Storm King

       

   
It has become a joke between us, Storm King. I've been talking about it forever - "we need to go to Storm King." "Once the weather cools down, let's do a day trip to Storm King." "Once spring is here, let's go to Storm King." It's far enough away though, and hard enough to get to, that our best-laid plans have never matured into action.

Until this past weekend. Finally.

Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre sculpture garden, though to call it a "sculpture garden" misses the point.   "Sculpture landscape" I believe, is another term often used. It is about an hour and a half from the city, and... wow. No photos I took can do it justice; please believe me when I say that it is beautiful. The sculptures and the landscape work together, and the result is so much more than anything I have seen in a traditional museum setting.

An added bonus for us: it is child friendly. There is no way I would take Nils to an art museum. Storm King was different. Lots of open space to run around in, enough distance between us and the "normal people" to make shrieks and an overabundance of energy totally okay. He ran around with abandon:

Rolled around in the grass (with a little help):

Paused occasionally to maybe? look at the art?

Nope. Just looking for rocks.

     

An update on all of us

     
So we go to movies, bike around the city, visit relatives, etc. ... that doesn't begin to cover everything that goes on around here. Especially with Nils. There are so many details I want to share! Care to join me for an update?

Nils

Nils is the most fun to write about. He's just so dang cute! And he's constantly doing the cutest things... gah! It's too much. Some highlights:

He's talking quite a bit now. No sentences yet, but lots of words. Recent additions include "oatmeal", "poop", "mine", "tractor", "spoon", and "Nils". He's also speaking German! It makes up a very small percentage of his vocabulary, but it's there. He says (the German versions of) "car", "tree", "hot", "no", and "more". Pretty cool.

He loves all things transportation related. Cars on the street, fire trucks, buses, street sweepers... if you can think of it we've probably stopped to stare at it. His newest fascination: planes and helicopters. We live directly under a flight path (to LaGuardia?), and this being New York, there are constantly helicopters flying overhead. Paradise. When the drone of an engine begins in the distance, he will stop whatever he is doing and point up at the sky. 

More than airplanes or any other street-bound vehicle though, Nils loves the subway. He doesn't get all that jazzed about actually being on the subway (go figure), but he loves to hang out in a station and watch the trains come and go. Here he is below, keeping his eyes on the lead car of the 2.

He loves so many things! Running, slides at the playground, playing with "choo choos", reading stories, leaping into piles of dirty laundry, splashing through puddles and fountains...
    

Pushing his stroller...
    

He was a sweet, lovely infant. Without question though, this is even better. It just keeps getting better.

Oliver

Oliver continues to work hard. He's been getting a lot of 5:30 and 6:00 am phone calls from staff in India lately - issues they need help fixing before trading starts at 7:00. Can you imagine? You wake up, not to an alarm, but to a pressing need to "work! Work now! Wake up, your work day has begun!" Yikes. I'd need a caffeinated beverage and 10 minutes to sit and stare out the window first. He doesn't complain, though.

Much more relaxing for him: running. He's training for the marathon again this year, and this time I plan to take pictures.

And a final note: he is officially a U.S. citizen. There was a ceremony (cameras were confiscated... alas, no photos), a certificate, and ta da! The days of hassles at the border are behind him. I told him he needs to stop making fun of Americans now. He told me he was voting for Clint Eastwood this November.

Me

No photos of me (guess who's always behind the camera), but plenty of things to tell. They're all sort of jumbled together right now, so I'll just mention the big one: there's a girl on the way! She's due in mid February, and when I'm not feeling guilty for ruining Nils's life, (My poor little baby! What are we doing to you?) I'm pretty excited. We've got 22 weeks to go, give or take, and I'm trying to really make the most of these last months as just the three of us.
     

Thing #5

   
Thing #5: Go see a historic monument or marker.

This one was pretty easy to knock off the list. This is New York! So many notable things have happened here! So many places are famous for one thing or another. The real question was then, what to choose.

I decided that the Village and its environs were a good place to do a little historic site hopping. We could bike there (we're always looking for excuses to take the bikes out), and we could hit up a few different not-so-on-the-map places.

 Site 1: Teddy Roosevelt's childhood home. 

Did you know that President Roosevelt grew up in Manhattan? I certainly didn't. Here was his house, though, just sitting there on a quiet block of 20th Street. 

Site 2: Margaret Sanger's clinic. This unobtrusive building was the site of a bold new idea: giving women access to birth control. Controversial then, and strangely controversial in recent days. After we left I wished I had gotten a photo of both Nils and I - he is, after all, the product of family planning. As am I.

Site 3: the Triangle Shirtwaist building. I remember being a middle school student and learning about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. The women working there had been locked in the 8th, 9th, and 10th floor factory to prevent unauthorized breaks. When the fire broke out many jumped out the window to their deaths. It was apparently a turning point of sorts for the rights of factory workers. At any rate, I'm glad no one can lock me in my office.

And then, since it was getting close to Nils's nap time, we cut short our tour of progressive New York history (another day, Stonewall Inn) and headed home. But not before a little bit of playground time.

      

Thing #4

     
Thing #4: Do something offbeat and/or New York-y.

Did it seem like I had forgotten about my New York list? Nah. Other things just got in the way. We went out of town, we socialized, we took Nils to the playground. Etc.

We had time a couple weeks ago to tick off another item from the list, and we did so by going to see a movie. Wait, it gets more interesting! It was a rooftop showing of Detropia (the New York premier, no less) at the old American Can Factory. The factory itself has been converted to artists' studios - very cool. And did I mention that one of the film's directors was there for a post-film Q & A?

Number 4: check! This also happened to be our first date night since, um, February? Sad. This needs work.
    

This way! 

The setup, pre crowd 

Ghosts in the yard

         

About a month and a half ago we went to Upper Michigan with family. Specifically, we went to the farm. My dad's childhood home (the home in which his own father was literally born), and the 99 acres that come with it.  My grandparents have not been with us for many years, and my dad and a couple of his brothers currently own the farm. None of them live there, but they all go up there from time to time to see old friends, fish, chop wood, and do other things that let them know that they can still call Tapiola, and more specifically that 99 acres, home. 

This trip had been in the works for a year or so. It was my idea, actually - I wanted Oliver to see where the other half of my extended family comes from (more or less), and I wanted my dad to show Nils the U.P. The U.P. and the farm mean more to my dad than, say, Kenosha and my parents' house mean to me. Some people are "of a place", and my dad is of those.

I hadn't been to the farm in nearly 10 years - the last time was for my grandma's funeral. Seeing it again after so long was wonderful. I have a lot of good memories: running around with cousins, playing with animals (back when there were still animals), walking through the woods by myself and finding a secret place to read. It was a bit sad, too. I looked out at the grass and saw myself and my cousins running around. I saw my aunts, uncles, and grandparents drinking beers and chatting. There were always so many people... and now it was quiet.

My dad told stories from his childhood, and I could tell that he was also watching people run around in the grass. There was the summer that his mother's sister and her (5?) children came to live with them. 10 kids, three adults, a steady stream of visitors. Mayhem. There was no room in the house, so my dad slept in the hayloft of the barn all summer - he said it was the best summer of his life.

Things we loved: Turkey post #2

Tea gardens

Every town had at least one. You could sit, half indoors and half out, and sip cup after cup of Turkish tea. Sugar was the only optional addition - no cream, lemon, etc. You stirred the sugar cubes with a tiny metal spoon and watched the men at the tables near you. A lot of farmers, I think. Absolutely no women present. Ever. Except for me. That was a little weird sometimes. I ended up putting on a sweatshirt one day - it was 90 degrees outside.

Minarets

Neither Oliver nor I had ever been to a Muslim country. We weren't quite sure what to expect. I packed a scarf and Oliver made sure to bring socks (Were bare feet in a mosque offensive?) Within an hour of landing in Istanbul we were on the road, off to see the rest of the country. The first thing that struck me as we drove out of the city: minarets. Everywhere. On every hill, sometimes multiple minarets to a mosque. These tall, sleek towers contrasting so beautifully with the domes they were paired with. 

Pinara

Down in Mediterranean Turkey, things could get a little touristy. It took work to escape the hordes of British and German tourists. Sometimes entire towns had to be avoided; no pizza, please. Or apple pie, or knockoff designer bags. When we got off the beaten path though, things got good fast. Pinara, for example. Pinara was a kingdom of ancient Lycia, built up on a mountain with the tombs of its rulers carved into the rock. The ruins of Pinara today are visited by few, on account of them being pretty difficult to get to. We had the place to ourselves. We scrambled over boulders, climbed into empty tombs, and walked until the sun beat us back to the shade of the exit. We could see the snows of Baba Dag in the distance when the clouds around it cleared.  

The Aya Sofia

It has many different names. Aya Sofia, Hagha Sofia, Haghia Sofia, Sancta Sophia. Whatever. I had heard of it, and knew that it was generally thought to be one of the world's most beautiful buildings. I had no idea. Seeing its exterior for the first time, not expecting it... it took my breath away. I can't explain what it was that made it so beautiful, though I suspect there is some sort of mathematical, architectural explanation. And the inside! A perfect symbol of Istanbul, with marks left by different conquerors. Byzantine Christian mosaics, 19th century Muslim caligraphy. At this moment, sitting in my living room and typing up this blog entry... I wish I could somehow get there again. Today. 

Istanbul

I generally prefer small towns and countryside while I travel. You can't go to Turkey and NOT go to Istanbul though, so we made space in our itinerary for a few days in the city. I wish we had made more. I could have spent a week there, maybe two. It's difficult to explain; if you have the chance, please go there and see for yourself. You won't be disappointed. When I close my eyes I can still see it - the hills, each crowned with a mosque. The seagulls. All those cargo ships on the Bosphorus.

Istanbul was the perfect end to our trip. It took every experience from the previous two weeks and magnified them. The best way to illustrate this: every city, town and village we stayed in had a mosque. We heard the calls to prayer several times each day. The calls to prayer never failed to give me a little thrill; I sat perfectly still each time I heard one and listened. In Istanbul, where there are something like 3,000 mosques, the calls to prayer overlapped. From our hotel we could hear a dozen of them, bouncing off each other and echoing against the hill behind us.

Turkey post #1

We were proud of ourselves for taking this trip. I think that's the first thing I have to say. Turkey with a 16 month old? Who does that? Fools. People who don't think things through.

Oliver and I though, we aren't fools. In planning this trip, we thought of ourselves as bold, limitless parents. We could do this, and not only would we have fun but we would accomplish something. Two and a half weeks travelling around Turkey with a toddler. That's an accomplishment.

I will readily admit that some things were hard. The flights, for example :

Nils slept the whole way over, and was awake the whole way back. A sleepless night for Oliver and I one way, most of it spent frozen in place while he slept across our laps. A curious little boy on the way back, determined not to spend any time sitting down.

Sitting anywhere turned out to be difficult. While Oliver and I wanted nothing more than to relax and enjoy a nice dinner :

Nils wanted to run around - pet the stray dogs and cats that were everywhere, dash into the street, touch breakables, etc. Meals were rarely leisurely.

(This little fit was very short lived - he was all smiles the moment he was off Oliver's lap and onto the floor.)

Sometimes we got frustrated, but we reminded ourselves that Nils hadn't asked to come on this vacation. He would probably be happier playing with his toys and buddies back home. We had to be understanding, and try to find ways to make things fun for him.

That turned out to be pretty easy. All he wanted was to run around. So we made sure he had plenty of opportunities for that :

 Up in the hills of Bozcaada, a beautiful island in the Aegean...

 At the ruins of Behramkale, from where you could see Greece...

In downtown Fethiye...

In the main church of Karakoy, a town forcibly abandoned in the 1920s when Greece and Turkey exchanged Greek Muslims for Turkish Christians...

On the boardwalk of Patara Beach...

 In Antalya's main park...

 In the courtyard of Istanbul's Blue Mosque...

In Istanbul's Hippodrome.

Bottom line: we had to be flexible. Flexible not only in our itinerary (i.e. frequent stops to run around in circles), but in how we handled everything. There were many snacks on the go...

Naps on Oliver's shoulder...

And naps in unusual places.

And you know what, it all worked. Oliver and I high fived at the end of the trip. We did it! And it was amazing! Gol, it was amazing. I want to write one more post on the trip, one in which Nils is not the centerpiece. Because Turkey deserves some more of my attention. It was that good.