Last weekend, a friend of ours from Texas was visiting Chicago, and we drove to the city on Sunday to spend time with him. Trips out and about are feeling less daunting, the older Cooper gets. And this past Sunday was no different. We had a wonderful time and having him with us made the day feel even more fun...

Some projects come along at just the right moment, and this shawl is one of them. After several rather hectic months, I wanted to get back into the rhythm of knitting, but wanted a fun, low-pressure, but still creatively inspiring project. I love knitting socks, but I wanted to knit something with more colorplay and this shawl was just the thing. I so enjoyed going through partial skeins of fingering weight yarn in my stash, mulling over color combinations and trying to figure out how certain colors would look striped together...

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of music circa 2000, like Switchfoot's older albums. I'm definitely prone to nostalgia (for better or worse), but in this case, it's enjoyable and harmless. And it's a bit of a challenge with myself to see just how many lyrics I still have memorized. Gone are the days of meticulously pouring over CD pamphlets and reading the lyrics word for word as the disc spins in my silver boom box...

I've noticed a distinct change in the air: mornings are cooler, breezes are more refreshing, and I'm consistently seeing temps in the 60's at some point in any given 24-hr period. There is so much chatter about PSL and "fall bucket lists" and scarves and pumpkin-everything. I love fall so much (as quippy as that may sound) and I'm eager for a true fall, which we didn't experience in Texas. All that said, as a rule, I want to be as thankful for the previous season as I am excited for the next...

My mornings look radically different than they did just three months ago. And personally, I love them so much more. I usually nurse Cooper around the time Nicholas leaves for work, and then since it's still early, he will usually sleep for another 1-2 hours. Then, I get up, open the blinds, nurse him again, and "chat" a little with him in bed...