Memorial Day Manhattan

Forget New York at Christmas or autumn in New York. New York on Memorial Day is where it’s at.

Nobody is around. There is TONS of street parking. No lines at my favorite bustling restaurants. Museums empty.

I LOVE Manhattan on Memorial Day.

In fact, we left town this weekend, and headed to my parents’ place in the Jerse, for some masquerading as suburbanites. We filled up a little wading pool with the hose. We had bike races. We gardened. The children played with worms. We even played baseball in the front yard. And all of us HATE playing with balls – every single one of us, including David and Primo – but I guess having so much open space got us heady and we started slugging that shit out. Afterwards I felt wildly proud of all of us, like we were a model family, doing what families should, covering all our bases, so to speak, fulfilling a conventional notion of summer fun. It’s something that I, as the leader of a bunch of bizarre eccentrics, feel rarely, but when the sentiment strikes, I do enjoy it.

But we always like to end our three-day weekends in suburbia one day early so we can get back into NYC before everyone else and enjoy the emptiness for a bit.

Primo is in the throes of a serious Greek myth fever and just last night, we finished Part One of Tales from the Odyssey, by Mary Pope Osborne. The kid is OBSESSED with Odysseus and I am OBSESSED with him being obsessed with Odysseus. The level of pretention is so friggin’ high right now in our house, it would probably make you yak. But since he started this new monomania, he’s been begging to go back to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, to check out (again) the exhibit on Gods, Myths and Mortals.

If you haven’t been to CMOM yet, go soon, because the exhibit will be coming down. And it is so fantastic. The exhibit basically takes kids on O’s odyssey from the Trojan Horse (there is a mammoth wooden horse with four levels of kid-climbing fun) to the Cyclops and the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. It makes former-English-majors like me swoon.

So on the way home, we stopped by CMOM and – wonder of wonders – no one was there. It was like they’d closed the museum for a private event – no elbow-jabbing between the kids in the Dora the Explorer fruit stand, no throwing sand at each other in the sand table, no bogarting the Siren karaoke. I never get a taste of VIP but today I did. David and I decided we couldn’t go back until next Memorial Day.

Then we walked down to Zabar's and bought some fancy cheese and coffee and a bunch of imported black licorice for my grandmother since it’s her birthday and that’s the only gift she won’t complain about.

I even got to try the gelato at Grom which usually has a super-long line down the street. There was still a line but manageable so Primo and I ordered a gelato with nocciola, ciccolato fondente and coco (I let the kid choose the combo, what can I say?)

First authentic gelato I’ve tasted in New York. The nocciola was a dream of Rome.

Only trouble was the small – SMALL – cost $5.25 so I made us all share one and sent David went next door to Beard Papa to get a few mochi balls ($1 each) to supplement our ice cream fix.

Lovely day.

Dreamy dreaminess.

Your Whole Life

Yesterday I was trying to get the kids through the turnstile at the subway, while carrying the diaper bag, stroller, library books and cup of iced coffee (the most indispensable item of all). As I am not an octopus, I found this challenging. So I asked Primo if he could hold my coffee for a second.

“Ugh,” he replied. Since I no longer have a cup holder on my stroller, this is a request I make fairly often.

“Oh come on,” I cajoled, “Just for a second.”

“OK,” he said, “but only if you promise you will never ask me again, for your whole life!”

“I don’t know about that,” I replied,” I mean, my whole life is a long time.”

“Not anymore,” he retorted.

Surely, I thought, I heard him wrong. Not only was it improbable that my five year-old would be telling me I was entering the autumn of my life, it was unlikely he’d be so cavalier about it.

“You’re already a grown up Mommy,” he explained matter-of-factly, like he was through pussyfooting around the subject.

I guess that means I can start making sweeping promises that I’ll honor the rest of my (numbered) days.

Then today I was telling him how I’d like it if we could help Nonnie make friends her age in Park Slope, and he inquired, “But YOU are elderly, aren’t you Mommy?”

Dude, I may have a few crow’s feet but come on, this shit is demoralizing.

I informed him I was not, in fact, elderly and then to help him tell the difference between ME and an elderly person, I pointed out that I wasn’t a great grandmother and I was not retired and also I didn’t have white hair.

“But you paint it yellow,” he said.

I've certainly taught the kid critical thinking but I may have overlooked teaching him mercy.

Don't make these chocolate chip cookies

My kids do not know how to use a computer for one simple reason. I never let them within ten feet of mine. They have access to everything else I own - they jump on my bed, use my clothes as dress-up, eat the food off my plate and I am more or less totally cool with it. But hands off the computer.

When we were at my in-laws a few weeks ago, though, Primo's Bubbe gave him the green light to play around on her computer as much as he liked. And he liked. I introduced him to Mo Willems' Website because A. we love Willems in general and B. Primo's been having a really great time learning to read with the help of the Elephant and Piggie books. They are genius.

I left him playing the Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed game and about a half hour later, he comes over to tell me he found a delicious recipe for chocolate chip cookies, just like the dinosaur Edwina makes in Willem's picture book, and could we make them, too, ASAP?

"OK, I'll come take a look in a minute," I said.

"Don't worry Mommy," he replied, "I copied it for you." And he handed me this:


It must've taken him 20 minutes to copy all of those words, dear little soul. What could I say but, "let's preheat the oven!" And voila:




I feel it necessary to add that these were the worst chocolate chip cookies known to man. Not Primo's fault (or mine for that matter). This recipe sucks elephant ass. I will eat ANYTHING resembling a chocolate chip cookie, and I couldn't choke down more than one bite. There s no earthly reason to try and improve upon the chocolate chip cookie recipe printed on the back of the Nestle bag. But besides that, Willems' website is funny and sweet and simple for little kids and I wholly recommend.

What are your favorite sites for the 3-6 year-old crowd? Besides watching Bookflix on the Brooklyn Public Library website, my kids are web novices, but if there was a really great site, I could be convinced to let them take a look.

Stayin' Alive

First there was Swimmy, the goldfish produced by a magician for Primo at his 5th birthday party. He didn’t last a week. Then there was Bandana, who made it almost three weeks before going belly-up. Next was Beethoven, the beta fish, who died within three days.

But Mr. Black and Mr. White have been swimming around in fishy glory for almost six months now. I credit the filter I conceded to let David buy for the tank, finally. At first, I didn’t think it was worth the expenditure.

“How do fish live in the ocean or river where there are no filters?” I argued, “The point of having a fish as a pet is for it to be cheap and easy! Otherwise you get a gerbil.”

After three fish died in just over a month though, David took a hard line. He single
-handedly provides all the care for the fish -- the cleaning, the food, the love and affection -- and he told me that he would not take care of any more fish without a filter in the tank. He also said he couldn’t bear to look at their depressed, lonely little fish faces, so I suggested we buy two instead of one.

Fourth time’s a charm I guess because Mr. Black and Mr/ White have been staying alive better than John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. They are doing so well, in fact, that Primo finds it rather strange.

“Mr. Black and Mr. White are living so long its like they are in the Bible!” he exclaimed.

“Because people in the Bible live a long time?” I asked

“Becase it’s a MIRACLE!” he clarified.

And then he made the following suggestion, “When they die, we should have a party. To celebrate how long they lived.”

I said I thought that was a superb idea.

Peeing Outside

Big thread on parkslopeparents recently about the permissibility of children peeing in the park. There are those who said, “Uh-uh, no way, under no circumstances,” and those who said, “A-Ok, peeing outside is fun,” and those who thought it was tolerable in cases of potty training emergencies.

I fall staunchly in the last category. Do I want to watch a kid drop trou and piss in the middle of a picnic area while I’m eating a sandwich? No. But I don’t blink an eye if I catch sight of a toddler or preschooler peeing behind a bush or next to a tree off the beaten path. I’m constantly dodging piles of dog shit on the sidewalks here and I think if I have to do that, then I’m entitled to let my not-fully-potty-trained-child relieve himself near a tree rather than wet his pants when he’s somewhere far from a bathroom/

But the thread did remind me of one time, a month or two ago, when I was in my local playground with Seconda.

We’d recently come back from a trip to Tennessee, where the backyard is literally a forest, and where Sec made a habit of letting herself out through the doggie door and peeing outside, just like the doggies.

I discovered she was doing this one day because she came up to me and said, “Mommy, I did pee-pee!”

I said, “That’s great honey, did you use the potty?”

And she said, “No, I went out to the woods.”

“Oh, OK,” I said, “But where are your panties?”

“As a matter of fact,” she replied, “they are in the woods and they are all wet.”

When we came back to New York, it was difficult to break her off this pee-outside habit. So one day we were in the playground -- not in the park, but a plyground in the middle of a busy street – and I looked over and saw a pair of little girl underwear on the pavement. Then I caught sight of Seconda next to a tree in the middle of the packed playground, about to squat down and take a piss.

“Sec!” I yelled, “What are you DOING?”

“I’m peeing in the woods,” she replied.

It was an honest mistake. Could’ve happened to anyone.

Where do you stand on the pee-in-the-park debate -- sometimes, always or maybe? Have you allowed your little one some license when it comes to emergencies?

An explanation

By now, some of you devoted readers will have noticed what looks like typos nad frequent misjudgments of spelling on the pages of the blog.

“This broad can’t type for shit,” you probably have thought, “Has she never heard of spell check? Dude, this is embarrassing.”

That does sound like a plausible explanation. But you are wrong. In fact, my fingers never miss a key and I can spell "massachusetts" without even thinking about it. Each and every seeming typo was placed there purposefully and lovingly by me in order to offer the foundation for a solid drinking game.

Every time you see a typo, you take a shot.

Now you know. Or, should I say, Noww yo kmow.

It takes a village of edgy moms . . .

I had the pleasure of reading last night at the Edgy Mothers Day Reading and thoroughly enjoyed discovering fantastic new writers and hearing from amazing women I’m already a fan of.

Being in a room with such powerhouse women, mothers that clearly love their kids with everything they’ve got but also insist on some kind of figurative room of their own, was a reminder that no one of us can get through motherhood on our own. It takes a village, but not just because the other villagers will baby-sit sometimes or give you advice about sleep training. It takes a village because you need other people to get it – to balk at the outrageous, rage at the unjust, laugh at the embarrassing, and cry at the shit that breaks your heart. Nothing refuels me like a hefty dose of fellow feeling, and that’s just what I got last night.

Here’s a list of the women who read with links to their sites and blogs. Give them a looksee:

–Marian Fontana, author of A Widow’s Walk

–Rosemary Moore, author of Side Street

–Martha Southgate, author of Third Girl From the Left

–Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway

–Wendy Ponte, author of Mothering Magazine’s Having a Baby Naturally

–Sophia Romero, blogger, The Shiksa from Manila and author of Always Hiding

–Yona Zeldis McDonough, author of Breaking the Bank

–Michele Madigan Somerville, poet and author of WISEGAL and Black Irish

–Allison Pennell, parenting journalist and writer for Effed in Park Slope

–Kathy Fine, educator