Six Months of Edith

Edith turned six months old yesterday. It's a milestone. She's in her own room. She had her first solid food on Saturday. A year ago -- even six months ago! -- this day seemed so far away.

It's flown by, and that's even more apparent as I browse through the photos I've taken on the 21st of each month since Edith was born.

The Day Edith Was Born

Paul took this photo minutes after her birth. Revisiting the photo over the last six months, I've so concentrated on her face that I only noticed as I was writing this blog post that Paul's finger was in the photo, too!

One Month Old

Edith was still pretty wobbly at this point, so the best photos on this date featured her swing. Smiles were few and far between -- and probably by accident. This was the best I could do!

Two Months Old

We were driving back from Ohio on this day. I had planned to take the two-month photos when we were back in Brooklyn, but we got stuck in a three-hour traffic jam in Pennsylvania in blizzard-like conditions. Since we were stopped anyway, I wrote "2 Months" on the back of what I believe was a gas receipt, propped it up next to her car seat and snapped away.

Three Months Old

Looking more and more like the girl I know now. I didn't realize until afterward exactly how long she was -- the sleeves on that three-month outfit she's wearing are already too short! Let's call them three-quarter length sleeves. Then she's fashionable.

Four Months Old

This is one of my favorite pictures of Edith so far. She's not stingy with her smiles, but they can turn into screams in about six seconds. Luckily the opposite is true as well.

Five Months Old

On this day we were driving back from Ohio yet again. We arrived in Brooklyn past her bedtime, but I had to sneak in a few photos before she was down for the night. That meant pictures in her comfy sleep sack, and fewer than normal attempts to get her to smile. At this point I was just glad she didn't look too annoyed.

Six Months Old

Edith just recently started raising her arms whenever Paul or I draw near: "PLEASE pick me up!" she always seems to be pleading. It was practically impossible for me to get her to lower her arms as I hovered above her with a camera. In fact, her toes seemed to reach for the camera almost as often as her fingers. I'm probably lucky I got a photo of her face and not just her hands and feet!

The Art of Riding the NYC Subway

There's a rhythm to the madness of riding the New York City subway.

Like many others who live here, I know exactly which car of the train to board to be nearest the stairwell when I get off at my home subway station. Not only that, but I know the exact door of the car where I should exit. Same went for when I was commuting to work.

But that's the easy part. Slightly trickier questions include:

• Should I bother sitting if I'm only going a couple of stops?
• Just how close dare I sit to that stinky guy? How much stank can I stand?
• If I'm sitting next to someone and a whole slew of people get off, should I move to a seat where no one is sitting? Will that offend the person I'm sitting next to -- or will it annoy her if I don't? 

I'm certainly not the only one with my own personal subway schemes. A draft report by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows "a transit landscape of convenience, game theory and occasional altruism, where often every movement is executed with purpose," according to an April article in the New York Times.

Unsurprisingly, both subway sitters and standers prefer spots by the door. Even less surprising was that standing riders much prefer grabbing onto vertical poles rather than overhead bars. (A not-so-secret trick to getting yourself more space as a stander is to make your way to the middle of the car and use an overhead bar. Standers congregate next to the poles, and it's very crowded. But it's a trade-off: Using the bars is quite uncomfortable.)

Here's my preferences if I'm alone:

1. Sitting next to no one.
2. Sitting next to a pleasant-looking, clean person.
3. Standing next to the door -- you can lean against the door or an adjacent partition.
4. Standing next to a vertical pole. (Note that Nos. 3 and 4 may be switched in an extremely full car. If you stand next to the door, you may have to get off the train for a few seconds to let people off the car. Annoying.)
5. Standing in the middle of the car, using an overhead bar.
6. NEVER: Sitting or standing next to a smelly person. AWFUL. Move to the other end of the car, or to an entirely new car at the next stop.

Exploring Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery

It's strange to call a cemetery pleasant, but Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery truly is.

I'm no stranger to cemeteries as tourist attractions -- those in New Orleans and Buenos Aires come to mind. And while Green-Wood Cemetery isn't nearly as well known as those other resting places, it's a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

Green-Wood Cemetery does have a few famous residents among the 560,000+ buried there: Boss Tweed, Leonard Bernstein and Horace Greeley to name just three. But Paul, Edith and I weren't there for the names, but rather the views.

The cemetery sits about three miles north of our apartment, but the elevation is much higher than where we live. It's an actual workout to stride up and down the cemetery's many hills, especially when you have a stroller in tow. But the reward is worth it: terrific views of Lower Manhattan and Midtown, as well as a rolling landscape filled with intriguing tombstones.

Midtown, beyond the cemetery and buildings

Statue of Liberty as a speck below one of the branches

Lower Manhattan, including One Freedom Tower

Lower Manhattan again

We easily whiled away an hour or two meandering through the cemetery's 478 acres of twists and turns. Although the roads and paths are labelled like any subdivision, it's easy to get lost. The cemetery offers free maps, which we failed to pick up. I had to use the map function on my phone to lead us back to our car.

The wide berths and occasional "secret" pathways made me think of another New York attraction: Central Park. Except you share Central Park with hundreds, if not thousands of others fighting for greenspace. Green-Wood Cemetery -- with visitors that seemed to number only in the dozens -- was much, much sparser. At least when it came to the living.

A Guide to Using Your Baby as a Party Prop

Babies are inconvenient. Except when they aren't.

As expected, having an infant excludes you from many activities. Late nights in bars are out. Fancy restaurants are out. Broadway shows are out.

But the secret truth is that a baby is always a good excuse to excuse yourself from anything for any reason. If you don't want to go to that party or get-together, there's always baby's early bedtime or mama's multiple nighttime wake-up calls to point to as a reason to decline.

Mostly these are real "excuses." But as Edith gets older, we're finding which rules and routines we can stretch. Just last Friday we stayed at a neighborhood barbecue until nearly midnight -- Edith slept on me in the baby carrier for a couple of hours and in the stroller on the way home. It would have been easy to stay home on account of her bedtime, but we experimented. Now we know it can be done.

If you decide not to use your infant as an excuse to stay home, baby comes with another perk: She's an instant conversation starter. People you've never met before will ask about all her vital stats. A baby is the ultimate small-talk conversation starter. And bonus: If everyone is otherwise occupied, I can always talk to Edith. As someone who tends to feel awkward around new people, this is a pretty big perk.

I don't recommend having a baby purely for these reasons, but there's no denying it: A baby is the ultimate party prop.

My Mother, and Being a Mother

Mom with Edith when she was 1 month old

Edith gave me a pretty good gift for Mother's Day: A three-hour nap in her stroller while Paul and I ate a nice lunch at one of my favorite neighborhood burger joints, followed by a piece of Brooklyn Blackout Cake at Little Cupcake.

But the best gift a new mother could get, I got almost 31 years ago: A great mother myself. Of course I never realized for all of those years that Mom was teaching me how to be a mom. Maybe she didn't realize it herself.

Long before Paul and I decided to have a kid, I wasn't sure how I would be as a mother. I'm impatient and exacting; I just want things my way. I'm still not sure how I'll be. After all, the proof is in the pudding, and Miss Pudding isn't even six months old yet.

But I'm trying my best, and I hope Edith feels even half as secure as I did as a kid that her mom always has her best interests at heart, even if we don't always see eye to eye.

So as my first Mother's Day has come to a close and I contemplate the type of mother I want to be, I want to thank my own mother for being the perfect example. I have big shoes to fill. I love you, Mom.