First Day of Vacation

The first day of vacation is the best.  You're antsy from being in the car for so long, eager to explore.  It's like how they say that people are much happier on Fridays than they are on Sundays, with the expectation of the weekend ahead, rather than the memory of it having passed.  We are conditioned to always look forward.

We arrived in Plum Island in the afternoon, and after dinner we walked to the beach.  The beach was deserted and the water felt warm on our feet.  The evening - and the week ahead - was full of promise.  First day of vacation hope is so sweet that I'm not sure that any vacation can actually live up to it.  Though I think ours came close.  I mean, we still had to wash the dishes and clean up after ourselves.

Gone to the Beach

Gardening Class

During the heatwave that lasted for most of July, Roan was enrolled in a gardening class.  It was every Wednesday and Friday from 9 - 12, at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.  The plan was to drop Ro off, and spend 3 hours wandering the grounds with Lani Lou, exploring, reading plaques, identifying plants that might work in my own garden, playing with my camera.  I was really looking forward to spending time with only one child, as I rarely get any alone time with Ilan.  It was going to be so bucolic and relaxing!  There is an excellent outdoor cafe at the gardens, with very good food.  Everything you need for a lovely morning.

But the heat.  It really put a crimp in our plans.  Some days we sweated it out, but most other days I ended up running errands during that 3 hour stretch.  Anything to get into some air conditioning.

Here's Roan and Ilan, walking to gardening class along Flatbush Avenue:

Some garden shots:

Ilan and I discovered most everything in the gardens.  I learned that he likes to sniff plants and herbs, and he does not like to hold worms.  He likes to run through the sprinklers, and splash in the stream.  He loves lemonade. (We always tried to save some for Roan, but we never could).  He is not very interested in composting.  But what he loves most of all is the jumping tree, a tree with a low crotch that he can climb and jump out of while we're waiting for Roan to get out of class.

Cyclist

Over the 4th of July weekend, Roan started riding his pedal bike without training wheels (!!!)  He'd refused to ride the pedal bike since I took off the training wheels a month or two earlier (at his request).  Grandma and Grandpa Lyons were in town, and maybe he wanted to show off for them.  He started out riding in our backyard, and then we walked up 22nd Street to ride the flat blocks of 7th Ave.

I was so excited.  Ro learned to ride on a little 12 inch bike that a neighbor gave us, but I knew he'd be happier on a 16 or 20 inch frame, something that didn't weigh so much either, since we'd be riding up some steep hills.  And we'd definitely need to find a way to install a water bottle holder.

I tried to not to freak everyone out with my ridiculous exuberance, but two days after Ro started riding the 12 incher, I took him to Mr. C's bike shop and we picked out a 16 inch Specialized Hotrock.  At first I think Ro was a little put off by the larger frame, and the 12 incher is probably better for negotiating the tight curves of our small yard, but when we took the Hotrock on our first ride through Prospect Park together, he loved it.

He goes faster now.  I'm no longer puttering around on our rides, I'm moving at a regular, sometimes fairly quick pace.  On the hills he stands up in the saddle.  He starts on his own, and even got some experience slamming on his brakes and skidding to avoid the dogs who sometimes stray onto the path.

So far, our most frequent bike ride destination is Dog Beach, a pond in the middle of Prospect Park where dogs can go swimming.  Lani Lou loves to watch the dogs, so we'll stop and let him look for a while before riding around the pond.

Riding around the pond

Standing up in the saddle

Dog watching at Dog Beach

Roan's new bike, and new ability to go faster and further means our world just got that much bigger.

I was so amped up about our family bike ride possibilities that I bought three roof racks for the car, so we can bring our bikes on vacation.  We can also cart the bikes around Brooklyn, to bike paths that are several miles away, and not yet within easy biking distance for Ro.  This weekend we mounted and tested the racks, and drove to a path along the Belt Parkway for our first test ride.

Summer in the City

You guys: it has been so so hot.  All we do is sweat sweat and sweat.  I wear dresses and the sweat drips down my legs.  The boys sweat through their sunscreen, and even after I dab their faces with hankies little beads of moisture appears on their upper lips, like beards.

I wish you could tell from these photos how oppressive the heat is.  It should show up in my photographs, it's so thick.  The other night I had dinner with an author, at Pok Pok Ny, this really hip semi-outdoor Thai restaurant with no air conditioning.  We stood in a long line of Brooklynites to eat dinner at 5:30 in the afternoon.  Have you ever eaten incredibly spicy food in 100% humidity?  It was like a competitive sweat fest.

This month Roan is taking a gardening class at the botanic gardens, every Wednesday and Friday from 9 till noon.  I thought it would be so fun, hanging out with Ilan for 3 hours, wandering around the gardens.  But even at 9AM it's so damn hot, and we just sweat the whole time.  The thing is, the air is so still.  There's no breeze, and it just hangs on you.  Sometimes when I move my arms, the air feels so thick I expect to see streaks.

During this heat wave Grandma and Grandpa Lyons came to visit from Texas, and I think they were quite horrified by the heat.  In Texas, everything is air conditioned.  Here, not so much.  Even when we turn on our wall units, the bathroom is steamy with humidity, walking in there feels like you're entering a sauna.  We can't use the oven, or even the stove top, it's just too much heat.  Everything has to be BBQ'd outside.  

Here are some shots of our heat wave activities.

Reaching for water at the Botanic Gardens

Open hydrant at a block party

Roan learns to ride a pedal bike!

"Pool party" in our yard

Watching koi in the Japanese Garden

Sweating in our yard

Lani plays in a stream at the Gardens

Katie

This is Katie.  She's been our babysitter for 2 and a half years; i.e. Ilan's entire life.  She left us to go to school in Virginia Beach.  We really, really miss her.

Katie seemed to really love and enjoy our kids, which is the primary thing you look for in a babysitter, and she also didn't take much crap from them.  She wasn't afraid to discipline them, and wasn't afraid to occasionally tell Roan that she was really bored of trains and could they please please please talk about something else?  She has lots of common sense, which is something I no longer take for granted, after having a babysitter without any.  And she was always on time.  In fact, she was usually early.

Katie was almost too good.  There was a time when she was cutting Roan's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into car shapes.  Roan told me about this, and asked me to cut his sandwich like Katie does, and I never got it right.  "Mommy, you didn't make the spoiler like Katie makes the spoiler," he would say, or, "where are Lightning's eyes, Mommy?" And let me tell you, when you are rushing around trying to feed your kids, and pretty hungry yourself, the last thing you want to hear from your little pipsqueak of a son is, "mommy, this doesn't actually look like the Lightning McQueen sandwich that Katie made so I'm not going to eat it."

I took the top photo on her last day with us, at the end of June.  This one on the bottom is from May, in our backyard on a rainy day.

Little Boy