school and even residents & fellows at this particular institution tend not to have kids hence they only need a studio or 1BR.

We're asking for a 3BR despite the cost because quite honestly, we're feeling very very cramped in our current situation. We've spent these last 3.5 years living in less than 700 square feet even as our family has doubled in size. Don't get me wrong... we're grateful for each of those square feet and I know there are others who manage to live in even tighter squeezes, but I think with T's addition (and impending mobility), we feel like we just need some more breathing space so that the kids have a place to play and so that we have a place to set up a dedicated "study/work" area without all being on top of each other. I have ideas about cozy reading corners and am also hoping to set things up so that A (and eventually T) have space to really set up the train tracks and also a dedicated area for a kid-sized table for them. Anyhow, we'll see...

The Start of an Adventure

If there's one thing I've learned over the last 5.5 years, it's to expect the unexpected... And so, crazily enough, we will be moving as a family of 4 to (back to, in my case) Big City.

I have no clue how much, or more likely, how little, time I'll really have to update this, but hopefully this will be a good way to keep in touch with friends and to keep a little record (for myself) of our adventures.