Thursday, May 12, 2016

Delights of NYC and Dean’s First Birthday

This little family is pretty incredible. I’ve said that before but every time we go, it becomes more and more obvious!  They know how to suck the very best out of their New York experience and know how towork the system and cut down on the number of times they go up and down their four long flights of stairs every day with the ubiquitous deliviery system in that great city. They get everything from laundry to delicious Indian and Thai food, to Trader Joe’s and Costo orders delivered to their dooror just everyday. In addition most of their clohing shopping is done online.They’ve got this jig down! 

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Several days while we were there we walked over 10,000 steps with them. For Eli (and Saydi when she went with them) that’s not counting a five mile run that me makes around the perimeter of the Park almost every day, rain or shine. Amazing!

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Zara kept us endlessly entertained!

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And we were so lucky to be with this family on Dean’s first birthday. It weemed impossible that a year had gone by since we were there with them when he burst into the world in three hours from the start of labor to finish!  What a joy he has been to his family. And luckiy he has survived a whole year of his sister’s endless smothering, squishing, squashing love!

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What a nynamic duo!

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We had such a delightful birhtday party at the park. That day we were also thinking about our little Mila in California, Dean’s cousin who was turning two on the same day even as her parents, Noah and Kristi celebrated their 12th anniversary. Quite a momentous day for Eyrealm!

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We joined another family in Central Park whose little girl was also celebrating her first birthday. The other mom thought of the funnest party game for one-year-olds possible: the kleenex game. Each of the babies was given a new box of kleenexes. Zara was placed in the middle of the those two to demonstrate the fun and started pulling kleenexes out of her box. Those babies created a blizzard of kleenexes and managed to pull every last kleenex out of those boxes. So fun!

Wish I knew how to post this video but I don’t. You’ll get the idea from this screen shot!

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On our last day with Eli and Julie, I got to take Zara to The Manhattan Children’s Museum! Boy howdy, did we have fun!  Zara grabbed as many stuff animals as she could hold, hung a basket of fake fruit on her arm and this pizzazy little girl was off like a roadrunner! 

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She showed me around her turf (she has spent a lot of time there over her long life). She is one of the cutest little pumpkins you can imagine.

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We went into imagination mode as she ad I gathered up all the stuffed animals and we took them to a safe place nearby to rescue them from a “bad guy.”

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She watched out for the that bad guy until the danger passed and then we took them all back to their homes.

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The fun continued:

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She loved fingerpainting on this fun wall. I wish you could have heard her singing “Jungle Bells” as she painted. Precious!

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The last three days we were in NYC, we moved to a hotel down near Lincoln Center where we loved seeing an incredible production of The King and I and had the privilege of hearing recitals by students at Juiliard, right around the corner. It was the end of their term and there were several free recitals every afternoon. We heard delightful concerts by a young student on the double bass, a graduating senior on violin and several students in an organ recital at a nearby church. Rick went to a fascinating Poetry reading. Great stuff!

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The next day while Richard stayed with Zara and Dean, Julie, Eli and I popped over to a museum recently acquired by the Met. It was so fun to see the exhibit entitled “Unfinished.”  There were so many fascnating pieces as well as some always-creative modern art! The lights here in the lobby were part of the art!

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Here’s an unfinished piece by JMW Turner (although some would say that most of his breathtaking paintings look unfinished).

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On the way home we stopped to take a picture of the apartment house of Hougette Clark on 5th Avenue. She was the daughter of one of the America’s most weathy men, during the era of Rockefeller and Carnegie. This woman lived to be 105 and owned (among other things) the entire top floor of this building and most of the 8th floor as well. She filled the rooms with dolls and dollhouses along with valuable paintings by the masters and a stradivarus violin.

I was reading a book about it with my Book Club. If anyone is interested it is called Empty Mansions. A crazy and fascinating story about the difficulites and sad results of having too much money!

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Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Grandfather was having a wonderful time with the kids. The apartment looked like someone had thrown in a grenade but boy, did they have fun!

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There couldn’t be a more fun Grandfather!

And we were off to Boston!

1 comment:

Eli said...

Thanks for such a great post mom! It is always so much fun having you here. These kids are so lucky to have you (as are we)!