Empire State of Mind

Whew. Well, we’re back in the city and honestly it feels amazing. This trip back to California was just what I needed. We missed daddy terribly, but it was good for him to put all of his energy into his first midterm (which he got a B on, yay!). He missed us too… I think he may have eaten frozen fish sticks and fries 4 nights in a row. I couldn’t wait to get home and cook for him- which is exactly what I did all day today. After preschool we hit the grocery store and I made homemade spaghetti and meatballs AND butternut squash soup (for tomorrow night)! The kids did a fantastic job of destroying every inch of the house while I did all that, including completely re-programming the cable box. Amazing what a 13 month old can do. I think they missed trashing their toys and ruling their own roost. The freedom that a HOUSE with a BACKYARD allows them is incomparable to apartment living, but this is their home, and they dig it well enough.

The travels went as smooth as can be expected with a two year old, a one year old, and one parent. I was toast before I ever began being outnumbered like that, but I’ll never learn:
We took a town car to the airport at 3 pm on our way to CA. I didn’t order car seats because it’s completely legal for children to ride in a cab or town car that way. Not that I necessarily agree with that, especially the way people drive in this city, but they were going to charge me $60 extra dollars, and the airport is in Queens. Normally a trip to JFK shouldn’t take that long, but guess what? Rush hour in NYC is at 3PM (or whenever it feels like it). It took us an hour and a half to get to the airport. An hour and a half of two screaming, bouncing children in stop and go traffic. This was somewhat tolerable until J started throwing up. He threw up 5 times on the drive to the airport, at which point I threw in the towel -quite literally- and decided that the trip couldn’t possibly get any worse. Such a fool I am. Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that shlepping a double stroller, three carry-on’s, two babies and dinner onto an airplane is not easy. Nor is it fun. It would have been a fairly painless flight, however, if it hadn’t been for Z’s diaper explosion, some really intense turbulence and the sour-puss sitting next to us, but I guess you win some and you lose some, right? There was a very bright light at the end of this tunnel, and we got through it just fine. Two weeks in my home town, in my mother’s home, with all of our friends and family around us was a complete vacation and totally worth the fuss. It rested and filled us to the brim with love and energy for the travels and life back in NYC. The flight home was amazing. We took a red eye, and because of that I was really nervous but we had an extra seat and the kids both slept together for the majority of the time on the plane. I got to watch Ace of Cakes for 3 hours while making sure they didn’t fall off the seats, so when we finally got home I was a zombie. We paid for the car seats for the drive home this time, but the driver was SO terrible that both of the kids got ferociously sick the entire way home. I happen to be very susceptible to car sickness as well, and it took all I had NOT to throw up myself, but I think I was too busy holding plastic bags and cleaning. Done with the barf talk yet? It was FUN. We arrive at our building at 7:30AM to see daddy waiting out in front for us. Happiest. Sight. Ever. Couldn’t wait to get upstairs, cleaned up and in our jammies for some quality nap time. Which is just what we did. It’s great to be back home in New York City.

Some photos from our trip: Family, friends and fun adventures.