As promised.......

(At a park in DUMBO sportin some borrowed digs)


As promised I am finally reporting on my NYC trip. We had an absolutely fabulous time. I was a little concerned about taking Pumpkin with us as I've never been there w/ a child and knew it was going to make things very different and well, it did. I'm sure some of you (as if to imply that more than 3 people read my blog...lol) will be surprised to hear that I did not visit many, if any of the usual tourist attractions. We went to no shows, we did not frequent Times Square nor did I spend any time at the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, the New York Stock Exchange (lol), or Central Park (gasp!). This is what I meant by the trip being different. We gotta make time for some naps or we have one cranky kid on our hands! Lucky for me I have lived there so it wasn't a big deal that I didn't get to see any of the above. Instead I spent most of my time hanging out with old college friends. We visited a few darling baby shops, went to an apparent Soho hot spot called Pinkberry (yum) and a cute little cookie shop in Brooklyn called One Girl Cookies. I got in plenty of clothes shopping at all my favorite places and of course made the trip to Chinatown where I am sad to admit did not find a new handbag as I had hoped. (sad face) As you can see, Chinatown was a bit too much to handle for the munchkin!

The first night we did actually drop by Times Square so that Pumpkin could ride the ferris wheel in Toys R Us (like she cares) and we could get some cute pictures (ah, the real motive). (See how much she cares) The second night I was there I had dinner with some good friends, all fellow social workers and one my old roommate. As always, it was so good to catch up and had the BEST Thai food that I have had in several years.After dinner we took a walk to the above-mentioned cookie shop. I, being the kind friend I am let my newly married friends Cait and Jeff practice some parenting skills (for future use) by pushing my stroller and carrying my diaper bag (which Jeff subsequently left sitting on the counter at the cookie shop in clear view of anyone with evil intentions. Should we really give this guy a kid afterall?) See what a good job they did.
All in all it was a good trip and reminded me of some of the things I really miss about the city and some things I can definitely continue to do without. The list:


Things I miss:

• walking and riding the subway everywhere. It makes it very easy to pop in to a store when you realize you are out of milk and there's no unbuckling of car seats and lugging of children into the cart. You just blip the stroller in, grab the milk and pay and blip the stroller out. There is so much to look at and so many neat places to go that it really gives you a chance to spend A LOT of time outside w/o too much hassle except....(see number 1 on Things I can live without)
• the un-Walmartization (so not in the dictionary) which means there are blocks upon blocks of cute little mom ~n~ pop stores and funky one-of-a-kind boutiques that you don't get anywhere else
• being around people all of the time. I didn't realize how rarely Pumpkin sees people outside of church and family until we went on this trip and I saw how utterly intrigued she was.
• street vendors. I know you get these in other cities but it's nothing like in New York, at least in my experience. And while I did not buy any grafiti ball caps, $5 purses, or used books, I did pick up some out of this world finger puppets for cheap!

Things I can do without:

• lugging a stroller up and down all the stairs to/from the subway and to/from the street.


• piles of garbage on the side of the road that collect rats


• not being able to drive a car even when I want to


• everything costing a fortune

At one point these lists were both much longer but because I'm a few days past when I wanted this posted, this is the best I can do. Bottom line: I love New York and miss living there but I can also appreciate the benefits of living elsewhere.