Out for a Stroll

Willie has a pretty good English vocabulary for a dog from Puerto Rico. First and foremost of the words he understands is "Walk". For Ivy's six month birthday that just passed we finally bought a stroller, which means our frequency of going for walks has increased dramatically. However, energetic dog, stroller, baby, and traffic don't always mix well, so unless we are going to a big park we tend to leave Willie behind (sorry buddy!). Thus, it has become common language for Jenny and I to use the phrase "go for a stroll" when we want to go with the stroller and leave Willie behind. The language change is just enough to save him the roller coaster of emotions at hearing the word "walk" and then be left behind. Ahh, the difficult life of a dog.

Willie, asleep sitting up.

Buying a stroller is a huge deal for us. This little boat of ours is completely out of space. We really can't put anything more into it. Our car is a Kia Soul. I love the Soul. It is incredibly safe and has made a surprisingly good boatwork vehicle. Nonetheless, it is not the biggest thing on the road--at all. That means, in shopping for a stroller we are far more limited, size-wise, than most people. Most strollers that have any substance to them are of enormous size. Seriously, have you ever looked at one of those JEEP strollers? Or the giant Graco pieces of junk? They are huge, and their "folding" hardly makes them smaller... really just changes the shape of the space they take up. So, casting out all those huge strollers really left us looking at some umbrella strollers... you know, little ones that fold up like an umbrella. The MacLaren Volo is the gold standard of umbrellas (its amazing what I now know about strollers). But in all seriousness, those tiny little wheels just suck. We go to parks and beaches regularly. Just to get home we have to go down gangways and walk boat docks. Those tiny wheels going klangity-klangity-klangity on the docks would drive me crazy, not to mention getting stuck on every root and rock we come across in the parks.

Lucky for us, we discovered the City Mini, from BabyJogger. It's a bit of an odd stroller, with midsize wheels, but it folds down quick and easy and it gets seriously small considering how big the stroller is when it's in go-mode. It folds down flat enough that it fits nicely in the trunk space of the Kia or tucks nicely under the nav station on Madrigal.

I just happen to have a pic of
the Kia and the Stroller all at once.

So far, we couldn't be happier with it. We've been on all sorts of terrain and we've only had a wheel catch and stop maybe twice. Ivy thinks its the greatest thing ever. She falls asleep in it easily and reclines nice and smooth so she can keep sleeping.

As an added bonus, we sent a picture of Ivy to the BabyJogger company and she won their monthly photo contest! The prize is a free rain cover (which would otherwise cost us $45 we weren't looking forward to spending). That's awesome for us. We'll really need that cover as it gets colder out and we take Ivy for walks around the Charlestown Navy Yard. Go Ivy go, thanks for being so cute.

Here is a copy of the picture for when they remove
it from the BabyJogger website