We've Come a Long Way, Baby

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was surrounded daily by my little group of youngsters, hauling around a diaper bag, and pushing a stroller (or two) around the mall.  Time flies and now they're all grown up, ranging in age from 25  to 32.  How did that happen?

I got to thinking about babies, but more specifically, TRANSPORTATION of babies the other day, when I looked out my front window and watched the neighbor across the street moving her baby.

Apparently she had been on a walk downtown with her little one in the stroller.  If my calculations are correct, I estimate her baby to be about 5-6 months old.  I watched in utter fascination as she put the brake on the stroller so it wouldn't go anywhere, then she simply reached in, gathered two handles, and lifted out what looked like a gym bag, and went into her house.  The baby was in the bag!

Modern technology has created this marvel of a stroller, such that if the baby is sleeping by the end of the ride, he can be lifted out and taken somewhere else without waking him.  Marvelous!

Before my time a bit

I think back to my days of pushing strollers, and what a conglomeration of harnesses, straps, and buckles were involved in those strollers.  There was absolutely NO chance that I could remove a sleeping infant without a lot of unbuckling and shushling around.  It was the same issue with the car seats back then too.  Nowadays parents can just grab the handle and carry the whole deal in.

Here is the closest picture of a stroller I could find to what I saw my neighbor using that day:

I'm not sure if that part on the left lifts out like a gym bag, but it was pretty handy the way she didn't have to disturb the baby.  We all know you don't wake a sleeping baby, right?

Because several of my four children were born fairly close in age, through the years I had several double strollers.  First I had a stroller in which the two children sat facing each other.  Each had a sun canopy to shade them, and there was a storage basket below each seat.  My parents helped us at that time and bought the stroller for us, and boy did I feel like I had the "cadillac" of child transport in those days.  A little hard to get down steps and around corners, but so what.  We were traveling in style.

Not quite like this, but still fancy:

Then there were the years when those umbrella strollers were all the rage.  I don't know how many of those we went through, but they were handy for older children that could sit up well, and were easily stowed in the trunk because they were light and collapsed easily.  We even had some kind of clips there for a while that could clip two umbrella strollers side by side to make a double.  Only trouble with that was fitting in through doorways.  

The last stroller we had was an ultra-modern two baby jogging stroller.  It had an amazing shock absorbing system, one puffy wheel in the front and two in the back.  Very easy to maneuver anywhere.  The one side was filled with pin holes by the time we passed it on, as we learned to pin daughter Sarah's security bunny to the stroller so there was no chance of her losing her precious bunny on the way.  

I can't even begin to imagine the variety of strollers and the technological advancements that have been made in child TRANSPORTATION nowadays.  These kids are traveling in style and surely having fun doing so:

I suppose this tactical ride is for the ultra-concerned parent strolling through the war zones.  

Honestly, some days I just wish somebody would push me around.  And I won't be too picky how.

Just make sure it has a sun roof for me, please.  And a basket for my stuff.  And a place to put my drink, too.  

That's all I need.