Epic Climb

On Day 2 of our stay in NE, Chris got it into his head to climb a tree in Grandma's backyard. I guess, raking leaves was getting to be too boring. Fortunately, I was there to take pictures of his fit of strength.

"Not sure what got into me, but I can totally do it! Totally!"

"It ain't nothing. I work out!"

 "Hey babe, check this out! Told ya I could do it!"

 "Crap, this is pretty high to jump down from"

 "No worries, I'll figure something out. Will try climbing down the other side"

 "Hmm, the other side is also pretty high... Ok, gotta go back the same way, I guess"

 "If this was yoga, this would've been a Panda-asana."

 "It'd suck to fall and break a leg. Should I tuck and roll?"

"The Eagle has landed!"

Nebraska in November

Let me tell you one thing about going to Nebraska - it's a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG drive! How long? Well, let's put it this way - at some point half through the drive, M voluntarily gave me the iPad back saying that he had enough of it. So you can imagine what the second half of the drive was like in terms of the frequency of the "Are we there yet" and "I'm bored!" sentences.

To be fair, M didn't just play on an iPad all the time (I wouldn't let it happen no matter how many "Are we there yet" he threw at me). He spent a lot of time drawing too. On the way there it was mostly Star Wars stuff. But on the way back it was all about dinosaurs, dinosaur bones and him and his friends digging up dinosaurs. And he took lots and lots of pictures of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa... all looking pretty much the same.

The highlight of the trip there (for me) was seeing a trailer hauling a wind turbine blade. The thing is unbelievably huge and absolutely beautiful, especially up close.

M loves taking pictures. He's careful enough that I trust him with my cheapie camera. He doesn't know how to navigate through the menus or, say, turn the flash or the macro options on and off. And sometimes his hands shake so much that the pictures come out impossibly blurry. But other times he takes great pictures! The best part is he is not at all afraid to find just the perfect spot for the picture, even if it means crawling under furniture or climbing up on the kitchen table. And he rarely takes "a picture of everything", preferring to focus on just one or two elements at a time. The downside is he takes A LOT of pictures. I mean, hundreds. Which makes my job of sorting through them that much longer.

But I digress... By the end of the drive to Lincoln, M was so sick of being on the road and so bored, that he kept saying how he wasn't going to be nice to Nebraska and how he was going to not like it and kick it. And how he wasn't going to talk to anyone in Nebraska.

And then we got to Grandma Phyllis's house and parked the car and M looked around and said "And you dragged me here for this?!" But then two things happened. One was M got to go out into the yard and play in a huge pile of leaves. And then he got to eat spaghetti for dinner. Well, actually there was a third thing - M got to see, touch and pretend-call a friend on a very old telephone that was hanging on the wall downstairs right above a huge old wooden trunk (M's dream possession). All this was just too great to stay mad. So M cheered up and even conceded that "Nebraska was turning out to be better than he thought".

Then the next day M got introduced to American football as we spent the afternoon with Chris's family watching the game on a humongous TV, the biggest TV M has ever seen. At first he was bored with the whole thing. After all, we don't have a TV set at home and he's not used to watching anything, not even cartoons, much. Plus he's never seen American football before. But by the end of the evening he said he understood what the game was all about and liked it. And the next day he came over to me and asked me to switch the TV channel to a game.

Honestly, I don't care much about football. Yeah, it's an American thing and all and maybe I should learn a bit more about the game. But it seems pretty boring even compared to soccer (which I don't care much for either). Still, I must say that I had a great time at Aunt Sharon and Uncle Sam's house spending time with the family. Too bad we had to leave kinda early 'cause M was so tired that he actually kept asking to go to bed (another first).

Over the next two days we didn't do much. One day we went to this little museum on the U of N campus. It was terrific. We were in luck 'cause they had some kind of Science Sunday event with all the fun activities for kids. The best one, IMHO and according to M, was the one about making edible scat (that's animal poop, in case you don't know). I always knew Tootsie Rolls were good for something.

M was absolutely in love with the place. And that was just after looking at mastodons and dinosaurs and trilobites on the first floor (and making edible poop). Then we got to the second floor where they have a great collection of rocks and minerals. Oh, boy!!! I think if M could stay there overnight, he would had. He was all teary-eyed when we had to leave 'cause the place was closing for the day. The next day he kept asking to go back.

But instead we went to the zoo in Omaha. And we spent pretty much the whole entire day there. I love that zoo. Except I never get to see it when the weather is warm. Seriously, I've been there 3 times - in the winter, in late fall and in early spring. And each time it was cold and miserable. So I haven't seen the entire zoo, not yet anyway. But what I've seen is really terrific. And M seems to agree, mostly.

The very first place he wanted to see was, of course, the Desert Dome. It's the most visible structure as you drive up to the zoo and it looks so cool too! At first M wanted to see and take pictures of everything there - the cacti, the birds, the "cave paintings", the snakes, the meerkats and so forth. But after about 20 minutes or so he started to get overwhelmed and was ready to move on.

And so we braved the cold and wet weather and went to see the big cats (tigers were having lunch of what looked like chopped steak), the orangutans, the gorillas and the giraffes. Of all these, M seemed to be most interested in gorillas mostly because they had a baby gorilla who kept trying to annoy the daddy gorilla. Plus in the same structure there were displayed skeletons of various primates for comparison. M spent quite some time in front of them, discussing the difference between human and gorilla skeletons.

Then we went to the aquarium. And that was pretty much it. Once we got inside, M did not want to leave. He just wanted to look at everything over and over and over. And when he got to the end of the aquarium, he wanted to start the tour all over again. He tried taking pictures, but that was tricky because of the lighting. So he asked me to do it and kept pointing to hundreds of fish and corals and anemones, asking to photograph them all. Apparently he had this idea that once home, we'll print all those pictures, cut out all the fish, etc, glue them to blue paper and we'll have our own aquarium.

After we took pictures of every fish in the aquarium... twice, we all went to eat at a cafe in the Lied Jungle pavilion. It's definitely the best place to eat at the zoo. The food is actually good and not at all expensive. And you can get a table with a great view of the family of monkeys. That's exactly what we did. It was great, watching Mama Monkey, Papa Monkey and their two kids. Except M got it into his head to act like those baby monkeys for the rest of the day which was funny only for the first 10 minutes or so.

We then tried going through the Jungle pavilion which is my favorite place at the zoo. Except M was dead-set on going back to the Aquarium. So after just 2 minutes in the jungle he asked мама, ты уже наджунглилась? And after another 5 minutes or so he started the "Are we there (at the exit) yet?". Which turned the whole thing into an exercise in parental restraint. So we turned around and went back to the aquarium... and, of course, to the gift shop.

On the way back from the zoo I noticed a sign for the Strategic Air and Space Museum. But I kept quiet because it was already around 4pm (and the museum closes at 5pm). Pitty. But maybe next time. Besides, they do not allow kids under 48" tall on their multi-axis trainer rides and M would'd been pretty unhappy. He tried this ride back in NY and loved it. I finally found a video of it.

And the next day it was time to drive back to NC. Another two-day drive, grrr. This time it was especially long for some reason. Missouri seemed absolutely endless! But then, late in the evening on the second day we finally got home. As Dorothy would've said "There's no place like home!"

Home for Halloween

Home for Halloween... For a whole year this was my standard response to M's endless questions about when would Chris get back "from the Army". And whadda ya know! He did get home just a few days before the Halloween! (Ok, so it was fairly easy to predict since Chris left last year right before Halloween, but still, things happen and we didn't know the exact date until the very last moment).

Once we knew the exact date, we had just about enough time to rent a car, get M into his astronaut costume  and drive to Greensboro airport. Why astronaut costume, you ask? Well, first M said that since Papa was going to be wearing his Army uniform, it's only fair that M would wear his astronaut uniform as well. Once we got to Greensboro, M saw that some of the families there had Welcome Home signs. So he said "See, Mama, I'm wearing this spacesuit and Papa will see me right away, better than if I had a sign". Which was definitely true.

So Chris was home in time for going to a pumpkin patch and taking M trick-or-treating on Halloween night (that was something M was REALLY looking forward to for months).

The pumpkin patch we all went to was new to us and it just might be the best one around here. It has so much stuff - animals, a giant slide, an air pillow (also giant), hay to jump in, hay to slide off of, hay rides, a little castle thingy to run around, a train, and a ton of other things.

It was a very cold day though and we didn't stay for too long. Just long enough to do the most fun things and to pick pumpkins.

Chris and M then carved one of the pumpkins before going trick-o-treating. This year M actually helped to scoop the seeds out. You see, last year he absolutely refused to get his hands into the pumpkin or touch the "gobly-goop" inside. But this year he came up with this idea of creating a mitten out of a Ziploc bag.

And then, the day after Halloween we left for Nebraska, to see Chris's family. But that's another story.

Random Pics from NY

 Wild mushrooms around my parents' house. Some are edible. These aren't. But they are huge and pretty.

 How huge? Well, here's M's foot for comparison.

 Here are M and Grandma tasting apples at an orchard down the road from my parents' house. We went to pick apples there again this year.

 This is M getting ready to go through some astronaut training at the Space Festival. He loved it and wasn't at all scared!

M and Grandma are about to enjoy their breakfast at Erik's in Long Island. Delicious!

M took this picture of me and I didn't even know. It's also at Erik's. I must'd already finished my breakfast (look at those chubby cheeks).

Collecting Rocks and Shells

Has it really been over a month since I last updated this blog?! Wow! That's all I can say. But things have been happening around here, as you know. It all started with a trip to NY. This time around I talked my mom into going on a little get-away to Long Island, just for a couple of nights.

The first evening we were there the weather was ok, but kind of cold. So we went to the little beach just across the street from our motel and picked some rocks and shells. And then went out to get some din-din - some seriously delicious roasted chicken.

What can I say... The old adage "never leave for tomorrow what you can do today" proved itself true again! Our first evening in LI we only spent about 30 minutes or so on the beach thinking that we'd go there first thing the next morning. Except it rained hard overnight and the entire morning and early afternoon. Basically, we were stuck in our motel room.

And let me tell you about this motel room. It was a LivingSocial special and seemed like a really good deal. "Seemed" is a key word here. It was absolutely bare bones as far as comfort and coziness goes. I mean, it was worse than a Super 8 motel (and those are pretty basic).

Anyway, I thought that M was going to drive us (me) nuts sitting in the room with absolutely nothing to do (no Internet connection, bad TV reception, no toys, just one book for bedtime reading). But I was VERY wrong. In fact, he spent the entire first half of the day absorbed in sorting through and re-arranging the rocks and shells he collected the evening before, taking pictures of them, and drawing them. He was so busy and so in the flow, that it took me some effort to persuade him to leave the room once the rain stopped. I had to promise him more rocks and shells.

Once the rain stopped, the day was just amazing - sunny and even warm. We drove all the way to Orient and checked out the pebbly beach there and watched cars driving on and off the big ferries. Then we went to a great little cafe that served excellent Manhattan chowder and jumbo shrimp. We also discovered a lighthouse and a nearby beach with lots of little pieces of sea glass. And late in the evening we went to dinner at some restaurant that came highly recommended, but turned out to be pricey, but very average.  But all in all, it was a terrific day and we were very happy.

The next morning, after checking out of the motel, we were in no hurry to leave Long Island. M wanted to collect more rocks. I wanted more sea glass. Mom wanted more shells. And we all wanted a good breakfast. Luckily, the lunch place from the day before also served breakfast and was close to the sea glass beach. In case you go, the place is called Erik's Breakfast and Lunch.

M could hardly wait to get to the beach and look for treasure. And boy, did he find something totally awesome. Ok, so for days before going to LI, M wanted to talk about all the things we might find on the beach - rocks, shells, sea weed, crabs, more shells, more rocks, sea glass, driftwood and on and on. I told him that maybe he'll see something unexpected and surprising. Guess what he found? He found an old buoy, plastic with peeling black paint and the number 1090 on its side. How could he not take it home with him?!

Lemme tell you - for the next few days this buoy was the most taken care of buoy in the Universe. M painted it black and red. He introduced it to all the toys. He took it on all the car rides. And, on the way home to NC, he even took him into an IHOP for lunch!

For me the most unexpected thing about the trip was all the farms and vineyards we saw along the way. We stopped at a couple of farms and farm stands to buy the beautiful fresh produce, fresh-pressed apple cider and award-winning cheesecakes. And on the way back home we stopped by the farm called The Garden of Eve. They have just about the best playground (and it's free), complete with a maze, a dirt track (little racing bikes are also free), a giant spider web, and a fort.

Even with the cold and the wind and the rain and even with the nightmarish NY traffic we got stuck in on the way back, it was still a terrific little vacation!