At home in Corolla

We're vacationing in North Carolina this week with our good friends who invited us to their beach house for a Fall getaway. We began the week sharing space with nine adults and seven kids under the age of three but over the last couple of days some guests left and new ones arrived and right now we're down to just three families with a combined total of five little ones (all under two).

I've been to the Outer Banks many times but never to Corolla and I find the solitude here to be refreshing, it doesn't hurt either that the crowds are much thinner now, in the off-season.

Maybe you've experienced this too, but, for us, vacations with our kids do not necessarily include the kind that relax. Romance and adventure can't be counted on either, although, as the kids grow these opportunities are thankfully growing too.

I don't know why we didn't think of it before, but it is wonderful to vacation with friends all who have kids of the same age, where we put under one roof what we each experience in parallel on a daily basis. The experience here has been really inspiring and has highlighted for me the value of finding a community, or in our case, holding on to our tribe as we plan to move away from it later this Winter. I don't believe that our role as mothers is best cultivated alone, inside the isolated confines of our homes.

My heart relies heavily on my friends, and their families, to share the affects of parenting 'round the clock in a culture that neither particularly respects the investment that we make every day nor routinely nurtures the family unit. While we have no more hands than usual this week (and the children are as spirited as ever with all of their buddies around), the camaraderie we're experiencing as we do it all, together under one roof, is really encouraging.

Connecting over our shared struggles, learning from one another, helping to guide children that are not my own; confiding our fears and our confidences about the choices that we make every day to remain committed to gentle discipline, and devoted to raising our kids in attachment. We are teaching and learning together.

The weather here hasn't turned yet and so we've kept the windows open to let in the salty cool breeze--meanwhile, the humidity has the upholstery in the house feeling damp and chill. We drive right out onto the sandy beach to find the perfect spot for unloading our toddlers with their embroidered beach towels and buckets of toys.  We stroll the local shops, take bike rides with the kids, and treat ourselves to local donuts for breakfast and gelato in Duck after the loudest, most boisterous dinners we've ever attended.

While this week has been full of all of the things that we had hoped for, and it is true that this vacation most closely resembles those of our former (childless) vacations in the way of joy and feeling at ease, I'm most thankful for the generosity of our friends in creating this opportunity to feed our adult friendships.

There have been other seemingly ordinary milestones in my experience and journey as a mother, but our time together here is significantly shaping my perspective of what is and what can be, and it moves me even closer to becoming the mother that my boys deserve.