New moms' outing

Yesterday, I got together with some other women from my new moms' group. We met for lunch at a restaurant called Sel de la Terre. According to their website, they're a French restaurant. Who knew. :) I thought "Sel de la Terre" was Italian. That shows how much I know. At least I got the part about it being a Latin-based language. I had a goat cheese salad that was really tasty. They had really delicious french fries too. I guess the French know how to make their fries, right? :) (ha!)

It was remarkable how baby-friendly and customer-oriented in general the restaurant was. When we called to make a reservation, they asked us if anyone had a food allergy so they could be ready for us. I've never had a restaurant ask that. Kind of amazing. Once we got there, they had set aside a table in kind of an isolated part of the restaurant so that we would have plenty of room for the babies, strollers, and other gear, and so we wouldn't be disruptive to anyone. In their restroom, they had the nicest changing table I've seen in a public place. The manager even came over a couple of times to check on us. I was very impressed.

After lunch, we walked around The Natick Collection. What, you might ask, is The Natick Collection? It's a mall. But, because it's so upscale, they decided to call it a Collection instead. It certainly is a nice mall. It's very new. The stores are upscale (Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, Lacoste, and some stores I had never heard of but looked very expensive). They had interesting decorations in the seatings areas in the middle of the walkway. They looked like birch trees, except that only the trunks were there. The tops of the trees were all cut off in different angles.

This mall had the best public restrooms I've ever seen. They had separate changing rooms for babies. Yes, more than one. You walk in, lock the door, and there's a whole counter where you can change your baby. Then, when you're done changing the diaper, they had this room with couches to sit, rest, feed the baby, read the newspaper, whatever you want. It's a living room inside the restroom.

You know your life has changed when you're excited about the restrooms. Or when you meet up with a group of new friends and hang out in the restroom for a large portion of your time together, feeding, changing, burping, and soothing your babies.

Annie did really well. I tried out the ready-made bottles of formula, which rock. They are about 100 times easier than making up formula in a bottle from the powder, refrigerating it, carrying it in your diaper bag hoping it doesn't spill, and then trying to figure out how to warm it up to room temperature while your baby is hungry and fussing. Of course, you pay for that convenience, but I really think it's worth the money for outings. It's going to rock when we drive into Buffalo next. No more running the bottle under lukewarm water or the hand drier at the rest stop!

Later that night, after we had gotten home and had dinner, Annie had a bath. Here's a photo of her with Jim after her bath:
This may be my favorite photo of her so far. There she is, bundled up, very calmly looking at Jim, who looks exhausted but happy. :)