The Parent Trip: Sara Trohaugh and Brian Eckenrode of Mount Airy

Once upon a time, she was the girl in the home-sewn, lime green dress, and he was the guy who charmed her by juggling fruit and vegetables in the produce aisle at Acme.

The night they met, at a friend's birthday party, they danced and sang karaoke until someone dropped the microphone in the beer. They wandered with friends around Rittenhouse Square and finally crashed on someone's couch at 4 in the morning.

It was a few months until they saw each other again, for a date that turned into a snowed-in weekend at Sara's group house in Jenkintown. But it wasn't until they were much farther apart - Brian had saved money to take a solo trip to Hawaii - that their commitment fused. "There was this hill I could climb where I could get cellphone reception," Brian remembers. "We mostly sent text messages to each other. That's when I realized that she was the one."

While their lives were in flux - Brian decamped to Maine for a year to apprentice as a wooden-boat builder, and Sara was studying to become a massage therapist - one anchor was the capacious Mount Airy house where Brian's grandparents, whom they called Yiayia and Pappoús, had lived since the 1960s.

One room held an enormous model train set with accessories hand-tooled by Pappoús, along with Yiayia's lush indoor garden of houseplants. Both loved to tell stories - of Yiayia's journey to the U.S. from Greece at age 18, and their family's stint in the Peace Corps in what was then Zaire. "I remember meeting his grandparents and loving them immediately," Sara says. "I knew it was a special house."

Although the couple planned on being together indefinitely, they felt daunted by the effort and expense of a wedding. So, in 2007, some friends threw them a surprise ceremony - a gathering in the woods near Syria, Va., with tie-dyed sarongs, goofy-sweet songs and a skein of yarn linking everyone who was present.

Later, they had a second ceremony, with family and friends, at Ridley Creek State Park. It may have been legal, but it was no less idiosyncratic; their ring-bearer, a child who was obsessed with Curious George at the time, dressed as a monkey, and the two wrote their own vows.

"Brian had his hand over his heart the whole time, talking about how he couldn't wait until I was older and had long, gray braids, and how beautiful that was going to be," Sara remembers.

But there was an aching gap in the ring of relatives. "Both our moms had passed away," Sara says. "For me especially, I feel that void in my life because of not having a mother there. It was very important to me to have a solid family around."

Still, they weren't quite ready to enlarge the circle with children. They lived for a while in a group house, paying $107 rent apiece, then moved to a snug Mount Airy rowhouse in 2010. Their careers - Brian was a plumber, Sara a massage therapist and yoga teacher - felt more solid. It was time.

According to their calendars, perhaps, but not according to their bodies. Months passed; they sought testing and treatment at a fertility clinic. Sara took Clomid, had acupuncture, and swallowed herbs that were supposed to promote conception. After her fifth round of Clomid, the fertility doctor ventured a smile. And suddenly, their 700-square-foot "love nest" felt too small.

Pappoús had died, and Brian's aunt and uncle, who had lived in the family home for a decade, decided to move. Brian's father was living in the carriage house on the property, along with Brian's nieces. The third floor was a separate, rentable apartment.

"It was amazing how it all aligned," Sara remembers. "It was perfect timing for us to move in. We'd be near Yiayia and Brian's dad. We'd have the top floor to have friends move in."

Yiayia was overjoyed. As Sara's pregnancy progressed, she'd kiss her swelling belly, exulting, "You're so beautiful! You're made to have a baby!" The couple was hoping for a natural, unmedicated birth, but Violet was resolute, and after 36 hours of labor and an attempt at suction, she was born via caesarian.

"She had some little bruises. Her head was cone-shaped. I remember thinking, 'It looks like she got in a fight,' " Sara recalls.

Once they were back in the Mount Airy compound, family became their cushion. Yiayia sang Greek lullabies; Brian's dad, a retired auto mechanic, kept the 1998 Honda in humming condition. Brian's nieces and his sister, now also living in the carriage house, were delighted to help with the baby.

When Violet was seven months old, Sara felt a familiar queasiness. She was stunned to be pregnant again, and though she was determined to keep nursing Violet, she chafed at having "a flailing little person all over me for hours a day." But Yiayia, once again, was thrilled: "You're filling the house with babies!"

This birth was the opposite of Sara's first. Lucia came in under two hours: a leisurely trip to Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, a few strong contractions, and there she was, pinkish-gold and perfectly content. "I felt like it was my reward," Sara says.

Once upon a time, they were the people who fantasized about a communal life somewhere in the woods. But this, Sara says, is how the grown-ups do it: She might be nursing Luci while Violet taps on the door that separates Yiayia's kitchen from their own. Maybe the smell of baklava or avgolemono, egg-lemon soup, wafts through. Brian's dad might be taking their border collie, Pepper, for his twice-daily walk.

This is the life they want their daughters to know: Pop-Pop in the carriage house, along with their aunt and cousins; the babysitter renting the third-floor apartment; Yiayia, now 87, still playing the piano and telling stories. Someone who loves them behind every door.