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.

Fathers - June 1 2014

On June 1st 2002 I lost my father. It was sudden, very hard and complicated to get through but it has forced me to reckon with trying to really understand who he was as a person before being my dad and also looking at my husband and trying to imagine what his daughters will think, learn and remember of him in the future. The day to day with him as a father is certainly much different than I had experienced with with my father, our relationship was much more complex. I didn't really have a day to day with him, he was always travelling so I saw my father for short periods of time over several visits each year. He ruled from a afar, he always seemed to be the backbone of the family but not immediately present. There was also 6 years where I was away in boarding school so our relationship was even less regular. I always loved him and I knew he adored his kids but just differently and from a distance. This wasn't uncommon amongst my peers growing up, many kids fathers were away a lot but my father was perpetually away. When he was around in between flights to and from every country around the world or on Christmas holidays in Langtang, we had long, lively meals around the dinner table, outside by the pond, under the itulum tree,  where he transformed into this dramatic storyteller, this is how I began to understand the formative years in his life which were quite poignant  and what I now realize have become moments where I saw my father as a human being. He was very funny and charismatic in a way that left his audience feeling like they had been momentarily part of something he had experienced. Through these stories he taught us kids lessons on how to be strong, persevere with unwavering determination, be proud of our background, to believe in ourselves and our ability to be come anything we aspired to be. He challenged us, he was as strict as a military commander, would not put with any nonsense but could dance with us playfully as we took turns holding his hands. I remember after he passed, I found some old tapes of us at home and on one of them was a big Christmas celebration I remember in the village when we were younger with hundreds of local people gathered and the Angas dancers were there performing, he was in the midst of the crowd dancing and looked out at whoever was recording to warn them to make sure they got this on tape because "I am recording this for my kids" he said as he proudly danced amongst the traditional dancers. Those are the things that remained with me, not when I saw him on TV or in the paper but when he was relaxed and genuinely content just being home.

 

As a father, my husband has it quite different, we both work everyday and have some help but when we're home she leaves so we try to manage the hours we have with the kids pretty strictly, we are usually on a pretty tight schedule especially now with two kids and one in kindergarten. Between bathtime, dinner, cleaning up dinner, homework, reading books and getting ready for bed, we barely get that fluff time, the magical time where one puts everything down to simply appreciate the present. We are efficient through our planning but I sometimes wish we had more time to relax unscheduled. This lifestyle is taking a toll on him (and me), the lack of personal time is hard. For a split second when he gets home and the kids are so excited to see him, it is magical but we quickly return to the rigor our life.

He does help with the kids when he's home but he also gets overwhelmed by them, he's funny and in the evening we have family time to laugh and play. He is quite stern with Arielle about doing her schoolwork, he gets frustrated by her nonchalant attitudes sometimes towards learning to read and trying to get her to commit to either piano or ballet.

I wonder if the absence of my dad made the moments he was present more magnified in my mind and if then, the regular presence of the their dad leaves him open to be taken for granted or vice versa, him not realizing  the fleeting nature of life. Not to suggest that every moment in life should be a teaching moment, but I do think we need to carve out the time to create even force ourselves to impart something long-lasting on our kids and make an effort to reinforce it so that it remains with them for life. Those are the moments they will take with them amidst all the chaos and noise..there will be something...the magical.

Wedding In Oneonta

Wedding season is upon us..I love weddings.... I really do. I really like the idea of just being a guest  not being in the wedding and just being an onlooker and having fun instead. I've only been a bridesmaid twice, both for my sisters but I've attended to a fair amount of weddings and no one is ever the same, with the right crowd, it can really be fun, with the wrong crowd, its a bore...and this one was not a let down. There were ups and there were downs but in the end it turned out to be fun and anyway I think the more important part of the whole day is what happens after the party.

Now, if you ever wake up one morning and decide you want to check out Oneonta, let me warn you now.. there is no direct way to get to Oneonta, its really, really quite circuitous to get to and then even further. We found ourselves on the way to Oneonta to attend the wedding of a family friend, one of my brothers oldest  and dearest friend who coaches basketball for the college team up there. On our way there we not only got stuck behind a slow moving tractor trailer on a single lane highway (apparently upstate NY only has single lane highways!)  for about 20 minutes, there were several cow crossings, deer crossings etc..and then a stopped vehicle which we couldn't go around..the single lane highway thing again...quite an adventure. 

The ride started out nicely, we left the house early, kids and nanny in tow, snacks and drinks; every ones clothes nicely hung and off we went. The first leg of the trip was fine and then we got upstate and it really turned to cow country. I realize most of New york state looks like this, it was an eerie feeling, no one in sight just animals, tractors, trucks and livestock on the side of these single lane thoroughfares. We pulled into town within one hour of the wedding and once we found the hotel we rushed in hoping they'd let us check in early so we could freshen up and change. They did! We also saw the bride and her entourage getting ready too. My mom and sisters arrived soon after and we all got our selves ready and headed to the church..LATE.as usual. Who shows up late for a wedding..well.. we do, we're a slow moving ship on our own but throw in other kids and three more women..and it we're like molasses in the winter. So we took some pictures in the hallway while waiting for them to get dressed...can you tell how thrilled Evalie was?

Arielle was just happy to be wearing a dress..she tries to wear dresses everyday..no jeans, no denim, no shorts..she's really the girliest girl I know. So she's thrilled with any occasion that requires a dress, jewelry, hair, nice shoes..look out.

I love this shot of her and her daddy, She's got such effortless beauty, I wish she understood why its okay to be/ look like her. She always seems to wish she had straight blonde hair, not that theres anything wrong with that..you know how girls are though..always wanting to look like or dress like someone else... when instead we should be able accentuate our unique qualities rather than try to assimilate with the crowd.. I digress..back to the wedding. 

It was a bittersweet day, as the bride, had lost her father the night before but she (they) made the best of it and it was a beautiful day as they released butterflies into the air.  My brother was taking his job very seriously..make sure those butterflies fly!

Afterwards we did the "meet and greet" with the bridal party and hung around a little longer outside the church then returned to the hotel to change clothes. Everyone (in our car at least) was starving and we didn't want to wait until cocktail hour so we stopped for lunch at Panera bread..we got tons of food ( didn't know one could spend so much in the drive thru!) because the kids were not allowed at the reception so we needed to have dinner for them as well. Our nanny aka their "other mommy" came with us and would be watching all four girls ( my two and my two nieces together) while we went to the reception.  The good thing was that the reception was in our hotel so we got the kids situated in two linked rooms and headed down to cocktail hour. Without getting into the specifics..the evening turned out to be quite odd, funny..strange..I don't know.  Under the table bar...strange unknown reggae songs..Andy Samberg look- a- like doing the robot..it was quite a night.

Arielle, 5