When our daughter was younger, she would ask the name of every dog she saw—and I would lie. I know it's bad to lie to your child, but I don't know the name of every dog in Manhattan. So I'd tell her that the name of every black dog was Midnight, every spotted dog was Spot and every small dog was Tiny. But this bothered me. When I was growing up in rural Ohio, I knew die names of all of my neighborhood's dogs. Our 5-year-old is being raised in New York City because my husband and I like it here. Although I can't imagine living anywhere else, I feel slightly ambivalent about raising our daughter, Coco, in New York. When I moved here from the Midwest, my first impression of New York kids was that they were overstimulated little weirdos. I thought childhoods should be in small towns or the sub-urbs. I expected that I'd be off to the 'burbs when I had a baby. But my husband believes Manhattan is the center of the universe, and I pretty much agree with him.
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