Thoughts on a warm autumn day's stroll

I took advantage of a warm fall day yesterday to take my daughter for a stroll in the neighborhoods around her daycare during my lunch break. What a beautiful time it was, hearing the leaves crunch underneath the wheels and looking at all the beautiful colors in the trees.

At sixth months, she's really starting to babble, and I know her first words will come soon. I remember how excited I was when my son was about the same age and started calling me "Dada." It made me right proud at first, until I realized that he also called his mother, his bottle and most of his toys "Dada."

I had lunch with my mother earlier in the week. She was 42 when I was born and had lived through the depression as a child and young motherhood during World War II, long before I came along. And here I was with her little granddaughter, just getting some of her first glimpses of falling leaves. My mother was born 85 years before my daughter. That's just an amazing thing to me.