Neighborly weekend

Yesterday lunch with the next-door neighbor didn't happen. Her kids were sick and she asked to postpone until next week. Instead, when I went out with X to bring in the trash can, I ran into another neighbor out with her kids and we stayed outside chatting for a while. Then a third neighbor who was on her way home pulled up in her car to exclaim over the babies and remind us both that she had offered to babysit. She also made my favorite X comment to date: "He's quite a buster!" I love our neighborhood. I'm so glad we moved.

This morning every kid on our street was out to investigate the loud trucks that appeared at the end of the street, so we had a few more encounters. After spending most of the morning playing on the porch or wandering around the block with the kids, I headed out to the bus stop with both boys in tow. Boston recently had a controversy over whether the MBTA should require strollers to be folded up on the bus, and many self-righteous people complained about moms blocking the aisle. To those people I say: suck it. If I'm blocking the aisle, it's because nobody will let me through and there's nowhere else I can put my kid. It's definitely not because I think it's fun to keep a death grip on the stroller, trying to stop it from sliding when the bus lurches, while I simultaneously try to soothe my crying baby, wrangle my 4-year old, and not fall down.

Oops, little sidetrack there. Anyway. We went to the Cambridge River Festival, where we somehow stayed for four hours and did very little. It took a while to get there because K got distracted by rocks. Since he was old enough to throw rocks into the river, it has been his favorite activity. Once at the festival, we listened to jazz for a while and I nursed and changed X. Then we ran into some friends I hadn't seen since they had their 8-week old baby. We swapped birth stories while K whined about wanting a snack. (Her, with horrified look on her face: "It was excruciating!" First kid.) Then we sat there for about forty minutes while K tackled a Hawaiian shave ice larger than his head. And finally, we took the bus home, which as you can tell was the best part of the day. I guess the whole thing was more fun than stressful, but it was close.

Tomorrow: family togetherness and K's first swimming lesson!