mom and josephine

In April, when Sean was already in New York, I took up a friend's offer for a mommy-daughter photo session in the Arboretum in Austin.  It seemed like a great Father's Day surprise, and the photographer, Christopher Fisher, did a superb job.  His company is called Priceless Perspectives.

I'm looking forward to the day when our son can manage a smile and/or interesting face, and then dragging Sean along into a full-family photo session!

Here are my favorite images.  Grandmas, I can print these once I'm back in Austin!  Let me know if there are any you want and what size.

not one, but TWO fiery displays

We had quite the farewell last summer, the evening before Josephine and I headed back home to Texas.  When we made our travel plans, we chose to fly back at the latest possible time: one month shy of Clement's due date.  The Fourth of July was not exactly a factor in our considerations.

But lo and behold, as we took a walk down to Astoria Park that evening, we came upon the makings of a well attended, very elaborate Independence Day celebration.  (No idea why they were holding it nine days early.)  

The sun was still up, so we debated the logic of hanging around long enough for it to get dark, or else heading home and going to bed at the proper time so Josephine would be well rested for travel the next day.
Spontaneity won out.  The idea of Josephine's first fireworks display being in Astoria, the night before we left, was just too romantic.  We couldn't have planned or asked for a more convenient arrangement.

A band and performances by United We Sing kept her enthralled for a good while, followed by lots of daddy-daughter play time...

How about that sunset?!  The fireworks were good, too.  Wish we'd had more than just Sean's iphone with us; it can't do the images justice, but at least it's something.

  

Josephine had fairly mixed feelings about the fireworks.  I'd warned her they would be loud, but she was ready to go home with the first boom.  (As I recall, Clement was also extremely responsive to all the racket!)  In the end, we moved up the hill further, away from the noise echoing off the river, I suggested she put her fingers in her ears, and we tried to enjoy them.  The real lifesaver was a sweet boy who started sharing his glow bracelets with her.  We were all touched by his generosity.  On the way home she even said something like, "He didn't mind that I didn't like the fireworks!  He still liked me." It was the sweetest insight; I think she might have actually fallen in love.  :-)

I fell in love, too, when I realized what a GREAT distraction they were on the airplane the next day!  

adios, Astoria.  Let's go have a baby.

how to melt your in-laws

Step One:  Invite them to visit you in New York, citing gorgeous spring weather and manipulating the grandmother's soft spot for her long lost granddaughter.

Step Two:  Keep things idyllic for the first day and a half, so as not to set off any initial alarms, which people are prone to have upon arriving somewhere new.  Take them for good Greek food and wine, amble through the park, permit granddaughter ham up her ballet routines*, facilitate trip to a museum, etc.

*A note on the ballet routines:  Josephine's interest in "ballet" has morphed from a mild curiosity that was sparked by me taking the occasional class for fun in Austin-- into something she has completely owned and redefined to fit whatever activity and song she is currently performing.  We bring home ballet books from the library so she can mimic the poses in the pictures, and Sean will facilitate various lifts with her (which is cute, but also a stretch: it somehow turns into her tearing around the apartment full speed, running into his arms, and him lifting her up to see if some part of her can touch the ceiling).

Left to her own devices, she invents "Chinese New Year Ballet" (in honor, I guess, of the holiday they celebrated at her preschool before we left town), "Washington DC Ballet" (when Sean was there on a trip), "Dangerous Ballet" (her attempt to acknowledge the perils of jumping from item to item, while trying to convince me this is a sanctioned "ballet" activity), and on and on.  Most involve awkward poses and tumbles, and usually there is loud singing.  It's an all out performance.  Even more so now that Mama Jo has provided her with the ballerina garb that you see in these pictures.



To see a clip of her in action, click here.  This is especially late in the evening and frighteningly slaphappy, but I don't have any other clips yet.  (Astonishing, considering the frequency with which she does "ballet."  I better stop taking it for granted and record it before she moves along to some other obsession.)

Step Three:  The following daybreak, coordinate weather conditions so as to have both heat and  humidity cranked way up.  Promptly embark on a walking tour of Astoria-- the full neighborhood-- one that requires your father-in-law to actually buy a hat to protect his head from burning.  (modeled by Josephine, below)

Stop briefly for lunch, but otherwise, DO NOT LET THEM REST.  It is imperative that you walk the full way back-- no public transportation-- so they can appreciate the various facets of your neighborhood.  Then invite them up to your 3rd floor oven of an apartment-- but do not let them sit still long enough to cool off.  After a few minutes of playing, insist that Josephine needs her nap.  Send them on their way with barely enough time to see Ground Zero (their only non-granddaughter-oriented request) before demanding they be back to your apartment in Queens by 5:00, thus ensuring they don't have time to stop by their hotel, take cold showers, rest, cool off, or otherwise do anything pleasant.

Step Four:  Upon their exhausted return to your sweltering abode, ignore all air conditioned restaurants in the neighborhood.  Stay in and "treat" them to a gourmet spread of foods you've been wanting to share with them... In other words, eat dinner IN the oven.  To help polish off the internal temperature of the apartment, make certain that at least a couple of these items require turning on the stove and oven for several minutes.  

Enjoy the expressions on their faces when you tell them you don't even have ice for their water.

Step Five:  Send them on their way early the next morning, covered in heat rash, eagerly looking forward to their Texan weather with central air conditioning.

Step Six:  The next day, go out and buy a window AC unit.  You know, just to rub it in.  (And because you're finally willing to admit that the situation has indeed grown intolerable for your own self, too.) (And because you actually do want them to come back again sometime, and you know they won't without the promise of climate control!)

Sean's Birthday

 When you turn 31, you can't expect much more than dinner and taking out the trash.

... just kidding.  We made more of it the next day by going to a minor league baseball game on Staten Island.  (Actually, Citi Field in Queens is much closer to our home, and that night the Yankees were playing the Mets!  Sounded like a pretty epic experience, but the game would have started too late for Josephine's capabilities, and as you might expect, each ticket was WAY too expensive, especially considering we would have had to bail after a few innings to get her to bed.)

So we trekked via subway, foot, and ferry to watch a Staten Island Yankees game, instead.

Josephine got to see the Statue of Liberty

It was set up to be a pretty great experience.  

(How's that for some foreshadowing?)

  

We enjoyed the journey, and it's a very nice stadium without a bad seat in the house.  Plus, the view from the ballpark was stellar; you could see downtown New York.

Speaking of the view...  I always get a little choked up during the national anthem.  Try listening to it live, somewhere nostalgic like a baseball game, with super-pregnant-hormones raging, and the World Trade Center construction right behind the flags.  There was really no possible way to hold it together.  I tried.  I couldn't.

I was not the only one with internal ragings, though.  These pictures are deceptively calm.  What should have been a perfect little birthday celebration for Sean (Josephine was even the one to request baseball!) actually takes the cake for being the second most publicly disastrous experience we've ever had with Josephine. (I expect that one monstrous tantrum on an airplane when she was two will forever reign as Most Horrid Parenting Experience Ever... but let's not tempt fate.)

Maybe it was a combination of heat and aspects of the journey being overwhelming... and then being relatively confined to a small space with the occasional stroll to tire her more... I don't know.  Maybe just really terrible luck.  Maybe a ploy to make Sean feel double his age and me question the sanity behind having another one of these people growing inside me.

Suffice it to say that being such a VERY long journey away from home did not work in our favor when it came to quelling the tyranny or finding a private place to have her regain composure.  It's not like we haven't had our fair share of public attitude and tantrums, it just takes experiences like this one and that airplane episode to make you EXTREMELY grateful for a car or other quick getaway!

Happy Birthday, tired man.

Ah well.

We survived, although I'm certain the melanin in many of our hair follicles did not.

And while the roughness of the experience hasn't faded completely in the 8 months between the event and me writing this, it's certainly lessened.  I know there will come a day when this memory elicits a chuckle, not our groans, and these pictures make us pine for every last moment with her at this age.
Parenting's SO weird.