Around the neighborhood adventures...

Alissa is almost two now, and she's a fun little bear cub.  She loves to be outside, run around, play with chalk, ride in her little pink car, etc.  She likes to go for walks and point at the trees, the birds, the flowers.  She loves to watch the cars come (or as most often happens, not come) to a stop at the end of our street.  She will scream, "TRUCK" when one passes.  She especially loves the ice cream truck, which I am trying to get into the habit of calling the "music truck", so she doesn't get the idea that there's ice cream in there or anything.  At least just yet.  Maybe next summer, when the idea of frozen treats doesn't seem ever so messy.
We have a little pink play pool, and a water table, and that's made for some easy water fun this summer.  She loves splashing, and has been to a few little splash parks (Stan Hywet and the Botanical Gardens have little ones). Even the rain is cheap, easy fun for her, and so are puddles.  We discovered this at this year's Irish festival.  She had so much fun just running and splashing through the puddles.  It's hard when we go to parks like the Bedford Reservation, which has areas that are very accessible if you want to splash in the creek.  I keep thinking, "oh, we'll take her here when she's older so she can splash around!"  And so I can splash around... I love wading in creeks.

It hasn't been a very hot summer, so many days we just go to local playgrounds.  She LOVES the playground at Preston's Hope. http://www.prestonshope.com/  If you've never been, it's fun for kids of all ages.  There's a section for younger kids, with a smaller slide and climbing place.  There's both kiddie swings and regular swings, plus a tire swing and handicap appropriate swings.  There's bouncy cars, dinosaurs, whales, and other assorted things.  There's a boat that you sit on like a couch and rock back and forth.  There's a sand area where you can "dig" for dinosaur bones, although at her age, it's easier to have her dig for the sand toys. And one of the highlights for me is the way that the place is set up like a miniature town, where kids can run in and out of stores, the gym, a school, the bank, etc.  Alissa loves to look through the windows and little face cut-outs at me outside.  There's really something for every child at this playground, and it's really big, so even on days where there's been large groups of camp kids running around, we can still enjoy ourselves.  On our most recent visit, Alissa realized just how fun a roller-style slide can be.  (something like this: Roller Slide.  

On the topic of blogging and trendiness.

So the other day my husband mentioned to me that I should get back to blogging.  That I should blog more about my experiences as a mommy.  I definitely miss blogging, so why not do it?

Well... I hate doing things that are trendy.  Mommy blogs are EVERYWHERE.  They all have their cute backgrounds and links and contests, etc.  Oh, and I love reading them.  I often read other mommy's blogs and think about what I would write about the same topic.  It's not that I don't like mommy blogs, it's that I don't like doing things that are trendy.  I've been blogging since 2001 - began shortly before 9/11.  No, you may not read the twisted blogs of my early-mid-late 20s.  So there's this part of me that's annoyingly hipster-like (another word I eschew) that's all, "I was doing this before it was cool!" like my love of Oasis, cloth bags, or organic foods.  I fell away from blogging when I was in my early 30s, too busy with work, life, marriage, etc.  I started writing about my experiences when Alissa was an infant, but sleep deprivation and such made this page sit here in perpetual lost-blogdom.  Would Alissa be eight months in the internet world forever?

No, my husband is right.  I need to return to blogging.  I enjoy my tweets and FB posts and all, but sometimes, I really have more to say about the world.

I really have no specific slant or goal of this blog. If you read it, and enjoy it, that's great.  If you read it, and hate it, that's great too.  Thanks for reading.

Rebranding

So I've re-branded this weblog to fit more with life as a stay-at-home mommy.  I do miss blogging, and now that Alissa is a bit older, I'm hoping to have more time for it.  Stay tuned :-)