Someone recently asked me what the hardest part of motherhood is and it’s not at all what I would have expected before going into it myself. For me, It’s mealtime. Maybe it’s because at 32 years old, I still barely manage to make myself proper meals or even simple dinners some nights, but introducing solids has been the absolute hardest challenge for me so far. I feel as if I spend my entire day figuring out what I’m going to feed Nate only for most of it to wind up on the floor. Sometimes he’s not even interested in what I prepared, which means it’s back to square one on top of an ever growing mess.

The other hardest part, which trumps even mealtime, is the lack of nearby support. We don’t live near family, which means there’s no one to help watch Nate for an hour if I have to run to the doctor and good luck finding a babysitter for a random Tuesday morning. We can never drop him off by a grandparent so we can have an afternoon to ourselves and there’s no one who can come by and just be a warm body on the couch so we can have a night out.

We have some really good friends in our neighborhood who have stepped in to help on more than one occasion, but there’s nothing quite like having family around. Don’t expect us to leave New York anytime, but I completely understand now why people move back home.

xx Esther