BBJ Does The City!

Oh, what a time we had, kids. Daddy was working in New York City this week, and BBJ and I decided to join him for a day. (Taking a toddler into New York is MUCH more appealing when there is a hotel room, AC and a clean bathroom involved!)

Aunt SheShe GRACIOUSLY offered BBJ and I ride into the train station on Wednesday morning. We left the house around 8:30 and made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare. (Of course, I realized just after SheShe pulled away that I'd left
BoBo at home....and we had planned to spend the night in the city. Oops.)


(At the Train Station waiting for The Train)

BBJ spent a lot of time in this stroller. She's getting dangerously close to "too heavy" for the poor thing, but it's just so darn portable. I think it will hold out until we can get a new double stroller around Christmas!

We arrived in Grand Central Terminal around 11 am and made our sticky way to the hotel. By that point, we were both ready for a short rest, so I let BBJ out of the stroller and we ran around the hotel room for a few minutes. When we were both cooled down (and dried off! New York is STICKY!) we loaded back into the stroller and went around the block to see what we could find. There was a Ray's Pizza just around the corner from us, so we stopped in there. Silly me - I gave BBJ a choice. Instead of Ray's Famous Pizza, she chose Ray's Overpriced and Vaguely Too Spicy Pasta with a red tomato sauce. Oh well - we took it back to the hotel room, stripped BBJ down to her diaper, put her on a towel and I let her go!

We made a fairly respectable dent in the pasta plate, and then I put her down for her nap.

After ten minutes of screaming, I got her back up from her crib and put her in a bed with me. (The room had two Full beds. The crib the hotel provided was one of the small, metal travel cribs that all hotels have. At what point did my behemoth daughter outgrow those things?! Her body completely filled the mattress, top to bottom, with her arms touching either side of the crib. Oh dear.) We lay there, in the bed, for over an hour...and never fell asleep. I finally lost interest in trying to sleep and put her back into her stroller. Don't get me wrong - she wasn't awful in the bed - she just didn't sleep! I lost my temper when she stood up for the fourth time and, when I asked her lay back down, she misjudged and lay down...right off the bed. She ended up wedged between the nightstand and the bed, with no way to get herself out.

We made our way in a vaguely southern direction, aiming towards Chinatown. When I found a Subway station, I decided to brave the rails.

Oh. My. Goodness. Those subways are NOT meant for prams, wheelchairs or ANYTHING else that doesn't walk on two legs. The stairs going underground are steep and narrow! The turnstiles to go into the subway are narrow as well. We ended up asking the attendant to open the Service Entrance for us, which of course set off an alarm...each time we used it. Oh well - at least now I know why the alarms are always going off!

As it turns out, BBJ definitely does NOT like subways.




She was an absolute angel on the streets - there were so many things to see and smell and point at. The only noise she ever made was to get my attention and point out a dog. Or a toy. Or an M&M approximately 16 times larger than she was. (Too bad I realized at the last possible moment how close we were to the M&M shoppe in Times Square!)



(BBJ in Chinatown, happily holding a Mango Bubble Smoothie.)

Chinatown is still my favorite part of New York City, and we made full use of our time there! BBJ and I quickly found an inexpensive Bubble Tea shop, where the girls were appropriately awed by both BBJ's beauty and my mad Chinese skilz. (That will make ANY smoothie go down better!) We also found a small grocer and bought some crackers and various wrappers for various Asian dishes. There was a small toy shoppe that caught my attention while BBJ took a quick nap in her stroller - I found two shaggy little rubber balls for BBJ to play with on the train. Of course we stopped by my favorite Tofu Shop (Fong Inn Too)for a few cups of Dofu Fa. (One for me, one for Lo Gung and one to share with a friend that night over dinner.) My favorite find, though, was a small restaurant supply shoppe. Oh, be still my heart! They had everything I could ever want to outfit my Chinese Kitchen, large or small! I ended up with a new bento box for Lo Gung. (It has a small cup to hold the rice toppings so his rice doesn't get soggy, and it has a small compartment in the lid that holds a small fork, spoon and set of chopsticks. So cute!) I also found a small strainer that fits PERFECTLY in my sink drain, to catch those nasty little bits of dinner before they make their way to our septic tank. Oh, but the things I COULD have taken home with me. They have small melamine rice bowls that match the two we have here. I could have had a set! As in, four matching rice bowls that are plastic and Chinese-y and...oh well. Next time. I knew I would be carrying everything home by myself. I just hope I can find the shop again! There were woks in every size, and spiders to match. (A spider is a large wire spoon/strainer that's PERFECT for fishing out delicate wontons or other boiled dumplings from their soup. The wire allows maximum water drip-off, as opposed to simply using a slotted spoon.) There were also loads of the Little Plastic Things that seem to show up in every Hong Kong kitchen - small plastic covers for a roll of toilet paper (doesn't everyone have a roll of toilet paper on the kitchen table for wiping their hands?), small plastic toothpick holders, plastic bins for washing vegetables in, and small plastic stools that stack up neatly in the corner, waiting for the next large dinner party!

Sweet little restaurant supply shop, I WILL be back for you! Next time, I'll have my in-laws with me...which means at least 6 arms to carry the load!

We met up with my friend (Hi, Kim!) for dinner at Grand Central Terminal before she caught her train home, and then decided (last minute!) that perhaps we would stay in the City overnight afterall! With no BoBo, and no crib that fit BBJ, and no room to give BBJ to herself, it was definitely taking a risk.

We made it back to the hotel around 9, thinking we would get there the same time as Daddy. (He was in a dinner meeting that was supposed to end at 8:30.) Daddy called us around 9:15 to tell us he was on his way back. (One of the key members of the dinner party wasn't able to arrive until 7:30, so everything was thrown off by about an hour.) By the time Daddy arrived at the hotel it was 9:30. I had already called Room Service for a glass of hot milk for BBJ, and it arrived shortly after Daddy did. (Can I throw in a little rant here? I know Room Service is generally more expensive than almost any other option we would generally take, but how on EARTH can they justify charging us $12.41 for 8 oz of hot whole milk?! $12.41?!) Thankfully, BBJ downed her entire bottle of Room Service milk. Then came the problem of getting her to go to sleep.

For some reason, she was scared to sleep in that room. When I told her it was time to go to sleep, she ran for the door and tried to "go home." Realizing that the crib was not going to be a happy option, I curled up with her in the 2nd bed. It was the sweetest thing she's done in a LONG time. I wrapped my oldest baby in my arms, stroked her hair, and whispered in her ear. It only took about ten minutes for her to be asleep deep enough that I could crawl out of her bed and into Lo Gung's. (Lo Gung might have made the bed more crowded than BBJ did, but he doesn't roll around and kick NEARLY as much as she does!) She slept soundly until 5:30 the next morning, at which point I crawled back into her bed and we snuggled and dozed until 6:30 when Daddy had to get ready to go to work.

We caught the first Off-Peak train back home and met Aunt SheShe at the station. The whole trip was MIRACULOUSLY lovely.

Oh, and it turns out - trains are only MARGINALLY better than subways, in BBJ's opinion.