The Ugly Mug is our neighborhood coffee shop. And so so much more. It is the place where you are always sure to recognize 75% of the people there and to be friends with at least 25% of them. It is the place where you can duck in to nurse your squalling newborn, when the stroller is just not working out, as I did many a time with Ezra four and a half years ago. It is the place where they will let your son help make his steamer, if he happens to be friends with all the baristas, as Ezra is. It is the place where you bring some choice items from your home book library and leave them there, so you - and all the other families in the neighborhood - will have some better things to read than their random, beat-up books that you've read at least one hundred times. It is the place where Ezra and I hung out every morning together when Reuben was growing in my belly. We would sit on "our" couch (which our barista friend Jen recently told me that she gets very territorial for me about when I'm here and someone else is sitting on it), read books, do puzzles, snuggle and eat bagels with butter or cream cheese. It is the place where someone is always offering to lend a hand when they see another parent struggling to nurse/fetch food/clean up/tend to an older child all at the same time. It is the place where I have had people hold Reuben, feed Reuben yogurt and carry Ezra's steamer over to the table for him just like it should be, everywhere, all the time.
And, the other day, barista Jaqueline, who gave Ezra a huge swirl of whipped cream on his steamer when he became a big brother, let him draw on the sidewalk chalkboard. He drew a giant.
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