June is one of my favorite times of the year. Not only has summer arrived in full force, it's also the month when we visit NYC for ten days. And the timing is usually great, because both Sean and I get to run a race in Central Park--something that we both love to do. My race is the women-only 10K and Sean's is the Father's Day 5-mile race. This year, Sean wasn't able to take any extra time off and so only spent about 48 hours total in NYC during that 10 day period. Additionally, this year, my step-mom, or NuNu to the kids, was only around through the first Tuesday. So this year, it was mostly me and the kids and my dad, aka BaBa. We had a great time. And like always, we crammed in all sorts of activities, some new and some old favorites. Here are my favorite photos. Click here to see the whole album.
The trip started with my 10k race (6.2 miles), basically one lap around Central Park. I've run this race 7 out of the last 9 years, or something like that. It's the oldest all-women race, and this year marked its 40th anniversary. The race also commemorated the life of Grete Waitz, an exceptional runner, role-model, and pioneer of women's running, who died of cancer in April. This is always a very inspiring race for me, to be shoulder to shoulder with thousands of women runners. Even though a terrible case of plantar faciaitis has hindered my running since January, and even though I basically gave up running in May in hopes that it would heal, I couldn't resist running this race. Additionally, my old high school friend, Lauren, ran it and we were able to meet up after the race and catch up a bit.
We still have a lot of good friends in NYC. One of Sean's best friends, Dan, (Sean would say that he's Dan's mentor, although I wonder if that's the way Dan sees it) always finds time to meet up with us. We saw him a couple different times during this trip. Here, he and Auric bond over a Thomas the Train book.
After my race and some lunch, we worked our way down to the very impressive NY Fire Museum, in SoHo.
It's a small museum, so it's well-sized for us. And the reproductions of all the old fire trucks were very impressive. Despite Auric's love of fire trucks, it wasn't the best environment for him because most of the exhibits are hands-off. I think this would be something he would love in about 6 years. But it wasn't a failure by any means. In addition to all the very cool displays, both antique and modern, we got to try on a fire fighter's gear!
After the Fire Museum, we fed the kids dinner at Peanut Butter and Co., a restaurant that serves-- you guessed it--peanut butter sandwiches. But the menu is very fun and has all sorts of wacky concoctions. We stuck with the pretty standard PB, Honey, & Banana, and PB & Nutella. While there, Thora worked on her Create-a-Face Sticker Book, an activity she did at almost every opportunity during the trip. That page of eyes isn't creepy at all.
Auric enjoyed playing with his new fire department truck set, purchased at the museum gift shop. Here he combines his love of stacking and his love of vehicles, stacking the fire department car on top of the fire department van.
On Sunday, after Sean's run, we piled into our car (I drove down on Friday afternoon) and drove up to Larchmont, (a suburb of NYC) to visit our friends Kelly and Loyd and their kids Sidney, Tai (twin girls), and their younger son, Drew. We all have so much fun with these guys. (Sean and Kelly use to work together at Columbia so they have a lot to reminisce about.) And the kids all have a great time, despite the varying ages. They seem to get a kick out of Auric, even though he's so much younger than all of them. And Thora plays with Drew (they're a year apart) but also the older girls, who include her in all sorts of games and pretend play. With a regular work day looming ahead on Monday morning, Sean drove the car back to Boston after dinner. Kelly gave me and the kids a ride back into the city. And here's where we began our week of being NYC tourists.
On Monday morning, the kids, my dad, and I took the train all the way downtown to South Street Seaport to meet my good friend Elizabeth and her two boys at the fabulous Infinity Park. This was the first of several awesome parks that we discovered on this trip. Here is Elizabeth and her new baby, Noel. It was great to catch up with her--although we ALWAYS fail to get a photo of her and I! Actually, it was a little tough getting any very good photos of the kids or the moms for that matter, what with the kids running all over the place.
Here is a rare photo of my two kids and Sam, her older son, all in the frame at the same time! It was a very hot day and the kids loved this playground's water feature.We all hung out until just before lunch time, when Elizabeth needed to get her kids back home to Brooklyn for their naps, and my dad went to meet my step-mom for lunch.
We bid our farewells to everyone and then I took the kids across the street for what would become a regular food source for them in NYC: hot dogs from a street vendor.
We ate, found a nice person to take our picture in front of the Brooklyn Bridge (right), and then found some ice cream for the kids.
After the ice cream, I took them back across the street to the playground, figuring that there was more for them to enjoy. Here's a view of the playground, looking toward the seaport and the big ships across the street. They played in the sand and climbed up the steps to a small tower, and cooled off in the water when they got too hot or sandy.
Here's Auric playing on some kind of contraption.
And if Thora had a cd out, this would surely be the cover!
They had a great time, but were thoroughly exhausted when I gathered us all up to leave.
Our second stop of the day was back up on the Upper West Side, The Manhattan Children's Museum, which had transformed its first floor into a huge Curious George exhibit. The kids loved this. But they were also happy to move to the activities on the other floors as well. At the right, they're driving a bus in the municipal vehicles section. This was much cooler than it looks, because there were all sorts of switches to flip and buttons to push, and when you pressed on the accelerator and the brake, they made very life-like sounds of a big city bus stopping and starting.On Tuesday, our big outing of the day was to the Natural History Museum. Actually, to be accurate, the whole visit was kind of a bust, which was a huge disappointment since I LOVE this museum and it can be really great for kids of any age. This visit was the first example of how traveling with young kids to the same place year after year can prove VASTLY different as the years go by. Specifically, last year Auric was a non-walker and was carried almost everywhere in the Ergo backpack carrier. This year, he was a walker/runner who loved to be chased. So in retrospect, we needed that backpack/leash for Auric that we ended up getting prior to our trip to London in September WAY sooner than we thought. Being at this always-crowded museum (and by crowded, I mean crowded by NYC standards) as the sole adult with a 4 year old and a two year old was about the worst punishment I could ever imagine.
Eventually, we worked our way to my favorite place, the Hall of Ocean Life, and I just parked there, letting the kids dance around in the open area. That's what is happening at the left, hopefully not to the annoyance of the other patrons.If they were annoyed now, I hate to know how annoyed they would become. As the museum was about to close, both kids began to melt down simultaneously, with me not being able to find the elevators! It was comical, actually. I finally managed to get the kids out of the building, and in the middle of the cacophony of wails, Sean called from Boston to see how things were going and to say hi. Hah! They sobbed to Sean for about a minute over speaker phone while I grabbed them both a hot dog from a vendor. I could literally see their demeanors improve with every bite. Thankfully, with that behind us, we walked up to Broadway and made our way up to the Upper West Side for dinner and a much-desired beer for Mommy.
Okay, now on to better times! On Wednesday, our big outing was to the Bronx Zoo, something that we do every year. I had my dad with me, and so didn't run into the same trouble of taking two young kids, solo, to an incredibly crowded tourist destination. And all in all, we had a great time. We saw so many animals, including our annual Riding of the Camel, something we've done for 3 years now (at the right). We also toured the Children's Zoo (the petting zoo at the end is always a huge hit), and rode the Bug Carousel. Good Times!
Here is part of a cute sequence of Thora sharing her ice cream with Auric.
Here is Auric inside a log in the Children's Zoo.
In the afternoon, we left the Zoo and headed back to Manhattan. I took the kids a bit further south, to the great playground at 96th and Riverside Drive. The kids had a great time, except that Auric kept making a break for the exit. Again, this was a new dimension to traveling in NYC that I hadn't realized in years past: some of the great parks don't have child-proof exits. This park was great last year, with a non-walker and a 3 year-old. But Auric, as a two-year-old, needs to be enclosed! His fascination with running out of parks or along the sidewalks of busy streets so that a grown-up has to chase him... well, that didn't work terribly well at this park. On the plus side, we did get a nice photo of Thora on a triceratops. (This is called Dinosaur Park because of these sculptures.)
Thursday proved to be the most successful day. We started the day with my dad accompanying us to Brooklyn. We ate at a 5 Guys burger joint (I'd never tried them and have to say that the burgers are incredible, i.e. indulgent), and then headed over to the New York Transit Museum, which is housed in an old, unused subway station. The kids loved running around among the various antique cars, and of course, driving the buses.Here's Auric driving a modern-day city bus.
And here's Thora, below, driving an antique. What would you think if you saw your bus driver steering with such flair?
After the museum, we parted ways with BaBa, and I headed with the kids to the incredible Pier 6 playground at the end of Atlantic Ave. It sits on the water looking across at lower Manhattan. The park itself is divided into four main areas. The first area we were to stop at was Slide Mountain. Here is the view of Manhattan from the top of Slide Mountain. After a few good slides, we were feeling pretty hot and we wanted to find out what this park was all about. So we went over to check out the water park, called The Water Lab. This was, by far, the best water feature I've ever seen at a park. There were pulleys and pumps and sloped ground to create flowing rivers. There were sprinklers, splash ponds, and a kid-powered water mill. In short, it was awesome!
After the water park, we spent the remaining time before dinner in the sand pit area and then Swing Valley, an area with about a dozen different swings, including some rope swings and tire swings, as well as your basic, standard swing.
As it neared dinner time, we made ourselves look as presentable as possible and walked our way back up Atlantic Ave and headed to the ChipShop just up the street. It's an authentic English fish and chips shop transported to Brooklyn. We all split the massive serving of battered cod and chips and I had a pint (all to myself). It was an incredibly successful, albeit brisk, meal in a restaurant (there's always a risk inherent in dining with little kids), and a long and yet fun ride home on the subway back up to the Upper West Side. (Somehow I still had the lemon wedge that we'd gotten on the plate of fish and chips and we were taking turns sucking on it and then making a puckered face.) Success all around!
The next day, a rainy one, demanded some inside fun, and we managed to find it at two indoor places. The first, The Children's Museum of Art down in SoHo, is a place we've enjoyed three years in a row. Auric is now the perfect age for the morning Wee Arts drop-in time; however, Thora seemed a little too old this time around. But regardless, it was fun as always. At the right, Thora does some serious-minded painting, while Auric drops the whole idea of "painting with a utensil," (clearly that's for dopes) and decides to cut to the chase and paint with the paint itself. (He's plucked the round paint disc from it's tray and put it right on his paper.)
In the afternoon, we tried out a new place called City Treehouse, which is an indoor play space that has a nice water table, a climb-able and slide-able tree, and a couple rooms for some movement and dance, as well as a baby room. It was a good find, although kind of pricey. However, given the rain, I was happy to have this option.
Throughout our time in NYC, we enjoyed lots of quality time with BaBa. He hung out with us in the playgrounds in Riverside Park and regularly accompanied us, at the very least, on our commutes to our destinations, but often he went along with us for the whole outing. One of the things that the kids love is getting to accompany BaBa when he takes Qali, their dog, for a walk in Riverside Park. Qali, who's an older dog, tolerates the kids' interest pretty remarkably. Walking the dog is a fun excuse to get down into the lower level of Riverside Park. On this day, I got a cute photo of Auric running along the paths in the park, sporting his new #1 subway t-shirt. (The 1 train is our train when we come to the city since it's the one that goes up Broadway through the Upper West Side.) This was a few minutes after we happened along the grate in the grass that stands over the high speed commuter train that zips underneath Riverside Park. Now, when we walk over grates of any size or location, Auric asks hopefully if there's a train under there.On Saturday morning, Sean arrived for the second half of his 48 hours in NYC. We met an old friend of his from his residency days at Columbia, and her family at a school fundraising street festival. We had a great time visiting with Nataki and her family, and then a late lunch at a pizza restaurant. After that, we ran into another one of Sean's old fellow-residents, Linda, and we met up with her, her husband, and their two boys at a park on Riverside Dr. We all had a great time while the kids played in the water (another great playground!) and did lots of running around. They invited us back to their place to feed the kids, and then before long, we were back in the Upper West Side winding down before our last day in the city.
Father's Day for us is usually spent cheering Sean on at his annual 5-mile race in Central Park and then cheering Thora on in her kids' race that follows. This year was particularly significant because it was Sean's first race after his lung surgery in April. We were so proud of him, seeing him run across the finish line, something that none of us could be sure that he'd be able to do prior to his recovery. Sean is incredibly driven, and a remarkable athlete!
Here is Thora, getting her game face on, ready to take on all the other 4 year-old girls in her completely appropriate red cowgirl boots.
My dad, a runner and a father himself, loves to come to the Father's Day races and cheer on Sean and Thora. (He's currently nursing a knee injury, but in years past, both he and Sean have run it.) After the races, we let the kids play in a nearby playground in Central Park, before heading off for our annual post-race, Father's Day brunch.
Here we are, taking some great Father's Day photos with two of the dads in our lives.
After brunch, we packed up the car, and drove back home to Boston, totally exhausted but already nostalgic for the city that we love.
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