Brit in the City

My auntie and cousin Brittany visited from Florida last week and although we spent most of the week swooning over the babies at home (Evalie and my sisters son), we did get a chance to get out a bit. Our outings were a compromise between what she likes to do, where I could handle going with two kids (and all that involves) and shopping which we all love! We went to Garden state plaza mall one day which was ok, we went to dinner a few times and on their last day here, we took the train into Penn Station and spent the day in the city. It was kind of like a real New York experience except we skipped the subway and walked mostly and we spent a fair amount of time in "The Macy's"..a nine floor mega department store. We ate at Chef Yu which everyone liked and then had some street meat after our shopping marathon. It was really nice to see them since we rarely see them for some reason. Basically, we see each other at weddings and funerals (luckily we haven't had many of those!) Its actually like that with most of my family, they live all over from Manchester and Leicester in the UK, Lagos, Virginia, Ontario, in total, I have 17 cousins and even though years pass in between our visits, when we do get together we have a blast...miss you all! 

Sesame Place

What a place..this was a really intense weekend of coordination, color, characters, crying and more..Sesame place is not for just anyone and I didn't know what to expect with a six week old baby in tow! You've really got to put on your happy pants and smile because it's packed with people and the sounds of Elmo are blasting throughout the day. The scenery is very colorful and around every corner there's something to see or do, so I put away all my reservations (..well, most of them anyway) and tried to embrace the world of make believe for forty-eight hours.

We arrived on Saturday morning around 11:30 and after waiting to park and a few trips back to the car to get things we forgot we made it into the park. The lines were a bit long but we had our tickets already so we skipped over to the security and got our bags searched ( yeah!..), you aren't allowed to bring in food and drinks so we just stashed our food in the stroller! 

As we walked down Sesame street, we noticed lines controlled by young girls in yellow shirts who take their job of policing the characters very seriously, it was rather funny how in the world of Sesame the kids are in control.

Anyway, on one side of the street was Ernie and Bert while across the street was  guy named Murray. At that moment, I realized why parents do this for their kids and knew it was worth it to make this trip happen. The look on Arie's little face was priceless!

Once we were done with Murray we went to to find some rides. They really liked the Counts Castle which was a large pool with slides and water falls all over it and dropped an enormous bucket of water on the crown every few minutes. 

The rambling river ride was also pretty popular for both kids and adults..it was worth the wait because you could stay for a while and enjoy the water while floating along. 

Most of the day Evalie slept in her bassinet or in the Bjorn, she did open her eyes once or twice but  could tell she was enjoying the breezes; she would make humming sounds every time there was a breeze. I carried her around a lot but we did switch off on the second day so I got to go on some rides as well. She was actually quite easy to deal with, we had a cabana on the first day so I had a private. cool space to go and feed/change her each time I needed to but even when we didn't on day two, somehow I was able to manage to find places to discretely handle all that. 

Next up the Sesame Street parade! At about 2:30 we noticed people crowding along the street and realized it was tie for the big parade..this happens twice a day but the second one is at close and I wasn't sure we'd make it to 8:30pm so we rushed over to get a spot to watch the parade. Although we didn't have the prime spots, Arielle go a good view of everything and really enjoyed all the music and dancing. good times..

It's really funny how kids think the characters know them and so they scream and yell and wave excitedly until they get their attention and get them to wave back..its really great. All the characters came out on floats and danced, waved, some even got off to play with the kids and hug them, it was like a scene from the Michael Jackson concerts in the 80's..people fainting and crying..pure pandemonium..I say!

Evalie awake at the parade..

Slimey's Shoots..

Evalie finally woke up

Meeting Elmo

Telly..

Bert's Bouncy Bed..

Competitive Mothering

After a very bothersome conversation with a mother, I have been thinking about this issue of competitive mothering as I call it. Does becoming a mother inevitably mean we will compare our kids to others and make efforts to "keep up with the Joneses"? Is it something we all do by default? Are we supposed to have a rebuttal to every statement made about ones kids and are we built to brag about our kids to other mothers? This may be offensive to some but its quite curious to me when other mothers compare everything from what size diaper your baby wears at what age to who can count to 100 the fastest! I understand..I get it..I have two of them and I love them dearly but I really hope I don't make others feel less in conversation by constantly comparing kids..especially when the kids themselves don't care! They will have more than enough time to succumb to the pressures and expectations of academia and life but for now is it okay to let them be kids?
Earlier this summer when I asked my little one if she wanted to do swimming lessons, she responded "Sure, as long as I don't have to listen to instructions!" I find that really funny only because thats her personality..she 3 1/2, so should I be forcing her to do all these extracurricular activities now or else she'll be destined for mediocrity? It's great to have schedules for the kids and expose them to as much as possible but I think theres a limit to it and if they want to sit around and play with sand one day then let it be. The mom I'm referring to snickered and replied that her child could swim when he/she was two when I told her I was happy Arielle would take swimming lessons for the summer ! Lets face it, if your kid is going to be the next Gabby Douglas, Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt, they probably already have it in their DNA and all they need is your support for what they show interest in and if they miss the class for a day because they want to play in grass or attend a family event then its ok? No? 

Petit Maison: Part I

Day 1: House after a few hours of prep and a trip to the craft store

I like the idea of making things, this is one of the things architects do all day, the work involved in actually designing, sketching, cutting and assembling an object from scratch is fun for me so I decided to make a small play house for Arielle. Initially, she really wanted one large enough for her and her cousins to hide out in but there isn't anyway I can do that so we decided to make one large enough for her dolls. I am not really interested in making a dollhouse in the traditional sense of the word and I certainly don't have the time to do so either but I can handle a simple design so thats what I sketched up; A simple two story house with a pitched roof. It is very hard for me to keep it simple and not go into real design mode, start sizing beams and calculation stair risers! 

   

Anyway, we started by going to the craft store to buy supplies. I decided to base the house on the largest piece of birch plywood I could find in the store which turned out to be 12"x24"x1/8". Here's what we bought: (2) -12"x24"x1/8" birch plywood, (10) -4"x24"x1/8" basswood, (4) -4"x24"x3/32" basswood and a mix of miscellaneous wood dowels. I also got out my X-acto knife, blades, Sobo glue, architectural scale, pencils, chopper, cutting mat and metal ruler. 

After a quick sketch to figure out what rooms we wanted, we started building.

Because the birch plywood is so hard, I used 1/8" basswood strips for the exterior walls laminated to museum board. The was good for two reason; it gave the wall thickness ( stability) and made it so that I could have a wood finish on one side and white on the other. Arielle enjoyed covering the entire 22x30" board with glue. We then laid each sheet of basswood carefully onto the board and piled magazines atop to keep it flat while it dried. We did this twice, one sheet for the front and back walls and then another for the long side wall.

While that was drying, I measured and cut 4 dowels to use as the edges for the floor slabs. I cut (4) 24" pieces and (4) 12" peices-less the thickness of the dowels. I then glues these onto the bottome of the (2) 12"x24"x1/8" birch plywood sheets and set those aside to dry.

Once the laminated wood and museum boards were dry, I drew out the profiles for the front and back sides and the side and began to cut them out using the x-acto knife and a metal ruler.

As I finished cutting them out I decided to try to assmeble the house to see if things fit together properly. Its important to do this before you glue anything together so you can adjust and trim where needed. If I was using a laser cutter, I wouldn't worry but because I am manually cutting this out by hand, I need to make things line up properly. I did this by basically using anything I could find to hold the walls up with and masking tape.

Two picture frames are holding up the second floor and I taped the walls together at the corners.

It took me a few hours to do all this only because I had a 3 year old helper and a 6 week old strapped to me in a Moby wrap but really its a quick process from start to finish. The next step will be to design and cut out the fenestration and interior walls.

After doing this, we took another trip to the craft store to get more board and pick out wall paper to decorate the house with. Arielle picked out this Dalmatian figure and the lady at the checkout forgot to ring it up until after I had paid up. I promised we'd be back to get it another time but a young lady behind us actually asked her to ring it up with her stuff and gave it to Arie...I had no idea people like this still existed..but it really made Aries day! So now we have a pet for our house.

Next Post: Fenestration and interior walls....