The Baby Community in the Pioneer Valley

I finally got my act together last week and got the hell out of the house in Easthampton, and out into the baby community of the Pioneer Valley!

We ventured into neighboring Northampton and Hadley for our baby events last week.  Now, I had originally considered baby-oriented happenings on here a couple weeks ago and then procrastinated and kept to myself. But no longer!

First, I went on to meetup.com (what would we do without the internet??) and looked up baby and parent groups in the area. I found three and requested to join all of them. I heard back from two (both seem to be more "official" mommy and me groups) that I had to attend one meetup before I'd be allowed access to the page and events.

So, last Saturday Ruby and I headed out and to Barnes and Noble in Hadley, for story time. Although this event is open to the public, the Amherst Parents Group folks were getting together there as well. We met some very nice parents and kids, ranging from 6 months (Ruby was the youngest) to about 4 years old. It was great, and I am excited to go to another meetup with this group (there seems to be a get together nearly every day!)!

The next day I consulted my Macaroni Kid email and saw that on Monday mornings there's "Tummy Time" at the Forbes Library in Northampton. We knew that the Easthampton Family Center also had an informal summer play group at Nonotuck Park on Monday mornings, but because the Tummy Time at Forbes was aimed specifically at non-crawlers/walkers, I figured we'd meet babies more in Ruby's age group, as opposed to toddlers. And we did! Another successful outing!

This week Ruby and I are going out of town on Thursday (to NYC so Ruby can get in touch with her roots for the first time!) but we plan to definitely go to Tummy Time again tomorrow, and on Tuesday we will either go to Lilly Library in Florence for morning storytime (I looked at their website and couldn't find the details, but if I hear more through word of mouth I'll post it here) or to the "New Mom's Circle" at Cradle at 1pm.

It's just so nice that now that we are out and about, we have lots of great options. I love this area!