Shows – The Mothners

Fall Day in NYC

One weekend, Brittney convinced Mark to take the kids to the city for multiple adventures. First Julie and Brittney went to a puppet show of favorite books Goodnight Moon & Runaway Bunny (we have been getting lots of free press tickets lately through Kid On The Town). Julie was very interested in learning how the puppet demos after the show.

Mark and Max hung out in Washington Square with colorful dogs and chess masters. Max lost but impressed everyone with his skill.

Julie has lived in the (cleaner) subrurbs long enough to lose any fear of rolling down strange hills.

The girls visited a trendy vegan cafe while the boys scarfed down Artichoke’s Pizza.

Mark took Julie home to nap and Max and Brittney continued uptown to pay tourist at Rockefeller Center ice rink, both the real one and the (perhaps more exciting) LEGO version.

No trip to Manhattan is complete without a visit to an overpriced chocolate store.

Then we took a family ‘Assemblage’ workshop at MoMA. We looked at Picasso’s sculptures and made observations about how they were put together, then made our own assemblage creation.

Max often works slowly, and sometimes at first I think he’s not doing the assignment, then he comes up with something unique and brilliant (and least it seems so to his mom). This creation has a movable piece that can swing on a string or be contained. He did a great job explaning it to the rest of the class. The extreme height was hard to engineer, but with my help we got it to stay standing.

Making wishes in the MoMA fountain, something we’ve loved to do for a while. Here’s a photo from a visit we had right before Julie was born. Glad we can still have special Mommy & Max adventures together.

click here for more photos

Dancing Machines

Still catching up on photos of all our adventures this summer. We really liked having more free time to do all our favorite things. I am happy our kids like music and dancing as much as I do (this is Brittney writing, not Mark’s inner artist). We had lots of fun during multiple visits to an exhibit on Latin music at the performing arts library that had a jukebox and dance floor with a disco ball (and air-conditioning!)

The kids’ impressive dance moves include walking on knees and flapping arms (Julie) and marching and spinning around until he falls down (Max).

So cute when they dance together.

Until this happens.

One of the best parts about being a mom means getting to explore all the diverse musical opportunities available in this city – I used to think I was too busy for free Korean concerts at Lincoln Center, now we he hang out (and dance) at them for hours (literally – Max always has to stay after and watch the stage hands break everything down) .

Checking out kids ballroom dance performances and classes at Midsummer Night Swing.

Watching a kids ballroom dance performance at Midsummer Night Swing

Max wouldn’t let me dance with him – his unique interpretation of swing, aka the one-armed-jive, is done solo.

Also saw some hillbilly rock at Lincoln Center.

And African dance and music in Central Park.

And a very silly vaudeville show (we especially liked when this guy played ‘ode to joy’ on a kazoo with his nose).

This guy played 'Ode to Joy' with his nose on a kazoo. Very silly.

And an Ethiopian concert. The dancers were really amazing, especially the little guy in the orange shirt.

Max volunteered to go on stage and dance

We didn’t just watch music, but also got a deal on our favorite music class where kids get to try different musical instruments.

Another music class – everything is a bracelet to Julie.

Julie likes wearing anything as a bracelet

Looking forward to many more cultural adventures together – planning Max’s first Nutcracker outing this December…

Click here for more photos

Memorial Day

This Memorial Day weekend we remembered why we love living in NYC so much. Mark’s college roommate Bob and his family visited from DC and we showed them all over town, including one of our favorite brunch spots Sugar & Plumm, which has an adjoining candy store.

Our brunch spot had a candy store attached to it

Lots of fun playing tourist! The moms took Max and Sofie to a hilarious show with plays kids wrote (similar to the first show Mark ever saw Brittney in way back when in Florida).

02-The actors performed stories written by real kids.

Had to take a picture with Dora in Times Square.

The big kids also got to see their first Broadway show (and take a taxi to the theater)! Max enjoyed one of Brittney’s all-time favorites. His favorite part was a tap dancing Santa Clause that made a brief cameo in ‘NYC.’

Taking a taxi to his first Broadway show

Hanging out and popping giant bubbles in Central Park.

Julie and Natalie danced along with some break dancers.

Mark had his hands full watching the seals at the Central Park zoo.

Mark’s arms got a break when Max decided he wanted to hold Bob’s hand all the time.

Even museums are fun for Mark with this little smiler.

Max and Sofie made sure we didn’t get lost as we found works by artists Sofie had been studying in school.

Julie fell in love with Sofie and wanted her new best friend to carry her all over the Egyptian wing.

Julie didn't want strong Sofia to put her down

Trying to get a pic of all four kids.

We weren’t the best tour guides on the walk back through the park and kept hitting stairs in the Ramble. But we did make sure we all had lots of yummy NYC food – dim sum to Austrian.

So sad to say goodbye. We’re trying to arrange another meet-up with all these new BFFs, maybe a beach in August.

Click here for more photos

Our Famous Moose & More

Now that March is almost over we figure we’d organize our photos from February. Winter in NYC is cold but always action packed. We walked by Fashion Week at Lincoln Center almost every day and one day Brittney took a photo of Julie to put on Facebook joking that with so many photographers no one was taking pics of this stylish baby.

Little did we know…a few weeks later someone told us she saw us on Facebook, where a photographer had posted this photo and we got over 7000 likes! No moose are safe from scrutiny in this city!

We saw the holiday train show at Grand Central Station before it closed. Max was way into it. Julie was into sitting on Daddy’s shoulders.

When a train stopped our engineer knew how to get it going again.

We finally got snow for some sledding! Max loved going down a hill in Central Park with Mark.

We finally got enough snow to go sledding

After an argument about who had more sledding experience – lots of holidays in Utah vs four years in Michigan, Brittney got a turn on the sled, and promptly wiped out and almost took out another kid. She’s used to powder, not icy hills.

Julie napped through most of the sledding – next year!

The other upside of cold winters- cool hats.

We are lucky to have a library two blocks away for all those bad weather days. We found some of Max’s favorite book friends, Frog and Toad. Max loves reading books. Julie loves throwing them.

Julie is super active and curious. She likes to crawl around and explore and pull herself up to kneeling and standing to get into stuff.

Max is also getting stronger and more adventurous, even walking on stilts in a gym class.

She and Max are starting to play together more, which is cute but dangerous. He likes to sit on her, which makes her laugh – until he moves the wrong way and it’s not so funny.

We saw Pippi Longstocking at Swedish Marionette Theater in Central Park and Max made his own Pippi puppet.

Julie turned 9 months old and wrestled with penguins.

When’s daddy home both kids want to be with him all day. Brittney feels a little left out, but then she takes a nap or goes to yoga and feels better.

Both kids wanted to be held by Daddy. He's pretty popular around here.

Click here for more photos

November Highlights

In November we celebrated Julie’s 6-month birthday with cheesecakes and chocolate. Julie was satisfied eating her hand.

14 lbs, 8 oz & 25 inches long and very squirmy.

Other highlights include a school service project planting bulbs in Riverside Park (Max never actually did anything with the shovel, but he was there for moral support).

Seeing the Big Apple Circus and Radio City Christmas Spectacular dress rehearsal. Max and Julie loved them both. Max danced in the aisle along with the Rockettes and clapped profusely for the kick lines. He liked seeing panda bears, Santa Clause, trains, and most of all a fire truck that drove by the Rockette-filled bus (which I had never noticed before, but Max knows his trucks).