Wave Hill

Jay was away for Spring Break, at the Bologna Book Fair, and Ro's preschool was closed for 10 days for Passover, so my Dad came out to assist me and spend time with the boys.  Every night my Dad and I made plans for the following day, what my Dad would do with the kids while I was at work.  I wrote incredibly detailed directions, because it's not easy to drive in New York or find a place to park.  I  knew Roan wanted to show Popi Grand Central, and my directions on how to take the subway there and come home again filled an entire page, front and back.  Somehow, they still got lost, and took 3 or 4 more trains than was really necessary, but they still made it home in time for dinner.

My dad took Roan to the Brooklyn Central Library, where they spent a few hours reading books about trains.  They drove around Bush Terminal, an old freight yard in our neighborhood that is just now being put back into service, and watched some work diesels loading a brand new Long Island Railroad train onto the rails.  They went to Bounce U, a playroom full of bouncy houses and insanely huge slides.  They went to the Children's Museum.

Then my mom came to town, which was very good because for all my father's adventures, he never was all that interested in the banalities of childcare, like figuring out when to give Ilan a bottle.  On Friday, we took the subway to Grand Central, and rode the Metro North up to Wave Hill, a rambling garden that overlooks the New Jersey Palisades.  We were a bit early in the year to enjoy the garden - it will be gorgeous in another month, but it wasn't really about the destination.  We just needed a reason to ride the Metro North.

March

It is still cold, but we are starting to venture outside.

Lani Lou Funny Guy

At the table, Lani puts the back of his hand over his mouth, wiggles his fingers, and makes wah wah wah noises.  He puts his foot on the table, on and off, on and off.  Roan eggs him on.  Roan laughs and says, "Lani Lou's a funny guy!"

When they're riding bikes, Lani rides with no hands.  Roan (who I've never seen take his hands off the handle bars) can't believe it.  "Put your hands back on!" he says.  And then, "what a funny guy."

When I'm sitting on the floor, Lani stands behind me and hits my shoulders, then hides when I turn around.  He will trash any laundry pile, fling clothes through the air, laughing.  Roan hangs underwear on his ear and laughs like a maniac.  I'll admit, that one is pretty funny.

In the car, Lani Lou makes this gurgle / shriek sound.  He laughs at himself and says, "aga," which is how he says again.  And then he gurgle / shrieks again.  He cracks himself up every time.

Roan tells him to blow a kiss, and he blows a kiss.  Roan tells him to go in circles, and he spins in circles until he falls down.  He is such a ham.

The Polar SS

It is unfortunate that Roan, my Jewish son, is obsessed with The Polar Express, a story about a train that takes children to the North Pole to meet Santa.

It is even more unfortunate that when he talks about it at his Jewish preschool, which is pretty much all the time, he pronounces it so that it sounds like "The Polar SS."  I have had several parents ask me what the Polar SS is all about, because their children are talking about it, and they heard about it from Roan.  Last week alone five Jewish women asked me to explain the Polar SS.

"It's the not the SS," I say, "that's just how Roan says the word "express.""  And the moms or teachers are relieved.

"It's this great story of a train ride," I explain, "about a bunch of kids who take this crazy midnight express train to the North Pole."  The moms and teachers seem interested. "And then they, um, you know, meet Santa Claus," I say.  The moms and teachers look concerned all over again.

Kitchen Bikes

That Time We Took Ballet

I signed Roan up for quite a few classes at our YMCA last year.  He's hit the age where most of the classes are drop off, so I can drop him off at art or soccer or whatever for 45 minutes and hang out with Ilan.  Over the summer I wanted something to do on Wednesdays.  There were, I'm not kidding, about 18 ballet classes offered, and nothing else.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but as the mother of two boys, I have to admit to some frustration.  Our local YMCA offers more ballet classes than *any other class.*  For example, there are more ballet classes than art, soccer, track, theater, and creative movement combined.  This seems particularly unfair, since ballet is mainly for girls.  We live in Brooklyn, where everything is overcrowded, and you've got all these kids who want to take classes, and so you offer tons and tons of the one class that's geared towards only one gender?

Naturally I've complained about this to other moms, who all encouraged me to put Roan in ballet. They all know or have heard of boys who took ballet, and if they had boys themselves, or a Y membership, or whatever, they wouldn't hesitate for one single second to sign their son right up.  Some moms are more aggressively liberal - what's my problem, they want to know?  This is Brooklyn!  Aren't we all above gender norms here?!  It's not like he'd be the only boy in class, they say.

So I signed Roan up for ballet. There were 7 other kids in his class.  All of them were girls.  Girly girls, who showed up every week in pink and purple tights, leotards, and tutus.  There wasn't a single tomboy or gender neutrally dressed girl in his class.

I bought Roan a wife beater and dressed him in his tightest shortest shorts, because it just seemed wrong, in the face of all that skin tight gear, to have him show up in cut offs and a baggy shirt.  I honestly thought he would enjoy ballet, the structure of it, being told what to do.  We'd tried those free form run-around-like-a-crazy-person classes, and Roan was not on board.  But he didn't take to ballet.  He spent his time huffing around the perimeter of the room, pretending to be a train, and when the teach gave him a choice between participating and watching quietly from the wall he chose to watch.

After a few classes we stopped going.  Roan could take it or leave it, but I began to feel like we were crashing a party.  There was a real sense of camaraderie among those girls, all dressed up like princesses and excited to prance around.  I think it spoiled the atmosphere to have a boy running around on a track no one else could see, hooting and hollaring and screaming "ALL ABOARD THE POLAR EXPRESS!"  Or sitting in the corner, like a delinquent, watching.

I guess I have a new appreciation for these sort of gender segregated classes.  It's nice for girls to be girly with other girls, and if my son isn't asking me for a tutu and ballet flats there's no reason I need to put him in that environment.  We are still baffled by the sheer number of ballet classes and still waiting for the Y to offer a class called "Pretend to be a Train."  Until then, we'll stick with art.

A Few of My Favorite Things

My baby on tippy toes

His floppy ears

This moose face he makes all the time

Roan in his wetsuit

When Roan tells me the moral of a story.  The other day he said, "do you know what the point of WALL-E is?  It's that we need to take out the trash."

Today he summarized the Purim story.  "It's just about a bunch of Jews.  There are a bunch of Jews, and a king."

And when Roan tries to teach something to Ilan.  Roan spent much of Wednesday trying to teach Ilan to have rhythm.  "When you hear music, you clap the beat like this.  The beat is the rhythm.  No Ilan, that is not right.  Okay Ilan, good clapping, you are a clever baby, but you have to clap when I clap, like this."  And on and on and on.