Neighborhood Moms

I've met a lot of great neighborhood moms during my maternity leave. We usually meet twice a week at the local YMCA, a restaurant or the park for a little conversation and fun with our babies. It's been fascinating to see what the babies a few months older than Ellis are doing and what's coming soon for us (teething, solids, grabbing hair, rolling over!) I don't make it to every meet-up, but when I do it's been great to get out of the house and take the nice long walk over to Williamsburg. I am sad I won't get to see these families as often now that my leave is almost over, but I am looking forward to running into them around the neighborhood and seeing how much their little ones have grown.

In addition to the meet-ups, Ellis and I have been taking a music class with a lot of the other Moms and babies. Today was the last class. Seven weeks ago (during the first class) Ellis cried half the time and nursed the other half, but I kept on singing. Today she was smiling and cooing along with the songs and even holding a little rattle.

The music class was on the same day as the meet-up, so a lot of us would walk over from Williamsburg to the space in Greenpoint. Sometimes there would be eight of us walking together. The stares were pretty funny and we'd get comments like “Look at the baby parade” and “Is there a baby party?”. The whole experience has really transformed this neighborhood into more of a community.

Here are a few photos from the meet-ups and a little video from today's class. Ignore the off pitch singing...we sound a lot better in person!