Tomorrow when you wake up

A few weeks ago I had to take Nils to the emergency room. It was the best kind of "emergency" in that it wasn't, really. The pediatrician's office had just closed for the day. It was best, they said, not to wait until morning. No need to panic. Just head on over to the ER.

There was a lot of waiting, and there were some tears (oh Nils, if only you could understand that an underarm thermometer is nothing to be afraid of!). There was a lot of medical jargon and a few reassuring statements that only made me more anxious ("This doesn't mean it's asthma", they said over and over again). Otherwise, it was okay.

We ended up spending a few hours on a rolling bed in a hallway. Nils did his best to sleep, and with nothing else to do I listened in on the conversation at the bed next to ours. A boy of 12 or 13 was talking with a psychologist. Were the kids at school giving you trouble? Yeah. How had you been feeling lately? Okay. The mother piped up: before today he hadn't acted out at school in some time, and he had been doing better at home, too. They talked about adjusting medication. Getting up to stretch my legs I noticed a security guard posted at the boy's bed. I also saw how tired his mother looked. How had he acted  out today, I wondered.

Eventually, Oliver was able to join us. He came bearing bagels - even better. "Did you see the girl two beds down?" he asked. "She has cuts all up and down her arms." She was maybe 14, and she chatted happily with the security guard posted at her bed. "You gotta ignore those girls," he said to her. "You're absolutely beautiful. They're just jealous." Her mother dozed in a chair at the foot of her bed, arms reaching up in her sleep to hold on to her daughter's legs.

We eventually got the okay to go home, and as we were getting everything together the boy approached us. "Would you like this?" he asked. It was an origami crane. Rusty orange. Impressive.

"Wow, you can make these?" I asked. "I could make a balloon when I was younger, but the crane was always too difficult."

"He makes them all the time," his mother said. I could hear the pride in her voice. "He likes to give them to people."

"I'd love it. Thank you."

Tonight, some weeks later, Nils was having a little trouble going down for the night. At one point I held him in his darkened bedroom, his security blanket slung over my shoulder while I stroked his hair. "I love you so much, Beansie," I whispered. "You sleep well. Tomorrow when you wake up we'll have pancakes and go to the park."

Thing #3

 Thing #3: spend a day in Central Park.

We've been to Central Park more times than I can count, but it has always been for some other purpose. Oliver runs races there, we walk through it to get somewhere else, we go to festivals held inside the park. I don't think we've ever gone just to go. 

This past Saturday we were up and out of the house by 6:30. Our mission: bike to Central Park! And get there by 7:30 because Oliver was once again running a race. But after that race: park time.

We didn't have an agenda. Some playgrounds would obviously be involved, but otherwise we just wanted to wander around and enjoy being outside. What a cool, beautiful day. We stumbled upon the West 110 St. playground, one of those built especially for little ones.

Soon after that, we found ourselves in the Arthur Ross Pinetum. The Pinetum is a semi-secluded area of the park, full of giant pine trees. We spread out our Zabar's lunch on a picnic table, and the sound of wind through pine needles made me feel like I was in a campground. We spent a lot of time playing this month's favorite game: where does Nils want to wander and what does he want to touch? 

After that, it was time for a quick run in the sun of the Great Lawn. And then, since Nils was clearly not going to nap in such an exciting place, it was time to go home.

A brief mention of Saturday's hero: Oliver. He biked 10 miles with 30 pounds of baby and car seat on his back, then ran a 10K, then helped Nils enjoy some post-race hot cross buns...

 
Then frolicked with us in the park, then loaded up the bike to head home... and when he saw Nils falling asleep in the bike seat and didn't like the way it looked, he pulled over somewhere near the Intrepid Museum, wrapped Nils in a blanket, and sat motionless for an hour while Nils slept (though to be perfectly honest, Oliver may have napped a bit himself). 

Nils was also a little hero, for being so agreeable on his first long bike ride. Such a great kid.

Lake Placid and such

   
Shortly before we moved to New York, I came across a book about Adirondack State Park. Upstate New York, bigger than many national parks, mountains and forests and lakes. The pictures took my breath away. "Oliver! We have to go there this summer!"

And then suddenly it was 2009. That turned into 2010, rolled on into 2011... you get it. It was always at the top of our list of places to go (oh, the hiking!), but always got pushed down somehow. Later. Next season. We've already rented a car so many times recently... let's wait a bit.

Would we ever have gone if my parents didn't book a week for our whole family at a time share? Thank goodness someone else kicked our butts into gear. Because, wow. We are sooo going back this summer to hike. (For real! We really mean it this time!)

Running around outside - can you see the ski jump off in the distance? Built for the 1980 Olympics, I believe.

Hiking up Cascade Mountain. Maybe you can tell by our attire - we weren't really dressed for hiking. We toughed it out. 

Side trip to Vermont. The Lake Champlain ferry approaches. Giving credit where it's due: photo taken by my brother.

Thing #2

Thing 2 on our list of things to do in NYC this year: Go to Harlem. Eat some good food.

We rode the 2 all the way up to 125th Street this Saturday. After the long ride we stretched out our legs at Marcus Garvey Park - first the playground:

then the overlook:

Quite the view up there. And we had the whole plaza to ourselves! We wandered back and forth until one of us decided it was time to go.

After a bit of strolling we went to Sylvia's, a restaurant we have been meaning to visit for the last 4 years. (4 years in New York! How is that possible?) I couldn't wait to see what Nils thought of the food. He loved the cornbread...

but alas, fell asleep before the collared greens came out. Such is life.

And yes, that is a hamburger in front of Nils. Oliver goes to New York's premier soul food restaurant and orders a burger. What can you do?

10 things: #1

 

1. New York is a feast. I have never been anywhere where there was so much energy, so much going on. Constantly. You can never hope to take it all in, and you can never complain that you are bored. It can be tempting to throw your hands up in the air - too many choices! Alternatively, maybe you can make a list. (you list maker, you!)

2. I've got a friend back in Wisconsin who has a great project going on. She has written up a list of 52 things she wants to do this year. It's a really neat variety of things: bake bread, go ice skating, give money to an animal shelter. She's blogging about it, and I've been following along. Fun to read, and inspiring.

Taking my cue from her, I've come up with a list of my own. Only it's a little shorter: 10 things to do in New York this year. We're always talking about doing this and that, then time passes and we're still just cleaning the apartment and going to the park. This list should be just the kick in the butt we need. And look, we can already cross off #1!

Thing #1: Go to an Off-Broadway Play


New York (obviously) has a great theater thing going on Broadway, but there is so much more to the theater world than the dozen or so pieces that have made it big. What about the smaller, more experimental stuff?

We went to the Bushwick Starr last night, a Brooklyn performance space carved out of a warehouse. The audience sat in mismatched chairs, some from Ikea. The young playwright filled in for an injured actress. The play was equal parts entertaining and disturbing, and ended with a group of young women, many of whom had been sexually abused, tearing another woman apart and eating her flesh. It was intimate, out there, and thought-provoking. I loved it.

Thing #1.5: have a drink and a conversation before the show

#21 in progress

This is what lunch looks like. Not every lunch, exactly. But this is what it often looks like. Little man in his high chair, sippy cup begging to be tossed to the floor. Laptop on, logged in to Rosetta Stone.


Yeah. Rosetta Stone.


I made a "life list" when I turned 30, and #21 is raise my children to be bilingual. English - German, obviously. The tricky thing here is that I'm hardly fluent. I probably should have made #21 read make Oliver raise my children to be bilingual, but that wouldn't make sense now, would it. Making someone else do the heavy lifting for my life list.


There are some obstacles:

• As I just said, I am not a fluent German speaker. I can read children's stories, and I can have simple conversations, but I do not have the thousands-of-words-vocabulary that I imagine is necessary to pass a language on to someone else.
• Lessons for me are not an option right now. I guess I could drag Nils to a class with me... *shudder*
• Oliver, our German-language ace in the hole, does not see much of Nils from Monday to Friday. At most, they get a few minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. At most.
• On the weekends, Oliver is hesitant to bust out the mother tongue. For whatever reason, he feels funny doing it in front of me. 

Here's what we have going for us:

• I have time with Nils. 5 solid days a week.
• I have access to Rosetta Stone's online learning system.
• I really want Nils to learn German.

When we sit down to lunch then, when I know we're going to be in one place for a good 15 minutes, I often fire up the German. Is this going to make Nils fluent? Hardly. It's the best I can do right now though, and it's a lot better than nothing. It keeps me learning, it gets me talking to him (with guaranteed proper grammar), and it keeps the language on my mind, making me more likely to cajole Oliver into a conversation of his own.


Not too terrible.

Feats of athleticism

 

Oliver made a new year's resolution of sorts back in January - start biking to work. I kind of had my eyebrows raised (is it feasible? Is it safe? Are you really going to stick with it?), but it has been a month now and he's going strong. Going strong and really enjoying it. He even launched into this sort-of romantic description recently of biking through neighborhoods, watching the trucks make early morning deliveries in Chinatown, crossing the bridge and watching the skyline unfold before him each morning. For a man who describes most things as "okay", this was a bit like watching him weep tears of joy.

A quick visual:

He starts out in Brooklyn, crosses the Manhattan bridge and scoots his way up 2nd Avenue until he reaches his office in Midtown. An 8 mile trip - that's 16 miles of biking each day. Impressive, no? I'm certainly impressed.

Not to be outdone, Nils has been working on his own athletic goals. Namely: walking! He started a few days before his birthday and is now up and running all over the place.

He is so proud of himself.