Stroller spotting

Not sure if you all saw the mayhem happening here in Milwaukee the past few days. We had the "storm of the century" (we seem to have the storm of the century every summer) on Thursday which dropped nearly 8 inches of rain in just over 2 hours. That translated into a lot of flooded basements, flooded roads, basement collapses, and sink holes throughout our city.

We fared OK at our house. This is a photo of our basement window well that turned into an impromptu aquarium during the storm. Fortunately whoever glazed this window 50 years ago knew what the hell he was doing! (Is this sexist of me to assume it was a he? Hmm.)

Several of our basement windows leaked, and the basement did too. Fortunately we don't have a lot of stuff down there and the water all flowed right to the drain. And the best part is that the sewage didn't backup from the drain, so we feel pretty lucky.

Our bike race/5K this weekend was cancelled due to all the flooding so we had an unexpected free weekend. Yay!

Decided to play hooky from doing more house projects and went to a street festival instead. We were able to do lots of our favorite things such as people watch, look at dogs, and eat. And, I noticed we started doing something new---stroller spotting!

It's still a long ways off, I know. But at some point, we are going to need a stroller (never thought I'd be saying that). We can't believe the variety that are out there, and have no idea what we'll even need. Right now strollers seem to fit in one of two groups: the SUV-sized stroller that's pimped out more than a low rider, and the no-frills, super light, old-school umbrella stroller.

We are not fans of the former. One too many close calls with those super-sized strollers in the grocery aisle has us a bit jaded against them I suppose. But I can see a use for something bigger than the umbrella stroller. Something small and efficient is what we are looking for.

At this point, we've just looked at strollers online trying to see what was out there and what we should budget for. The Man seems to have taken this part of the baby project in hand--that man sure does love his Consumer Reports.

So today, I was gawking at a ridiculous hoochie-mama outfit worn by some 20-something parading through the crowd. I say "check that out" and he says "uh huh". I turn to see what he's checking out, because it's certainly got his attention and it must be really good. I couldn't believe it...The Man was gawking at a Quinny stroller!

Boy, the times, they are a changin'.

So the rest of the day, we'd see a stroller in the crowd, and stalk it until we could get a better look. Still pretty hard to believe that we might be pushing one of those next year!

Here's a few others we liked today: the Bob and the Bugaboo lines, as well as Maclaren. I guess the next step would be to find a place where we can actually push these things around and see what works for us.

But that's a little too much reality right now. We'll just settle for a little more stroller stalking instead.