Baby on the Hill: Making Beacon Hill Our First Family Home

My husband, Bill, and I welcomed our amazing, smart, adorable, beautiful, smiley, happy, (just fill in any other positive adjective here) baby girl last October---and her arrival made both our apartment and Beacon Hill become a home rather than just where we live. And so far, seven months in to this roller coaster called "parenthood", we are so happy with our decision to plant our roots in this great neighborhood.When we initially moved to BH, it was a matter of convenience: my husband is a resident at Man's Greatest Hospital and I work in Government Center. Our five-minute commutes are AMAZING. I truly believe that our quality of life and marriage are better for it. We, like so many other folks in Boston, are transplants: we came to town in 2009 from St. Louis (that's in Missouri, a state some of you might just fly over to get to the West Coast) for his medical training. Coming from the Midwest, we had a bit of culture and sticker shock---we said goodbye to our $500/month mortgage on our cute bungalow and moved to Dorchester at first because we thought that we needed to have the same amount of space as we did in St. Louis. While we had some fantastic neighbors and enjoyed parts of Dorchester, it just really wasn't for us so we moved to Beacon Hill as soon as I got my job in Government Center. It's kind of amazing that in the span of one year, we went from a four bedroom house with three cars, to a two three bedroom house and no garage, to ultimately less than 1000 square feet and no car! And we're so much happier for it! I still can't believe how much stuff we schlepped across the country to only get rid of when we moved from Dorchester. Finding creative space-saving methods is now one of our favorite things to do---utterly unheard of in the land of McMansions back home.Fast forward two years later: we have a seven-month old daughter and an apartment filled with space-saving baby gear. Although, if you have a lot of it, I'm not sure how much space is actually being saved... When we were making our baby registry (let's be honest--I made the registry), things like footprint, storage, and multi-purposeness became more important than the cute factor. Since we don't have a car, we had to find a car seat that would be easy to store in our apartment or storage closet; this was something that my friends back home didn't really understand until I made a flow chart explaining that without a car you can't store the car seat in the car. Urban living just has different needs than what many of my other friends have experienced. I did three things when I found out that I was pregnant: I called my parents, I got on daycare waitlists (why is it harder to get into daycare than Harvard, by the way?), and I started scoping our the stroller situation in Beacon Hill. I'm not a statistican, but I'm pretty sure that 87.5% of Beacon Hill babies are ferried around in an Uppa Baby Vista.  I stopped everyone I saw with a stroller, rubbed my belly, and grilled them with questions. By month four, I knew what I wanted and we joined the ranks of UBV users. So, now I push my sweet Abigail around in her black UBV SUV and explore the neighborhood. I keep looking to make new "Mommy Friends" but I'm having mixed success. My baby is too small for the playground--I can't wait to hear her giggle on the swings at Myrtle Street---and I'm kind of at a loss as to how to meet other moms. I took advantage of the Tuesday morning baby group at MGH (FREE, by the way, and so helpful) during maternity leave, but now that I'm back to work I have found it much harder to connect with other moms. Any suggestions?I'm really looking forward to next weekend's Duckling Parade! The idea that Abby and I will get to celebrate Mother's Day every year with this tradition may just be reason alone to stay in Beacon Hill. And Halloween on Pickney Street. And the commute. Now we just need to find other young families in the neighborhood.