Stroller Hell

I'm perhaps more tired today than any other day in recent memory. I'm also tired of writing "I'm tired," so I'm going to make this extremely brief. I spent part of the afternoon trying out strollers in a famous baby store, wishing one of them looked at least half as good as the strollers I'd seen in France. The baby loved it--at least, the first part of it--sitting in a big stroller with arm rests, he chortled and yelled excitedly as I pushed him forward. I'm dying to buy him a forward-facing stroller, as he is so in love with the world right now--our car-seat-travel-system stroller just doesn't cut it any more; he can't see anything but my face and whatever's visible above it. And the large jogging stroller we bought recently is too big for his purposes right now; his head just rolls around or forward when he sits in it, and his whole body slouches down in a way that is painful to observe. But it's hell, shopping for strollers. There are just so many different kinds out there, and so few of them are any good. But I have to get it done...will try again at a different store tomorrow.

Perhaps the only interesting phrase I've written today is, "my baby is in love with the world"--it's astonishing, the connections he's forming with everything, just everything he sees, hears, tastes, feels and smells, during this part of his life. The sound of the lotion tube, with the air wheezing in and out when I squeeze it, was an intense pleasure for him this morning. Yesterday it was watching and hearing the spray come out of a spray bottle as I cleaned the mirrors. His laugh, when he's really tickled by something, bubbles out with so much energy, and his eyes light up with so much joy, that I really stop whatever I'm doing and remember how lucky I am to know him, every time he laughs like that. I see that I've migrated far from the subject of strollers and hell--to the subject of laughter and heaven. Good enough place to stop for the day.