A Train Bound for the Big Apple

Since we're pretty much never on the east coast, we decided to take the train from DC to New York City to visit one of Justin's cousins while we're here.  He hadn't seen her in at least 10 years, so it seemed like it was time to make it happen.  He can't take any time off from his training, so it was a pretty quick trip up and back.

We left Friday night.  This was the first time that Justin or the kids have been on an Amtrak train.  Vivian is a bit of a seasoned traveler, so she took it all in stride.  To say that Ivan found the experience exciting would be a total understatement.

Vivian played quietly with her stickers the entire ride.  Ivan played quietly with his for about 10 minutes.

He quickly discovered that a train doesn't require him to sit in his seat the way the metro and the airplane did.  He spent a large portion of the trip darting back and forth across the aisle between Justin and I.  He was exhausted, but the aisle was calling his name, and the guy next to me was a source of never ending fascination, and this other passenger's pita chips (which he thankfully didn't mind sharing) were too tasty to be neglected.  Although our train didn't arrive in New York City until almost 11pm, Ivan remained awake, alert, and loud for all but the last 30 minutes.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm totally comfortable in big cities, because I'm not.  I don't like them, and I am pretty intimidated by them, and I'm really phenomenally bad at directions so this makes cities feel really overwhelming.  I printed out detailed instructions of how to get from the train station, to the subway, to our hotel, gave them to Justin and told him to make it happen.  His cousin Kristin asked if we wanted to stop for some ice cream on the way to the hotel and meet up for a minute.  I would have never agreed to this on my own, because it would require deviating from my specific instructions, but Justin seemed confident and so we figured, why not?  We had an early dinner, Vivian was willing to force sleep aside for it, and Ivan was fast asleep in the stroller.  Justin got us to the ice cream place with only one minor little turn around (no street sign, so he really wasn't to blame).

Since our trip was mostly about visiting Kristin and she lives in Upper Manhattan, and I gather that most of the tourist type things I want to see are in Lower Manhattan, we decided to just spend the day with the kids in Central Park.

We actually started off with breakfast in a diner where Vivian spent more time trashing their sugar collection (making a salad) than she did eating breakfast.

In the subway

She loves climbing.

Climbing all over the Alice in Wonderland statue with their dad.

We spent a fair amount of time at the Alice in Wonderland statue.  I was feeling pretty hot and tired, and still very paranoid about a recent bout of what my internet research has led me to believe was the "Disney Rash" following our Thursday night outing back in DC.  I was wearing the old lady compression stockings for this outing, but still kind of hoping to take it easy, so I was very grateful to Justin for letting me just ride the bench for this one while he monitored them.    Mostly Ivan, whose legs are still a bit too short to do much unassisted climbing.  I think that Vivian would have spent all day there.

We wandered over to a lake with little sail boats.  We watched people paddling about in row boats on a river, with varying degrees of success, and Vivian conquered a large rock.

The wind kept blowing her hair in her face.

I was actually very proud of her.  When she got to the top of the rock there were two other little girls up there, with bare feet.  They proceeded to tell Vivian that she couldn't stay on the rock without taking her shoes and socks off, because it was their "house."  Now, my Viv can be a bit bossy when it comes to kids she knows, but there's also a history of her letting strange children tell her off, and push her around, and she doesn't stand her ground.  So Justin walked off and left her alone to handle it.  After some heated discussion the two other girls abandoned the rock, and Vivian, with shoes still on, climbed to the top.  The other girls returned as we were leaving, wearing shoes.  Vivian reported that she told them that it wasn't their house, and they better put their shoes back on their feet.  I was just pleased that she stood up for herself without being a jerk, a small victory in parenting.

We moved on to an area with some performers where Vivian experienced the inside of a bubble, thanks to "Bam Bam the Bubble Man."

His first attempt was only partially successful.

Round two did momentarily place her in a bubble.

It was shortly thereafter that the kids started to run out of steam, and we went to lunch.

We stopped to let Vivian play for a second in the fountains outside of the Met. 

Ivan was no longer a participant.  She leaned up against that water wall and walked away looking like she'd been for a swim.

Lunch was followed by naps, and a rainstorm, and then dinner, and we went to Kristin's apartment.  She loves living in New York.  I think maybe, maybe a quarter of my belongings would fit in her apartment.  I just don't think it's for me.  I'm not sure what that says about me, just that I prefer a home that affords me the ability to hoard lots of things that I rarely use I guess.  Anyway, I thought it was very interesting, and we had a really nice visit.  We stayed kind of late, and called it when the kids started crossing the line from tired to hyper and there was no way the neighbors were going to like their volume.  We said goodbye to Kristin, and hopefully it won't be so long before our next visit.  Our big regret from the trip was only that the visit was much too short.

Thankfully Kristin had the presence of mind to get a picture of them together.  

Our train trip home was only marginally better than the trip out.  I mean, truthfully I thought that Ivan was quite a bit better behaved, but we had two people in front of me that were very vocal about their annoyance with him...or obvious anyway.  The woman made remarks in a nasty tone, and the man just made a point to stare and glare at Justin and I.  Seriously, Ivan really wasn't being that bad, and he slept for about half the trip.  I'm okay with it though, because I never have to see them again after I got off in DC, and that's a luxury that they don't get.  It was a fun little introduction to the great NYC, great finally getting to meet Kristin, and I'm looking forward to the day when I get to go back and see more of her, and more of all that NYC has to offer.