Tag: natural history museum

New York 2012

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As you may know, every year I do a trip to New York with one kid and alternate kids every year. This year it was the girl’s turn to come to New York with me.  She was so, so excited to go, as was I.

With this trip, I let go another one of my parenting tenets that was established before having children, which was “Children do not need to watch screens while on the plane.” Idiotic, really. Had I been wise, I would have plugged my kids in much sooner.  To this day I have NO idea how my parents managed to travel with small children to India without any assistive devices. I was incredibly happy to get out “How to Train Your Dragon” and plug both of our headsets in. You know, that is a very good movie, even if I did have to fast forward through a few scary parts and constantly shush the girl as she yelled out “TOOTHLESS!!” in joy, unable to hear how loud she was.

First stop once arriving in Brooklyn was getting froyo at Culture. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to eat froyo again, anywhere.  It’s that delicious. Bad foodie that I am, I did not take a picture.  I’m wondering if it actually happened.

The next day it was a bit rainy so we briefly braved the Brooklyn streets,

had a first (remembered) encounter with a subway train

And then went to the Transit Museum. SO COOL. All about how the subway system was created and how it runs, though the girl mostly loved driving the buses.

My favorite part was the vintage subway trains they had downstairs, starting with above ground Brooklyn trollies from the late 1800s. The girl decided to use this time to pick her butt.

The trains are decked out with vintage ads and admonitions as well

Still good advice, if you ask me.

We then hopped the subway to the Natural History Museum.  By this time the girl was an old hand at the trains and kept warning us to “Stay away from the yellow lines or you get squished!” Always the safety officer, that one.

I love seeing the dino skeletons.  It’s astonishing to me how incredibly huge they really are.  It steels my resolve not to go back too far should I ever happen upon a time machine without first going to the future and picking up a jet pack so I can escape quickly. Or an invisibility cloak.  That would work.  But they might have a good sense of smell, so the jet pack is still the better idea.

Rawr!

You know, one thing I forget about New York museums is that they are NOT friendly to little children.  I feel like the Denver museums make a real effort to have things be open to all kids and accessible, whereas the ones in New York seem to make a point of being more for adults, really–crowded halls, tiny dense print and few interactive features.

After that, we went to get Thai food and the girl had a huge meltdown, which should have been entirely expected given that we’d been traipsing around 2 boroughs for the entire day. Poor thing.  She recovered to her usual self and we headed back home and had an early bedtime, with plans to fit in a lot less the next day.

brooklyn/manhattan

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After a great few days in Westchester, we headed to Brooklyn to spend a few days with my sister.  We hopped on the train and the girl waved goodbye to her new friends, who waved from the platform.  At every single station from Westchester to Grand Central, the girl looked at me and asked, “Friends? Where go?” She didn’t quite get the principle that we were at different stations every time…

We met up with Sapana –who, I’ve since learned, is called “Panda” by most of her workforce after multiple clients have written to the office for “Sapanda.” That’s how I’ll refer to her for the rest of this entry, and perhaps for the rest of the blog–anyway, we met up with Panda at Grand Central and dropped our stuff off at her office and headed to the Natural History Museum.  That place is HUGE.  Massive.  We got lost quite a bit until we got our bearings and made our way to the dinosaurs.

It’s nearly impossible to get a decent picture in there, partly because the girl never stops moving:

and because the lighting is terrible! (This is remedied by the awesome flash that my parents got me for my birthday, which I can’t wait to try out!)

Look at that hadrosaur!

We hopped on the train back to Brooklyn, and got to Panda’s apartment.  It’s a rather large (by NYC standards) 3 bedroom apartment, which she shares with two other people.

Do you remember being in college, or living away from home  (or if you still live at home, this is every day), when your mom would come visit and would, well, go into mom-mode?  I don’t remember this because my mother never once visited any place that I lived away from home until the day I left, so I never got this benefit. (Sorry, Mom, but it’s true.) My roommates’ parents, however, would often visit and I’d see the mom-ing take place.  Shortly after arrival would be a trip to Target and back would come bags and bags of shower curtains, and floor mats, and furniture.  When I was in high school, we got the mom-ing from my aunt! She came to visit us in California and was apparently so horrified that we used reusable sectioned plastic dishes as dinnerware that shortly after her departure, boxes and boxes of matching Mikasa dinnerware sets showed up at the house.  I used to wonder how one knew how to do that stuff–was there a mom class that you took?

Apparently, I’ve taken this class at some point because my first instinct on going to Panda’s place was to take her to Target, Ikea, and Bed Bath and Beyond and buy new stuff for her.  She’s been there for 9 months but on a shoestring and hasn’t been able to get a lot of the home furnishings she’d like.  We didn’t manage to go because it was just impossible with a two year old in tow, but I’ve learned that sometime after actually becoming a parent, I’ve become a Mom. Fantastic.

The next day we went to the Prospect Park Zoo and met up with Eric’s family, who drove up from Pennsylvania!

Here’s the girl with her adorable cousins:

The older kids were so good with the little girl, and they all clearly loved being together.  The Zoo is a bit scaled-down from your typical zoo which was perfect.  There’s a petting zoo that the girl just loved.  I think she fed almost all the animals except the alpaca and some dwarf cow thing, because they were over 4 times her size.  Anything smaller than that, she had no problem with.

The next day, we took a visit to the MoMA. The girl was NOT very impressed, though I did get her to sing “Twinkle Twinkle” while looking at “Starry Night,” which I got a kick out of.  

Then the girl posed in front of a wall describing all her finer points:

After that, a trip to Central Park and then, finally, back to Brooklyn to pass out.  Panda and I were exhausted, so we thought we’d watch a movie together and just choose from one of her roommate’s 100+ titles.  Unfortunately, this particular roommate is a documentary producer-type and doesn’t own movies, only films.  We ended up watching “Memento” and going to sleep with a quite unsettled feeling.

The next day the girl and I bid farewell to Panda and set off for Denver again.  The flight home was not as much fun, and culminated in the girl spitting into her hands and then grooming herself like a cat.

It felt good to get home.

A few thoughts after the trip as a whole:

I’ve been to New York plenty of times, and have always loved going there and just feeling the general excitement of the place.  Being there with a two year old is an entirely different phenomenon, however.  I was struck by how much of just getting around was a struggle.  Here, we live in the city but  aren’t fighting the crowds and noise right outside our doorstep every moment of every day.  Even if you’re a wealthy New Yorker and live in a beautiful apartment overlooking something green, as soon as you get on the street you’re back in the middle of it all.  And as for that “something green,” Denver is rife with green spaces and flora, even just in the front yards.  In New York, those spaces are relegated to small community gardens, balconies, some roofs, and Central Park.  You have to make an effort to get there–it’s not just in front of you all the time.  Before I had kids, I never would have noticed these things, since my main focus was on museums and, well, the bars and clubs.

I loved travelling with my daughter.  It’s so different to visit places as an adult and make an impression of them, and then think about those same places through your child’s eyes.  I know that she’ll remember little, if anything, of this trip when she’s older, but there is value in the experience and the exposure.  I don’t buy the argument that you shouldn’t travel with your kids before they can remember it–I mean, if you extend that argument why expose them to anything before memory sets in?  The girl LOVED all the newness and the thrill of being somewhere new, taking the train, having a daily adventure.  We give our children experiences that shape and form who they are as adults, even if the experience itself becomes nothing but a faded impression.

And one last thought–all you second and beyond children, your suspicions have been correct all these years.  You completely missed out.  The girl’s language developed exponentially during this one week trip, and I think it’s because she had my undivided attention.  I’ve realized ever since the boy came back home that he gets about 80% of my verbal attention and the girl gets the rest.  (Eric and I basically just communicate in grunts at this point, so that doesn’t factor in.)  It really made me realize that both Eric and I need to spend more one-on-one time with our small one.

Overall, a fantastic trip! I loved getting back to my garden, and can’t wait to update you all with the next post!