About a year ago, I posted here about the articles club my friend Stephanie and I were starting. I’m happy to say that our experiment has been a success! We’ve met almost every month since, and the discussion (and snacks, and company) has been great. I thought I’d share a few tips we’ve learned since October, as well as a few of the articles we’ve read! They’re worth looking into whether or not you’re part of a club.

— Find a co-host. It’s nice to share the responsibility of finding articles, sending out details, and starting discussion!

— Have snacks. We meet at 7:30, so we ask everyone to bring a savory snack, a dessert, or a drink. Since we usually meet at my house, I try to make a warm and more substantial offering, like a hot dip, pigs in a blanket (my favorite!), or samosas. It’s the perfect excuse to try out new Pinterest recipes :)

— Gather a group. We’ve met with as few as four ladies and as many as fifteen, but I’d say the ideal number is between six and eight.

— Choose your articles. Stephanie and I have each picked the articles a few times, and a number of other gals have shared favorites, too. We choose 2-3 articles on a particular subject for each meeting, and the leader usually comes prepared with a few questions or thought-provoking lines from the articles to start us off. Here are a few of the topics we’ve covered:

Family
The Myth of Quality Time
The Family Stories That Bind Us
Motherhood, Screened Off

Friendship
Friends of a Certain Age
Why It’s Smart to Court Your Friends
How Friendships Change in Adulthood

Food
A High Price for Healthy Food
What Food Says About Class in America
Why are Millenials so Obsessed with Food?

Relationships
The Questions that Will Save Your Relationships
Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear
Love Languages

Kids and Tech
Don’t Post About Me on Social Media, Kids Say
How I Protect My Family on Instagram

Stuff
Downsizing the American Dream
Stuffocation
How Far Can Amazon Go?

Etiquette
A Last Bastion of Civility, the South, Sees Manners Decline
27 Etiquette Rules for Our Times
How to Be Polite

Sound like fun? We’re always happy to welcome new gals, so if you’re into snacking, chatting, and reading and live in the Triangle, we’d love to meet you! Just send me an email :)

It seems like the milestones are coming fast and furious these days, from eating solids to crawling to pulling up! With all that action has come some new gear, so I thought I’d share a few things that June, John, and I are loving these days…

— Like any good baby with New England heritage, June has an oh-so-classic L.L. Bean boat & tote embroidered with her name. We use it mainly to pack her gear on road trips.

— Until seven months, June slept in our room. After she graduated from the Rock & Play at five months, she transitioned to the Lotus bassinet. It is fantastic for travel (it folds up into a backpack!), and we also have the crib attachment, so we’ll be using it for years to come.

— Did you hear about the landmark peanut allergy study released last year? You can order the snack from the study, Bamba, on Amazon. We’ve fed June a bite almost every day once she started solids because mama’s not having a peanut ban in her house if she can help it.

— We’ve been making June’s purees since she started solids, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is! Steamed or roasted veggies (either fresh or frozen) go in our food processor (we got this one as a wedding gift), then are portioned into ice cube trays and frozen.

— For smaller portions, like if we’re just blending a single plum, our immersion blender/mini chopper has been invaluable. (And regardless if you have a baby, you should have an immersion blender! They are the best for making soup!)

— My priorities for a high chair: not ugly, small visual profile, and easy to clean. The Ikea Antilop is a big winner in all categories, and it’s inexpensive to boot ($20!!).

— Weck jars have been great for reheating and mixing frozen food as well as storing refrigerated portions.

— These baby spoons are gentle on gums, easy to hold, and come in pretty colors!

— My Mom does NOT like these bibs (I think because they’re too “industrial” for her grandbaby), but the convenience can’t be beat — especially now that June is learning to drink from a cup and her bib pocket looks like a swimming pool at the end of a meal :)

— This little high chair pal was not something I would have thought to buy on my own, but I’m very grateful someone gave it to us as a gift! June loves to play with it while we’re getting her food ready, cleaning up after a meal, or cooking, and it saves us from picking a toy up off the floor every three seconds.

— Our rechargable stroller fan has made walks in the summer heat feasible with a baby. (Side note: between when I made this graphic and when I’m writing this post, the exact fan we bought seems to have disappeared from Amazon, but this is a fan from the company who made ours, and this is a fan that looks exactly like ours. Weird!)

Mamas, would love to hear a few of your favorites for this age!

P.S. Favorites from the first six weeks, and favorites at five months.

This post falls under the category of “I’m not sure if anyone besides our family and dearest friends will find this entertaining,” but it’s my blog so I’m going for it :) To mark June’s first June, we filmed a short clip of her every day, all month. It’s not the highest quality (everything was filmed on our phones, and some of the clips are blurry!), but I can already tell this little video will be a Thomas family treasure for years to come. She’s already grown so much in just two months! Here’s a peek at our life together, if you’d like to see…

June in June: 2016 from Emily Thomas on Vimeo.

The password is JUNE.

Love love love that little muffin :) Hoping this will be volume one of many!

I am really grateful for August!! It was just a good, good month, starting with our time in Connecticut, which felt slow and relaxed (and now, like it was a long time ago!), and ending with a string of at-home weekends with no big plans (a rarity this summer). June continues to be the most fun thing going, especially now that she’s crawling everywhere and obsessed with pulling up. There’s so much to look forward to in September, too, including more relaxing weekends and more adventures (and potentially welcoming three already-beloved friends + family babies into my life!!).

This verse has been constantly on my mind the past few weeks. Hoping y’all have much to be grateful for this month, too!

Revisiting my goals for August:
Finish our June in June movie (last night! Coming soon to a blog near you :))
Try out a yoga class at the studio near our house
Go to an outdoor concert or movie
Relish our time in Connecticut (post here!)
Read at least one book (Garlic and Sapphires – it was great)
Book accommodations for our camping and Asheville trips (SO excited about camping, and our Asheville Airbnb looks amazing! Lots of fun adventures coming up!)
Master an updo from the Small Things archive
Finish our will

September goals:
— Run once a week (hoping this will be more enjoyable as the weather begins to cool down!)
— Plan well for and enjoy our camping trip
— Add the final layer to June’s nursery so I can call it complete
— Post my guide to the Triangle (have been wanting to do this for ages!!)
— Celebrate our four year wedding anniversary
— Resurrect my nighttime routine now that June is sleeping in the nursery

As a reminder, here are my 2016 guideposts. If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!