Love Thy Neighbor

It normally takes me 12 minutes to get from my office chair to Landon's daycare lobby. Today it took me 2 hours and 2 minutes. There was a man + gun + SWAT team situation on the highway I take home and even though I left work an hour early I quickly realized there was no possible way I could make it to daycare before close. JP was teaching a swim school lesson up the road where all the highway traffic was being diverted so there was no way he could make it either. Not helping matters was the 108 degree temperature at 6 pm and my car's very nearly empty gas tank. Stress.

I called my friend who works at the firm. She lives in our neighborhood and is currently home on maternity leave after having her second child. She was heading out the door for a pedicure but bravely took her 2.5 year old with her so that her husband could have his toddler car seat empty for Landon. Her wonderful pizza-from-scratch-making, stay-at-home-husband then loaded their 8 week old little girl into the car, picked up my little guy, and took him home for some after-daycare care. They called me on speaker phone so Landon could say Hi and tell me all about the "beebee! mama BEE! BEE!!!" (he's obsessed with babies right now) and how they were making salsa and he had already eaten a delicious dinner with lots of fruit. I started thinking my friend's husband should do daycare pick up every day... When I pulled up to their house- TWO HOURS after leaving work and an hour after daycare had closed, Landon gave me a big hug and then refused to leave. When I finally pulled him away from the toys he waved and said goodbye to the baby the whole way home. Some people say the grandparents push them to have more kids, but for us, the pressure comes in toddler form.

In other wonderful friend/neighbor news, our next-door-neighbor mowed our front lawn for us while we were away this weekend. Just because he knew we weren't getting back until late on Sunday and mowing is such a delightful chore in 110 degree heat. Not living very close to family makes it even more important to have a great support network of friends and we've been lucky to find that for ourselves here in Austin. We try to be good friends and neighbors too. I'm baking some breakfast bread for my neighbors and telling my friend to pick a night to go out with her husband while JP and I babysit the kids (is it bad that I'm slightly terrified of caring for an infant again? they're so floppy !). Feeling grateful for our good friends kept me from attempting to rip my hair out on the drive home; it's hard to be upset when you're feeling thankful. Harder, anyway.