Guest Post: Jenna of Sweet Fine Day, Raising kids in NYC

We’ve asked a few friends and fellow-bloggers to drop-in and share while we take some time to get to know this amazing little person, Hudson, whom we’ve just welcomed to the world. We’ll no doubt be dropping in here and on babymine.net from time to time, but we’re so grateful for these wonderful guest posts and hope you enjoy them as well.


Jenna writes a beautiful blog called Sweet Fine Day–beautiful for its photos as well as its writing. Her posts range in topic from business to baking (the family owns Whimsy & Spice, a Brooklyn confectionery) to parenthood to just about anything she might be pondering that day–or more likely in the wee hours of the morning. I love reading about her two daughters and feeling I am being given an honest glimpse at a family’s life in Brooklyn. I was so happy when Jenna agreed to share some thoughts on raising children in New York…

Not everyone may agree that a city as big and urban as New York might be the right environment to raise children, but as Ashley and Aron welcome their baby into the world, I wish to assure them that it can be. Perhaps I’m biased, after all, I was raised in NYC myself, but that’s not the only reason why I choose to raise my children here. Having had the experience of moving away from NYC for a good 5 years and living in other parts of the county, I feel like I’m making an informed decision based on what’s right for our family, and not because It’s what I know. 
I’m not saying that the city isn’t a hard place to live. Sometimes it can be and it can often beat you down and it’s not right for everyone. But at the same time it can also inspire with its diversity, its grittiness, its urban beauty, and incite raw emotions that you can’t feel anywhere else, not even in any other city because NYC is unique. 
As I watch my kids play on our sidewalk with half a dozen other neighbor kids, or walk them to school where the sidewalks in our Brooklyn neighborhood are filled with streams of other parents walking their kids to school in the morning, I can see what makes the difference. Our communities are visible, our kids are in the playgrounds and the parks and not hidden in backyards or in cars. As every single out of town  houseguest or visitor never fails to remark,  “there are so many kids and babies here!”. I always found it an odd thing to point out, but they are right.
 

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