Rediscovering THE CITY.

Being a foreigner and a citizen of the United States at the same time has always caused a rift of sorts for me in the way I relate to the city. If you came to Jos, the city I grew up in, there would be no doubt that I'd feel like I knew the authentic citizen, I was from there..but that changed when I visited last year with my family and was forced to experience my home as if I was a visitor for whatever reason. I had been gone for a long time, my family had changed, extended relatives were occupying the homes, we had to be on high security at all times because of the hostile situation that was developing..etc.

Anyway, in New York, like most other city's there aren't many qualification that allow you to claim to be authentic to that place. In New York, I believe you have to be born and raised in the city to be called a native New Yorker so I'm no where close to that but at the same time, people visiting me think I am because I live close enough. The truth is, "the city" is a place to be reckoned with, its a great place but it is tough, in many ways, its built to be a transient place, it isn't very forgiving to many, it inherently defines the kinds of people who can call it home.  It's made up of a lot of cultures, architectures, social classes and styles which makes it very exciting and allows one to continually be surprised as you turn the corner. Its a city which is alive, its continually changing and regenerating itself.

I'm totally an expat who has grazed the city, either commuting in for work, living close to but not actually in THE city or living in a suburb of the city as we do now. So its always fun to have visitors from the motherland (which is quite often in the summer) who are eager for the city experience. This weekend, we did the Financial District, Chinatown and the WTC sites all walking, on a wonderful early summer day with perfect temperatures and bright sun. 

We drove in and met my brother who actually lives on Wall Steet in a nice building, with a decent number of young professionals with no kids so it was a bit overwhelming when we turned up in their lounge with 8 eight kids ranging from ages almost 2 to 11 who all somehow are equally destructive and loud! Luckily we didn't get thrown out but my brother did usher us out after a quick tour of the amenities. He then took us on a nice shortcut walk from Wall street, past city hall (his commute every morning!) and the Brooklyn bridge, through a park and then to Chinatown for lunch. There was a fair going on which was pretty cool, but it seems theres always something going on in the city.  The funny thing about this trip, was my 11 year old niece carried my 5 year old the whole way there and back. Arie barely let her feet touch the ground and we were walking for hours!.I don't know what more surprising, how much of a pre-madonna Arielle is or how fit my niece is...she didn't break a sweat or put her down once.
My husband can't walk the supermarket carrying my 2 years old for more than 10 minutes! I was truly amazed..she's got to be some sort of famous athlete in the future because she's just naturally so strong and fit...I digress.

        

Also, along the way, there were some selfies taken and since my husband takes a lot of pride in his "Brookly-ness" he took a few shots of the icon Brooklyn Bridge and a sign he thinks was named for him I guess.

 The funny think about carrying a big camera around in the city is that you end up looking like a tourist and people react not to nicely to being photographed ( like the girls in the picture above..they probably assumed Austin was taking a picture of them not me..of course not..why would he take a picture of me?) Girls are funny..

We walked through one of the few open spaces in Chinatown and briefly watched a basket ball tournament and let the kids play but I realized immediately how your environment shapes you so distinctly, while my kids were fine playing in the overly populated playground, we, the parents were uncomfortable and watching them so closely. My sister was really not feeling the park at all while I looked around and all the "city" parents were just sitting at benches around the park chatting or on their phones not concerned at all. This was normal. It was concrete with a water feature in the middle and metal slides..so kids were wet and barefoot in the middle of this urban park sliding down metal slides..it felt unsafe but to them it was normal. Thats something I wonder about with my kids, how am I really shaping them by keeping in this somewhat sheltered bubble of safety where everything is clean, soft, organized and perfect. No grunge, no creativity?

What are the pros and cons of these exposures, I grew up really as a traveler, never really lived in on spot long enough to be be sole and permanently shaped by a single environment, rather I had to adapt to frequent change while not becoming frustrated  and /or attached. I do believe thats why I have ended up only valuing a couple of friends from my past, and a keen ability to shut people out when things get to complicated or too close. Its a trait that I value and struggle with at the same time, never get to committed or invested because then you compromise the flexibility to change. After a very interesting lunch ( and by interesting, I mean unorthodox, authentic) in Chinatown, we headed back out for some cheap wares and to the WTC. The site was unexpectedly open not overcrowded, and there it was, the two reflecting pools, the new path station, the tower the museum, all these buildings I have personal history with and it was nice to see them come to fruition. We discussed where we were when we heard, some were there in the city, some of us watched remotely from various locations. I'll do another post about the WTC site next. 

We walked back past the New York Stock Exchange and ended up back with large Starbucks drinks and some lounging back at my brothers place for a bit and then headed back to the safety...or whatever...of the suburbs.

Strawberry Fields. First dayS of Summer

The summer is finally here and we aren't missing one moment of it moping around the house! We started the weekend with Kindergarten Field day, ended it with a day in the strawberry fields with an outdoor movie birthday party for my friends son in between. You know you had a good fun filled weekend when you are exhausted on Monday morning instead of being well rested!. We both took the day off on Friday to be attend one of the many end of year Kindergarten activities that have been scheduled (we missed the family picnic on Tuesday so we felt pretty bad.) Like a normal day, I put Arie on the bus and then returned to clean up the house. I figured since we had a "bonus" day and a few hours in the morning before we had to go to her school, we'd clean the house from top to bottom. Lets just say, the other members of the home who are old enough to have an opinion weren't pleased but by the time we headed out at 11:30, the house was spotless, dustless and well organised. What can I say, I enjoy a clean home..to a fault maybe. Anyway, we decided to go to a farm we had been to when Arielle was younger and pick our own produce. The kids had no idea what to expect but when we arrived, they immediately started running around.

Not only does this farm have pick you own food but it also has a miniature village, horses, chickens, goat, ducks and a very voracious swan. I loved the little wooden carts you get to pull around the property with. We put the kid sin there with some apple cider donuts and juice packs for the ride.

As we headed down to the fields, we realized ( or I did) that we had our work cut out for us because there was quite a crowd and amongst them were strawberry picking aficionados apparently. I am rubbish in the fields, it seemed to much to squat and look under the leaves of rows and rows of berries only to find the the perfect plump berry with a huge bite taken out of it. I eventually go into it but it took a minute.   

Our kids had no problem finding strawberries to pick eat even though there was a "sample conservatively" sign cautioning us on our arrival. Evalie was in heaven because she loves berries and given a field she will eat!

Arielle cautiously picked only the best berries mostly ones that were small and red but Evalie was eating everything in sight. She was so overwhelmed by being surrounded by her favorite food. After a few minutes she was covered in berry juice so we had no way to hide that she was doing more than her fair share of sampling. Luckily the farmers must be used to kids doing this because just up the row we encountered another very guilty looking two year old who was also covered in red juice, his cheeks so full he couldn't even speak...(boy in orange shirt). .so funny.

Once we had picked what seemed like 5 pounds of strawberries, we decided to head back up the hill to see what else we could get into. We met the farm dog; a huge, furry brown dog who is quite friendly to little people.

We paid for our bounty and bought some more apple cider donuts..then headed down to the little village. Not before the kids said hello to a really big horse and played on some carnival type rides.

Evalie was a little apprehensive about these little houses but Arielle when trunning in form one to other, she had similar structures at her school.

She was even a bit scared to feed the goats which was surprising because she's usually a very daring little child. We fed the ducks off beautiful wobbly pier wiht a nice view.

There were smelly chickens, a loud cock crowing and a feisty peacock. I was telling my husband that it reminded me of the opening scene from one of the most popular shows from growing up in Nigeria in the 80's called "cock crow at dawn" our own version of Days of Our Lives or Santa Barbara.

After a quick go around on the train, the kids played a bit more in the little village and then we decided to go home. Maybe not as fun for Arie as a day on the beach but it was still fun. Another day well spent. I have a whole calendar of activities to do this summer with the kids. Every weekend we will be on another adventure to places within driving distance from where we live and hopefully spend a week on the beach in August. Its shaping up to be nice summer even though we can't go resort style. We'll save that for next year.

Beach Day

Happy Fathers day to the best, decent, grumpiest, most thoughtful,...oh so life with two kids is challenging but as I have said before, we do our best. I don't think we are perfect but I am sure that my daughters will tell you that their "daddy bear" is the best daddy a girl could ever have. So we celebrated him on this day, trying to create the ideal, the relaxing, somewhat serene experience of spending a day in an unfamiliar location with nothing but food and ourselves.  It turned out to be a glorious day, we somehow eluded the incessant traffic on the cross Bronx expressway and made it to the Sands Point Estate in an hour. I didn't know what to expect but I had only heard great things about this getaway and the employee I had spoken to when I called was very pleasant so I was encouraged. When we arrived, we drove through large gates with a giant "G" sculpted into the gate, you could see the Guggenheim Estates almost immediately. There were mansion structures immediately visible on our way down to the water, the Hempstead house and Castle Gould and then further in The Falais a French eclectic castle. Arie especially liked the fact that there were castles since she really believes she is a princess.

Getting down to the water, we were rather shocked at the little strip of sand along the Long Island sound with a great blue sky view across to Westchester. The water was cold, the smell of the sea was sharp but once we settled in and laid out our picnic, the toys came out and everyone began to just relax and play. We walked along the beach, the girls made friends with other little kids and some ladies who had set up beside us. We put on some music and had some lunch (with a bit of sandy crunch in everything..you can't avoid it at the beach). The kids attempted building sand castles, collected rocks and continually sprinkled me with water out of their little watering cans.

After several hours, we packed up happily and bid farewell to a really nice day out. The kids got ice cream from a really sweet ice cream truck and as we got to the car Arielle told me this had been the best day of her life...wow..coming from her, that was a gift. I don't believe it really was the best day of her life but maybe pretty close..

Ballet

We've been fairly obsessed with ballet for the last few months. It all began when I took a photo of Arie playing around in the kitchen pretending to be a ballerina and it looked so effortless for her, she floats in the air as if she really is weightless. Then I saw a documentary about Misty Copeland and really fell in love with the possibilities, and also after Arie was a swan for Halloween and her Kindergaten teacher commented on how she fit that costume so well and how she would imagine her taking ballet because she felt she looked like a ballerina with her long neck!..I realized that we had been so overwhelmed with her starting Kindergarten that we had forgotten to continue to engage her in some extra curricular activity. I looked into the local dance school here and although the courses had been in progress for a few weeks, they took her in and even got her a costume for the recital. She joined a pre-ballet class because she joined late so the other children in the class are 6 months to a year younger than she is but it was fine because our neighbor (one of her playmates) was also in that class. The class was already practicing for the end of year show when she joined but I figured that if she were a natural, it would...you know...come natural so to speak. Well I was wrong!

With no one watching, she's a confident performer but as soon as there is structure (which there was..in form of a one and a half minute routine) and an audience, she freezes. She is just really shy to the discontent of some people, I guess because it seems like she is being unfriendly but she's not. She's always been that way, she is still reluctant to give a hug when she sees my mom, she barely will talk on the phone to her cousin and best friend (my niece) and is even reserved when they first get together even though they see each other every weekend.

She wasn't really able to keep up with routine at first even with the young teacher leading them but then at her last class before the big show, her daddy sat and captured video of the whole routine...one week to the performance. We basically, loaded it up on the Apple TV and made her practice the routine in our living room every night until the final performance. She did improve greatly by the final performance.

She was even teaching her little sis the five positions of ballet. Anyway, the performance was really nice, they did a routine to the "flight of the bumblebees" and I was impressed and very proud of her. What was also nice was to see the older more advanced classes perform which reinforced my confidence  in this schools staffs ability to get her properly trained and proficient in the art of ballet. I had already begun looking at enrolling her in the Gelsey Kirkland program for classical ballet.