Our weeks have a really good rhythm. I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Tuesday and Thursdays, while I work while Henry naps, I try to be 100% in mom mode in the morning and after he wakes up. I try to minimize the housework and errands I need to do then, so that I can be really there as we explore the city and meet with friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes life creeps in, but I love the rhythm of work and play that fills my weeks. They are busy weeks, as I am racing towards dissertation deadlines, job applications due dates, and teaching responsibilities, but they are good weeks. I’ve been pulling back a little from blogging and social media to make more space for life, to feel like I can work well and rest well in laid back playtime. I’ve made space for sitting it at the window and endlessly yelling “BUS!” with Henry every time one passes, or analyzing the leaves on the sidewalk in excruciating detail.

It’s really, really nice, this season of toddlerhood. Sometimes hard, but mostly, I like it. We get with friends often, usually some deeply exciting activity like picking up (insert treat) and taking it to (insert park). No planning, no hassle, just kids content to run around and moms content to sit and talk. The past two weeks we have hit Sugar Shack and carried donuts to the playground. The kids crowd around to grab a handful and then run off, coming back with sticky fingers every so often. It’s the best of fall and motherhood and city living all wrapped into one. I race home afterwards, tossing [healthier than donut] snacks into the backseat to serve as lunch and then carry a sleepy boy into his room and he naps the afternoon away, still smeared with park dirt and donut glaze.

It’s really, really nice, this season.

Some things for your weekend…

If you are in the DC/VA area, you should track down a Sugar Shack and get some of their butterbear donuts topped with golden snitches. Heads up- we found you have to preorder them to make sure you can snag one!

Last night we did our annual it-finally-feels-like-fall viewing of The Village, and y’all, it just gets better every year. It turned 13 this year and has people coming around to its total perfection. Before bed I told James that i love it as much as when I saw it in high school and I think it may always be one of my favorites, to which he sighed and conceded that, “You will always love The Village longer than you have loved me.” Sorry Husband, old loves die hard. Or never.

I know we just moved past swimsuit season, but I may troll this one to see if it goes on sale this fall. Never to early to countdown to next summer!

This hits really close to home as I am in the throes of applying to jobs for next fall, all while worried about how I actually feel about taking one.

The most profound difference these days, it seems, is not between the women who spend the early years of their children’s lives in playrooms and those who spend them in boardrooms. It is between those of us who start the journey of motherhood clinging to the idea that we can have it all and those of us who start it with the less glamorous, but more realistic, expectation that we won’t.

I am kind of morally and practically opposed to buying expensive clothes that kids will grow out of soon… but even I am tempted by these Smallbirds!

This is the dreamiest fall dinner party.

Recently I remembered how much I love this green bean recipe and I can’t stop making it.

Going to have to hit this exhibit sometime soon! I took Henry to an exhibit there a couple weeks ago, and he very quickly realized that he could do amazing echo things in the [otherwise silent] gallery spaces… so maybe I will leave him home.

I know that 99.9% of the people reading this will not care, but I stumbled across this  in my research the other day and I really want to find a way to see it. Almost as good as if someone would turn all my favorite French books into miniseries.

Happy weekend friends! I highly recommend picking up some donuts and eating them at the park to make the most of it.