Wonderful weekend

I love these fall weekends. Friday we attended the opening of Josephine’s solo exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins. The show looks incredible and we are so proud of how far she has come in her artistic career. On Saturday we took the ferry down to Dumbo for brunch. The East River Ferry has been great. The pier is only two blocks from our house and it’s so much easier to navigate with a stroller than the subway. Today we rented a car and drove out to Long Island for a day of biking and picnics at Caumsett Park with Dave, Simone, and Henry. Ellis is just all smiles and giggles around Sophie.

Ellis draws glasses

Ellis and Erik draw in her room every morning while I stumble out of bed, shower and make breakfast. Half of the time she calls out requests for things she wants Erik to draw. Usually it’s her closest buddies (Lulu, Annabelle and Max), Mama and Papa, baby with her bottle, cats, trains and shoes. This morning Ellis surprised us by drawing her own glasses over Erik’s drawing of us. She loves glasses...which is great because I have a strong feeling she’s inherited our less than 20/20 vision. Besides glasses, she also likes her friends to have pacifiers. She’s drawing one on herself in the second photo.

Bring to Light

Earlier this month I went to the Bring to Light Festival in Greenpoint. It’s part of the global Nuit Blanche celebration. I went last year and was amazed to see Ellis’ local playground completely transformed. Loved it again this year. The large scale projections were my favorite.

Bike rides and pumpkins

Another weekend has flown by. This one was unexpectedly warm...a nice last gasp of summer. I brought the sandals and picnic blanket back out and we enjoyed two nice bike rides. We are starting to get the hang of biking as a family and looking forward to more rides before winter sets in. After two years of traveling with Ellis in the stroller or carrier, biking is a refreshingly different pace. On Saturday there was a Pumpkin Festival in McCarren Park. Ellis enjoyed decorating her first pumpkin. We also made it up to Long Island City and saw a neat sky writing piece.
The past few weeks have been great for Ellis. She’s healthy, happy, sleeping well, not terribly tantrum-y, picking up a few new words everyday, and newly obsessed with drawing. I know other weeks will be a lot more challenging (like the potty training ones) so I just want to pause and take note of these weeks while they are here. I am probably feeling so gushy because she just said her first “Love you Mama” when I put her to bed tonight.

Apartment #2

We’ve now lived here for over a month and are feeling very settled in. Only a few times have I almost walked up to the third floor. I hardly miss our old space although I am very curious to see how the new tenants have transformed it. For friends and family who haven’t been able to visit in person, I wanted to share a few photos. One is a pre-cleaning, post-hurricane Ellis photo and another is of our new dining room chairs.

Lovely weekend

It’s Sunday night again and we are relaxing after a great weekend spent around the neighborhood. On Saturday we had a few friends over to celebrate Ellis’ birthday and today we went for a bike ride and stopped by another birthday party. Ellis looks so much older in these photos. She’s really becoming a little girl.

Happy 2nd Birthday Ellis!

Can’t believe Ellis is now 2! Erik and I took off of work today to celebrate with her. We spent the morning at the adorable art/cafe/playspace Moomah in Tribeca. Ellis painted a little canvas and had a blast in their “funky forest” room. Mostly she was in complete awe of two four year old girls and tried to copy everything they were doing. So sweet to see her try and jump (or “shump” as Ellis says). She’s still working on the mechanics for shumping!

She is saying so much these days; a lot of two and three word sentences and some intense babble conversations. I love the surprise of not knowing which words she will pick up next. Really looking forward to seeing what great changes her third year will bring. I know there will be tantrums, but as long as Erik and I can keep from throwing tantrums ourselves, we should all be fine.

Molly’s wedding

We traveled to Illinois over the long Labor Day weekend to celebrate Molly and Josh’s wedding and to visit with all of the Carrow family. We had a great time and were happy to sneak in one last free flight with Ellis before her second birthday. Mike flew in from SF and Ellis greeted him by calling him by his name.“Mike” is easy for her to say. She really enjoyed spending time outside, in the pool and was in complete awe of her older cousins. We’ve had a busy few months of traveling combined with the move. Looking forward to a few weekends at home to fully settle into our new apartment and to go through the few leftover boxes I've shoved in a corner!

Quite a week

A move, an earthquake and a hurricane! This has been a crazy week. Thankfully, the two natural disasters were more bark than bite and thankfully we are almost fully settled into our new home, just one floor below our old one. We love it here. The deck we had was wonderful, but giving Ellis her own room is even better. She's adjusted really well. There's more space for her to play and two mirrored closets she's obsessed with. She could dance, make faces, and blow kisses at herself all day. More pictures of the new place soon.