Debut of Mr. Silas

Because Zoe and Paul had both arrived a little before their respective due dates, I fully expected our most recent addition to also debut a bit before expected. As such, I gave Dan a bit of grief about scheduling an out of town interview on March 17, knowing I was due on March 20. The day came and went, with not so much as a contraction in sight, and I got a bit of grief for prolonging the job hunting process. Soon Dan was on vacation and seemingly a bit annoyed that we had moved his vacation to accommodate my due date and his time was being wasted. Our little bundle of joy continued to sit tight past his due date as we approached the long string of interviews scheduled for what was supposed to be my second week with the baby. On Wednesday, we decided to take steps - Castor Oil. A most unpleasant experience: there were contractions, I suppose, but it could have just been the serious gut-cleansing because they stopped as soon as the oil began to wear off. The midwife on call said she'd be happy to induce me after the day of awfulness, but we'd lost precious time and didn't want to risk a prolonged induced labor.

So Dan went off on another interview as we approached a week overdue. We went through our normal school routine, exhausting though it was at this point. Nanna came over to hang out with the kids and make things run a little more smoothly. We even went to Fun Friday at the library as we usually did, but with no big change in things. As Dan flew home Friday into Saturday, I got a few of my first contractions. By morning, I let Dan know I'd had a little hope and we decided to go forward with our plan to induce on Saturday morning. We got the kids up before dawn, got them into the car in their jammies, with the promise of a box of waffles when they got to Nanna's. Paul didn't let go of those waffles from the moment I attempted the bribe until Nanna cooked them.

After a quick breakfast, we headed to the hospital. We got into the triage area pretty fast at 10am, but waited until noon for a room to become available. Inductions, even past due date, are lower priority than folks in active labor. With no contractions to speak of, I was at the bottom of the list. Once we had a room, we got started on the antibiotic and pitocin. Ahh, contraction medicine...I did not miss it. I had gotten hearty doses of the stuff after Zoe was born in an attempt to stop the bleeding. This lovely bag of gut-wrenching evil would be my companion for the next 24 hours. I started this scene with 4cm dilation, so knew it could be a long haul to 10cm. Dan and I hung out in the room for a while, chatting. Another check- not really exciting progress, so let's break the water. Some more time with weak contractions, sitting on the exercise ball and chatting away. Eventually, contractions got uncomfy enough to ask Dan to hook up the TENS machine. Things were then pretty bearable and we continued to talk about travel plans, who was coming when to help out, etc.

Eventually the midwife and nurse returned - apparently her other patient had delivered successfully and she could turn her attention to me. We all sat around as talking as the contractions continued to strengthen. It was weird, though, because everyone kept looking over my shoulder at the machine measuring the strength of my contractions.
    "Did you even feel that one?"
    "Yeah, and it was a decent one."
    "You didn't even flinch."
    "I did feel it, though."
I felt like I was the star of my own episode of Nature as my audience watched the line on the monitor and then glanced at me to check my reaction. Eventually, I started to feel very shivery and the contractions became more distracting, so I lay down under the covers for a bit. The midwife checked - 6cm at about 6pm. Ugh! These contractions were painful. I couldn't do another six or eight hours of this. Then, inexplicably, the midwife asked the nurse to get the delivery kit opened up. A few minutes later, she asked if she could check what was taking so long, with a hint of urgency in her voice. Someone came and opened the kit. After that, I was pretty much in the zone, so don't recall too many specifics. I had made what is likely an unusual request to take things very slowly during the delivery process. I had powered out Penny and Zoe in a hands and knees position, giving myself some nasty injuries each time. Paul I delivered on my side very slowly and his delivery was pretty problem-free. This time, I delivered on my back, I think I responded appropriately to requests to pause or push a little, and thankfully avoided any serious injury to myself.

I soon (6:44pm) had a little boy plopped onto my chest - his hands slightly blue, but otherwise pretty active and awake. Dan said he had a heart-stopper on his end of things (he often watches the emergence since I'm pretty ok during the pushing part of the program) because Silas emerged totally blue, with the cord wrapped around his neck twice. The midwife adeptly released the cord upon exit and soon had the little guy breathing fine. However, Dan emphasized again that he did not wish to return to the delivery room for fear of losing someone.

Recovery went well, but the late hour of delivery meant a two night stay at the hospital. A nice respite for a newly minted mother of four. I was beginning to fear that they wouldn't let us go at all, though, because Silas absolutely refused to pee. He was a little jaundiced the second morning and the nurse thought perhaps a bit dehydrated. So we went on a serious breast feeding campaign and by lunch time had a nice wet diaper to show for it. Yay! We were cleared for take off.

Because Dan had already taken off for his next interview, we had actually left our three little dears with Aunt Rose, Aunt Helen and FCOR John. She'd had a crash course with Dan on their schedule. We simplified things by keeping Paul out of school for the day. Dan gave a driving tour of schools and other important landmarks. But they were all on their own for that first day and I can only imagine how much fun that was. After Girl Scouts, Aunt Rose ventured into Brooklyn to pick up me and Silas. So that's Silas' heading home outfit - perhaps convict stripes shouldn't have been my first choice.

We had an uneventful journey back to Staten Island, where I just caught Penny as she was drifting off to sleep. Everyone else had somehow managed to get to bed already. Kudos to Aunt Helen, who was our holding down the fort person, while Aunt Rose explored the neighborhood via trips to schools, etc. Nanna came over to visit the next day (seen here shadowed by photographer Penny's finger). The rest of the week was nice and quiet, without visitors, which is honestly how I like it. We then ventured out to Easter dinner at Dan's uncle's house for Silas' second big field trip since going home. There, he received a warm welcome, with lots of comfy shoulders to sleep on. Thus did Master Silas Prodeep debut to his New York family!

Confession

Every year, Penny's school has a number of contests and I always rail a bit about how parents get a little too involved in creating their kids' supposed submissions. One such event is the one hundred days hat. All the kids have to make some sort of hat with one hundred things on it. Most of the hats are big hats purchased at the store and the parent or kid chooses one hundred of something that the parent hot glues to the hat. They then parade around the school and some sort of judging occurs.

Penny's first hat - she wanted hearts, so we cut out 100 paper hearts and I mounted them on pipe cleaners that emerged from the holes of Paul's green baseball cap (that way he'd get to have his hat back). Year two: Penny wanted flamingoes, so I cut a paper plate with flamingoes facing each other and forming a heart, then she covered it with 100 sequins. Perhaps a little too cheap looking.

This year, she decided pennies. Heavy. My first thought was Chinese crowns - golden, covered in flowers or other designs that have lots of little disks. I showed Penny, sketched a phoenix hat with a fanned tail...no interest. I did a little more digging in the photos and came across some peacock shaped crowns. I tried a new sketch  on Penny and it was well received.

I cut out a cereal box to form the backbone of the hat, gave Penny a stack of Christmas paper to choose from for providing her hat with basic background colors. I traced, she cut out and glued. I counted out 100 pennies from Paul's piggy bank (replaced by quarters), then set them in some vinegar to shine them up a bit since many were collected on our walks to school. Once they were dry, Penny began the arduous task of gluing on all her pennies with our bottle of Elmer's. When we found the form was too small to fit the 100 needed, I devised some pipe cleaner add-ons (using scraps from prior year's hat). I used beads from the playground for head bobbles, She placed jewels from other craft kits for face and decorations, then used some hole punches I'd made to put the eyes on all the peacock's spots, and voila, a 100 days hat to be proud of. Total project price: $1 (or however many pennies would get lost over the course of the parade).

The morning of the parade, we had just finished up gluing the last batch of pennies (had to do batches for the band because one side would slide off depending on which side was up). I asked Penny to pose with the hat on because we had discovered that pennies popped off every time the cardboard bent to fit her head, so this would be the only opportunity to see it intact. She went to pose and my other little hams tried to muscle their ways into the picture. This blurry shot was all I could get as they moved around trying to get the best position in the picture. Sadly, Penny tilted her head to dodge Paul, dropping the hat to the floor. Instantly, dozens of pennies shot in every direction and there was only one hour until Penny had to be at school.

I lost it on her. After all the work I had put into this hat, she had completely destroyed it at the eleventh hour. How was I going to fix it in time for school? Elmer's glue takes time to dry and I don't have a glue gun or other method I could whip out at this late juncture. I tore into her about how stupid it was to dump her hat like that when she knew it was so hard to balance. She was soon in tears. I continued to grumble as I hurriedly glued all the pennies and blue dots back into place. I carefully placed the hat out of reach on the counter, then dashed to get everyone ready to head out the door to do school drop off. First, we took Paul to school, then came back to the house in hopes that 30 minutes was enough time for the glue to at least keep things in place enough to be transportable. I gently placed the hat in a stiff bag for transit and then dropped Penny off with explicit instructions to handle with care until parade time so the glue could set properly.

For the entire rest of the day, I ruminated on how I had completely ruined what should have been a fun activity for my daughter by tearing into her and making her feel awful about her hat. She takes this kind of thing to heart, so I felt really bad about hurting her feelings. I had gotten so bent out of shape because I was offended that she hurt MY artwork. I was guilty of that sin I so often condemn in others. As soon as I picked her up from school, I apologized for how I had acted in the morning. She, of course, forgave me because she's awesome like that. She also handed me a bag with the hat and a pile of loose change rattling around in the bottom. She was excited to have found a nickel that day because she was pretty sure she lost some of the pennies.

When asked how her day went, she said the hat was nearly impossible to wear because of the weight and the fact that it was SO front-heavy. Her teacher really liked her hat. Apparently, the teacher pointed out her hat specifically whenever they passed another adult during the parade. I wouldn't exactly describe her tone as excited as she mentioned this, but it seemed like she was at least pleased that her teacher had taken an interest in her hat. I asked Penny whose hat she liked best and she cited one of her friends, whose mom had hot-glued 100 particularly cute little chickies to her hat. A few days later, Penny said that there was an announcement about the 100 days hats, listing three winners from each grade and all three winners for first grade were in her class (the contest is for pre-K to 2nd grades, but there are 5 first grades classes, each with 30 kids, so still a pretty stiff competition). She was proud to tell me that hers was one of the names that was announced and she got this spiffy certificate as well. She seemed a little more pleased about the public recognition of her hat, though I'm not sure she totally sees it as "her" hat. I felt pretty darned excited that someone thought the hat was cool. I was pretty proud of the process and ingenuity of the hat. I obviously still need to work more on giving Penny a say in how it is put together and giving her more ownership over the project, though.

I haven't decided what to do with the hat. Though I am darned proud of its construction, I am also ashamed about how I behaved about it. So far, it sits in tatters on the counter, little glue spots indicating where its fine feathers once stood. The certificate hangs on the fridge with artworks whose authors are more clearly delineated. Perhaps I will leave it a bit longer to remind myself to let the kids have more say in how they put together their projects. It seems like such a fine line sometimes, so it is good to be reminded to be aware of that line.

Conspiring

Collaborating to construct a play house

 My little cuties are beginning to conspire together. The other morning, I was awake before them, probably making school lunches. I sat down on the couch to rest for a minute. I heard all three of them upstairs plotting to sneak up on me. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to have fallen asleep on the couch.

Now the first question that popped into my head as I listened to them hushing each other and planning what they'd do when they reached the bottom of the stairs: "How did Zoe get out of the crib?" I'm not totally sure of the logistics, but Penny is helping her out, perhaps by climbing on the outside of the crib and then giving her a giant hug. Somehow, this occurs without dropping or Penny collapsing under her weight. Zoe is close to 20lb, Penny about 40lb, so it is a pretty impressive feat in the grand scheme.

The next question is, of course, "What are they going to do when they think they're free to do whatever they want?" Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Penny went to the kitchen and grabbed the folding stool. She got the cereal, bowls, cups and handed them to her younger siblings to put on the table. Then she got down and handed out spoons. It is important to remember what a complicated task this is - not only are these items on high shelves, but each one of them has a color preference and a certain way they like to have things on the table, so setup can be a bit complicated in the morning. They were conspiring to put together their own breakfast because Mommy was too tired to make it!

Working together to free the Mega Blocks

Eventually, somebody did something that upset Zoe and she came crying to me to fix it. I patted her on the head, told her to hush and not give away that I was awake. Penny and Paul continued their setup for another minute or two. Then I had to "wake up" so that I could administer the milk and cereal and breakfast could get underway.

They are such funny stuff some days. Paul has been increasingly articulate, which allows him to tell us not only what he wants, but how he'd like to help out. He often loses the ability to talk when frustrated, so we had no idea he was getting frustrated about being unable to help in the way he wanted.  He is very particular about how things are supposed to occur or be set up, so getting more talkative has been rather revealing. I'm hoping the trend toward being helpful continues.

Zoe MUST choose her own gloves

Zoe (in contrast to Paul) is becoming very independent. The other day she was very determined about putting on her shoes and socks for herself. She now does it rather regularly. Dan was all excited that perhaps Paul would not like to be shown up by his little sister, so would begin to start dressing himself, wiping his own nose, etc. I explained that, unfortunately, that's not how our son works. Paul is a stickler for rules and procedure. Zoe puts her own shoes on...he takes them off because she's not supposed to wear them in the house - even if that means tackling her on the stairs and ripping them off her feet as she slides down the stairs. She puts on her hat and gloves, he takes them off and shoves them back in the drawer because it's not time to leave yet. There's a lot of sobbing about things being put away in their proper places around here. Zoe's pretty determined, though, and I'll need people who can take care of themselves, so I think she'll find a way to continue to build that independent streak.

New England, Part II

We didn't let our soggy visit in the White Mountains deter us as we continued our New England tour. As we left the park and headed through back roads into Maine, we kept our eyes peeled for moose. There were traffic signs everywhere warning of their presence, but their nocturnal nature meant we had little chance of actually spotting one. The search did get us looking out the windows, though, and it seemed the closer we got to our destination, the more colorful vegetation seemed to be intact.

We reached Portland, Maine, just in time for an afternoon at a park in the Promenade. It had amazing views of Casco Bay. While we enjoyed seeing the lighthouses, historic fort and more among the beautiful colors, the kids reveled in the opportunity to run, climb and jump until dinner time. 

It got a bit brisk as night fell, so we grown ups were eager to head to the car in search of food. After circling the posh main drag for a bit, we settled on Andy's pub for our exploration of Maine cuisine. As it would happen, "Andy" was having a birthday party that evening, so we were invited to partake a cake and snacks with our meal. While the kids tried more traditional kid foods (pizza and fries), we tried the Mac n cheese with lobster, shrimp bisque, and something else with lobster. Somehow, the chef managed to get perfect little extracted claws in the lobster dishes, ensuring that we knew we got the real deal. Totally creeped out the kids, but pretty tasty.

We checked into our enormous suite at the hotel - two bedrooms, separated by a hallway and a sitting room overlooking the local jetport.  The kids couldn't stop running around all the rooms from excitement.

After a very nice breakfast, we headed to the Portland Head Light. A school group tour kept us outside for a bit exploring the various out buildings. The kids enjoyed seeing some of the historical things in the museum, but the beach was way more fun. After a quick nap, we got out and built stone castles on the rocky beach. Penny and I scaled some slimy rocks to see what treasures lay in the tide pools. We were rewarded with a boatload of snails, but not much else.

After a cold picnic lunch at a playground near the Head Light, the kids caught another nap in the car on the way back to the hotel. Something seemed a little amiss as we drove around the jet port. There seemed to be cops on every corner. Not making a scene or doing anything, just watching. I turned to Dan to comment how reminiscent that was of Washington, DC, but he was sound asleep. When we got to the hotel, I took a moment to do a quick web search to see if any celebrities might be visiting Portland for the day. Lo and behold, our fearless leader was scheduled to campaign in the local gubernatorial race that very evening. The great debate: how would we get food if they totally shut down the neighborhood around the hotel? If we leave to eat, how do we know we'll be able to get back in by bedtime? Darned President! Always getting in the way of the little person's plans. We eventually decided that we had enough time to send Dan out to get food before everything shut down. If he wasn't able to make it back in time, I'd be able to feed the kids some of our remaining leftovers in the cooler and get them to bed on time. From our super suite on the fifth floor, we'd be able to monitor police activity and the runway to notify Dan if he had to rush back or not. 

We had fun watching the set up. Someone in the security team went up in the elevator with us and began knocking on nearby rooms. The cavalcade arrived and lined up. A little band of people, hair blowing in the wind, huddled and waited on the tarmac. I noticed that cars on a nearby road were starting to be diverted, so texted Dan that he'd better hurry home. There was a knock on our door and a hotel staff member asked us to close all our drapes. We were not supposed to watch the plane land. The secret service guy behind the staff member gave a serious enough look to get immediate compliance. We may have taken some extended peeks, though. We watched as the snipers set up camp on the airport roof...then as they began watching us watching them. Quick drape close. I told Penny we had to stop watching because there were people with guns who were protecting the President and they didn't know whether we were bad guys or not. She said something about "Lock Down" or "Code blah" and ducked under a table. I guess it's good to know that they're practicing their shooter in a school drills and all. A little sad at the same time. I explained to her that there was only a risk if we kept peeking through the windows and she came out from under the table. Dan had come back by that point and chose to peek from a different room. He was chastised soundly by hotel staff in the parking lot who insisted that he stop. 

The plane finally landed, though we never saw it exactly. I'm guessing there was waving and a quick step into the car and away they went. We waited a long time before peeking out again. However, we were rewarded by a beautiful double rainbow over Air Force One. We didn't fully reopen the curtains that night, though. Bummer because it really was a fabulous view and fun activity to watch. Alas, sometimes I miss all the excitement in Washington. I don't miss all the traffic that usually results from presidential movement, though.

Penny has been really excited about a book series called the "Magic Tree House," so when I saw that there was a planetarium show starring the characters from the book, I thought it would be a good idea to go see it. Unfortunately, I managed to pick a location that wasn't open on the day that we'd be able to pass through. So after hyping it up for weeks, I had to figure out where we could still manage to see it. Thus we entered Boston to visit the Museum of Science without actually going into the museum it self. Try telling small children fresh from their naps, "No, no. We aren't here to see that dinosaur exhibit. Big sister is just going to go watch a movie with Daddy while we go to the cafe to eat this cold fast food we brought. We will not be playing here." Thankfully, eating takes a long time and the planetarium show did not, so just as we were heading to find a playground to keep the kids entertained, Daddy and Penny emerged from the show. We then battled rush hour traffic (or something) to get out of town to our hotel. We spent the evening catching up with a Cornell friend who recently got engaged. It was a nice visit. We had some take out down in the lobby during the hotel happy hour, which seemed like a good idea at first, but apparently, children weren't expected at this happy hour and we got some sour looks and a good scolding from one of the hotel staff. The next morning, I took the kids down to the indoor courtyard because other kids were playing there. Mine decided they were suddenly to shy to play, so we headed over to breakfast. Just in time to get scolded again by the same staff member for letting my kids play in the courtyard. This time, though, he was scolding me for three kids that weren't even mine. Seriously, how many kids did this guy think I had? Six kids ages 10 an under? I'm not really that ambitious, despite some of the jokes I've been getting from my Grandmother about trying to beat her record. I was glad to put that hotel behind us.

The day was soggy again, so our big plans to visit Mystic Seaport seemed ill-conceived. Instead, we headed to the Mystic Aquarium. As luck would have it, they were celebrating Halloween with a series of games and giving away candy corn. The kids had a blast checking out all the animals, playing the games and generally running around. Zoe was constantly frustrated to have to follow the pack. There always seemed to be something interesting in a totally different direction and we kept pulling her back to follow her older siblings. We spent all afternoon enjoying the exhibits (mostly indoors), then had a lengthy round in the shop right before closing. Penny insisted on getting a stuffed pink penguin, whom she named Penny. Paul was tougher to figure out. Eventually, we settled on a giant floor puzzle of fish. It was ludicrously expensive, but he got quite a bit of enjoyment out of it for the rest of the trip and weeks after we got home. I figured it was a good early birthday present.

The following day, we headed off to Dinosaur State Park. I had almost forgotten this amazing East Coast gem. Usually, when I think dinosaurs, I think of big fossil finds in Montana, Colorado, and points West. However, if you're looking for dinosaur FOOTPRINTS, the East Coast is the place to be. As we learned at the museum, that's because the conditions for preserving footprints are totally different from those for preserving fossils, so they rarely occur together. For an avid fan of the Dinosaur Train, this stop was the mother lode. Mr. Paul went racing through the museum, feeling the footprints real and replicated, checking out the life-sized models of who made the footprints, and generally making a lot of racket. Thankfully, there weren't a whole lot of people to disturb. Just when he was starting to have a hunger crash, we discovered the hands-on room with embossers that made footprint bookmarks, actual fossils to examine, toy dinosaurs, dinosaur hand puppets and all kinds of exciting things. That bought us another hour or two of entertainment, but then sent us to the edge of hysteria as hungry, sleep-deprived children now had to be removed from someplace fun. Thank goodness we had both parents and a stroller to use as a restraining device and get everyone to the car. I think Paul might have been asleep by the time we got to the nearest fast food place and then we had to decide whether to wake the sleeping bear. Can't remember what we decided on that one. I know it's a tough decision almost every day recently.

After nearly two weeks on the road, the kids were getting a little punchy and sick of the tough travel schedule. Penny had certainly had quite enough sharing fold out couches with Mr. Paul. She insisted on sleeping in a pillow nest on the floor for our last night on the road. Paul does move a lot in his sleep on a normal night and he was getting pretty wild at bed time by the end of the trip, so I totally understood her point. Heck, I had a near miss myself sharing a hotel bed with my sister back in the day (apparently, she sometimes punches in her sleep), so I DEFINITELY understand Penny's position on the matter.

Our last day on the road was Penny's birthday. Not the greatest way to spend your birthday, to be sure. However, there were a few things that made the day special. While at breakfast, Penny searched for bananas and found none. When she asked the staff member at the hotel if she could track any down, the lady said they were out. She offered to bring out an apple with some caramel sauce, though, as consolation. As luck would have it, she chose a Granny Smith apple (Penny's favorite), and you just can't go wrong with caramel at breakfast. Daddy had done a little homework when he was out scouting for food earlier. He had discovered a really nice beach nearby. So after breakfast we headed over there for a jaunt across a boardwalk onto a beach like none we had seen in Staten Island. For starters, this one needed no beach zamboni to go around removing litter. We had arrived a nearly low tide and it was absolutely covered with seashells; so many you couldn't avoid crunching and crushing them as you walked. There were slipper shells, the beautiful see-through orange ones, oysters, clams, moon snails, and who knows what else. The seagulls were busy taking some of the occupied shells and dropping them from a height in an attempt at a quick snack. As low tide continued, a peninsula slowly lengthened, reaching out to a tree-covered island across the water. You could see gulls standing in the shallow water that remained between us and the island, so it had to be safe enough for people to cross, but there were signs all over that warned how swift and sudden the currents were when the tide came back in. So we ventured out a bit on the peninsula, but didn't attempt to make it all the way to the island. The kids had such fun collecting shells, seeing the creatures that lived inside a few of them, scaring the gulls, and just crunching along without me constantly telling them to "put down that dirty thing" like I have to do on Staten Island beaches. It was a really nice way to wrap up our trip to New England.

After a relatively short and painless drive, we arrived back home on a Monday afternoon. Plenty of time to rest and prep for our family photos and dentist trip first thing on Tuesday. Yeah, I pack this action in when I know Dan is on vacation and I've got help with these things. So that Christmas card you might have gotten with everyone looking all chipper and happy, that was after 10 solid days of driving all over creation and nights hoping everyone would actually go to sleep despite the excitement of novel surroundings. Not too bad in the grand scheme. They're little troopers, to be sure! I think they all had a really good time, though. Some of Paul's smiles were hard to capture because he was too busy exuberantly jumping up and down. Zoe was hard to photograph as she launched headlong into exploring absolutely everything. Penny made sure to write down her various adventures in a series of short journal entries and postcards that she wrote to each of her classmates throughout the trip. So that should be fun for her to look back on some day. I know I have a few journal entries from some of our big road trips out West and they always bring a smile to my face. The things that seemed like such HUGE discoveries back in the day - driving through a cloud of grasshoppers, rocks painted more colors than a crayon box. I'm glad we were able to see things that were fun on their level so the trip would be something they look back upon fondly. 

Grand New England Tour

Ever since we moved to NYC, Dan has REALLY wanted to do a tour of the fall colors in New England. The premise being that we don't really mean to stay in NYC on a permanent basis, so this may be our last chance to conveniently do a pretty classic road trip. It was a great idea, but never quite seemed to work out with vacation times, birthdays, etc. Finally, we had this wonderful scheduled vacation time right at the end of October, so we wanted to finally take that trip. Last major hangup - Dan planned to take his Step 3 exam in September, so would be totally engulfed in studying. Then a nasty rotation at work that would again keep him from home pretty much all day except for sleeping. So...one New England Tour planned exclusively by me, in between school starting, big garage sale where I try to offload all our stuff before we move, oh yeah, and a nasty invasion of mice right before we left. Nice, right?

With a little lack of sleep (not easy in the first trimester of pregnancy) and a few miscalculations in booking hotels, I managed to come up with a reasonable plan for our young audience. Logistical challenges: minimizing time off from school, short daily drives that still got us all the way to Maine and back in a week, peak season for visiting the area, so not many hotels left to book so close to travel time, sites that made sense for little people, hitting what Dan wanted to see without seeing Dan in advance to ask him what he wanted to see. It helped that I was just as psyched to visit the Northeast as Dan - this is a corner of the country I've never visited and would bring my remaining number of states to visit down to a number countable on one hand.

We started off on Saturday after Penny's morning CCD class, taking a whole day to drive up into the Adirondacks to Lake George. We arrived around dinner, so it was the drive up where we enjoyed the lovely colors of our surroundings. We had enough time to enjoy the pool at the hotel before heading to bed. We rose bright and early the next morning because it was another two hours to our morning rendezvous for trick-or-treating at an historic village near Burlington, VT. On the way, we stopped briefly to visit the founding house for Dan's fraternity, Kappa Delta Rho. Apparently, they're not the alpha chapter because they were forced to go co-ed (darned equal opportunity), but it is still an important place in the history of the group, so we stopped to get a few photos.

The historic park was really fun. As you can see from the packed "parking area," this was the place to be for trick-or-treating the Sunday before Halloween. Despite a cool drizzle, there were hundreds of kids dressed in all kinds of great costumes going from covered bridge to lighthouse to circus barn collecting candy along the way. The museum staff were all decked out - each location had a different theme - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Captain Nemo and a Kracken, Harry Potter, you name it. Though we brought costumes for the kids, Penny's coat covered her mermaid outfit (it was cold), Paul decided he didn't want to wear his antennae to be a bee, and Zoe just started to look cold after a point in her ballerina mouse outfit. Should I be concerned she still fit that 6-9mos costume? After all the folks handing out candy disappeared, we had some lunch, then really took some time to explore the park. Paul had an amazing time in the engine room of an old paddle boat, insisting on returning again and again, and even asking to buy a postcard of it. By the time we left, we were the only car in that expansive field and we had some worn out little walkers. Thankfully, our hotel was just 20 minutes away in Burlington. I think Penny may have found enough energy to go swimming again, somehow, though.

Our next day was the dairy tour day. After breakfast, we headed over to the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory in Waterbury, VT. Nothing like a little ice cream for morning snack. The 30 minute tour was a bit of a challenge with the little guys, but as long as Zoe was on someone's shoulder's or in the backpack, she seemed reasonably happy. It was tough getting all four kids out of the gift shop at the end. A little lunch, in the capital of Montpilier, VT and then afternoon snack at the Cabot Cheese Factory in Cabot, VT. The little cheese bar where you could sample all kinds of artisan cheeses was perhaps the toughest to get Dan away from. This tour was a bit more dry than the ice cream one, but Penny at least seemed genuinely interested in how milk could got through all these steps and magically become cheese. We got some souvenir cows here, as well as some nicely aged cheese. We got to our next hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire a little late and certainly done for the day.


You may have noticed in our pictures so far that our vacation had sort of a gray overtone to much of it. Though not brutally cold, the on and off drizzle did make it seem a little chilly. On the plus side, the dreary overcast meant we had whatever attraction practically to ourselves. Cabot was blessedly empty since Zoe and Paul had zero tolerance for the informative video and tour. There were hardly any people in the White Mountains National Forest main visitor center. That meant we had the life sized stuffed moose all to ourselves - yet no photos?! 

Sadly, we had totally missed the fall colors and with them, every single attraction in the White Mountains. The caves, trains, trams, mountain roads, pretty much everything was closed for the season. Some might reopen when ski season started, but there was absolute zero for us. Naked trees greeted us on all sides. The folks at the visitor center kindly directed us to some short, very easy hiking trails the kids would be able to enjoy. With Zoe in our trusty hiking pack, we set off along a wide rocky stream. The kids crunched along pretty happily checking out every large stone in the path and admiring the speed of the torrent on our left. After half an hour, Zoe was getting restless, so we headed back to the car. Zoe walked for a bit of the return, which brought her immense satisfaction. It began to drizzle again right as we returned to the trailhead, so we snapped a couple of quick pictures and packed it in for lunch. 

After lunch, we took a scenic drive in the mountains to facilitate naps. Zoe took the bait, but Paul was still wired, so we got out for another short walk at Beaver Pond. I took the kids a teensy bit off trail to check out the water's edge. There were lots of stumps that showed evidence of chewing, so I figured something exciting should be nearby. Penny did a nice instructional video where she misidentified a log jamb as a beaver house, but it was a cute attempt. All the evidence of activity had moss or lichen growing on it, so my guess was the beavers had moved on a while ago. The kids had a serious blast looking, though.

The School Year Begins

Sometimes it fells like we are racing forward, though nothing significant is really happening. Penny has started first grade, where she has realized that school is work. Alas, it did have to happen. School can't be one birthday party or national food holiday after another forever. It's sad to hear her dreading it already. I wish there was a way to make it a little more fun. However, schools and teachers are pretty worried about the Common Core, so I'm betting they're cutting any fluff they can from class time. From the notes I've gotten in her homework notebook, the teacher is a stickler for formatting. Not a bad thing, but I'd prefer we get shown how to format before it's counted as wrong. I hate when teachers do that. I don't read minds. I'm also not sure what to put in "Explain your thinking" for math problems. I'm glad I missed that philosophy change in education. Show your work seems sufficient to me. 

Zoe is enjoying all the additional trips to the park. She loves climbing. More importantly, she loves the chance to walk to and from school. It wouldn't be too bad, but she has her own idea of which direction we should be going and how many stops we should make. She's able to walk about half way between school and home and that's after only a week of practice! When she is tired, she's pretty emphatic about being done walking. I like the drama of watching her sit, then slowly lower herself into a lying down position.Where does she come up with this stuff?

Paul is asking to do homework and to go to school. It is worth contemplating, but I feel like my day would just become endless chauffeur work. He seems pretty smart - has his numbers, shapes, construction equipment, etc. all memorized. He needs serious work on following instructions, which is something school could really help with. When we looked at pre-k for Penny, there weren't any options within walking distance, so this would become a driving exercise for me. Ugh! Her school hours just made driving more onerous by starting at the same time as the Catholic school next door on Mondays and Tuesdays. But maybe if I stick him in for a limited number of days, I could just choose in the Wednesday-Friday range. We'll see what options emerge. 

As for me, I obviously miss work too much. After attending some council-level programs for Daisies over the summer with other girls from her troop, I figured "Hey, I can do this." I told Penny's troop leader that I'd help her do a journey with the girls. After reviewing two, I'm not impressed. Makes me sad because I really love Girl Scouting and I hate seeing things that turn people away unnecessarily. I figure I can achieve the same educational goals in a more direct manner. Can we complete two this school year, plus some bonus recognitions and cookies? We'll see! It will feel nice designing programs for girls again. It has been too long.

Dan is inching closer to the end of the educational portion of his career and toward the part where he's really a doctor. This month he had an in-service exam at the hospital that he seemed pretty stressed about. The end of the month will also bring us to the Step 3 exam, final step in his standardized doctor testing. He's way stressed about this two-full-days paper and pretend patients style exam. He's been studying by doing sample questions pretty much non-stop for several weeks. He isn't feeling great about it, but he's doing all he can to prepare. The kids miss him a bit, but he's on a clinic rotation right now, which allows them to see him in the mornings if they get up in time for school. It may explain why Zoe wakes up just before dawn. She just lights up and does a little happy dance whenever she sees Daddy. It wouldn't surprise me if she's waking up a bit early just to ensure she sees him each day. She's such a cheerful little person!

Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour, Part 2

Moving out of our little cabin in the woods took longer than anticipated. I was up until midnight the night before squaring away the secret compartments in the car, packing all food and clothes we wouldn't need the day of our departure. At 10am I told Dan to take the kids to the playground next door because constantly providing them service was keeping me from finishing our packing. Someone from the staff checked on us for 11am checkout, nice and prompt, and I insisted I was just packing up the cooler. I finished the dishes, packed the cooler, loaded the car, texted Daddy to get them back for final potty breaks and I think we were on the road by 11:30 - terrible because we'd have to stop for lunch before we made any good distance. Thankfully, Zoe napped through to the far side of Akron, a good hour or so. Thank goodness for GoogleMaps and being able to see every Wendy's at key driving intervals!

The rest of the trip was pretty in eventful, though I think Dan declared a moritorium on visiting Wendy's. We got to our swanky hotel and checked into what seemed like the equivalent of their presidential suite - we had a whirlpool! More importantly, we had a door that closed for bedtime. Penny and I enjoyed a lovely evening swim in the pool where she tried out a life vest I can't even remember purchasing. It was so freeing to go swimming and not have to hold onto someone. We played a little Marco Polo, chased a ball, I got to go underwater, lots of fun all around.

On Saturday, we went to Triangle Park, right across the street from the museum where I grew up (Dayton Museum of Natural History at that time, Boonschoft Museum of Discovery now). It was like walking into Roman ruins. Everything was overgrown, with grass up to our knees. The swings each had a spiderweb filled with holes and old dead bugs, evidence that no one had swung in them for days at least. The structures weren't excessively rusty or overtly dangerous looking, but their style belied their age (likely similar to mine). There were a series of nice looking pavilions and a family was setting up a birthday party in one. Other than that, we had acres of parkland and play structures all to ourselves. The kids were thrilled by the unusual lack of competition and explored each structure in turn.

Not a garden, just a tall weed in the grass

It was such a stark difference from NYC parks. Here we were in a giant open space, no fences in sight. No need to open and close a gate each time we went from one structure to the next. Big, fat, old trees with no low branches lent their cool shade everywhere, from pavilion to play structure. I didn't have to hide on the sidelines so I didn't sunburn while they played. No need to constantly shout, "Take turns, you have to share the slide!" Of course, I did wonder if ticks hid in that tall grass. Both parks seemed to have similar amounts of trash lying about, but Dayton's seemed to be ancient, bleached by exposure to the elements and cleaned out by critters and teams of ants. The kids insisted on collecting bottles like we do at home, though I told them Ohio doesn't give us money for bottles like New York does.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the parks around here. They're cleaned daily, there are plenty and they have some variety in the kinds of structures. It's just that they're crowded and I feel like a caged animal in them. Sometimes a good feature when you've got someone who likes to run away. It made me a little sad to see the parks around home so abandoned, though. Each one we visited seemed to be SOOO empty, so filled with exciting animals and plants taking over.

Going to church on Sunday was a bit of a challenge. The population of Dayton has shrunk so much that most Catholic churches share their priest with one or two other parishes. So finding a Mass in the vicinity with a time that worked for the kids and had a cry room for us to escape to if they decided to be a bit more unruly involved some memory and web searching. St. Rita fit the bill, but we were a little too embarrassed to walk all the way to the front to the cry room. Of course, we were the only family with kids in the entire service, so even their quiet chatter was a bit of an intrusion. So many grey heads. Aunt Helen mentioned that my old grade school, which had become the grade school for three parishes, still might not have enough enrollment to continue. As I drove through my old neighborhood, noticing all the now-empty lots where homes, schools and businesses used to be, I could see why. According to Aunt Helen, as many as 25% of homes in Dayton are unoccupied and even enticements like property tax forgiveness can't keep people in them. So sad.

Driving tips from Great-Grandpa Saluke

On the up side, though, the important people are still around town! My Dad joined us for Mass and then we went over to Amanda's to celebrate her birthday. We enjoyed some lovely cheesecake and just hanging out for a while.  On Monday, we ditched the hotel to head over to Aunt Rose's house. They'd been making some serious preparations for welcoming us. For Memorial Day, we broke in their brand new patio, complete with huge inflatable pool. Penny was the only one brave enough to dive into the cold water. Paul tried, but requested to be removed immediately. Zoe loved kicking the water while seated on the edge. I'm not sure what the kids did for the day. All the Salukes came over to say hello and Zoe was a little clingy and shy. While I took care of her, the other kids played badminton, splashed, drove in the house and generally entertained themselves and those around them, I'm sure. Dan eventually figured out that he was in charge of ensuring they ate and what not.

I had never visited Uncle Joe's new farm and meet his bees, so I was excited to incorporate that into our trip. Uncle Joe just retired a couple of weeks before our visit, so he was settling into retired life. He introduced us to his six chickens and we went into the coop to watch him collect some eggs. He also showed us how he helps them hunt for food in the yard. They're about as free range as one can get - coop is just there for shade and protection from predators. Penny was thrilled to help collect a bountiful harvest of strawberries. The asparagus was also ready to go, but she left that to Uncle Joe to handle. We then ate an entire hatful of strawberries in the cool AC of the house. Though he doesn't have grandkids, Uncle Joe did have some nice farm-themed toys at the ready for the kids. What does Uncle Joe farm? Bees! He's had to restart his hives recently, but I get the impression the new ladies are working hard. The rest of his land he rents to someone else, who does all the farming action. Sounds like the best farmer gig there is.

We went back to Aunt Rose's for a lovely spaghetti dinner with my grandparents, Aunt Helen and a few other folks we had missed the day before. Then goodnights, a whole lot of packing and a bit of sleep before heading back to NYC. We passed through Northern Ohio again, this time staying with Aunt Cindy. Apparently, our travel schedules coincided just enough so we could catch her after her return from Florida. My cousin Andrea stopped by with one of her daughters and Penny latched onto her for a whole lot of fun. Penny loves playing with iPads, so was happy to have an opportunity to play a few games at Aunt Cindy's with an experienced friend. Aunt Jayne and Aunt Pam came over in the morning to hang out, play a few online games with us (a little weird when you're sitting across the table from someone) and enjoy another yummy feast. Then we were off again to Pennsylvania. After our last successful layover, we headed home and were more than happy to arrive at our little abode in time for dinner. It was an awesome trip. I, for one, was glad to be finished with packing up and moving every few days. Penny misses the pools and play dates. Paul has asked to go back to some of the playgrounds. Miss Zoe had some kind of revolution on the road, switching from massive quantities of spoon food to insisting upon self-feeding finger foods. She also seems to be pointing with meaning quite a bit more. Who knows what adventures our summer will bring?!

Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour

 For the second year in a row, Dan managed to have vacation in May. He hasn't managed a visit to Ohio since 2009, so we figured this would be a nice time to try. I don't know that I'd recommend traveling with three kids five and younger to anyone because it involves so much gear. Stowed in the back here, you can see a portable crib, a booster seat and a bed rail, among other things. Unseen, 50 containers of baby food, 50 diapers each for two kids, two packs of wipes, enough snacks for an army, 3 nanna blankies, stuffed friends a-plenty, Paul's roller suitcase of cars, and tons of car activities.  Thank goodness it was summer and not winter! If we had poofy winter clothes to pack, we wouldn't have managed to fit into a MERE two giant suitcases. With the car packed and some cranky kids in tow, we set off at afternoon nap time for our two-week excursion to Ohio.

We made our first stop just outside of State College, PA. Penny and Dan enjoyed the hotel pool while I tried to get the stir crazy young ones ready for bed. We had booked too late to get the suite with a separate bedroom that we aim for, so bedtime was a bit of a nightmare, but we got there eventually. The next day, we made our way to the state line. We danced the line for the next few days at Pymatuning State Park - an awesome fishing spot based on the residents of the adjacent cabins where we stayed. The kids enjoyed that our cabin was right next to a playground. I enjoyed that our cabin with linens and a full kitchen was essentially the same floor plan as our NYC apartment, only uncluttered by all our junk we usually live with.

Our first excursion after settling in was to see Uncle Dave and Aunt Pam (Mom's sister). Uncle Dave kindly took Penny and Dan on an off-road golf carting expedition to explore the farm. Having read up on the various states we'd be visiting, Penny was excited to see Pennsylvania and Ohio's state mammal up close and personal. When spooked, the white-tailed deer were kind enough to demonstrate how they got their name. Paul didn't want to go on the golf cart, but he was pretty excited that Uncle Dave had his very own bulldozer and a spiffy collection of Hot Wheels. All the kids thoroughly enjoyed the patio, with it's slide for a quick escape down to a swing set and open area for kicking around a ball. Zoe played hard to get, though, resisting multiple attempts for cuddles from her grand-aunt and uncle.


That night, Penny stayed up a little later to see the stars. It was a lovely night - no milky way visible, but she did spot a shooting star. A clap of thunder made her nervous and when we glanced in the direction from whence it came a great blackness was creeping across the sky like the Nothing in the Neverending Story. "Maybe we should go in now?" "No, no...count between the flash and the thunder. One, two, three...fifteen" BOOM!! "See, it's still three miles away." "Maybe we should go in now, Mommy." "All right."

The kids went to bed and we stayed up a bit watching the snowy TV signal. Suddenly, one of us muted the TV.
Dan: Is that an air raid siren?
Me: Yep. Probably a tornado warning.
Dan: Oh.
Me: Let's find the weather somewhere so we can see where the tornado is.
Dan: That means there's a tornado? I thought a "watch" meant you had to watch for a tornado. Is there someplace we're supposed to go or do?
Me: No. You do not go outside and drive in a tornado. John went out for a run in a tornado when we were kids. That's not good. We are in a cabin in the woods someplace we don't know. The whole place is swampy to start and there's a flood warning as well.
Dan: What should we do, then?
Sandy: If the tornado comes, we close all the doors in the hallway and hide in the hallway. That's pretty much the best we can do. Let's see if the news says where the tornado is so we know if we should wake the kids.

None of the channels was local, so no news was covering the tornado. The weather-ish channel we can found seems way more concerned with the flash flood warning, going so far as to interrupt the tornado warning as it described where it was. With our intermittent cell signal, we were able to get a doppler map of the area and it seemed that the worst of the storm was to our South and East, so we just stayed awake until the warning expired. Uncle Dave told us later that he was pretty worried about us because he knew where we were and where the warning was. Thankfully, we escaped unscathed. The only major results seemed to be a bounty of new kindling available for our planned s'more roast the next day.

The next morning, we headed over to the fishery to see some of the Pymatuning Lake residents more closely. They had some nice big specimens of a variety of fish on display in trophy mountings and swimming around in tanks. Penny enjoyed a series of matching games to identify species of local turtles and fish. Sometimes even the low-tech museum exhibits can be fun. We had the place to ourselves thanks to a steady lingering drizzle. The drizzle also meant we were alone at the spillway when we went to feed the fish. The fishery end of the lake prohibits fishing, but has a spillway that feeds into the part of the lake where fishing is ok. It seems that for generations, people have gone to the spillway to fatten up the fish before they get sucked over the small waterfall into the area where they can become someone's dinner. Uncle Glenn had clued us in to this wonderful spot. The giant carp churned the water as they fought for our bits of graham cracker (the kids had already eaten our Goldfish and I hadn't packed our precious sandwich bread for the occasion). The ducks vying for a bit of the bounty didn't like how crunchy our snacks were. It seemed the carp might accidentally inhale a duckling in their eagerness for the crumbs, though. The parent ducks planted a few good pecks, but eventually herded their progeny away from the feeding frenzy. I got a lot of scolding from the kids for not bringing more things to feed the fish, but we had to head over to our next stop anyway.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Uncle Glenn and Aunt Barbara's (mom's eldest sister). She had been under the weather when we last visited Northern Ohio, so we were glad to see her this time around. Here the kids enjoyed some fun tracks for cars and chalk drawing out in the driveway. I enjoyed seeing some of Aunt Barbara's paintings of family members. She's been doing quite a bit more since she did the portrait of my mom. Uncle Glenn showed off their awesome tiered patio, leading down to a creek. Apparently, Paul thought it infinitely fun to throw the ball all the way down the hill when playing "catch" with people. Uncle Glenn assured us he wasn't the only one to pull such a move.

Zoe spent the day of her birthday at Aunt Barbara's as well. Aunt Jayne got some awesome Minnie Mouse-themed gear, right down to some ears for Zoe to wear. She joined Aunt Pam and came over to visit for a bit. She was kind enough to also bring some lovely chocolate chip cookies (with coconut oil instead of butter - yum!). Paul was thrilled about that contribution. Paul helped me make some rainbow sprinkle cupcakes, which Penny then iced with strawberry cream cheese icing. Zoe actually ate some of the cupcake and icing, so everyone must have done good jobs.

After a wonderful party, we had to drag the kids away from Aunt Barbara's. They were pretty sacked out and went to sleep easily. Thank goodness, because there was plenty of packing up to do before heading to our next big destination on Zoe's Buckeye Birthday Tour: Dayton.

Sick and Back Again

Wow! No one in the house seemed to notice, but I was sick as a dog for nearly three weeks there. The turning point was when Penny's school called me to pick her up because she was sick. My first thought was, "Oh no. I can't take care of all three of them all day when I'm feeling like this!" Eventually, I dragged my butt over to the school, where Penny felt absolutely peachy, just had a bit of red splotchy action on her face. Apparently, strep had been making the rounds of the school and they wanted to send her home just to be on the safe side. So now I had all three perfectly healthy and energetic little buddies and I felt like death warmed over. Serious sinus headaches, lowest energy possible, nose so runny that I had worn off the outer edges a few days ago. But the lightbulb went on - strep can be treated with anitbiotics! I made an appointment with my doctor for later in the afternoon and was psyched to be diagnosed with a sinus infection. The pharmacy was out of antibiotics, so I found another pharmacy. Within 24 hours, the headaches were gone and I was seriously optimistic, which was half the battle.

I was pretty on edge with everyone toward the end of my cold. It was hurtful that no one seemed to notice that I was feeling absolutely awful. I went to bed early for nearly a week so that I could focus on getting better. I got the random comments about not having enough socks, "I need new [s]poon!!" or where I was on the taxes. Maybe over the course of three weeks I got two "How are you feeling today"s from Dan. Nothing from the kids. Going on a tirade when they bugged me didn't seem effective in generating sympathy, though.

Of course, now the tables are turned. Everyone else in the house has runny noses, coughs and feels a bit crappy. Paul here has a new-found appreciation for napping. He finally is starting to nap at the time in the afternoon that makes sense for picking up Penny from school. Of course, if we manage to miss nap time, we end up with situations like this where he falls asleep in the middle of a meal. I'm enjoying that nap time finally works around here, but it would be nice for everyone to feel better soon. We've gone through an entire case of tissues and feeling awful leads to some aggressive behavior around the house. We'll get well soon, with any luck. I can't wait for summer and lower exposure to germs at long last.

My Little Girl Scout

Penny joined a Girl Scout troop at her school just before they went out on Christmas break and I've spent the past few months trying to convince her that she should get a Daisy uniform. It's been tough going. She REALLY doesn't want to cover up her clothes with a big blue smock. We finally had a break through a couple of weeks ago - I think I said something about needing a place to put all her badges. She had been earning badges with the NY Public Library's summer reading program, so she was familiar with collecting things with cute little pictures on them. She's also quite fond of collecting stickers. So perhaps it was the key to finally getting her seriously excited about getting her uniform. The way I figure it, if we live close to the National Headquarters for the organization, it's just a waste to go and order the stuff online, so we took the opportunity of mid-winter recess to board the bus and head to Manhattan for an amazing Girl Scout adventure.

Our adventure began on the Express Bus to Manhattan - a ninety minute drive in Greyhound-style comfort. Paul spent the day being plied with cookies over at Nanna's, so it was just me, Penny and Zoe for the day. It was Zoe's nap time, but she couldn't hide the exhilaration she felt being on the road and not in a car seat. Penny enjoyed watching the sites and the basic tour of the sites all the way there. Since we started our trip at 9am or so, there weren't too many commuters to pester with our boisterous bunch. We arrived at the National Headquarters right on schedule and I called an old friend who works on environmental programming. It was cool getting to catch up a bit with her, even though she had a pretty hectic schedule that day. Then we headed down to the shop, where we picked up all the uniform parts, our Girl Scout Daisy Handbook and a couple of mementos to commemorate the occasion (100th anniversary pin for me, HQ pin for Penny)

Next, we managed to sneak in a mini-guided tour of the Girl Scout Museum, where Penny got to pose with Juliette Gordon Lowe, our founder. By now, we were edging into lunch time, though, so Zoe cut our touring a bit short. We did have enough time for me to point out my old uniform and a couple of recognitions. We even got to see a bit of the Girl Scout Archive as well. Penny wasn't impressed, but I thought it was pretty cool. She got WAY more impressed when she was presented with a couple of patches that you ONLY get when you come to visit the Museum and/or see the CEO. Her first day with a uniform and she already had special things to tag onto it!

After an emergency lunch there in the GSUSA cafeteria, we headed off for a special dessert - a visit to Dylan's Candy Bar. It was two floors of crazy candy excitement. My mom was not a glutton for punishment, so I have no recollection of being brought to a candy store as a kid. I can see why she avoided it. We perused the scene for about an hour trying to decide which of the candies Penny would choose as her one allotted choice. It gave Zoe a good napping opportunity, I suppose. However, it was a school holiday and the place was packed wall to wall, making the navigation with a stroller more than a little challenging. We finally settled on a gummy bear piggy bank that could be filled with any number of delightful confections. There were some old stand-bys and I interjected some items that were new to her as well. They have all been warmly received so far. You can see her new friend, Rosie the Panda, helping her select appropriate candies. Rosie was someone we picked up at HQ for "free" as a thank you for blowing an obscene amount of money.

Then we boarded the subway to head downtown and catch the express bus back home (it's easier to catch the bus right before it head off to Staten Island). This gave us a chance to point out Trinity Church and Alexander Hamilton's grave site, among other exciting historic sites. It was also fun to show her the timeline on Broadway there since her homework for the break was to make a timeline of her life. Our 3:30pm bus just had enough room for our little band, enabling us to get home just in time for a brief breather and some dinner. Whew! I asked Penny about the best parts and the worst parts of the trip and she said there were no worst parts, so I was pretty pleased with the day. Zoe seems to have survived her first trip to Manhattan pretty well as well. Having discovered the ease of getting to midtown, I might consider this route again for spring break. We'll see.

Whoa! Snow!

 Ok! Enough with the snow already! We've been getting decent blocks of snow every few days. The city has refused to close the schools, regardless of how unsafe the road conditions have become. Now, I wouldn't mind having the schools open with the snowfall, except we weren't getting plows or salt at those times. So...snow started at 9am, pretty manageable to get Penny to school, but then now plow until 9pm and six inches of snow sticking to the roads in the interim. How was I to get Penny from school? By making a dog sled out of an underbed storage container and hooking myself up in front of it so that Paul could ride in comfort to go pick up his sister. Thankfully, someone was nice enough to give us all a ride home because I was pretty darned exhausted after lugging Paul for about 0.75 miles.

Penny and I did take the wintry opportunity to go learn about maple syrup. Penny was way more interested in tromping about in the deep snow than in poking a bunch of trees with pointy tubes. She did provide the very important stick for cleaning out the tube to allow the sap to flow out. She was absolutely soaked through when we got back in the car and pretty thoroughly pleased with her snow hijynx.

I'm glad she at least got that opportunity this winter. It has been a sad one for me because just about every storm we've gotten has been perfect packing snow. But there's just no way I'm making a snow man with a baby pasted to my chest. All the good storms have been on weekdays so far, so Dan can't take the kids out either. It's been eating at me. Poor Dan has been shoveling us out day after day, sometimes piling his work to form makeshift snowmen. I'm looking forward to a few more days of temperatures in the 40s and 50s so we can finally clear away these teaser piles of snow that we can't enjoy. Of course, these piles are becoming increasingly ugly as the salt and debris are left behind in the melt. There were some parked cars on a street littered with potholes yesterday completely encased on the street side with a solid inch of gray ice. I felt sorry for the cars and owners - how will they ever get clean?!