This is my 101st post! With summer winding down, I'm heading into triple digits.

I love this time of year because it promises a fresh start. Shopping for school supplies with my daughter Maeve, I like to buy a few pens and notebooks of my own, just to get that sense of excitement a new school year brings.

What ideas do I have for Birth Story this fall? I have been an independent writer for 10 weeks now, but more of a full-time mom, really. Now I have to get back to work in earnest. I'm looking forward to it.

One resolution is to do more multimedia posts. This morning, I took my trusty camera (a Mother's Day present) to Foster Beach, a mile or so from my house in Chicago. I wanted a picture to evoke the end of summer — an empty beach. As you can see above, I got that picture. There was indeed a stretch of sand and birds and little else.

However, I can show you other aspects of Foster Beach as it looked this morning as well. I can show you this:

And even this, from a tiny dog beach at the north end:

This weekend, Foster Beach will host two entire triathlons plus a leg of another one. It will look very different from the way it looked today.

I couldn't help thinking, while I was framing my "empty beach" shot on this busy strand, that every one of my posts  is a kind of snapshot as well.

No one of them tells the whole story. Even all 101 taken together don't tell the whole story. But I am telling the Birth Story as I understand it, one post at a time. Thanks for joining me.