A new member of Jack's crew

We are astonished at how Jack already has a large circle of friends. Yes, a sociologist would explain this phenomenon very quickly by saying, "As his parents, you have friends who are roughly your age, so it stands to reason you're all going to have kids around the same time." Still, it's like a baby explosion around here, and Jack has a lot of company.

The new kid on the block is Audrey (Jen is holding her in the pic below). Audrey and I share a birthday! Her parents, Kurt and Courtney, are getting used to life without sleep.

Jack has seen Ellie a few times this month and also got to hang out with his best buddy, Alexander. It's kind of funny that we have so few pictures of Sonja, the girl-next-door and half of our nanny-share. I guess because Jen and I are always flying out the door to get to work, the camera doesn't get pulled out. Fortunately, we captured these two in a few photos. Check the February album (still a work in progress) to her and the other little ones.

February Follies

Watching Jack's friend group grow makes me think of the things our cohort of friends have done together over the years:

• In the beginning, we got together to eat pizza on Thursday nights and watch "Must See TV" on NBC. We loved our dingy DC apartments with window air conditioning units and hosted fabulous parties with themes.
• Then we talked about trying to get promotions at work and complained about how we couldn't afford to buy a house in DC. We went to hip bars and refused to drink cheap rail drinks or light beer.
• We bought houses (in Virginia, or somewhere else entirely) and started nesting (er, renovating). We talked about the virtues of Home Depot versus Lowes and marveled at how it was impossible to get out of a Target without spending at least a hundred dollars.
• Finally, we decided we were ready to start families. We saw other young couples with babies strolling about and thought they looked adorable. We took our "big vacation" to a foreign country and then came home to get started.

And now we swap stories about baby's "firsts" and fret over eating and sleeping habits and growth percentiles. We celebrate each new birth and watch Jack's circle of friends grow.