Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) Read Online Free PDF
Author: Alex McCord
to go to the roof of the hotel to see something I’d never seen in the middle of a big city before: a sky full of stars. It was spectacular and worth the climb.
6. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Women have been having babies for thousands of years
5. Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses are a practically perfect design for pregnant women
4. In order to keep François occupied during prenatal appointments we got him involved by letting him help take my blood pressure etc
3. Best advice I heard: men’s genitals grow and change shape regularly then go back to the way they were before Don’t worry about your female delicate bits being able to retract
2. Pregnant women are neither aliens nor invalids. However, far be it from me to suggest that women should not use that incorrect assumption to their advantage when trying to get a seat on a crowded subway train
1. Number one thing to bring to your hospital birth: a third party advocate during labor who is willing to burn down the hospital to get your needs met—someone who isn’t the medical provider and who isn’t you Some people hire a doula—for me that was Simon
Chapter 2
No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn, What’s My Name Again? and Who is This Alien?
The First Six Months
Simon
One of the great advantages I found by having my first child reasonably later in life (I was 39 when François was born) was that my career was relatively secure. As the general manager of a well-run hotel operation, I could largely drop out and stay home. And so with the support of the owner and my great staff behind me, I did just that for the first two weeks of his life. The only hiccup to this was my executive assistant had just resigned and in the midst of the birth I hired a new assistant fairly blindly who, while I was being thrown in at the deep end of fatherhood, was being thrown in the deep end to manage my office as I worked from home. At this time PDAs with e-mail capability were still not in common use, but I was never more than a phone call away. After we brought François home, not only did we have to get used to a new being in our existence, but our two cats also had to as well.
Alex
When François was 16 days old, we were in London midway through our first trip away from home since the birth. We were both determined to get out of town and travel as soon after the birth as possible, partly as a getaway and partly just to prove to ourselves that becoming parents didn’t mean staying at home all the time. I’d read so much advice for new moms that to me seemed condescending and presumptive, such as, “You won’t want to do anything for a few weeks, you won’t feel like going anywhere” and my reaction was, “Well, that’s NOT ME.” I didn’t plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or anything too crazy, but a trip to London? Easy! I wanted to prove to myself that I was still me and that Simon and I could simultaneously be good first-time parents obsessed with our new baby, and normal city dwellers who did normal things, like go out for late meals and travel. We continued to do so, just with a peacefully sleeping baby tucked into his stroller or car seat.
The only thing on our London agenda that didn’t involve the baby was a two-hour cocktail party for the luxury hotel conference Simon attended. The party was two blocks from the hotel and we organized a sitter in the form of Simon’s best man, Eddie, from our wedding, who also happened to be the director of finance of the hotel we stayed in. He came upstairs directly after work and played with, or rather walked the floor with, spaced-out François, who was wide awake and looking as far as his two-week-old eyes could see at the new person holding him and whispering to him all sorts of inside information with which to tease his father later on. It was the first time I put on a cocktail dress postpartum, and played it safe with a blazer on top. I had had my hair done in the hotel earlier while
6. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Women have been having babies for thousands of years
5. Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses are a practically perfect design for pregnant women
4. In order to keep François occupied during prenatal appointments we got him involved by letting him help take my blood pressure etc
3. Best advice I heard: men’s genitals grow and change shape regularly then go back to the way they were before Don’t worry about your female delicate bits being able to retract
2. Pregnant women are neither aliens nor invalids. However, far be it from me to suggest that women should not use that incorrect assumption to their advantage when trying to get a seat on a crowded subway train
1. Number one thing to bring to your hospital birth: a third party advocate during labor who is willing to burn down the hospital to get your needs met—someone who isn’t the medical provider and who isn’t you Some people hire a doula—for me that was Simon
Chapter 2
No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn, What’s My Name Again? and Who is This Alien?
The First Six Months
Simon
One of the great advantages I found by having my first child reasonably later in life (I was 39 when François was born) was that my career was relatively secure. As the general manager of a well-run hotel operation, I could largely drop out and stay home. And so with the support of the owner and my great staff behind me, I did just that for the first two weeks of his life. The only hiccup to this was my executive assistant had just resigned and in the midst of the birth I hired a new assistant fairly blindly who, while I was being thrown in at the deep end of fatherhood, was being thrown in the deep end to manage my office as I worked from home. At this time PDAs with e-mail capability were still not in common use, but I was never more than a phone call away. After we brought François home, not only did we have to get used to a new being in our existence, but our two cats also had to as well.
Alex
When François was 16 days old, we were in London midway through our first trip away from home since the birth. We were both determined to get out of town and travel as soon after the birth as possible, partly as a getaway and partly just to prove to ourselves that becoming parents didn’t mean staying at home all the time. I’d read so much advice for new moms that to me seemed condescending and presumptive, such as, “You won’t want to do anything for a few weeks, you won’t feel like going anywhere” and my reaction was, “Well, that’s NOT ME.” I didn’t plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or anything too crazy, but a trip to London? Easy! I wanted to prove to myself that I was still me and that Simon and I could simultaneously be good first-time parents obsessed with our new baby, and normal city dwellers who did normal things, like go out for late meals and travel. We continued to do so, just with a peacefully sleeping baby tucked into his stroller or car seat.
The only thing on our London agenda that didn’t involve the baby was a two-hour cocktail party for the luxury hotel conference Simon attended. The party was two blocks from the hotel and we organized a sitter in the form of Simon’s best man, Eddie, from our wedding, who also happened to be the director of finance of the hotel we stayed in. He came upstairs directly after work and played with, or rather walked the floor with, spaced-out François, who was wide awake and looking as far as his two-week-old eyes could see at the new person holding him and whispering to him all sorts of inside information with which to tease his father later on. It was the first time I put on a cocktail dress postpartum, and played it safe with a blazer on top. I had had my hair done in the hotel earlier while