One of the big ticket items on the Mayer Family 2013 Spring Break Bucket List was to take my three daughters (ages 1, 2 and 3) for a ride around the city on the metro link.

Yes, I know what you're thinking, and I doubled up on my Zoloft right before the train pulled into the station.

We pass the metro almost every morning on the way to pre-school and my girls are completely fascinated. My husband happened to be off work this week also so I had some back-up if things went all pear-shaped. Which is usually a pretty solid bet any time we leave the house.

I've always had fond memories of the metro - the cars buzzing with my fellow Cardinals fans on the way to a playoff game; crammed shoulder to shoulder with a group of spirited women on our way downtown to walk for a cure.

“LET'S GO CARDS!” I belted to two business men listening to their ipods as we all stepped onto the train.

The dynamic at 9 a.m. on a random Tuesday morning was a little different than my metro trips from days of yore.

The so-tired-my-eyelid-is-twitching part of me loves

When my daughter was a newborn, she cried – a lot. She never wanted to sleep in more than 30 minute increments, and she wanted to be held constantly. Breastfeeding seemed to be the only thing that soothed her, so like a lot of new moms, I spent those first few months of motherhood with an infant literally attached to me almost 24 hours a day.

A few years ago, my husband and I migrated from St. Louis City to the Edwardsville area. With a young daughter, another on the way, and two busy careers for which we traveled frequently, we needed to be closer to his family.

But while the move was right for our family, I won’t deny I threw myself on my bed, wailed like a hormonal teenager (“It’s not fair. I don’t wanna gooooo!”), and cranked The Cure to musically proclaim my displeasure with my husband’s plan.

No more spur-of-the-moment trips to the Zoo, no more 10-minute walks to a quaint dinner on The Hill. Home was to be a suburban promised land of chain restaurants as far as the eye could see and happy hours centered on the Applebee’s margarita.  

Yet, as much as big box stores dominate the suburban landscape and as much as consumers and the community depend on their services, to my delight and surprise, Edwardsville has held on tight to its locally-owned businesses –  the organizations that built and fuel small towns like ours. And at no time has that devotion been more evident than the past two weeks.

Like most married couples I know, my husband and I have a celebrity “list.”

You know, that special list of celebrities where, if the opportunity arises, we can totally blow off dinner plans and dump the kids on the other to go to a book signing. No questions asked.

March, I’ve recently discovered, is National Craft Month. There’s a month for everything these days – hello, it’s also National Frozen Foods Month – so I probably shouldn’t be all that surprised to find out that we’re devoting an entire 31 days to getting our national craft on.