Busy, Busy, Busy

We’ve been busy here lately. We took a trip to Pittsburgh to see my family and now we’re getting ready for my sister-in-law’s upcoming wedding in Italy, after which we’ll be spending 5 days in Paris with my husband’s parents.

There are just an infinite number of things to prepare for overseas travel with a toddler – just figuring out how to get all the stuff we may not find there  for him onto the plane is mind boggling.

Then there’s the wedding itself – all three of us are in the wedding so we all need wedding clothes and shoes and we have to figure out who’ll be watching my wild child during the ceremony and how we’ll handle his being out so late for the reception. There are just so many things to think about. It’s a little overwhelming.

I’m sure we’ll figure it all out, but right now it’s occupying my thoughts about 99.9% of the time.

Anybody have tips for intercontinental travel with 23-month-old boys?

Pool vacations are nice...but my next stop is Europe!

The New Ancient Playground

Sometime just after Brady was born, the Ancient Playground at 5th Ave and 84th St, right across from the Met, closed for renovations. A little over 2 weeks ago it finally, finally opened again. Local web sites and articles have been talking up the redesigned space for months and local parents have long-awaited a new place to play.

So the day after it opened I hustled Brady over there to play…and it was a NIGHTMARE!!!! The playground is amazing, there are tunnels, and climbing walls, and bumpy hills, and tire swings – all things that lead to heart attacks for the parents of toddlers.

Ah, those chains are perfect for running away from Mommy!

Each section of the playground is separated by pillars connected by chains. Brady would just swoop right under the chains and take off as I was left clambering over them to chase after him. There is a really cool tunnel – with THREE entrances. So Brady would go in and I had the option of either crawling after him or trying to guess which side he would come out. When I guessed wrong I was left panicking until I found him again.

There are climbing walls all over the place! And I quickly learned that Brady has the skills to climb them. One of the “pyramid” tops can only be reached by climbing wall and on the top you have the option of either coming down the slide or climbing a ladder down into the aforementioned tunnel. So Brady would climb up and I would plead desperately with him to come down the slide and to stay away from the ladder of death into the tunnel of the lost children.

He can climb!

One end of the playground is a padded space with rolling hills built in. Brady loved running up and down the hills. Unfortunately, this is where they decided to put the giant tire swings. So Brady continually ran in front of them as I ran after him with visions of concussions in my head!

The only thing I really liked was the water area. The water ran from a cool little waterfall down an elevated walkway and then off another waterfall into an area where you could push a button to turn on overhead sprinklers. I liked it because I could follow Brady and cool off in the ankle-high water as he played.

So my review of the new Ancient Playground is a huge toddler thumbs-down!!!! What a cool place, but I think we’ll go back when he’s five.

But the waterfall IS cool...

Country Boy

I'm running!

Well, for a weekend anyway. Brady and I are actually heading off for a trip to Pittsburgh to visit Grandma, Aunt Von, and the rest of the relatives. But I wanted to put up a quick post about our trip to my sister-in-law and (very) soon to be brother-in-law’s house in Upstate New York last weekend.

They have an awesome place. It’s an old farmhouse sitting on a pretty big piece of land. The house has been updated and decorated amazingly. It’s quiet and it smells good and there are bunnies and deer and birds. In short, I LOVED it. Brady did too. He got to run and run and run – in his bare feet. He went in the kiddie pool with their dog. We grilled out and just hung out in the sun and had a wonderful time. Almost wonderful enough to make me want to abandon the big city…but not quite.

I got some great pictures of the boy in nature.

I see you!

Yay pool!

Even better...pool AND doggie!

The terrible…ones???

My little Brady-Bean has not been the sweetest of little boys lately. Rather, he has been more like a holy terror. Aside from the aforementioned biting  incident and the fact that he has decided to wake up at 5:15 every morning, he has been throwing knock-down, drag-out fits and using the words “no” and “mine” as if they were about to disappear from the language.

My lovely little angel has been demanding that I play Thomas computer games with him, allow him to watch unlimited amounts of television, eat as many popsicles as he wants, and that I sit where he wants me to sit when he wants to me sit. And if I don’t comply, I’m sure to be met with screaming, throwing, stomping, and more screaming.

This is exhausting. Ignoring his fits has been pretty effective in diffusing them, but he throws so many a day that it’s getting to be overwhelming. That and he also likes to do things like empty the cat’s water onto the kitchen floor while I’m in the bathroom or squash blueberries into the floor while I’m getting dressed.

And he counters this awful behavior by being the smartest, cutest, most polite thing on Earth the rest of the time (thank goodness). He now knows all of his colors and likes to point them out to me and uses (semi) full sentences a lot of the time (“Mommy, wow, a big train!”, “Mommy, read it, the book, please.”) It’s like living with a little bi-polar maniac!

I’m praying that this is just an early manifestation of the terrible twos, because if it gets more terrible than this I’m going to need a vacation.

This was an "I want popsicles for lunch" fit

See? I told you...