Stefanie v2.0

It's hard not to live in the moment when you have a toddler at home. Thoughts of your younger, less responsible self are almost always overshadowed by the snot on your cashmere sweater or the poop under your fingernail (yes, I washed my hands immediately afterwards!). College seems like a distant lifetime ago, and the single city girl you once were has been replaced by impossibly younger versions (seriously, why does everyone at the bar look like 14-year-old jailbait?). As I get older and continue to reinvent myself, it becomes increasingly more difficult to look back and truly remember what it felt like to be 24 and single, when my biggest concern was what to order for lunch from the Penn "ski lodge." Now that I'm a wife and a mother, I find it nearly impossible to sympathize with my younger self. Worrying whether or not HE would call? Give me a break. The insignificance of that compared with Daniel's health and well-being is ridiculous. I don't mean to come off as elitist or condescending. It's just that I've always been someone to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders for everyone to see. Pain and suffering? I can compete with the likes of DeNiro. That hasn't changed. But there's so much more at stake now than when I was a single city girl. My happiness is bound to Peter's and, most significantly, to Daniel's. While the responsibility to my husband and son can sometimes be scary and overwhelming, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.