day by day, little by little

During the course of the morning I realized that we have now been here for six weeks. It's an important number, six weeks. After eight moves during our married life, nine if you count moving across the street in Charlottesville and thirteen if you go back to our pre-married days (I wont even give you the number of times I've moved in my whole life, it might make me look a little crazy) I've learned that six weeks is a turning point. The boxes are long gone, or, in this case, long since stuffed behind the couch. You've stopped saying "I just moved here" and know where all the important things are: the post office, the go-to grocery store, the when you have more time grocery store, the schools and parks and playgrounds. The Michael's (this is me, after all) and yarn stores and fabric stores (or lack there of). After six weeks, you stop feeling like your moving and start feeling like your living.
New York to entirely different than I expected. I looked forward to the adventure of life in the city but what I really expected was that this year away would give our family a chance to circle the wagons, so to speak. To spend more time together away from fixing up houses and PTO meeting and school concerts and community events. Not that I didn't love all of those things. I did. But taking a break from it just to be a family was appealing. I worried about getting around, about cramming into a small apartment about having no yard to play in or best friends just up the street.

The reality has been very different from all of my fears and concerns and even my expectations. I love the city. I love that there are so many parks we'll never get bored of them. I love that I haven't, even once, missed having a car. Our apartment is small, yes, but surprisingly well thought out for a family. There are places to escape to and sound proofed walls that mean that quiet time is possible, even when a legendary and complicated Angry Birds-esque Lego/Calico Critters battle is being waged in the other room.

But it is also hard at times. Will is busier than he has ever been. Busier than when he was an intern at his first job, busier than when he worked for himself and seemed to eat, drink and sleep his projects, busier than when he led projects on the other side of the world and had meetings at weird hours. It's no fault of his, or mine, or even the program he is in. It's just how it is. Busy. And we make it work. Hours and tasks are shuffled so that he is home for the important things. Our sleep schedule has shifted, with all of us staying up later and sleeping in later than we normally would because it means more time together. And that's fine. It works for us. And just as we used to fall into a alternate routine when Will was out of town, I've gotten us into a pseudo single parent schedule so that life cranks along pretty smoothly.

It's a good life. It's harder on poor Will than it is on us. He is missing most of the fun stuff, but he gets enough of it to make it worth while. And he loves school, which makes the busy days and nights worth while for me (most of the time ;)).
My Aunt recently passed on a piece of advice, to enjoy even the hard stuff. And that's what I keep reminding myself. Some nights the kids will not fall asleep, even when I'm so desperate for some peace and quiet that I could cry. But that's ok. It's life. It's motherhood. And it will be gone in a flash. Pretty soon I'll have to beg them to come out of their room and talk to me. Some days I want to scream at stalled subways or late buses or lines to get into museums or long walks home. But that's ok too. Because before I know it, this year will be gone and we'll be back in a car, driving thorough a normal small town life, and I'll miss buses and subways. Even the M11 which always seems to be ten minutes late, except when I'm running late, and then it's early. Some days I would kill to not have to wash every dish by hand. But that's ok because one day I'll have a dishwasher again and I'll miss....actually, no, I'll never miss not having a dishwasher.

There are days that I cant remember our old life. Almost like it's a dream that I can't quiet bring into focus. It seems like we've been here forever. Other days it's this life that seems more of a dream. Regardless of if the day has been good or bad I often look up and think "Do we really live here? In New York?" Almost as though this is a vacation, as if we are just pretending to live here.

I know we are no where near to being "New Yorkers". That would take years, a lifetime. But I'm enjoying that fact that I don't feel so much like a tourist anymore. My daughter has stopped (for the most part) licking the subway windows, I can come up out of a station and almost always walk the right direction without having to consult the GPS dot on Google Maps. my kids have found friends in our building and traipse up and down the stairs, running from one apartment back to the other to play. I saw Larry Davis walking down the street in front of Tom's Restaurant and was totally unfazed by it (no really, it was weird, but I kept walking because , eh, famous people, whatever) I've even been asked for directions a few times, and once I was actually helpful with my answer.

Day by day, little by little, we are settling into this new life and finding that it suits us. Even the hard parts.

(brooklyn) wild

There are wild parrots in Brooklyn. Did you know that? And not just one or two, whole huge colonies of them. I stumbled across this website back when I was researching neighborhoods to live in before our move and noticed that they offered a parrot safari. Unfortunately, I then totally forgot about it. Fortunately though, my iphone did not. Friday morning I got an alert, "Parrot Safari Tomorrow!" Honestly, I shudder to think what I would forget if I couldn't have alerts on my phone to remind me. Not that I would remember that I'd forgotten.
So Saturday morning we took a Brooklyn bound train all the way to the end of the line. It's a long trip, my friends. More than an hour sitting on the hard plastic seats of a subway car. Will often wonders why I always seem to bring so much stuff when I head out the door : sudoku book, Highlights magazine, various pens and colored pencils, charged phone, two water bottles, spare grocery bags, camera, baggies of graham crackers and goldfish and trailmix. But the thing is,if we were heading out for a days adventure in the car, I would have brought much more (and had a place to leave them when we were doing our adventuring) so I think I've pared things down pretty nicely. Enough to keep the kids busy on longer rides without killing my shoulder with too much weight.
When we finally got to Brooklyn College, late, due to six unscheduled and unexplained stops along the way, and grumpy because we were late we found the group a few minutes into the tour and looked up in wonder. Parrots. No really. Parrots! Big, green, loud parrots!
They are transplants, of course. The descendants of a crate of birds from Argentina that broke open at the airport in the 1960's. They have defied attempts to eradicate them and poachers traps and have become solid, cherished members of the neighborhood. As we watched them a car drove by and shouted "leave them alone!".
It's mating season and so they few in pairs, nuzzling each other on the branches above us and chirping in what the guide said was their "contented sound". And we watched from below as the big green birds swooped from branch to branch, nest to nest, in the leafy trees of a quiet neighborhood.
Sometimes, I'm just flat out amazed at what you find, if you look, in New York.

snippets from the week

It took us more than two hours to get home after the fireworks on Monday and we seem to have spent most of the rest of the week recovering from our very late night. Lots of at home time. Lots of crazy erector set building and coloring and projects with mama. A good week.

We heard about it in the play garden. The Fire Brigade Parade, which is really the firemen from our block driving their truck down Morningside Drive while all the kids in the neighborhood follow behind on their bikes. Before they rolled out, everyone who wanted got a chance to sit in the truck. Evelyn liked the hats best.

At the end of the parade, much to the delighted squeals of the kids, the firemen shot the water canon at the crowd. Wet, happy children.

We walked a good third of the way home, waiting for the roads to clear out or the subway stations to calm down enough for us to find a spot. The fountain at Lincoln Center was the perfect place to rest and have an ice cream cone (the 11:30 pm ice cream cones earned us cool parent status for at least a week)
We had a little competition, Evie and I vs. Daddy, to see if we could make pasta from scratch before he got a pot of water boiling. It was a tie. Which means that I should make homemade pasta more often. No "it takes too long" excuse when the food processor is involved. Not that I will. But I should...
Watermelon Smiles. Definitely my kid.

She helped me make some superhero cuffs but then insists on wearing them on her ankles instead of her wrists. Apparently it keeps the bugs away. Alert Scientific American folks! I've found the cure for mosquitoes! Felt Superhero Cuffs!
A "heart", from my boy. Whom I love (along with his sister, of course) more than anything.

chocolate craving + peanut butter playdough =

Yep. Chocolate Peanut Butter Playdough. I kinda wish I hadn't had this particular brainwave, if you can call staring at the jar of chocolate chips trying to think of something cookie-ish that doesn't require turning the stove on a brainwave.
To off set the addition of chocolate I did go with a slightly healthier version of PB playdough that I've been making of late. Less sugar, more oats. Also no dairy. Not because it's not healthy but because I forgot to add some and it turned out yummier and more workable as a playdough.

So here you go. fair warning. I just ate a slightly bigger than a walnut but smaller (just ) than a tennis ball sized lump of it. Muuuummmm...


Chocolate Peanut Butter Playdough

3/4 cup rolled oats
2 T sugar
1/4 cup cacao
3/4 cup peanut butter (the not natural style of PB works and tastes better. Just sayin)
1-2 T of honey

Throw the oats, sugar and cacao into the food processor and whiz it till the oats are pretty finely ground. Add in the peanut butter and mix until you have a sandy texture, drizzle enough honey through the feed tube to form a dough. Roll.Play.Eat.

the magic basement

Briton and I have decided that the basement of our building is a sort of New York muggle equivalent of The Room of Requirement. If you need it, it will provide it, given time, of course. We've heard lots of stories about people here who have furnished entire apartments with stuff found of the street and I can see that. If you wanted (and were willing, eewww) you could easily have a Princess and the Pea sized stack of mattresses after two weeks of cruising our neighborhood on garbage day. And many, many dressers. But the same also applies to our basement, with the added bonus of interesting little things showing up for the taking.
I'm not sure if it's because we are in student housing or if this is normal for a New York apartment building, but people seem to be moving in and out all the time around here. And when they go, they haul things down to the basement for the rest of us to scavenge. You have to be quick and decisive, however. Three times now I've come upstairs to ask Will what he thinks about me bringing up a "_____" (small dresser, strange mirror tray that was begging to be rehabbed, interesting looking chair) only to return to find them whisked away by someone else in the building. We could easily have saved a bundle buying our white IKEA bookshelves if we'd been patient (and known about the magic basement) because I've seen at least five float through on my laundry trips.

So far I've rescued a trifle bowl (something I've always wanted) a very funky old pencil sharpener that is just the thing for the empty spot on my shelves and, most recently, on an "I'm Bored Mom" kind of afternoon, an entire Erector Set from Korea.

I actually questioned bringing this one up. The set was perfectly organized in a cool fishing tackle type of box but the direction book, which is thick and extensive and in two volumes, is totally in Korean. In fact, the only reason I know (or guess) that it's in Korean is from the website listed in teeny tiny print on the back. So I wasn't really sure Briton would be able to use it. But, I figured, at least we could use the cool box for lego sorting, should the Korean instructions be a little too hard to figure out.
I had forgotten, however, that my son is a little mini engineer, because instructions in a language he probably didn't even know existed seem to be no problem for him at all. In fact, he's so into it that yesterday I had to bribe him to go to the park and play. Yeah. I think that if the New York ed department people give me any lip about homeschooling (it's very strict here, you have to fill out all these forms and prove your child is learning at a comparable rate, which, I should probably get going on, come to think of it) I'm going to tell them that after only a month of homeschooling my son was easily following intricate building instructions in a second language. No need to mention that none of that is my doing, right? Still, next time we need to assemble something from IKEA with those weird, totally unhelpful instructions, I know who's doing the work.
I'm still waiting for the magical basement to provide me with an armoire. I really need one for all my craft and teaching stuff, the shelves we have (also found in the basement) are starting to sag in a terrifying way, like a dam about to burst. Maybe I should be making offerings to it. Maybe the gods of the magic basement are waiting for some cookies or a plate of brownies before they will grant me anymore wishes. Or maybe I should just go to a used furniture store and get myself an armoire before our office/dining room is covered in glue sticks and rolls of newsprint from a massive shelf explosion.

fireworks, of many kinds

When I was a kid, the Fourth of July was the highlight of the summer. Every year the day seemed to be filled to the brim with picnics and barb-ques and walks on the beach with friends to catch ladybugs in coke cans (I'm not sure why on that one, it's just what we did). I can almost feel the prickly of the heat on my arms and the relief of leaping in the water. The beach smelled of coconut oil and was filled with teenagers who used masking tape to block out the initials of their boyfriend or girlfriend on their backs or arms so that at the end of the day they had a sun tattoo. Later in the summer we would see several crossed out sun tattoos when beach romances went awry.
When the sun started to set, we piled into our old wooden boat and cruised out to the center of the lake to watch the fireworks. Lying on my back on the deck of the boat, the fireworks directly above me, the water lapping rhythmically, the radio playing patriotic tunes, it was magical. I don't have any memories of the night ending. I suspect that each year I dozed off somewhere along the way back to shore and was carried to our car and then into the house to bed.

I loved it.

And then I grew up and stopped liking the Fourth of July.

I'm not sure when this happened. I'm not a huge fan of crazy crowds and I'm a total heat wimp so I'm going to guess that it occurred at some point during my various stints of living in the South. And the fireworks? Eh. They just never seemed....worth it. Terrible, I know. Will loves the Fourth and I've told him many times over the years that he's just more patriotic. That it's politics that has soured me to the day. But I'm not really political enough for that to be true. But for whatever reason, the Fourth of July has become, over the past few years, just something I tolerate.
Will wanted to go downtown to see the fireworks. I knew he would. It's New York, after all. One of the biggest fireworks displays in the country. Of course he would want to go. And I was resigned to that. Lots of fireworks, lots of crowds. And heat. It would be hot. It's been blissfully cool so far this summer here, but yesterday morning, when we went to see our local firetruck spray the crowd at Morningside Park the air had that sticky quality that usually turns into a hot and humid day.
Nevertheless, I packed a picnic and dressed the kids in their red, white and blue outfits and took the dog out to pee one more time before we left for the long evening, and off we went. And unexpectedly, I fell back in love with the Fourth of July over the course of the night.
The weather had cooled down dramatically, back to my beloved mid seventies, which, I'm not going to lie, put me in a pretty good mood to start with. But it wasn't just the weather. Everyone was in such a wonderful mood. Strangers chatted on the bus, people smiled, weird outfits abounded. We walked from the bus stop over toward the Hudson River and spread out a picnic blanket on the Hudson Parkway. And while we sat there, in the middle of what is normally a highway, while the fireboats sprayed water out in the river and the crowd got bigger and bigger, waiting for the fireworks and eating our picnic, Briton turned to me and asked,

"How could a plane hit the Twin Towers?"

My first instinct was to tell him not to worry about it. Or that we could talk about it later, at home, away from the crowd of people, some of whom most definitely lost someone that day. Or maybe we could talk about it never. Which would be so much easier.
Except, this wasn't the first time that he'd mentioned it. We've had a few questions before, not as specific, but enough to show that he is aware that something very big happened here in this city.

So we told him. We told him about terrorists and why they hate us. We told him about the four planes. About the fourth plane and the bravery of the people on board, how they probably saved a lot of people by fighting back. About the firemen who died and the people who couldn't get out. And I cried. But we also told him about the good things that came from that day. That our country pulled together and became stronger. And I realized that, sad as it was, it's the perfect tale to tell on the Fourth of July. The Revolutionary War is so far away for children. For adults too. It's hard to grasp what the people who lived and fought back then gave up for their country, but it's not as hard to understand what people gave up on September 11. Even four an eight year old. Especially for an eight year old.
And then we watched the fireworks, right over our heads. Huge, amazing fireworks. And for the first time in a long time I remembered why we celebrate the Fourth of July. Really remembered.

snippets from the week

Math on the run. While we waited to get into the Sony Wonder Lab, the kids were in need of a little something sweet. We divided up a packet of M and M's and then Briton made bar graphs from each of our piles. I tell ya, that kid, he loves the graphs.

Mo Williams got it backwards, the pigeon doesnt want a puppy. The Puppy wants a pigeon. Really, really wants one! Nigella has found her inner bird dog at last. Alas, her bird of choice taunts her from every corner and every scrap of park. Lots of whining has ensued.

I walk down this street every morning but only just noticed this in the sidewalk. Actually Evie noticed it. It makes me wonder what else she and Briton see that Will and I miss.
We met up with a group of Homeschoolers who play once a week at a truly fabulous playground in Central Park. This is carved into the park entrance nearby. I couldn't tell if there was a Girls Gate on the other side because an ice cream truck was parked in my way. Next time.
This week there are Piano's all over New York for Pop Up Pianos. This one was in Central Park near the Harlem Meer where we went to fish. (You can check out free rods! How cool is that?) Somehow I don't think I'll ever fish and listen to strangers play piano at the same time ever again.

He didn't catch any fish, not even a nibble. But the people next to us had better luck and told us where to get the good bait for next time. It didn't really matter, the view made up for the lack of bites.
Briton had no interest in trying out the piano but Evie sat for a long time and played all the little songs she knew from her piano lessons. She also had her picture snapped by a few tourists girls who kept saying "so cute!" And it was.

Have a fun and safe Fourth of July everyone!