July 12

A month or two ago, I volunteered to do a free babywearing mini photo session for my local babywearing group. It seemed pretty straightforward: they chose a winner, I met the winner for a 20-minute session, and I delivered 5 edited images. No big deal.

Except that the winner ended up living an hour away from me. Oops! That was a tricky situation, but luckily there was a lovely park exactly halfway between us. Even luckier was that the park was literally three minutes from Chris' bank. We ended up scheduling the session for a weekday - today - and Chris met me at the park and took the kids to his office for the time it took me to do the session. The kids were pumped, because one of the things on their summer goal list was "Visit Daddy at work", and it was just the right amount of time for them to spend at his office.

This is what I found when I returned from my mini-session:

Lily loved Chris' phone. I always forget that these children have exactly zero experience with corded phones, except as a novelty. It's so strange!

Eli was just excited to see me.

(Side note: do you notice that he's standing? That's because he is suddenly a walker! Like, not "he takes a few steps here and there", not a cruiser, but a legit walker! Overnight! It's crazy, and I'm not entirely emotionally ready to process the fact that my last baby is now officially a toddler.)

And Caleb was playing with some Legos that months ago he insisted Chris take to work.

I asked the kids later what they thought about Chris' office.

Caleb said it was "not that bad". Ha!

Daisy said it was really messy. (She's right!)

Lily thought it was messy, but was mostly interested in talking about the phone and all of the phone calls she made. (I'm fairly confident Chris unplugged the phone, so she didn't make any real calls.)

Later, once we were home, I took some pictures of wraps that I am ready to sell.

I stalked this piece of beige linen fabric with gold flecks for months at the fabric store! I needed 4 yards, and first it was $28 per yard, then $14 per yard, and I finally scored it for $7 per yard and split it with a friend. I converted it to a size four wrap, and used it a lot last summer. Now that I have a legit size 3 cotton/linen/hemp wrap, this one needs to go. I have actually already sold it!

I love this wrap. It's a Yaro Yolka Toddler Blue, size 3. The herringbone just does something for me! It's specially woven to be super-supportive for toddlers, but that means it's also a really thick, beastly wrap. I don't like wrapping with it, and the size 3 cotton/linen/hemp wrap means this one has to go. Sadly, no one seems to want to buy it!

This one is my size 5 Girasol Northern Lights. Man, I love this wrap. If I were a sentimental person, I would totally keep it. Instead, I'm taking pictures of it. This was the wrap I stalked when Eli was born, and was thrilled to finally find. It was the one I used for his one-month pictures, when he wasn't even supposed to be out of my belly yet. It is lovely and I will probably one day buy a scrap of it to make a keepsake with, but a size 5 doesn't really do anything for me now. Off it goes. Hopefully it finds a home soon!