Aunt Rissi and Uncle Ryan

My sister and brother in law are somewhat homeless. They left their apartment in Manhattan last March, like many manhattanites did, with just a small bag for a few days away while the city got this whole Corona thing sorted out. After their few days turned into a few months, they realized it would probably be a few more months, so they sublet their apartment. They took up a semi permanent residence in the Hamptons, and as the winter months approached that got super old super fast, so they decided to spend some time town hopping. After spending the month of December in Fairfield with Ryan’s family, they moved into their one month rental just down the road from us for the month of January. It was super amazing to have someone to take a walk with, and drink wine with, and eat dinner in a freezing cold garage with. Landen and Joey LOVED having them here too (and so did Graham, he just doesn’t know it yet). And let me tell you, it got us outside more than I could have ever done otherwise during what is historically the coldest month of the year. Racking up those outside hours right from the start. Sidenote: We got really lucky. This January was unseasonably warm and dry with almost no rain or snow and most days creeping up into the 40s.

As the month progressed and I saw all of the hours we were spending outside continue to grow on my chart, I set a personal goal of getting outside for 50 hours in the month of January. I was confident we would do it, and as I write this on January 31 in the middle of a cold front turning into a blizzard, we are stuck at 48. BUT it was a really good 48 hours, and they go outside almost every day at school which is hours that I don’t keep track of because I don’t know if or when they occur, so we can safely say that my kids spent MORE THAN 50 HOURS OUTSIDE IN THE COLDEST MONTH OF THE YEAR. I am okay with being stuck at 48.

Here’s some pictures of all of the outdoor fun we had.

We started our month off strong with some walks to the playground.

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I know I said there really wasn’t much snow or rain, but we did have a mini snow storm in the beginning of the month which made for some super fun play time. And also some garage arts and crafts time.

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After that snow, we didn’t get much more and we spent all of the time enjoying the sunny warm (relatively) January. Starting with a trip to one of our favorite quarantine parks.

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And a visit to Aunt Rissi and Uncle Ryan’s apartment complex where we played checkers and chess, and built big towers, and played tag, and of course went for a swim because it was such a warm January, so why wouldn’t pools be open.

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While Landen was at school, we had a ladies lunch.

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OF COURSE we hiked the fairy trail. If you live anywhere near Millburn, New Jersey, I highly recommend this hike. It’s not super long or difficult, and there are little fairy houses all along the trail for the little ones to find. There is a part where the path gets narrow and the hill gets steep, but they handled it well and so can you.

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We had some other special visitors on a day that Joey woke up at 4 am and took a nap on the swing. By the way, we also spent a lot of time on the swing.

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We found some empty playgrounds because after the first trip to the big playground in early January, we realized that if the sandbox wasn’t a super spreader event then nothing was. So we avoided that playground for a while.

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For our last big outing of the month, we found this really fun place called the “Sensory Friendly Trail” to go “hiking”. The hikes were really short and really easy, perfect for tiny humans. I believe they call it sensory friendly because there is braille along the trail, and some signs explaining the environment with a turn wheel that allows you to listen to the information instead of reading it. Perfect for blind people, but also for tiny humans who can’t read (or just like spinning turn wheels). There was a central area in the middle of the hikes with drums, a xylophone, and a fun little tunnel, also perfect for tiny humans. Right down the hill there was a HUGE playground with some really big, fun, and different things to climb. Perfect for tiny humans and bigger tiny humans (Landen) who love to climb. Also, we didn’t explore the area much because, as I’m sure you figured out, we had tiny humans with us. However, I believe there were some more legit hiking trails to be found if you venture off of the tiny trails a bit.

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Ok I’ve written a lot about my kids in my limited amount of blog posts this year, because I was stuck home with them all day every day and also pregnant and then with a newborn so basically every aspect of my life was kids. But something incredible happened in this lovely month of January. I spent some time away from my kids. Sometimes it was in the morning, at Marissa’s apartment building, doing yoga outdoors. And then there were the dinners. Every night around 7 pm, my kids went to sleep (even Graham who recently began sleeping 12-13 hours without a bottle!). And at that time, as often as possible, we would put on a warm jacket and hats and boots, open up the garage, and eat dinner and drink wine like actual adults (if eating in a freezing garage is what adults do – maybe some adults can weigh in here). Here’s some proof of those glorious moments.

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At the end of the day, this was not the same as it would have been is Covid wasn’t a thing. We didn’t get to spend all of our time together indoors. We didn’t get to go out for dinner. We didn’t get to cuddle with our aunt and uncle on the couch reading books. But we did get to spend a whole month playing with them, and if it weren’t for Covid this wouldn’t have happened at all because they’d still be in the city.