Brooklyn Bridge Park

 This weekend we met up with our Flats Friends at Brooklyn Bridge Park. If anyone is in the area, this has got to be one of the greatest public parks ever. It has "neighborhoods" of themed play structures. Most of these pics are from the vast Sahara of the sand pit, but there is also a Slide Mountain, Swing Valley, little sprinkler park set up like a stream. Recently, they installed bathrooms (thank goodness!) and a couple of food stands with picnic tables. It's also got a fab view of Manhattan since it's situated under Brooklyn Bridge. In any case, it's sort of midway for all our friends to get together and it's a great area for folks Penny's age. The hardest part is getting there since it's only sort of subway accessible and parking can be a hassle. We headed out early in case traffic was bad and managed to get there a full 30 minutes before we schedule to meet anyone. For someone as serious as Penny is about playing in the sand, this job gets pretty hot and sweaty, even on a cool day like Labor Day was. So we had already moved on to water play by the time our friends joined us.

 A quick wardrobe change and she was ready to roll in the water play area. It is such an awesome setup. The upstairs has a bunch of cool toys for moving the water - Archimedes screw, water wheels, sprayers, etc. - then the water trickles down a fake rocky stream (great for splashing) into this ankle deep pool. They had just enough of the jets turned off so that I could make a semi-dry crossing to the island between the levels for dry (and seated) supervision. Most other adults were soaked or standing at the fences around the area. Penny was having a great time running around - perhaps a little too great, because she had quite a few full body head-on collisions with other kids, all of whom seemed more massive than her. She usually just shrugged it off. But after the second run-in with friend Paul, she decided to sit out for a while. She sat on me, so I spent the rest of our visit trying to dry off.

We had a great time catching up with our friends Paul, Kylan and baby Kaleb (and their mommies and daddies). It seems we're all applying to what seems like a few billion schools all over the country in hopes of getting into at least one good residency program. Seems a bit like a scam when you think about how much they charge you just to apply, but that's the way the system is set up. We'll see how this all goes in the next few months as Dan gets some interviews (hopefully).

If you've wondered why on earth my posting has been so curtailed, it's because I've got one dangerously cute little girl on my hands and some serious mommy fatigue. I mean, look at her, can you really tell her no ALL the time? For example, she is currently going through a Minnie Mouse thing. She just HAS to have Minnie on all her diapers. Darn those diaper folks, they have four different patterns on the diapers in the same box and only two of them have Minnie. So I've had to resort to drawing Minnie onto the remaining half of the diapers. I usually do a day's worth in a sitting. What would I do if Mom hadn't shown me some simple character drawing skills back in the day?! Some of those little hints can be really darned useful when you get down to it. It's nice to know that she can help me be a mom even when she's not here to actively consult every time we hit a challenge.

I apparently haven't been posting quite enough about our new little one recently because I've gotten quite a few inquiries about the little guy (it's a boy month). He's doing quite well. It looks like we'll be getting new pics about monthly for the home stretch here as they're going to be watching us pretty carefully. He's not much of a kicker, but LOVES stretching. I'm constantly having to remind him to stop trying to poke out like the namesake for the movie Alien. Penny likes to have me ask the baby if he can hear her yelling, cleaning, jumping, etc. She'll then shout into my tummy to that effect. He sometimes kicks her in response. Penny's still climbing on me, despite repeated warnings not to hurt the baby. It does seem to be a little less frequent, though. Who knows, maybe she'll come out of this less violent than she had been getting! I obviously enjoy rough-housing a bit too much. Just a little while until Nov. 19. Have to get quite a bit in order still. I have inventoried the wardrobe, so know exactly where the holes are for the next one and have been trying to fill those on and off through garage sales. However, our busy schedule and the dearth of quality garage sales in this area have left some serious gaps still. We'll get there eventually. I've got some hope that folks will be hanging at home this weekend and looking to distract themselves with some garage sale action. We'll see.