Once upon a time in a faraway land called BeforeKidsLand, going for a walk meant putting on shoes and exiting the house. A walk was a good time to clear your head, increase your heart rate, get your muscles warmed up and take a breath. Ahhhhh…. doesn’t that sound idyllic?

Now, going for a walk means a minimum of 10 minutes of prep wherein we load Cam into the stroller, assemble the snack tray, get a warm blanket and a flashlight just in case, strap Demi to my chest with a pacifier, leash up Mila and… on the nights when Joe isn’t working… crack open 2 cold ones. Don’t judge, I’m pretty sure there are 2 cup holders on the stroller for a reason.

Luckily, this is when Cam is at his chattiest. He keeps us entertained. Right now, his favorite things to do on walks include: chasing monsters (the monsters who stole whatever is missing from our house like the soap or our ball pumps), zapping down walls/fences/bricks/trees or whatever is rolling down the sidewalk at us (“Wait a second! Here comes some boulders!”), talking about the sun and moon, and checking the ripeness of the fruit on our neighbors’ trees, which often becomes eating fruit from the neighbors’ trees.

Now that San Diego is heating up, I am going to see Joe less and less in the evenings during our usual walk time. That’s the way it works in Sno Business. So, I’m trying to get used to doing this alone.