Work unexpectedly extends the gift of a long holiday weekend. In Belgium, this is called “making the bridge”.

We spend the 4th at my parents’, in part to get out of the city, and in part to celebrate my dad’s retirement. We bring a spumoni cake – not the brilliant ice cream thing making the rounds in the NYTimes, unfortunately, though this is equally spectacular – and veggie kabobs and our swimsuits. The baby loves the pool as much as anticipated, though he gets overwhelmed quickly, retreating to the safety of a snuggly towel on Papa’s lap. The big kid can finally touch the bottom of the shallow end with his tippy-toes, which is exciting for all involved.

More early morning walks with the kids, sometimes with coffee, often with foraged fruit. One morning we hear chirping and look over to spot two juvenile raccoons snuggled up together on a porch rail, calling for their mama. The big kid and I imagine what they might be saying, or what he and his brother would say if they couldn’t find me.

The baby masters hands-and-knees crawling over the July 4th weekend. He’s been scooting along on his belly for what feels like months, and all of a sudden, he’s off! It’s so fun to see him exploring, though it feels like we’re constantly pulling things out of his mouth. I suppose that’s all part of being a tiny scientist.

These curls! I’m dead.

I pass a blissful morning in personal and professional conversation on the patio at Spoke and Bird. We used to go here all the time when we lived in Pilsen and it was around the corner from the Chicago Women’s Park and Gardens and on the way to the Lakefront Path. I grumble about work, but I’m deeply grateful for the many opportunities for professional connection it affords me, and particularly for the flexibility to have mornings like this.

We find a little push-cart for the baby on the neighborhood Buy Nothing group. He discovers it with glee the next morning, crawling over in his sleep sack to start playing. In what feels like no time, he’s doing laps in the kitchen, pausing to inspect the washing machine with every pass.

I spend what feels like weeks agonizing about how we’re going to make a second work trip to Champaign work for our family. All of us in a hotel room for 2.5 days sounds miserable. The baby moves around too much at night to safely sleep in a hotel bed BUT ALSO nurses too much at night to expect that nights away will be anything but difficult for everyone. The big kid would love a night or two with his grandparents, but that means extra time in the car, which is the thing the baby hates more than anything in the world. Ultimately, we decide that the best way to make it work without messing with nursing is for me to miss the first evening of activities. I feel terribly guilty asking for this, even though I know that it’s the best possible compromise for my family.

Once I’m there, I feel like it’s important to make it clear the sacrifices involved, and to make visible the struggle of balancing the personal and the professional. In the parking lot after the last session, another participant approaches me to thank me for saying what I did. These sessions were her first time away from her kids as well, though hers are quite a bit older than mine. I feel deep gratitude that she shared her experience with me.

And being away isn’t as difficult as any of anticipated – as always, the anticipation is worse than the actuality. I soak up the solo time – back to back runs in dear and familiar places, meals and drinks with good good friends, painting my nails, loads of coffee – but after one night am ready to be home.

The big kid asks for a bow and arrows for his birthday. Their birthdays are coming up soon, one in August, the other in September. How quickly the time is passing. The big kid looks so small in photos from last year. It hurts my heart sometimes to think how abruptly his world changed, and I’m grateful for the extent to which he’s been able to take it in stride.

We weather a dangerously hot weekend, deeply grateful for central air conditioning, particularly after the misery of last summer’s heat. Our experience of the heat wave pales in comparison to that of our family in decidedly un-air conditioned Belgium. And then it’s over nearly as quickly as it started, the temperatures dropping by 30 degrees overnight. We go out for a walk and are unexpectedly caught in a severe thunderstorm, hiding out with lunch and then cupcakes rather than getting soaked to the bone.

I finally get the bike trailer hooked up – only to blow the rim off of one of the wheels the first time we tried to take it out. I’m grateful that we weren’t actually on the road and that we were more scared than hurt. Another week of waiting before we’re able to ride, but then we make it happen, the big kid endlessly chattering as we run errands. His big idea for a summer outing involves a family bike ride to the “dinosaur museum”. He offered to pack a picnic since we will be hungry. Smart guy.

Long runs happen again, finally. I miss this part of marathon training – the hours of podcasts and meditative steps by the lake, the early mornings and the clothes drenched in sweat. Maybe next year. For now, I’m deeply grateful for any miles I can sneak in.

I spend an afternoon playing tourist with friends from grade school. Our conversations are wide ranging, hilarious, and restorative as we wander around downtown, taking in hot dogs and cocktails and architecture and broken shoes. It is a good, good thing to connect with people who understand where you’re from, even if the intermediate steps in your lives haven’t been the same.

We go to member night at the science museum. It’s too hot for outdoor activities, so we enjoy our scoops of ice cream and as many exhibits as we can manage before the kids melt into tired puddles. We decide to do just one more thing, and then happen into a whole hallway full of magnetic shapes which keep both kids enthralled. These sorts of things always risk throwing the entire evening off – we are an early bedtime household – but they’re almost always worth it.

At the end of the month, the baby stands up on his own for the first time. Steps can’t be far behind.

July Reads

• This is New York in the not-so-distant future — NYMag, beautiful and devastating
• City Guide: Chicago — Tim Mazurek of Lottie + Doof for Cup of Jo
• These Five Words Changed My Relationship — Cup of Jo
• is my employee taking advantage of the flexibility I give her? — Ask a Manager
• Family Meal Planning for Real Life — Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen for the NYTimes
• The House, the Food and Issues in Between —  NYTimes – for this line from Julia Moskin: “From this episode I learned two things. First, hell is other people in the kitchen. Two, life — and summer in particular — is too short to eat a bad salad.”
• I’m God’s Ex-Girlfriend — Gloria Beth Amodeo – I’m going to have some thoughts on this when I catch my breath.

July Eats

• Several dishes from previous months have made it into the weekly rotation: mushroom shawerma pitas, endless riffs on takeout-style sesame noodles, roasted carrot burgers (carrots were the best, followed by beets, but definitely not sweet potatoes)
• From the NYTimes Cooking:
  • Tomato poached fish with chile oil and herbs, a real knockout.
  • Kuku sabzi, with some modifications. Samin Nosrat remains an absolute joy.
  • Creamy white beans with herb oil served with crusty bread and a handful of greens
  • Ottolenghi’s pasta and zucchini salad, with mushrooms added because we had them on hand. Big herby dishes seem to be a theme.
• The best lentil salad ever, my go-to for picnics or summer lunches. We always have loads of leftovers and I’m never disappointed.
• A vegan coffeecake, doubled, for a neighborhood playdate.
• Vegan chocolate cupcakes – at the big kid’s request – for dinner with friends
• Smitten Kitchen’s pesto potato salad, once with beans (as written), once with peas.
• Curried sweet potatoes and chickpeas, in an attempt to eat from the pantry despite the seasonal abundance

We moved.

We moved, and it was awful.

We moved, and it was awful, and nearly everything that could go wrong did.

We moved, and it was awful, and nearly everything that could go wrong did, but in the middle of it, I took a break to take the big kid to a bubble run, $5 each to run a mile around the track in perfect weather with bystanders blowing bubbles, plus our own bubble wands, snacks, and small cups of boba, a first for him. He tired quickly, but found extra steam when we were done running and all he had to do was joyfully chase the bubbles.

We moved, and it was awful, and nearly everything that could go wrong did, and every part of my body was bruised for weeks, which is about how long it took to sort out all of the money and repairs and losses.

We moved, and it was awful, and nearly everything that could go wrong did, but at some point, it was finally over and we went on with our lives.

The big kid moved into his own room. We thought this would be harder than it turned out to be. He shared our bed until a week before the baby was born, and then shared our room after that. Now he is on his own in the room he will eventually share with his brother, and we have returned to the enormous floor bed that we referred to as our nest. It’s not the best for our backs, but it is the best for the baby, and so we make it work, much as we made the previous arrangements work.

We gave up our couch in the move – sold, along with many other things, to our remarkably accommodating subletter when it became apparent that the couch was not coming out of the apartment. This would have been a much more painful decision had the whole situation not been so absurdly stressful. Instead, we gave it a moment, and then let it go.

In the new place, we have appliances. It’s a mid-century housewife’s dream: a dishwasher AND a washer/dryer. Months ago, I told my therapist that if there was a single thing that could improve my day-to-day happiness, it would be a dishwasher. I wasn’t wrong.

But we also have repairs: windows that don’t close, water damage from previous roof leaks, a closet door that won’t stay on its track. If there is one thing we appreciated about our previous place, it was the responsive maintenance folks. We miss them already.

With the new place, new routines, some intended to save money, like eliminating the Saturday morning grocery store breakfast, and others to capitalize on the disruptive nature of moving, like establishing new cleaning routines, and still others to address the incursion of a horde of milipedes, like mopping the floors with essential oils and hoping for the best.

For Father’s Day, a trip to the north side for lunch, pie, and a walk. We stop at the fancy olive oil store and pick up a bottle. The baby naps in the car. Salmon and potatoes for dinner, just what was requested. We are deeply grateful for our calm and consistent Papa.

The baby’s sleep is broken, temporarily, and I spend a week or more up at 5, walking to Starbucks in order to keep the house quiet and myself going. I choose to focus on the spectacular morning night and the delicious baby snuggles and not the fact that I’m hanging on by a thread.

A colleague organizes a team for the city’s bike to work challenge, and that’s all the nudge that I need to fall back in love with my bike after a few years away. Now I’m frustrated when the weather or other circumstances prevent me from riding, especially since my commute is a total of 5 minutes door-to-door. (I don’t contribute much to my team’s mileage, but I do my best.)

Standing! The baby is standing! And playing with balls! Every ball he can find! At the same time!

I use my last morsel of vacation to take the kids to the beach (we intended to go to the pool, but couldn’t). The last time I was at the beach was my due date, big as a house and so uncomfortable, unbelievably still pregnant after weeks of false alarms. The baby, now on the outside, kicks his feet happily at the edge of the water while big brother runs around. We return home tired and coated in sand.

And then, at the end of the month, my dad retires. It’s the end of an era, and I look forward to whatever comes next for my parents.

June Reading

• Alanis Morissette on Pregnancy at 45, Childbirth, Postpartum Depression, and #MeToo — SELF Magazine — this profile was so, so good, particularly the parts about coparenting and boundaries
• The Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund Helps Women Get Abortions in the South — Buzzfeed — An important and highly personal profile of one family/organization doing the work to ensure access to reproductive health.
• Opinion | Black Women in Chicago, Getting Things Done — NYTimes
• Life Advice for My College-Bound Daughter — Cup of Jo
• My Kids’ Hilariously Passive Aggressive Notes — Cup of Jo — The first letter of this genre that we received was definitely one for the memory box.
• Where the Wild Things Are — Food52 — OMG, this series of posts about Amanda Hesser’s family’s struggles with various invaders had me stifling giggles and horrified gasps
• How Much the Everyday Changes When You Have Kids — Flowing Data
• 1 2 3 Magic – Thomas W Phelan

June Eating

• For Father’s Day, vegan pancakes, 70s salads and pie at First Slice, walking around coffee from The Coffee Studio, and olive oil poached salmon with fingerling potatoes and roasted mushroom as requested.
• From NYTimes Cooking:
  • Mushroom shawerma pitas, except with arugula and served on or with ciabatta
  • Takeout-style sesame noodles with fried tofu — liked this so much that we’ve made it three weeks and counting
  • Pasta with kale sauce — same as above! This recipe is way better than you’re thinking it will be. I promise.
  • Sheet pan tofu and sweet potatoes — also a repeat. Good for a Friday night when you can’t even.
  • Zucchini and egg tart — spectacular brunch food. As delicious as it was beautiful.
  • McBitty’s black bean burgers — we’ve been trying to settle on a solid homemade veggie burger recipe for awhile. These were decent.
  • Chilled pea soup made vegan with soy instead of buttermilk, refreshing on a hot afternoon.
• From The Guardian
  • Roasted carrot burgers — another one for the burger rotation, made first with carrots and then with beets.
  • Butternut squash with black bean mole — a weekend dish, but well worth the effort.
• Palak tofu with rice — simple and a keeper
• Sugar snap pea salad with grilled asparagus, grilled zucchini, and tempeh to make it a whole meal
• Gazpacho, the big kid’s request from his special cookbook, except we didn’t have enough vinegar, and then we accidentally had too much vinegar and so no one could finish.