Maiden Voyage

We have added a new weapon to our arsenal of child transport devices. Welcome, BOB Revolution Duallie. You join a well stocked fleet of slings, carriers, car seats, and single and double strollers. After much research you were hand picked for your ease of maneuverability, your comfort, your durability, your jogging capabilities, and the fact that you will cook us dinner.

Just kidding on the cooking bit.

We took 'er out for a spin this afternoon, on what was really our first fairly chilly day of fall. I love this stroller. I no longer have an excuse to not get out and exercise outside with the kids.

In other news, it has been an extraordinarily easy and wonderful week at home. We have rather suddenly settled into a great schedule. Luke wakes up around 7, Julia around 8. Julia is now napping from about 10 - 12.30, Luke napping from 12-3, and Jules napping again from around 3-5. They both go to bed at 7. It gives me a lot of alone time with each kid, and a lot of time to get some things done. I have decided that I could never live in a place without seasons. I need the change that seasons offer us. While summer is fantastic and beautiful and great, its also exhausting and hectic and very....driven. This week we really segued into fall mode. For me, that entails lots more cooking and general homemaker type poking around-ish jobs. Its time to hunker down (and slow down) a little. Its fueled by the shorter and colder days making us spend more time in the house, which then mandates that the house become a place that I want to be for large chunks of time every day. I take a lot more pleasure in being organized this time of year. I take a lot more pleasure in cooking food for my family, and making baby food for Julia. I enjoy the quiet afternoons with some music on and Luke throwing impromptu dance parties while I cook.

My girlfriends are the glue that holds this whole "at home" schedule together. I have friends and their kids over almost every day, and it keeps me sane, and it keeps my kids sane. Thank you to all my girlfriends for sharing your wisdom with me, for sharing your empathy with me, your experience, your struggles. Its just so edifying to know that so many of us struggle with the same things as we work hard to be the best Mom's we can be to our children. Whether its what to feed them, how to discipline them, how to diaper them, or how to educate them, (and everything in between!) I learn so very much from my friends. Thank you and your beautiful children for all that you are to me and to my kids.

(And Jenny, thank you for the beautiful sweater that you made Luke ~ Julia is now wearing it, and anywhere and everywhere we go I get accosted by other Mothers wanting to know where I bought it :)!