visitors at home

forward facing in the car, wearing infant sized sunglasses, cracking us up!

Mathilda and I just returned from 3 days in DC (we accompanied Reg on a business trip).  Her first visit to our nation's capital, and where Reggie and I lived when we got engaged and married. I hadn't been to DC since I was about 4 months pregnant, and on that visit, like most others since leaving the city as home, I stayed with friends.  This trip was the first time we stayed in a hotel. Interestingly, it is the same hotel where we stayed on our first trip to DC together back in 2004.

I remember going to DC at 16 to look at colleges with my mom and being really excited to see the NPR headquarters (OMG Nina Totenburg!)

Unlike New York, which reinvents itself at the speed of sound and feels nothing like the city I left in 2003, DC changes more slowly and is more or less the same (save some dramatic gentrification and improved fashion sense of the downtown government employees).  For the most part, the coffee shops and bars we frequented are still there and thriving.

Staying in a hotel in a city you used to call home is an odd experience. I kept forgetting that I knew my way around town! Being in DC again also made me realize how small and limited Pittsburgh is.  I have always prided myself in my chameleon-like abilities to fit in, thrive, and love wherever I am living.  When in DC we lived in a mini high rise right in the middle of the city (about a mile straight north from the white house), in Pittsburgh we have our urbansuburban abode.  I hadn't realized how different the two living situations and cities are until I was strolling DC with Mathilda this morning. I can't lie- I lost a little bit of love for Pittsburgh as I relived being walking distance from dozens hundreds of restaurants and shopping. It made me yearn for real city living again.  We'll see- maybe that life will be in the cards for us again someday.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Obama?!?

she was waving hi and giving "high five" to passing tourists

Dad teaches about presidential history

playing with her cousins in VA

a thrilling moment- the garbage truck arrives!