ChiKat

Ugh. My insurance company is dropping Rush. Ian has been to the same pediatrician since, literally, the day he was born. But now I have to find a new doctor because the insurance company is fighting with Rush about rates.

Healthcare in this country is so frustrating. I'm not changing employers, I'm not missing my payments. I signed a contract with them, but they can change their network at any time. That doesn't seem fair at all.

Thankfully, Northwestern is covered by the insurance company. I just have to blindly select a new doctor and hope we can build the same kind of supportive relationship that I have with my current doctor.

If anyone loves their pediatrician at Northwestern and would recommend them, let me know

When we moved into this condo, we spent about three months making changes to ensure the space would work for us. After three months, we declared it "perfect enough" and haven't done major work since then.

One of my concerns with a house is that fixing up a house isn't as easy. The benefit of having more space means…there's more space. I'm not Martha Stewart, but I do like to make our home look nice. My husband and I both know enough about remodeling to be dangerous.

We don't have a ton of money. The spare money we do have, we like to spend on travel. I'm worried that if we buy a house, I'll get sucked into wanting to make it perfect. I'm worried I'll spend our spare money on housing repairs and not vacations.

This worry isn't keeping me up at night – I mean, what a great problem to have: how to spend spare money. But it's something I contemplate when I think about where I want us to live. I grew up in the suburbs and there is a huge part of me that loves the idea of having the house-picket-fence childhood for my son. But there's another part of me that is fairly convinced I'm a better person when I'm living in the city. I see more of the realities of life; I have to make due with fewer things; and I have a better sense of my priorities. I'm worried I'll lose that if I buy a house and throw myself into home-ownership.

With a condo, it's easier to end remodeling. You only have control over your small, interior space. With a house, it's much easier to continually find new areas to improve (Add a deck! Finish the basement! Plant an herb garden! Paint the exterior!). I can imagine myself enjoying that a great deal…so much so that I forget the other things I also enjoy.

My son got his first tooth for Christmas. That made for VERY tired parents during the holidays. He still doesn't sleep through the night. Teething has just made it worse. I'm so tired, I am ready to claw my own eyes out. My husband had developed an eye twitch that gets worse whenever our son cries. I have dark purple bags under my eyes that no amount of make-up can disguise.

And yet my husband and I still talk excitedly about having ANOTHER baby in the future. I swear, this biological need to continue the human race makes you crazy.

My husband's new job is going well. We were expecting it to last 2-3 years, but some of his new colleagues have hinted that he has a very good chance of earning a long-term position.

After his last experience, which was incredibly stressful and demoralizing, this new opportunity is truly a breath of fresh air. He's going to spend 2008 throwing himself into this job to see what he can make of it. His goal is to decide if he wants to commit to this career path, or if he wants to keep his options open.

If he commits to this career path, we will probably move. I love where we live, but we need to be closer to my husband's job site. He works long enough hours as it is. Adding an hour commute is driving us both crazy.

Ideally, I would love to move into a house in the city. But financially, that isn't a possibility for us right now. I assumed that would mean we would find another condo closer to his new job. But an experience Tuesday changed my thinking a little bit.

We had our family over for a New Year's Day party. It was going so well. There are lots of little kids in the family, and they were all playing in my son's room, having a fabulous time. I was so pleased that the family could see my son in his comfort zone, crawling around the condo like he owned the place. It was the middle of the day, and there was certainly a lot of running around and shrieking, but that is pretty reasonable for an afternoon party. My downstairs neighbor didn't think so. She came up to complain that the noise was just too much.

I don't dispute that we were noisy. Kids are noisy. But in the middle of the day, I think it is ok for someone to be noisy once in awhile. We have parties once every three or four months, so I was shocked that she was so quick to complain.

The whole experience really soured my husband and I to condo living. We always shovel the walks for the condo. We do all the gardening for the condo. We handle all the condo association management. But all of those activities, and the fact that we are normally very quiet, didn't matter to this woman. She complained. And I'm the type of person who feels bad when someone complains.

It's making me rethink everything. I was 100% certain I wanted to stay in the city. But I want my son to be able to run around his house without fear that the neighbors will hate us. That might mean a move to a house in the suburbs.

Happy New Year! I took a break from this blog for awhile, which was good. But it's a new year and I am recharged.

This is going to be an interesting year in my little neighborhood. Three blocks away, a new dorm is opening this fall, bringing 800+ students to our part of the world. It's going to be interesting to see the impact they have on us.

There is construction all over the place, because of the new dorm, and because of several new apartment buildings going up with the speculation that the students will want to stay here after living here.

But tossing up a few new buildings doesn't change a neighborhood. A man was shot to death last month a few blocks from my house. Some teenagers tried to mug him, but killed him instead. The man had just finished his Ph.D. and was getting ready to graduate. He was from Senegal. The kids said that they were poor and needed money. They mugged two other people before killing the Senegalese man. Their take was a few pens, and a little cash. Nothing that is equal to a human life.

When I heard the news, I was filled with rage. With total frustration that a life can be taken so easily.

A week later, some teenagers drove by one of their high school classmates and shot at the classmate. He was wounded but not killed. But it was another example of how violent this community remains.