home is wherever i'm with you

living in the city has a transient feel. even if you know you are a chicagoan for life, there is a chance you will move to the burbs once raising kids becomes too difficult. or if you are committed to the city, there is always the chance that all your friends will leave. one by one, or maybe even all at once.

which, like i said, leaves life with an uncommitted and transient feel. all my friends throughout my 9 years in chicago always thought about staying, thought about moving to the burbs, or even thought about going back to their home towns. my all-too-wise friend, sarah catherine, summed it up one morning at mom's group when she burst out with "i'm 35 years old and i don't know where home is!"

add to this the fact that our family literally has no clue where home is. having left our house in the city we are staying in a place that is not home, headed to a lake house that is not home, and have no idea where we will end up in the end of it all. our little family went house hunting last weekend and chris and i kept looking at one another and asking, "can we picture ourselves here? " wilmette? glenview? winnetka? back in the city? where is home?

chris sent me some of his favorite songs on dropbox last week (you must try dropbox if you haven't, its the only way we've found to share music). anyway, the lyrics were running through my mind this morning and duh. it's a classic song with lyrics that everyone knows by heart and they are just what my heart needed to hear...

home is wherever i'm with you.

i suppose i need to remind myself that it doesn't matter where we are for the time being or where we end up, we are home. every time that i am with chris, austin, graham and carter... every time we are playing, crying, or even dancing ...

i am home.

Oh where oh where could my baby be....

in the blink of an eye, our baby boy is 3 months old! carter, i don't know where these past few

months have gone, but i can't believe you are already so big.

for any of you who know me as a mom, you know my heart is stuck on the toddler-stage. a sweet look or lispy-pronounced sentence out of a 2-year-old's mouth will make me literally melt. graham is 2... and his mere pronunciation of "gawk-a-mo-wee" (guacamole) or "hop-i-sit-ital" (hospital) makes me stop to squeeze his little toddler self and wish he wouldn't grow another day older. but for some reason (and i HATE to say it now) i have somewhat wished away the newborn stages with my big boys. maybe not wished away... but i was always looking forward, not back. always wondering what stage would come next, not savoring the moment. when would they roll over? or sit up? when would they sit in their car seat without crying? when would they be able to eat at a restaurant without me packing baby food? when would they sleep through the night?

but ahhhhh, then came carter. my sweet baby boy who i cherish every second i get. i don't care how soon he will sit up because i love laying beside him. i don't care when he wants to sit in his car seat because i'd rather hold him. i don't care when he sleeps through the night (okay, sort of) because i love seeing him every single time i wake up.

something tells me that i am enjoying this little newborn more than my others because there is that thing inside me saying this could very well be our last baby. yet people tell me that one just knows when you are having your last baby so there are more lil hills to come. but without knowing whether we want four kids -- and knowing the current rate of private college tuition -- sweet baby carter could very well be our last.

tear.

but if you know carter, you know that there is more to appreciate than the fact that he could be our last lil hill.

while he looks as though his first love is food, it is definitely people. try to feed my little baby boy and you will know what i mean... he literally pushes his food out of his mouth with his tongue when he has something he needs to tell you. and it's urgent. the sheer emotion and energy that go into his coos and gurgles is so intense that you know you it sometime feels like i am sharing a special moment with a peer whenever carter needs to talk. and in looking through all our pics of carter, so many show him in this state... making direct eye contact and talking or smiling.

plus, he just never complains about anything. one will only hear a cry from carter if he is starving or overtired. several people have told me that third children are always easy....

but several people also told me that second children are always easy and laid and graham, as much as i love him, was NOT easy. just ask his grandparents.

quite simply, it is a joy to be around carter. he enjoys life as it comes his way.

and with all that said...

carter, whether you are my last bambino or merely a marker on our journey to six (kidding:), you are so incredibly special and i wouldn't trade you for anything in the world.

even for a girl.

you say tomato...

like most brothers, austin & graham fight. and they know how to push one another's buttons. but lord help me if i have to listen to one more of their nonsensical arguments that leave austin screaming in frustration and graham laying on the floor sobbing. and the reason i cannot stand these arguments is that they just don't. make. any. sense.

this picture is the aftermath of just such an argument. although austin is the only one crying, it is usually graham who is even more upset.

yesterday's argument in the kitchen:

Graham: "I Austin. You Graham."

Austin (clearly annoyed already): "No Graham, I AM AUSTIN. I am Austin and you are Graham."

Graham (starting to cry): "No, I is Austin. I is Austin!!!" (wails and tears)

Austin: "NO Graham, you are Graham. Mom, he can't be Austin because I am Austin. He is Graham!!!"

Graham (wailing as he throws himself to the ground): "I not Graham, I Austin, I Austin, I Austin!!"

seriously?

this morning's argument as three boys were piled in my bed:

Graham: "Dats Carter, he my broder."

Austin: "Yes, Graham, and Carter is my brother, too."

Graham: "NOOOO, dats MY broder. Carter is MY broder!!"

Austin: "Graham, he's my brother, too! He's not just your brother!"

Graham (wailing): "NOO, dats my broder. Dats MY broder!! No Austin, dats MY broder!!"

i'm creating a new rule in the Hill house.... if you are going to argue, at least pick an argument that makes sense.

i know chris is reading this right now and thinking i need to practice what i preach.

the days are long...

dear mrs. lady from starbucks,

the days are long when i find my toddler dressed in nothing other than his skivvies and my high heels.

do you promise that the years of required therapy ahead of me will be short?

suburbs or bust

if you know our family...

you know we love the City. and we love our boys.

so naturally, the question has come about... is the City what is best for our boys?

thus came about our move from 1851 west larchmont. into homelessness.

okay, not homelessness in its entirety. thanks to my in-laws, we have running water. and a toilet. and while we have not reached any conclusions as to where we should live, we have reached conclusions of some sort or another....

(1) attached garages are the best thing that man has created.

(2) drive-thru starbucks are equally amazing. no joke, city moms, you can order a frappe-crappa-whatever without EVER LEAVING YOUR CAR. it is truly glorious.

(3) the suburbs have teenagers. in the past 2 weeks both chris and i have inadvertently pointed out pimply nosed and greasy haired individuals as if they are as precious as the almost extinct pandas of our great green earth. coming from chicago we just can't believe that these creatures exist, no less that they babysit for less than $16 an hour.

mother's day!

more importantly than mother's day, this particular sunday was our chance to dedicate Carter Daniel to the Lord... after a beautiful service at park community church, our families headed to chicagoQ to brunch and hang out. after we were there for a bit we realized that chicagoQ was where tsunami used to be, a sushi restaurant located near division and dearborn.

and ironically, where chris and i had our first date.

we then realized that the table we sat at for brunch with our screaming three kids and large extended family was a few mere feet from where we had sat as young singles meeting for dinner the first time.

wow, we felt old.

happy mother's day to me:)

outside chicagoQ... the love these two cousins share just never gets old:)

maggie, thanks so much for joining us in our hill family uniform of denim and khaki! clearly fallon has gone over to the "lake" side with those spunky pink boots and pig tails.... no clue how this is going to work out long-term....

wisdom from starbucks

the days are long but the years are short. wise words from woman behind me in line at Starbucks as she watched me and my pregnant belly trying desperately to wrangle two little toddler boys. and apparently looking quite desperate doing it.

but as i'm trying to get through morning meltdowns and spilled chocolate milks (in the car seat), it only takes one look at my baby boys' pictures from even a few months ago to appreciate the fact that they are growing up. SO. fast.

and i can't even tell you what happened in them.

so instead of relying on my fallible memory or the unorganized pictures in my iPhoto, i am going to start blogging. so that i can print these pages and tell my boys exactly what happened in our long, mundane days and catch a quick glimpse of how they grew up into little men in the blink of an eye.