Chapter 33. A Place for Three

In late January, the streets of New York were still covered in snow — not the fresh, cinematic kind you see in movies, but the gray, compacted version that lingers at the curb. For weeks, the thermometers would not climb, and mountains of ice piled up, refusing to melt. The main entrance of the New York Public Library had been closed for a few days, its two iconic lions still lightly powdered. On my way to work each morning, I stepped carefully around the slush that collected at the intersections. Steam rose from the orange-and-white ConEd pipes and disappeared into the low, overcast sky.

I’d head down Fifth Avenue, slipping past tourists who stopped abruptly, mid-sidewalk, to photograph the Empire State Building; past the red-jacketed sales reps trying to funnel those same tourists onto hop-on, hop-off buses; past the Sabrett’s cart selling overpriced hot dogs and stale pretzels that had clearly seen better hours. Then I’d turn right onto Thirty-Fourth Street and, a few yards in, step through the revolving doors of my office building.

The commute felt like a routine I knew by heart — mildly annoying, strangely comforting. The kind of thing you assume will always be there.

Lately, though, I’d become aware of how the life I was living was about to change.

As I stepped into the elevator, my phone buzzed. It was Jaime.

“There’s a two-bedroom that just opened in our building!”

I clicked the link. A floor plan filled my screen: two beds, two baths, a decent living room, an open kitchen — and, drumroll please, a washer and dryer in unit. The full NYC renters’ bingo.

I scrolled down to the price. It was high — not Manhattan high, but higher than we’d been paying for six steady years.

Still, it felt almost too perfect not to consider. We could stay in the neighborhood we loved, in the same building. No new commute. No new routines to learn. We could start looking for daycare now instead of rushing later. We could keep our doctor, our supermarket, our pharmacy.

I dared to imagine an updated version of our Sunday morning routine, when I usually went down to our local pastry shop and grabbed a couple of warm, right-out-of-the-oven croissants. Maybe there could still be a world where I walked down there — this time pushing a stroller while we let Papa sleep for a couple more hours.

At a time when so much was about to change, the idea of staying put felt grounding.

I scrolled further.

Immediate occupancy. February 1.

That was less than two weeks away.

Could we pack up six years of life that quickly? And were we ready to start paying more rent now — before we even knew what the rest of our new expenses would look like?

That night we opened our laptops and started a spreadsheet. If we were going to do this, we needed to see the numbers.

“We need to figure out how much our life will cost when it’s three of us,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Jaime said.

He paused.

“How do we do that?”

We looked at each other — two adults with jobs, 401(k)s, and a shared Google Drive — suddenly unsure where to begin.

We texted a couple of friends with kids. I also posted in a gay dads Facebook group I’d been quietly following.

New parents-to-be here, with a June due date. We’re trying to figure out how much our life will cost once the baby is here. Any advice?

By the next morning, we had dozens of responses. No one dared give an exact number, but the themes were consistent: you’ll have some high upfront costs — mostly one-time purchases. After that, it’s the basics. Formula, diapers, doctor visits, copays. The two major expenses are childcare and health insurance. Make sure you budget for those.

“Many of your current costs will also go down,” one person wrote. “Once the baby is here, you probably won’t be going out as much — restaurants, shows. All of that slows down.”

That part rang true. We loved musicals and would happily splurge on good tickets when a show excited us. But with a newborn, we were unlikely to find ourselves heading to Times Square for a show anytime soon.

The advice made sense. It was practical.

But it still left us with wide margins of uncertainty.

Over the next few days we kept researching, adding numbers to the spreadsheet and discovering new categories of expenses we hadn’t even known existed.

“Did you know car seats expire?” Jaime asked one afternoon.

“What do you mean they expire?”

“Most car seats expire six to ten years after the manufacturing date due to plastic and materials degradation,” he read from a website.

“That’s insane,” I said. “When we were kids, a car seat was basically whatever object happened to elevate you high enough to see out the window. We were lucky if our cars had seatbelts, period.”

“And yet here we are — mostly fine,” Jaime said.

“At least it’s six to ten years,” I added. “You probably don’t need a car seat once your kid is that old, right?”

We looked at each other once again.

A beat.

“At what age does a child stop using a car seat?” I asked ChatGPT.

“In the U.S., most kids stop using car seats between the ages of eight and twelve,” I read out loud.

“Twelve?” Jaime said. “I was practically driving when I was twelve.”

“But here’s the catch,” I said. “First you need an infant car seat. That one only works until your baby is around thirty pounds.”

“Thirty pounds,” Jaime repeated. “What age is that?”

We looked at each other again.

I typed another search.

At what age do babies reach thirty pounds?

The answer appeared on my screen.

“Well?” Jaime asked.

“It says… it depends.”

“On what?”

“Apparently…”

I scrolled.

“…babies.”

We stared at the laptop.

So far, our entire parenting strategy consisted of a spreadsheet and increasingly specific ChatGPT searches.

It was these small moments that made us realize how little we knew about everything; how unprepared we were for what lay ahead. Still, I trusted us. In almost fourteen years, we had figured out seemingly unsolvable puzzles a thousand times — together.

Little by little, the blanks started filling in. Our spreadsheet took shape, the numbers clicking into place with each keystroke. The bottom line was high. Very high.

“So… what’s the verdict?” Jaime asked, his voice low, almost hesitant. “Can we afford the two-bedroom?”

“We can,” I said. “Barely.”

I turned the laptop toward him. The screen glowed in the dim light, columns of numbers reflecting in his eyes.

He leaned in, fingers drumming lightly on the table, scanning each row. His breath caught.

“We wouldn’t be saving much anymore,” he said. “Is it… responsible?”

“Probably not,” I admitted, feeling the weight of the silence between us. Then I added, “But it’s the right thing to do.”

Jaime looked at me, brow furrowed, uncertainty flickering in his eyes.

“All the big decisions we’ve ever made together seemed irresponsible at the time,” I said.

I could feel the memory of each choice pressing against my chest.

“Fourteen years ago, I left everything in Vancouver — the prospects of a career, my family, my life — to move back to Mexico. No job lined up, nowhere to live. Not responsible. But right.”

“Four years later, we left stable, well-paid jobs in Mexico to come to New York. We lived off our savings, pasta, and Prego jars for two years as students. Not responsible. But right.”

“Then came graduation, the choice: stay here or go back home. We paid a stranger a year of rent upfront, not knowing if your visa would hold. Not responsible. But right.”

“I still can’t believe we did that,” Jaime said, shaking his head with a small, incredulous laugh.

“And two years ago, we wrote that big check and signed that contract with a surrogacy agency, not knowing if we’d ever be able to finish the journey. Not responsible.”

I turned the laptop toward him once again — this time, the black-and-white image of Jaidan sucking on his thumb filled the screen.

Jaime’s hand hovered briefly over mine, his fingertips brushing against it.

Jaime exhaled, a quiet laugh escaping him.

“But it was the right thing to do.”

I nodded, feeling the warmth of the living room lights on my skin, the hum of the refrigerator in the background.

“We’ll do it for one year and reassess. It’ll be an expensive year. Fancy dinners, shows, trips — they’re off the table. But we weren’t going to be able to do those anyway.”

Even with the uncertainty pressing in, the quiet weight between us felt like momentum. A leap into the unknown — but one we were ready to take together.

Two days later, we signed our new lease. It was a one-year commitment, which left room for us to reconsider if things changed.

I’m not sure if it was the winter spike or the way stress hit my body, but that week I also caught a nasty and extremely debilitating cold. It was as if life was telling me to slow down — except we couldn’t. We needed to act and get things done.

We packed everything into boxes — and by we, I mean Jaime packed most things while I sneezed in the background and inhaled Vicks to try to breathe. Once I felt a bit better, I did my part: packing, cleaning, and throwing half our stuff away in the process.

An early spring cleaning in the middle of winter.

We went to see the new apartment the night before we moved in. Jaime brought a measuring tape and a notebook. As he called out measurements, I looked around and started picturing what our life would be like in this new home.

A highchair by the dining table. Bottles and cans of formula in the pantry. A crib and a changing table in the nursery.

I went on Amazon and bought a small magnetic frame that arrived a couple of days later. One night, as Jaime finished filling drawers and stacking the last empty boxes, I cut out the image of Jaidan sucking on his thumb from the long strip of sonograms and placed it in the frame.

Then I stuck it on the fridge, where we’d see him every day.

Through the window, I watched night fall and windows begin to light up across the buildings. A few tiny patches of green were starting to make their way through the ice.

“Not sure if we’re ready for you, little fellow,” I said quietly. “We know nothing about car seats, or formula, or diapers, or night routines. And to be honest, I can barely remember all the do’s and don’ts from the half dozen books I’ve read.”

“But we’re more than ready to have you in our lives — and to figure things out together.”

I turned off the lights and went to bed.

It was week twenty-two.