Alisa is pregnant. With our third boy. Three boys! Holy moley. Twenty weeks pregnant, due in early October. We are thrilled, we are grateful, and we are more than a little bit daunted. The idea of bring a third baby home feel a little like wing walking or bunjie jumping right now — many have done it before us, but it gives me vertigo to think about it, as grateful as I am.

When friends tell me they are pregnant, I often ask them what their excitement-to-fear ratio is. All meaningful life changes, it seems to me, produce an excitement-to-fear ratio. If they don’t, you probably don’t understand the stakes. Alisa tells me her ratio is about two-to-one right now, which sounds about right.

A pinch of fear is a rational response to the situation – it feels appropriate, and more than a little exhilarating. In exhilaration, it seems to me, there is a pinch of fear. When I was younger I saw fear as a sign of weakness; now I see it as a sign of respect for life’s challenges.

So we are a little afraid and very excited and humble before the unknown – humble before the fertility gods (we’ve had one miscarriage and take nothing for granted), and humble before the logistical and financial challenges in front of us. We both work full time, so we’ll need a good deal of help next year, and we’ll be tackling two private school tuitions for the first time in the fall. Declan is headed to VCS, a wonderful elementary school in the west village, which is about as cost effective as buying a Bavarian automobile every September. Throw in pre-school fees, and survival equipment like a mini-van with an audio-visual system capable of sedating our feisty little street gang for half an hour at a time, and you’ve got a watermelon of a nut.

Suffice to say, it’s a highly motivating set of circumstances. Alisa and I like surprises, challenges, errant adventures — we like high stakes, and the stakes just got a couple notches higher. We have lived in New York for more than a decade, and consider the city nothing short of magical. Babble has had a great year, and we are fiercely determined to make sure each of the next several years is equally great. It feels like we are diving headlong into our future, willing our feet to catch up with our torsos.