Hi! I'm Jessica. I'm a Mom first, crazy lady second, while some (read: many) may disagree about the order of those two things. Here's the deal with this blog: there is no deal. I just like to talk about being a Mom with other parents (how great it is, how much it can suck, where to find the best fill in the blank for your however-many-year slash month-old, what to do when you

r baby does x,y, or, God forbid, z). I also like to talk about politics, fashion, men and how dumb they can be, crap tv shows, the South, the City, AND food. Today I am thinking about how I am crazy. Me, and every other person who lives in New York City, especially the parents. What is WRONG WITH US? It is outrageously expensive. No line of good logic leads to spending thousands and thousands of dollars a month to RENT an apartment and pay for a nanny or day care. I think about this almost every day. No, not almost. I think about how stupid it is every single day as I walk from my building in the East Village toward the hot, crowded, slow-ass train that will take me to my job in Soho where I toil away only to essentially sign my paycheck over to my nanny. That, my friends, is insane. But, Baby Daddy and I (no, we're not married, probably the smartest thing we've ever not done) would most certainly go even more crazy in a smaller city with less amazing food and less access to awesome things like tickets to Frank Ocean and Patton Oswalt. Also, our sweet one year old girl who makes even the most hardened New Yorkers smile on the sidewalk, will enjoy a cultural education that is arguably exclusive to this place where she was born. My Mother was visiting this weekend for our little girl's first birthday party. As we were walking along the East River I commented that it would be really nice if we could do this every weekend. It's very difficult to raise a child with zero family members within a 1000 mile radius. She said to me that she wouldn't be able to afford to live here, ever (this coming from a woman who lives with only my step-father in a three story, 4 bedroom house). But, I thought to myself: NO ONE CAN AFFORD TO LIVE HERE. Even the richest of the rich are paying out the nose to maintain their lifestyles. You seriously have to be out of your goddamned mind to raise a family here. And, yet, here we are, thinking about how we are going to get our daughter into a good PUBLIC school 5 years from now. Five. Years. See? Crazy lady.