FOR many New York City families, January is the cruelest month. It is a time to get seriously claustrophobic in an apartment stocked with young children and the vast plastic undergrowth in which they thrive. It also a time for many to ponder the absurdity (or impossibility) of paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for private-school tuition, soon due for the coming semester.

But those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who went before them, only to double back within a year.

"I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city," said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the repatriates interviewed for this article.

Ms. Hillen, her husband, Gerry McConnell, 42, and their son, Duncan, who was 1 at the time, vacated their TriBeCa loft in December 2001, shortly after 9/11. They bought a 6,000-square-foot newly built McMansion on three acres in the upscale, semirural Westchester enclave of Pound Ridge, N.Y., not far from the country homes they had rented before.

"It was just a giant, echoing space," Ms. Hillen said, adding, "It was great to have all that room, but we never used it," except to put up extended family on holidays.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/realestate/08cov.html