There is one thing that's always bothered about living here though. As a city we struggle with discontentment.
I know. Discontentment could totally be a theme for our society as a whole, but it is prevalent here. There's so much to love here, and yet most people want to leave. It's rare to meet a friend that is content in calling this their home. I've felt that it's hard to keep close, solid, real friendships, because each person I've met has one foot out the door. Everyone has a plan to move, it's just a matter of time. Daniel and I used to call ourselves "lifers." We were convinced Chicago would be our forever home, and we would raise our children to be well rounded individuals growing up in a diverse city. Ironically enough, they're also one of the main reasons for our new found city discontentment.
What is it that makes us discontent? Each person's reasons are different. I can't speak for everyone, so I will share with you the issues feeding my dissatisfaction. Many of the people that live on the north side are transplants. We didn't grow up here, and any roots we have are ones we have created ourselves. That's all well and fine when we are living single or in a relationship without kids. After all how much do you really see your family when you're working hard, and filling up your free time with all the activities the city has to offer. Now throw in a few kiddos. Here's what has our panties in a twist.
*Family. Once you have kids yourself, it reminds you how much you loved/longed for that special time with grandparents, aunts, and/or uncles. Daniel and I both had a set of grandparents that kept us on weekends pretty often. Offering a break to both the parents and the kids. We want our children to have those memories of staying the weekend with grandma and grandpa (and quite honestly we wouldn't mind having a few memories of the date nights we had while the kiddos were at the grandparents. More on that in a bit.) On Saturday night I found myself getting so jealous as I scrolled my Facebook feed from my couch, reading status after status about my friends being out because the kids were with the grandparents. Without those family members here, it means to have a date night we are paying someone hourly to be here in addition to the money spent on the date. Forget overnight getaways, those are out of the question. There's a special bond between grandparents and grandchildren, and also a lot to be learned. It's great to have another set of adults around for your children to look up to. I would love to be close enough to have family dinners, and meet up whenever we wanted.
*Housing. It's pretty dang rare to meet someone my age that owns, and if they do it's just a condo. I've never wanted a house. Yuck! Who wants to clean all that space? If I did we would pretty much be screwed. We would never be able to afford to have an entire house in any desirable neighborhood here. We aren't in a position where we could even buy a condo any time soon, so that's out of the question. The hard part about that being things most people take for granted in their homes are something of a dream for us in the city. Having a dishwasher, in-unit laundry, and God willing a parking spot would be nothing short of a dream place.
For the first two years of Mylin's life ( and the first 5 months of the twins) we lived in a 4th floor walk-up apartment. If we needed to do laundry we had to walk down all those stairs, go outside, and go down another flight of stairs into a basement. As a family of 5 we create 2-3 loads of laundry per day, and it's impossible to make that trek everyday. Even now in our new place, I have to go outside and down another small staircase, which isn't bad distance wise. The hard part is finding a time to do it when the kiddos aren't going to be able to destroy the house or themselves while I sneak out to wash clothes. The laundry thing was the biggest of our discontentment until last summer.
Many of you read about our issues with our downstairs neighbor. We got complaints like, "I hear the baby crying.", "The kid walks too loud.", "You need to only let them play with their toys at the back of the house (the kitchen)." (Keep in mind, besides middle of the night feedings for the babies my kids are in bed from 7:30am-7:30pm, and if it's nice out we are at the park the majority of the day.) Basically were being asked to not live in our own home. I was constantly telling Mylin not to run or jump in the house, and had such anxiety over the whole issue. We weren't just letting this kids run wild, we were just living life in our apartment. Yet, that was enough to get harassed by our neighbor, and eventually our landlord. We aren't the only ones either. Most families I have met have had complaints (wether over the phone, in person, or via passive aggressive notes on the doors) about their kids, and even been asked to leave by the landlord. I know a gal whose neighbor went so crazy about the noise of her toddler that he began to vandalize their property badly, (leaving just enough remnants behind that they knew it was him, but not enough for the law to come into play) and made them fear for their safety. My family now resides in a basement apartment in attempt to resolve the issue of unhappy neighbors.
As of now we have great neighbors, but again because it's an apartment building in a few months our neighbors could change. This is a huge point of anxiety for me. It drives me crazy that someone could just move in and suddenly it isn't ok for us to live here. There's also a chance we won't be ok with them. At the last place we had girls downstairs that smoked so much weed that they would smoke out our entire apartment, and the nursery in particular. After confronting them in person multiple times, and not having any change, we contacted the authorities. They were pretty sure they were dealing with the amount they had, yet only gave them a warning. The landlord did nothing, and the cops wouldn't come again. We were paying $1,100 a month for a place that our kids were breathing in 2nd hand illegal smoke. It costs too much to live here to be dealing with that.
The price of housing is insane, and ever since the crash of the housing market rents have skyrocketed even more! Our neighborhood's rents have went up $400-$800 extra per month in the last 4 years. Which lead us scrambling to find a place that we could afford to live in.
*Weather. Chicago has long been known for its unpredictable weather. It's not uncommon to see a 60 degree weather change in a 24 hour period, to see sunshine, snow, rain, sleet, ice, and warmth in a single day. We're known for our amazing summers and horrific winters, yet even that's not a given. Anyone remember the year that it barely got above the mid 70's all summer? We all felt like we were robbed of the summer we deserve to have after our 6 month long winters. Summer could be super rainy full of floods, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, all reason we can't be outside. Fall can be gloomy, rainy, and cold, or sunny and crisp. Winter, ohhhh winter we shudder at the thought of you, but this year... seriously?? This is a whole other level! 3 polar vortexes?! I am going stir crazy enough on my own, remember I live in a frigg'n basement now?! I can't even take my kids to the park, or on a nice long walk. We have literally been trapped indoors since the beginning of December. We're all going crazy. Our frosted barred windows only giving a glimpse of wether it's sunny or overcast, not a detail more of the outdoors can be seen. We can be found giving ourselves pep talks about making it until spring. Yet, March is only a few days away and we'll be lucky if amongst the inches and inches of snow fall predicted we somehow hit the double digits in degrees. My kids beg to go outdoors. Even the twins run to get their boots and jackets crying to play outside. Lakyn at only 21 months old says " I wanna go to Fwoyida (Florida)." almost every day. Mylin reminds me constantly that in Florida and California where her grammy is she could be outside and it wouldn't be cold. "They have the warm beach, Mama." I haven't had such winter blues in a long time. Even when I did it didn't start till closer to Spring, when winter had already beatten me down for months. This year it's been rough since the beginning of January. With the extended forecast looking very grim, it leaves much to be desired.
*Parking. It's not an uncommon event to find my van parked blocks away from where I live. After driving laps around my place and still not finding any parking I find myself parked in far from desirable spot hauling as many grocery bags as I can in one trip. (The only good thing about this Polar Vortex is if I don't feel like going back for a 2nd trip, the van can serve as a temporary freezer to my perishable items. Ha!) I've seriously carried so much at once that my wrist ached for days. Since parking is so hard to come by, you find cars squeezing themselves into tiny spots, leaving your car's bumper and sides scraped, scratched, dinged and dented. Let's hope you didn't park in school zone, rush hour zone, street cleaning zone, snow zone, permit zone, loading zone, temporarily restricted zone, or meter zone. You'll be looking at upwards of a $50 fine on any of those. If you don't pay that within 30 days, it doubles to $100. In case the annoyance of the parking fiasco in itself isn't bad enough for you, now if you need to take the littles anywhere you have to walk them the 2 blocks down to where you parked (which is extra fun on the un-shoveled sidewalks). Then don't forget to take their jackets off (in this freezing cold) to put them in their carseats, only to put them back on before you leave the car again.
*Schools. Getting your kid into a great elementary or high school here is equivalent to most people's college struggles. If you don't live in a great district you're stuck applying to other schools, being put in a lottery, and even forking a bill for pricey privatized schooling. Of course, the rents in the good school zones are pricey and hard to come by, so if you're not already in a good school district... good luck!
*Stress. We're all so busy busy in a hurry from one spot to another. Traffic has taken my anxiety to whole other level. Even when I have no reason to be hurrying I still feel like it's a race to get wherever I'm going. There's always some political scandal going on. How many more budget cuts can our schools handle? How many more ways can they find to ticket me? The red-light cameras were one thing, but now they speed cameras!! I've never even seen a speed limit sign in the city outside of a school zone.
At this point you may be agreeing with my discontentment. Why am I still here?! However, the city does have a lot of desirable qualities, and recently we've obtained many of the things we'd been praying for.
You want it? We've got it. This city has so much to offer (besides an intense slab of political corruption and a triple dose of the Polar Vortex). Even as a visitor you can't deny the attractions, the food, and the people have you wanting to come back for more. Since moving here I have been introduced to so many things that I had missed out on before.
Before making Chicago my home I was a very American cuisine kind of gal. Give me burgers, some "Americanized Chinese" food, spaghetti, or a burrito and I was good. Thai food? What's that! My palate has totally changed, and it has been great. It's so much fun to get a group together and try something brand new. There's an authentic independently owned establishment for just about anything that tickles your taste buds. I've been to a science like ice-cream shop where they make your ice-cream in front of you using nitrous oxide which creates this really awesome "smoke" throughout the room. I could recommend a handful of out of this world brunch places. I've been with friends to have Ethiopian, Thai, African, Peruvian, and Middle Eastern food just to name a few. There are amazing bakeries, and donut shops. Don't even get me started on the local coffee scene... mmmm!!! (Heavennnn!) Wine bar? Yes, PLEASE!
Everything is in walking distance! When it's nice out it's not unusual for me to walk at least 6 miles in a day. I take the kids to the park, and stop at a coffee shop. We ride the train to a water park, and get groceries on our walk home. If I can't directly walk somewhere, I can hop on and off a train and be there within minutes. I couldn't imagine living a life that required me to use my car for everything. I only use my car to get groceries, beauty supplies, or leave the city.
There is so much culture here. I already talked about the food, so I won't go there. I can honestly say that living here has made me less of a judgmental person (unless you aren't an aggressive driver, then I've probably flipped you off and made the quick judgment that you're a tourist, yelling it out the window to be sure you know. Ha Sorry about that.) I love that my kids get to experience so many different types of people. I love that there are so many people that everyone has someone they can relate to. Any dance, language, art, or event you can think of is taught/held here. If I see something on tv or read about it online and am interested, chances are if I Google it I can find it. I can find it right here in my very own city.
Daniel and I both have great jobs. After over 3 years of school, almost 9 months of applications, and a few times of feeling like it was all a lost cause, Daniel found a great job in the field he wanted to get into. He has great benefits for our family, and doesn't have to commute to the suburbs. It's exactly what we had been praying for. I work for myself, and it works so well with our family. I can work around any doctors appointments and school functions. The flexibility I have is something I don't take for granted. I have a great clientele, many of whom have been with me for the entire 8 years.
Our apartment is a great fit for our family. We're in the bottom floor so we can't bother anyone. It's much bigger, so even as a 2 bedroom it fits our family of 5 wonderfully. It's literally across the street from a great school that the kids can attend until 8th grade!! The train is only a few blocks away. We can walk to the beach in about 15 minutes. Our back door opens up to a reverse courtyard that is paved, so the kids can ride bikes and scooters back there. Starbucks is only a 3 minute walk, and Chava a wonderful independently owned Intelligentsia serving cafe is only about a 6 minute walk. There's a craft beer restaurant up the street, and Rick Bayless's sue chef owns an awesome BYOB joint called Mixteco a block and 1/2 down.
We may not have family here, but we finally have great friends. I feel like making friends once you're out of school is so hard, especially those close family type friends. We have been so blessed by these people. It took years of living here before we felt like we had people we could truly call friends. I spent lots of nights alone wishing for some gals to go out for drinks or dinner with. Daniel used to long for the friendships he had back home, even though he knew most of them had moved on to other places as well. Now he has some really great friends.
I know we are lucky for what we have. God has definitely blessed us. It's crazy to me that now when we have all the things we felt we needed (besides in unit laundry haha) that we are so discontent. It is beyond a doubt that it is hard to raise children in a city, and that it's even harder to raise them without family. I can't say which is the right answer for us. Should we stay or should we go? Knowing there's a place where not only is it like summer year around, but we also have grandparents whose hearts are aching to be involved the way we would love them to be, is so hard! It's easy to see it all through rose colored glasses and think that if we move we'll be running in the sun, have help with our kids, and everything will be sunshine and beaches. I know however, starting over for me means working more for less money. It takes years to build a good clientele in the hair industry. Most likely I'll be spending less time at home with my kids while building my new clientele. We'll have to live the pain of finding friends, a church, and a place where we belong all over again. Daniel would have to find a job. What if he didn't like it as much or his co-workers weren't as cool. What if the area we live in sucks, and we have to drive everywhere. There's so many "what if's" that plague my mind, but for now I know I need to calm my mind. I need to live in contentment until we decide a change is a sure thing. I need to give thanks for the many things I have. Let's just pray together that spring is on it's way, and this feeling of entrapment will be a thing of the past!
