The move to the suburbs was completed successfully on the last weekend in February. It's nice.

It's very quiet, though. A fairly busy street runs beside our apartment complex, but I never hear traffic. Roxy almost never barks at anything anymore. Our old apartment had a glass door and a busy parking lot; the dog could bark all day at interesting things. Now she can't see what's going on outside and the neighbors are quiet, for the most part. Sometimes someone knocks on a door or flushes a toilet, bur mostly it's quiet.

And when I go to walk the dog at night - at ten or eleven or so - there's no one around. When we went out for that walk Uptown I'd see the neighborhood homeless and crazy people and the trash sitting out on their front porches and the people going to and from the bars and restaurants and the homeboys walking from one neighborhood to another. There's only one way into our little community at night, though, and it doesn't go anywhere, if you see what I mean. It's not on the road to anyplace. If you're in there you're going to or coming from one of the apartments.

It's busier in the evening when I go out to take the dog for her long walk. Lots of dog walkers, of course, and the road around the place goes in a big loop, which is attractive to power walkers and joggers. The latter is appealing to me, especially since I'm a touch out of shape and my ex-coworkers did get a nice jogging stroller for us last fall.

John already goes with Roxy and I on our afternoon walk, most of the time. Shawn the Stylist and his (business) partner Scott gave us a BabyBjorn, which for you non-baby having people is one of those things where you wear the kid on your chest in a little pouch. When they're very small you wear them facing in so they can snuggle up against you and nap. When they're bigger (approximately John's current size) and can hold they're head up fairly steady you can turn the kid facing out so they can see the world. I take great joy in calling it The Baby Strap-On. Not in mixed company, though.

Anyway, John loves to ride in the thing. People stop to coo at him because he is (and I'm being totally objective here) so fucking cute and he smiles and gurgles at them. He turns his head left and right to see all the new things and every day I think, "wow, he probably hasn't seen that before." He also watches the dog for long stretches of time. He's pretty fascinated with the dog, actually. Whenever she comes into his line of sight he loses interest in everything else to watch Roxy. She thinks he's pretty cool, too, and will lick his face at any opportunity. Then she barks at him, because he's punched her in the nose just a few times too many.

So the kids are all right. In fact, I'm going to talk about The Boy some more. If you don't like it go look at the Gawker which is full of New York celebrity gossip and never goes on about quiet suburban communities and children.