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Do you know this boy?
Posted by nathan on Sep 1, 2010 in Son
first haircut.
Return of the Dutch Boys and more…
This morning, I was drinking coffee and sitting in front of my window on the world, ie my computer, when I noticed a particular friend of mine appear in my Instant Messenger buddylist. I said, “Hiya!” and she asked me what we had planned for the day because she needed something to do, so we made plans to meet up and let the kids all play with each other.
I hurried TheBubster through her ABCs & 123s; currently she is writing a sentence by tracing and then copying the words, the content is about Ancient Greece and her mathematics worksheet is Addition and Subtraction exercises with the number line Just as an important note, we are not yet dealing with negative numbers but it is possible that we will introduce them relatively soon. Then we hustled down the Westside Bike highway to get to the park.
The kids all got along swell. My friend made a comment about how good LittleBud’s is with a soccer ball. Later a complete stranger came over to the field to express his opinion that LittleBud has potential to grow up to be one of the “top 99% of football players in the World.” It was a bit outlandish to hear this, but the boy does love chasing after a ball.
After we were exhausted and overheated, we went home to wait for a surprise. I knew what it was but the kids were not expecting it at all, they just knew it was a surprise. When it arrived, TheBubster helped figure out what to do with it and how we should put it together with the large wooden box we found last week on the sidewalk. Pictured below is the kids enjoying their new surprise.
Finally, I got an email today from Kidzui, which is an adaptation of the Firefox Web browser which has curated content for kids. I like it alot because it gives TheBubster a great deal of freedom to explore the web and find things she likes, that are entertaining and sometimes even educational. It lists all the websites that she visits, the videos she watches and several other areas of interesting data is reported and I can make selections about permissions. Anyways this video keeps popping up in her list of watched videos, TheWife and I found it hilarious so you are all forced to watch it as well.
Mini Golf Adventure!
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p>On Friday, TheWife ,also known as TheMommy, had oral surgery; new donor bone was hammered into her jaw to rebuild it. She was strictly told not to lift anything substantial or to make any great physical effort as it would not heal properly and the graft would fail, so to prevent the kids from jumping on her all day Sunday I dropped them into the bakfiets and set out on a random adventure.
Initially, my idea was to go and find some Crocs for the boy because LittleBud had seemed to fall in love with the ones that belonged to our little houseguest. Every time she would come home and take them off, he would scurry over and slip his feet into them. It was not just her little pink ones that he liked but Crocs period because we will wake up in the morning and put on his sister’s yellow shoes on. Its quite a funny sight, him in these slightly too large yellow shoes and his nappy padding around the house.
Anyways, the adventure Sunday turned out to be more surprise to us all than I planned. It was Sunday morning and the shops were all closed so there was no buying little shoes.
At this point, we just moved out to the edge of the island and rode the bike; looking at the water and the other side. As we were on the eastern shore of Manhattan and the greenway is not continuous; the United Nations building interrupts it for security purposes (I am sure they could secure the perimeter of that building with a greenway if they really wanted too but I digress….). This meant that we had to ride up a ramp, back into the main avenues and around the building and back down a ramp onto the greenway. We actually had to do this again further along because the greenway stops where the highway runs right up next to the water’s edge.
Finally, we came to a third ramp at 96th street. It was starting to threaten rain, so I took it with the intention of headed west and downtown to our home, but then at the top a saw that the ramp splits in two directions. One way goes west into Manhattan, the other goes over the river to Randall’s Island. We had a quick chat about what happens if we get rained on and everyone sort of agreed that we’d just get wet and so we crossed over to the east.
Randall’s Island is a cute little place that has athletic facilities and an insane asylum. There are nature reserve areas and a decent sized track and field stadium next to each other. There is also a huge car park and a place where outdoor music concerts take place. In fact while we were there a Puerto Rican organization was warming up for a summer party. There is also a Golf center with a driving range and mini golf. We stopped at that place to get some drinks and use the restroom. TheBubster then used her best requesting forms and asked to place some mini golf. So we did. It was great fun with the three of us, even more fun because I did not try to keep my score; I am certain that if I had Little Bud would have found a way to beat me!
So because you have sat through my prose or maybe because you skipped ahead, here are some photos.
On the way home both kids fell asleep in the bakfiets and I had to carry them both upstairs (four flights! heavy!)
Orange, Rolling Orange and Bubbles
I should start out with a simple statement of fact. The quadrennial sporting event known as the FIFA World Cup, henceforth known as The World Cup, has started. The World Cup is a tournament played between the national teams of 32 countries which has successfully completed a two year long campaign to be included. Football, also known as soccer blah blah blah blah. I see I have lost nearly all of the Americans in the crowd. Anyways, the tournament is on and it is being played in South Africa. So time zone shifting puts the early game at 0730, which is pretty much when LittleBud insists that we get up and do things for him. So that works out.
I watch matches on my computer from the free stream at Univision. Yes. I know it is in Spanish, I have been watching football in Spanish so long now, that I can not listen to the blithering idiots‘Muricans at ESPN anyways. One of my favorite memories of childhood was watching Spanish television broadcasts when I was twelve of The World Cup as it was played in Spain. There were a couple of boys from Spain visiting their grandfather; who lived in my neighborhood; and we all huddled around the telly and watched the matches and then ran outside and played our own games until we could not see anymore. Ah! the memories….
But I digress.
This weekend, while the English were buttering their fingers and demonstrating some hospitality to Team USA; maybe it was out of guilt over what they had done to our Gulf; our family rode over into Brooklyn to visit the opening of a new bicycle shop that sells Dutch Bikes. NOTE: that’s my ear leading TheWife along the Westside Bike Highway. The bike shop is called Rolling Orange Bicycles and it is a beautiful and very Dutch looking store full of Dutch Bikes and bakfiets. Bud had a cupcake, TheWife and I had lekker coffee with cake and we rode some of their fancy bikes. While standing in the middle of an asphalt field, I heard a yell from two different directions that meant only one thing, Team USA tied up with the English. So we left and went to a quiet field in Prospect Park where I watched the rest of the match on my phone because I live in the future baby.
After we had dinner at a Greek restaurant, TheWife took her bike and rode the subway home. LittleBud and I knocked off another lock in our Key To The City Quest. this one was a cute little cabinet that had a bubble machine in an alley.
This morning, I woke up early and watched the Holland versus Denmark, cleaned house, put on my Oranje jersey and rode my orange bike around the city and high-fived all the Dutch people, we also sang songs and exchanged victory stories plus a couple other things that I am not at liberty to discuss… Not that I am actually Dutch, its just that all those years of watching football in Spanish, I must have been reprogrammed somehow, or maybe I’m just a socialist. Anyways, I leave you with some pictures of LittleBud unlocking the lock at Trinity Church as a continued assault brandishing our Key To The City.
Key to the City
Hello there, New York. We now have the Key to the City. Yup, that’s right, we have a key to teh city and it works, it actually opens up stuff. This is all thanks to the artist Paul Ramirez Jonas’s creative imagination, there is an art project which covers the entire city of New York. Within each of the five boroughs of the city there are locks that the key opens. When I read about this in my news feed from the Gothamist I knew that I had to get one of those keys for Bud. Turns out the way it all works is you exchange keys with a friend or someone else, so we were both to get a key.
We like to cover a lot of ground in the bakfiets everyday, but this art project gives us extra incentive to go further and into new places. There is a great deal of excitement buzzing through the city about this project so it’s going to be a blast. Immediately after reading the news, we packed up and headed off to Times Square. We did not have to wait in line because we got there before it opened, so there was no line. We played around in the immediate area after volunteer manager asked us if we were going to leave the bakfiets parked next to their set up long. I told him, “we’ll leave when Bud gets a key.” After an hour and a half, they made all the preparations for the opening, which was going to have the Mayor give a speech. A guy walked over to us and began to talk about the bakfiets and question how we liked it and such, cause he’s got a kid and they just us the regular child seat on a bike and so forth. Then he revealed that he was the artist behind the project, said it was great meeting us and stepped into the presentation area. So we took that as a cue and when to the head of the queue.
We walked through the empty queue, filled out the paperwork, received the keys and mounted the presentation stage. The Artist guided us through the ceremony as I bestowed a Key to the City to LittleBud. I did not think that Bud was gonna be able to decide to give me a key, so we made it only a ceremony in one direction. Then as we were leaving, Paul shook my hand. We stepped off the platform and a professional photographer took our photo (the one above). We mounted our bike and rolled off.
Yesterday morning we went to our first lock to see what was inside at the Whitney Museum. Pretty fun.
Off the Fat of the Land
Its been a week now that TheBubster has run away to Florida forever and ever. Yes that’s right, she seems to think that this extended trip to Nana’s is permanent and I guess since there is not really a good guideline that indicates to her mind exactly how long six weeks is, then it might as well be forever. One of the stipulations for her to be allowed to make this trip, especially because of the amount of time she’d be gone, was that she had to continue to work on her school agenda everyday; school days for us follow the traditional Monday through Friday with normal holidays off. So her books and practice pads and other items made the voyage as well. I know it helps having some of the same routines continue everyday as she is away from us, plus music lessons are definitely back on the agenda at my Mom’s house.
In the meantime, TheWife is working late this week as there is a big push at the agency. So this leaves Bud and I with lots of time together.I believe I am the one who is most deeply effected by the absence of the loudest and noisiest and most active person in the family, so I end up putting Bud in the bike and riding around all day for days on end. This means I am getting lots of pictures of him taking naps in the bakfiets; which is exactly why we decided to get the bike, for the naps, not necessarily for the photos. There has been an unintended consequence to all this riding about, the house has quickly grown messy. The dishes do not do themselves, the clean clothes do not put themselves away and the dirty ones definitely do not jump into the basket on their own. To make matters touch more difficult, I played cricket on Monday and my forty year old body has been very, very sore making it painful to contemplate taking any action on this front.
On a slightly related side note, I did take my first wicket on Monday; I bowled a googly and the batter edged it so that the wicketkeeper was able to collect it from the air and thus sending the batter off the pitch. All the Jamaicans made a bigger deal about that than I was expecting, they went so far as to run off the pitch and inform TheWife that I had just taken the first wicket of my life. I do have to say, I have never had the opportunity before so that’s part of the delay but now that’s out of the way, I guess I can get on with the rest of my life.
As you can see here, Bud is really relishing his freedom, as I am certain that TheBubster also is enjoying hers. We are looking forward to the reminder of the month to see what surprises it brings to us all.
Far and Wide
So, my legs are rubbery jello (jelly if you are reading this Down Under) now. A fully loaded bakfiets, you know both kids, is quite heavy, especially when we go over the bridges around here. The bridges are some of the most challenging hills south of 100th St and need to be mounted every time we go to Brooklyn, which has become surprisingly frequent. But now I’ve got a good workout going on and the kids love seeing the city. Two days ago, we took the Staten Island Ferry across the harbor to Staten Island, of course. We found a quiet park to play in. Staten Island is significantly more hilly than Manhattan Island but the day was worth it as a nice relaxing time. We took the balance bike and TheBubster rode around the park with me while Bud slept. Then another little girl showed up and the two became fast friends and played for a long time while I chatted with her dad, IrishBob.
Yesterday it rained and we had a rest day at home.
Today, it threatened to rain but I had errands to run so we left with the rain cover on the bike.
- **** Errands ****
- drop off books to donate at Salvation Army depot
- drop off textbooks to sell over Amazon at UPS
- pick up Commencement tickets
- purchase cap & gown
We ended up in Central Park on the Upper East Side where the radio controlled boats are at. TheBubster was really very interested in them, I promised her one day we would return and we’d actually rent one and give it a go. But in the meantime, she tried to get a little boy who was very close to her age, who was actually piloting one of the remote controlled sailboats to let her have a turn with it. He was not actually pleased with that sort of attention, so I helped him out by talking her out of using the strategy further. He seemed relieved; so relieved, he let his grandfather have a turn.
Now some photos.
City kids
One of the big activities that a city kid gets to do a lot of of is chasing pigeons. Bud is exceptionally enthusiastic about this ’sport’. He truly aims to catch one, or at least frighten it very badly; he roars as he is running after the grey bobbler.
Imagine that you are a pigeon. Imagine the shock of being chased by a screaming midgettoddler, possibly it would be something like this although not identical.
We went to Prospect Park yesterday to play with some friends. We can call them the Dutch Boys, as their father is from the Netherlands even as he has no interest in teaching the kids how to speak Dutch, we’ll still call them that. We have another family with who are are friends that we could call the Canadian Girls as their father is Canadian, and I bet he has an interest in teaching them to speak Canadian. So anyways, yesterday was a day with the Dutch Boys. TheBubster wants to set up a day where we play with both families at the same time, soon I tell her, soon.
This post is completely jumbled anyways so I’ll just set a little mini rant about the Brooklyn Bridge in here. Most of this rant is because I am on a bicycle that has two small children in a basket in the front. Another part of this rant is because tourists and joggers and other pedestrians do not give the dividing line between their section and my section any thought. And yet another part of this rant is about how my shoulder made contact with the back of someone who stepped directly, backwards, into my path and nearly sent the whole bike into the huge mass of other pedestrians flocking around admiring the wonderful skyline; the skyline which I never get to admire as I am too busy looking out for pedestrians who are about to step directly into my path. The last part of this rant is a plea to anyone who visits our fair city and decides to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, please do not let this happen to you or us or any other bike rider. That is all.
My legs are sore from all the riding that has happened this week, which is a good thing. The kids are tired and need some restful play at home now. Our school agenda will get a little more focus on the books for the day and we will all feel regenerated soon enough.
Life is great.
More travelling stories
Flipping through the meager photos that I have collected in the last week or so, I can see that there has been a great deal of travel about the city on our bike. Nearly everyday we pile into the bakfiets and set sail for some new adventure. So far we have bounced back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn numerous times and TheBubster is learning the difference between the two big parks, Central and Prospect. We mostly meetup with our friends in Brooklyn, as we used to live in Brooklyn before our little enterprise in Cambridge, this is where most of them still are. However, this does not mean that we are lonely during our time in Manhattan. But then again you should know that by now.
We have had the opportunity to try out the rain cover as well, and it is a wonderful little thing, however the biggest bonus we have seen in the past couple days involves sleep. TheBubster has had more naps in the past two days than in all of the last two months; LittleBud of course naps whenever his little bobble head lets him. Sometimes at the end of the day, as I am pedaling up the bike trail on the Westside Highway, both kids just keel over and soundly sleep, I have to wake them to get up the stairs at home. Although there was that one day when I let LittleBud fall asleep on the ground at the playground!
Maybe you can see TheBubster in the background pretending to run an ice cream shop. Speaking of ice cream, the kids love havin ice cream in the bakfiets, even when we are transporting a keyboard and amplifier to a music gig!
I’ll leave one last picture of the kids at an Apple store playing at the display which has been set up just for kids. Its actually quite ingenious demonstration of the applicability of computers (and iPods) as appliances which are appropriate for people of all ages.
The Bakfiets Arrived today! (unboxing)
We waited and waited and waited, and finally it arrived. The teamster thought it was a couch and he was trying to tell his dispatcher that he was not going to carry it up the stairs by himself.
The kids love it of course!
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