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Rails
Felix loves the subway. I don't think he's an unusual kid for having this passion. There is, apparently a long history of subway obsessed preschoolers. I'm more interested that I've joined this cabal of Gotham's parents who need to contend with this obsession. Many years ago I marveled that a friend of a friend could be moved to exert herself so far as to make a "Metrocard" sheet cake for her four year-old. Now it seems like she got off easy.
In the New York Times yesterday (apparently, I only spotted this today) one of the staff artists composed a little illustrated story based on his children's passion for New York City Transit. (Actually, his kids seem mostly subway-focused. Felix is also quite interested in bus routes.)
I suspect Mr. Niemann is only mildly joking that he and his wife had to pick a name for their third son so that his first initial would be able to represent one of the letter-named subway lines in the city. He had the A (Arthur) and the G (Gustav) lines covered and finally settled on the F (Fritz), which neatly also brings no overlap of subway route colors on the map, which would no doubt cause ridiculous competition (one boy would surely feel he had been named for the express line and in the "naming is destiny" philosophy that baby books like to kick around, would surely always believe he was pressured to be faster than his sibling).
I don't have the time to spend four hours at the transit museum and I don't have the luxury of letting trains (and buses) go by as we wait for Felix's favorite train to show up (he prefers the 2 but if the 3 comes first I'll risk the argument).
Here is where I will cave to the lure of New York City Transit:
I will listen to Felix reciting train routes over and over and over again.
I will ask at every station booth for extra maps even though we have some ratty ones at home.
I will read this New York Times piece to Felix four times in exchange for him letting me put sunscreen on him.
I suspect I'll be getting him an 7 train t-shirt soon, after he got to ride above ground last weekend.
posted by Elise at 6:27 AM
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Sparks
So all last week I lost precious time reading Slate's coverage of the Supreme Court decisions, and while there were decisions that were surely more controversial (wiretapping for everyone, or instance), I keep thinking about the social ramifications of the gun control decision. Will it be easier to get a handgun in my neck of the woods? Maybe. Perhaps not. But it has made me wonder if I will ever ask one of my kids' friends' parents if they keep guns in their apartments. What is the protocol in places where guns in teh home are more common? do people not care? Is it too rude to ask? (Possibly.) Am I alone in getting the itch about this? (Possibly.) But don't tell me that I'm being naive about firearms and New York City. Felix's former babysitter has a license and in fact it's part of her job to carry.
I can't say this is keeping me up nights, though. That honor actually goes to Sebastian. It was a bit of a pity he didn't time last night's wake up so well because yesterday was the Pridefest (celebrating the end of Pride Week) and there was some fabulous fireworks display on the Hudson River.
It is a shame that even after waiting for years to show Felix some fireworks (my husband and I talk about it every year), it will still be some time before he can stay awake past nine o'clock without unspeakable results.
At least we have snapshots.
posted by Elise at 6:48 PM
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Totally Insane First Paragraph
The New York Daily News needs to get a bit of a grip, if you ask me. I think having a baby is a happy thing (except possibly if one is Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby or the woman from It's Alive) but I suspect I'm not alone in having had panicky moments where I worried about going in to labor and delivering in an inappropriate spot. I looked darkly on elevators and occasionally got nervous if my subway ride ground to a halt...
And I suspect this poor woman who had her kid on the F train platform (at the East Broadway stop for those of you out there who wondered what happened to your commute yesterday) wasn't feeling so much as if her baby was "lighting up the subway platform" as generating the most awkward and uncomfortable moment of her life.
Still, congratulations are in order, of course.
posted by Elise at 12:56 PM
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Museum Going
Emily Bazelon's writing on Slate has appealed to me for a long time (though I have an extra fondness for Dahlia Lithwick), and today Bazelon discusses taking her children on an extended museum jaunt and its relative success.
I actually love taking the children (mine are younger and easier to bully) to museums. They don't seem to mind what they see as long as they see it quickly and keep moving. There are exceptions, of course. Felix can remain transfixed in front of the elephants at the American Museum of Natural History for some time and hasn't yet become smitten with arms and armor the way that I was (see last week's entry on our trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that turned bloody).
The key I think for museum trips with the toddler set is to keep them brief and this is difficult when one pays huge entrance fees and one wants to get one's money's worth. I don't have a solution for that, except to say that I have had good luck puttering my kids around Chelsea where they can see quick hits of art, form some opinion and then run down the broad streets without interfering too much with other pedestrians.
While part of my desire to art-ify my kids is selfish: I like it and I want to experience it with them, I have to say that looking at art is not a bad thing to have in one's bag of tricks on Days of Questionable Weather.
posted by Elise at 5:58 AM
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Just Found
I should be working. I need to be working. I have a deadline that is poking at me the way the terrier does when he's hungry, which is always...
But I just saw this on the New York Magazine site and couldn't not comment on it, even if my remarks will have to be imagined in the tasteful space indicated by some ellipses. The product is called Heelarious.
...
Need I say more?
I think not.
posted by Elise at 11:59 AM
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Mass Organization
Even in my bleary state, where it takes me much much more time than it should to figure out what to pack for Felix's lunch (and as an aside-- is is at all odd that I would find this a somewhat melancholy milestone in a "how is it that my toddler is already ready for bag lunches" fashion?) believe me, I'd be shedding a bittersweet tear if I weren't puzzling over how to get a banana to school without it squashing--- oh God, what happened to that sentence?
Anyway EVEN in my obviously compromised state, I have gotten wind of the Pregnancy Pact Girls in Gloucester Mass. What were they thinking? The articles I have seen mention that these teenagers wanted to raise their babies "together." In a commune? Is that what was up? The media appears to be pointing the finger at Hollywood. But the celebrity mothers tend to be of -- ahem -- advanced maternal age. There's Jamie-Lynn Spears of course. She crops up in all of these articles as a Bad Influence, but is she really such a bright spot in the world of entertainment that people would follow her choices in shampoo, let alone pregnancy?
Oh what do I know? I am mostly curious about the bandwagon jumping that these girls apparently did because even Spears didn't find a homeless guy to knock her up the way some of these teenagers apparently did. It's creepy and distasteful all right to do that, but it also speaks of a really weird need to fit in. I don't think I've ever seen an almost literal instance of the phrase: "if your friend jumped off a bridge would you do it too?" but there it is.
One was never in danger of doing this sort of thing oneself. One never had that kind of community to live up to, but it seems a terribly extreme thing to do to keep one's friends, especially since, my experience in the wake of having children is a huge wave of Friend Attrition that I'm only now learning not to whine about.
In the meantime, does anyone have good ideas for lunchbags? They don't even have to be good ideas, actually. I have no idea what the kid eats, if he eats anything. I ask of course. Of course I ask, but the answers aren't anything the reality based community would want to take to the bank.
posted by Elise at 4:27 AM
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Lesson Learned
If you decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and there's no reason not to because there is plenty to see for most varieties of adults and children, I would caution you not to do one thing: do not overpromise a visit with the gigantic Jeff Koons balloon dog in the roof garden. Apparently the garden is closed all the time for reasons of weather, practicality, and museum affairs and one really can't count on it so much as cheer when it is open and one is able to provide a terrific surprise.
Of course I promised the balloon dog and of course, OF COURSE it rained and the guards remained firmly planted in front of the elevator leading to the roof garden, so I had a sullen kid to drag around through otherwise tantalizing exhibits of armor and swords and Greek sculpture.
But the day was not a loss because I learned something else as well. While buying our passes to get in to the musuem, I asked for an extra "we paid" button because Felix, who loves accessories, would surely want one. (If you've never been to the MET, you signal that you've paid for admission by putting on this little metal "M" button. They change color every day.) I was a little surprised when the woman at the admission table refused me an extra pin (kids under 12 years old enter at no charge).
And then she explained things. Apparently the buttons, which are made of very thin bendy metal are slightly notorious for leaving little cuts on kids' fingers. She went on to say that the MET's nurse's station (and I admit to being surprised that the museum HAS a nurse's station) finally complained to the admissions department because they were overrun with requests for Band-Aids.
Anyway, at that moment, Felix was still caught up in the romance of seeing the giant balloon doggie (dashed hopes were soon to follow and remain dashed even now) and didn't notice that he was denied a button, so I was feeling pretty good about things. But of course, someone else noticed what was up.
Our last stop with now mopey and sad Felix turned out to be a bumble through the back entrance of the Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy exhibit, and somewhere just past the Spiderman display and close to the Superman/Clark Kent hologram, I happened to glance down at Sebastian, who I was wearing for the trip and to whom I had been complaining about the roof garden being closed. His face was smeared with blood.
In moments I discovered that, indeed, those admission ladies know what they're talking about. He had apparently plucked off my button, played with it until he painlessly nicked his finger (he had not peeped about it) and then threw the thing away (making his mother ripe for being ejected from the museum). After that what was there to do but grab at his face, blotching it up with dried blood? A close examination revealed a fingertip with very minimal, papercut-level really, damage. The bleeding was certainly over and Sebastian couldn't have cared less. I admit to being a little surprised and quite relieved that no one mentioned my kid's messy face. At least I was the one who had him on, it would have made my husband look really bad to be the one with the bloody-faced kid... on Father's Day, no less.
Happy Father's Day to all, by the way.
posted by Elise at 6:57 PM
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Mystical Manhattan
Of course it has to appear in an article talking about very very wealthy people and of course it all could seem a little bit twee, but I just read this piece about a remarkable apartment renovation that turned a family's new home into a habitable puzzle and was quite taken by it. It seems so marvelous that your kid could be lying on the floor, staring at the wall and suddenly realize that it is saying something to him. I have always loved puzzles and codes, mysteries and trompe l'oeil oddities, so of course it is appealing.
But there is something about this place that seems very much connected to New York City and what it is like to be a child here. I realize that compared to other cities in other countries, New York is quite young, but it has a very accessible history, one that is particularly intriguing for kids. Who can read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler and not even want to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art? When I tell kids about the weird whispering place outside the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, they always want to see it. And even as an adult, knowing the painting of Eloise survived the incredibly odd and protracted renovation of the Plaza hotel is reassuring.
Anyway, all of this is to say that it clearly takes time and money in great quantities, and most people aren't able to manage that, but I'm glad that it is possible for some because it continues to make the city the kind of wonderbox I loved when I was little.
But now I must attend to a duel over Cheerios.
posted by Elise at 5:44 AM
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