In the little outdoor courtyard that our building gym overlooks, the leaves changed color quite quickly. The week of Halloween on Monday, all the leaves were green on the trees. On Tuesday, they started to turn yellow. When Wednesday and Thursday came, the leaves gradually turned orange and yellow. Then by Friday, every single leave on all those trees were a bright goldenrod. Talk about a rapid change in color in just five days!

This past week, all those leaves have fully shed and fallen off. I do not envy those who have to rake leaves and clean all them up. We walked through Park Slope today down many blocks of endless autumn leaves covering the sidewalks and streets. Kaia eagerly kicked the leaves, hoping that at least some were crunchy. Unfortunately since we’ve had rain the last couple days, most were still quite soggy. She persisted and kept kicking them in an attempt to detect a “crunch!”

This was the first really cold day of autumn for us this season, a warning that winter is growing ever so closer. I wore a sweater, scarf, a thicker fall jacket, and even put my gloves on this late afternoon given the cold wind. Chris is already cranking on the heat in our apartment. And Kaia for the first time is trying to use little boxes as her “ice skates.” We decorated our little Christmas tree this evening, and she helped put up ornaments for the first time… and broke just one. As much as I hate the cold, I still love Christmas, and this is just a precursor to all the end of year travel fun that awaits us.