It's been more than a year since we moved from our much-loved neighborhood in Baltimore.   We've taken many opportunities to visit, staying with friends, arriving just in time for this neighborhood event, or that birthday.  It isn't easy, but I've noticed a few things:

• Our daughter still sometimes refers to the our old neighborhood as "our Real place", but is very comfortable also in "our New place".
  
• When we visit friends, several of whom have children the same age (because something was truly in the water that year) who she's known since they were 3 and 4 weeks old, the kids pick up right where they left off - as if they'd never been apart.
  
• She is comfortable meeting new people in the old neighborhood, and loves telling her neighborhood 'aunts' and 'uncles', as well as her godparents and various other friends-who-are-like-family, what she's been up to in the intervening months. 
  
• There is always a place to stay, and we try to rotate so as to avoid overstaying our welcome at any one place.  We also try to be good guests; bringing something with

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Gap Mountain, just outside of Fitzwilliam, NH, is the perfect mountain for hiking with a baby on your back.  With a decent walking stick and good shoes (and, of course, a sturdy and comfortable backpack carrier), it's just steep enough to feel like more than a walk in the woods, but still easy enough that you won't mind your center of balance being thrown off by 22 lbs of toddler on your back.  It takes about 90 minutes to get from the parking lot up to the top of the mountain and back.

It had rained a few days before we got there (the day after Thanksgiving), so unfortunately there were too many icy rocks near [...]More

Gap Mountain, just outside of Fitzwilliam, NH, is the perfect mountain for hiking with a baby on your back.  With a decent walking stick and good shoes (and, of course, a sturdy and comfortable backpack carrier), it's just steep enough to feel like more than a walk in the woods, but still easy enough that you won't mind your center of balance being thrown off by 22 lbs of toddler on your back.  It takes about 90 minutes to get from the parking lot up to the top of the mountain and back.

It had rained a few days before we got there (the day after Thanksgiving), so unfortunately there were too many icy rocks near [...]More