Whew! We’ve been away, or should I say, DH and I have been away. Yes, that is a choir of angels singing hallelujah at that pronouncement. A friend of mine got married in CT last Saturday and we decided to make it an extended parents week-end by leaving on Thursday to tool around NYC before the main event in Greenwich. Oh, what a week-end it was! Here are the highlights of Thursday and Friday in NYC.

Thursday Morning (2am)
Leave VA for NYC via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Thank goodness for that 20+ mile stretch of bridges and tunnels because I am pretty sure that if we had taken 64 to 95, we’d still be approaching Fredericksburg, right. . .about. . .now.

Thursday Morning (9:45am)
Arrive in NYC and check into the hotel. Kiss the car goodbye, turning the keys over to the valet. I’m having images of Ferris Bueller looping through my head, but this is New York City, not Chicago, and really, I drive a Nissan. We decide to hit the ground running and tool up and down 5th Avenue like we’ve got money to burn. The stores tick by like a Tim Gunn wet dream — Versace, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Michael Kors, Kenneth Cole, Cartier, Bulgari. It’s ridiculous, but fun. We pop into Tiffany and Co, just to look around. We make a pit stop at the Disney Store NYC — so over the top — and learn that this particular store has no affiliation with the ones you find in the mall. This store is, according to the clerk, “a theme-park store, you know, as if you were actually at Disney World.” Okayyyyyy.

Thursday Afternoon
We keep walking and hit our destination, the Howard Greenberg Gallery. DH and I have been toying with the idea of starting an art collection and this gallery has original images from some of our favorite photogs, namely James Van der Zee and Gordon Parks. Oh! It was amazing! Signed images taken by James Van der Zee from 1923! Images of Duke Ellington that Gordon Parks took while he worked at Time magazine from the 1960s. It was so amazing.

We grabbed lunch at Ray’s Famous (nothing beats a slice of NYC pizza) and then hit the 80’s for some consignment shopping. DH scored big time, but alas, nothing was working for me. Still, the week-end was early and we had plenty of time. We came back to the hotel, showered up and began our evening adventures.

Thursday Evening
Note to women of the world: Despite what you may see on TV, you CANNOT walk around Midtown in strappy, 3 inch heels. It hurts like a mo-fo after about 2 blocks. In our attempt to be authentic looking, we decided to take the subway to our dinner destination, Perilla, which is in the Village. Well, DH is no Magellean, despite his best efforts with Google maps. We walked two blocks in one direction, the wrong way. Three blocks back and were still turned around. In any event, by the time we got to the train and were able to sit down, my feet were throbbing like whoa. Thankfully, the restaurant was only half a block from the stop otherwise, I would have cabbed it the rest of the way. Dinner was really good — spicy duck meatballs, grilled skirt steak with creamed spinach, a nice chocolate trio for dessert. Yum!

We teetered our way out of the restaurant (hello wine with dinner) and hailed a cab back to Midtown to get our seats for the curtain rise at Wicked. SO good. I am a fan of the Wizard of Oz anyway, and this show just added to it. Very tongue in cheek, very clever, very powerful. It was a great show.

Up and out of the theatre for drinks at Flute before catching up with a college friend of DH’s at his apartment. Let’s see, that puts us at 1am, crashing out in the hotel. No rest for the weary! Nice. . .

Yes, we’ve been drinking. . .

Friday Morning (9am)
Basically, Friday was spent on the go. We hit the American Girl Store and picked up something for Mo for her birthday. That place was re-dick! The store is about 5 floors with a doll salon, doll hospital, theatre, cafe and merchandise. There were little girls everywhere and every little girl has a doll tucked under her arm, a harried looking mother in tow, and an American Girl shopping bag full of stuff. Oh to be 9 years old again!

Friday Afternoon/Evening
We took the subway down to Chinatown and after a few navigational errors, we make it to lunch. Dim sum at the Golden Unicorn -oh yeah! The joint was jumping and rightly so. I love Chinese food and this was the real deal. Right as we are leaving, we get caught in a rainstorm. It was like someone flushed a toilet in the sky. It was cold, fat drops just falling, falling, falling. No matter, we kept on going. We headed back to the subway and rode up to Century 21. I have to tell you, I was not prepared for the shopping mecca and madness that is Century 21. Skadoodles of stuff on a ska-billion different floors. Women were dropping their clothes, revealing bike shorts and sports bras so that they could just slips stuff on instead of waiting in the long ass line for the dressing room. It felt like a cross between the floor on the opening day of the New York Stock Exchange and the wedding gown sale at Filene’s Basement. Seriously, I was so overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to get, where to go and it was all I could do to find DH again when our designated meeting time rolled around. Poor DH — he had two bags full of stuff and looked at me incredulous that I didn’t have a single thing. No worries, I was going to remedy that before the week-end was over.

We met up with my brother-in-law (BIL) for a coffee break and then drag him along with us in search of something for me to buy. We hit up store after store before we go where we should have gone all along: Ann Taylor. What a mess that I come all this way to shop at a store that can be found here in VA. Still, because DH was distracted by BIL, the store was mine for the pillaging. All that guilt DH had from earlier in the day — vaporized. We bid peace out to BIL and then got glam for dinner with my cousin and DH’s college friend at Convivio. Great company, great food. Seeing as we had to be up and out on our way to CT in the morning, we had an early night — only 11pm.

We packed, we crashed, we were in the car by 9:45 Saturday morning on our way to Greenwich with visions of naps in our heads. We were not disappointed.

PS — The rest of the week-end was fabu, too., don’t get me wrong. The wedding was spectacular and we caught up with another set of friends for brunch before trucking it back down to VA.

We’ve got this porch swing in front of the house that I like to swing on when the girls are napping. It creaks like an old man with “arthur”-itis (thanks, Gram), but it is so nice to just relax, southern style.

The other day, when were killing time between snacks and dinner, we all went outside for a swing. Mo sprawled all over the swing, legs akimbo, while Co was happy to be upright of her her own doing, hanging onto the rails.

So what if I had not clue what was on the menu for dinner? It’s not like we all can’t afford to miss a meal, anyway. That afternoon was a rare one. The breeze was nice, the shadows were lengthening, the girls were getting along. I could hear Wilford Brimley ticking off the merits of Countrytime Lemonade and was actually surprised not to see Bartles and Jaymes sitting on the porch swing at the house next door. Sure, it wasn’t a Calgon moment, but I’ll take it.

I’m convinced that Co-dizzle is putting all of her 11 month old energy into “guarn-dam-teeing” that she is the last Mohican on this here reservation. Ugh, that child, a veritable Sleeps She Will Not! I love her to smithereens, but if she doesn’t start sleeping past 4:30am, there’s going to be a come to Jesus meeting of epic proprotions.

Now, I will say, in her defense, it is in part my fault. When we moved to the new digs, she went from being in a pack and play to a crib. Big transition for a small person. Add to that, a week later, yet another stint in the pack and play at Grandma and Pa’s house, while DH and I had some alone time with the house and all of our earthly possessions as we unpacked. Mo-dizzle came home totally toilet trained, even over night, but Co dug her heels into the sleeping through the night with such force, we’ve got some size 3 ruts in the floor leading up to her crib.

The pediatricians I have had for the girls have both said, “Three nights makes it a habit,” when I ask what I should do or not do with respect on how to handle it. My mistake in thinking that if I just popped a warm bottle in her maw, she’d get a milk coma and fall back to sleep, like her job description requires. Three nights of that, and it was like she was waking up to a hot fudge sundae. Well hell! Who doesn’t like that?

Back to the drawing board. As the wake-ups continued, I just prayed that she wouldn’t be so loud as to wake Mo in the next room. The house has all hardwood floors which means a fly farting sounds like an elephant stampede. A baby crying is like a banshee wail that can make your ears bleed. Several times over the weeks, I’ve stepped on a particularly unforgiving floorboard, which emits a Dumb and Dumber most annoying sound in the world type of sound.

Mo calls to me like she’s been awake for hours, which she probably has, so in addition to piping down pip-squeak, I’ve got to do a potty break for Mo. She wants to be up, no matter what the reason or the season. Oh, is there a bird out my window? Let me get up! Did the air conditioner kick on? Time to get up? Sister’s crying? Let me get up! And she knows I’ll let her get up and go, too, because we want her to be potty trained, right? Right. Ugh! I am so delirious from sleep deprivation, I’ve got toothpicks propping up my eyelids.

As for Co, instead of picking her up, I gave her the tough love. I let her cry, while I dangled my upper body into the crib to rub her tummy, rub her back, rub her face (oops, sorry) and keep putting back down when she would grab the bars and hoist herself back up. Fast forward a few more days. We have progressed into a wake-up at 4:30 in the morning, which, while still sucks, I can manage better than a 2:30 or 3:00 one.

I’ve decided to forgo the bottle, keep an appetizer plate stocked with pacifiers on her dresser and simply slide into her room to pop one in her mouth if she starts up a holler. Sometimes, it isn’t even because she lost her plug or has a wet diaper. She just wants to talk. They say what goes around comes around, right? Yeah, ask my mom about how at 18 months, I was still getting up to “talk”.

If she’s particularly persnickety and it’s closer to 5am or 5:15, I may pick her up and rock her in the chair. Sucker that I am, I realized that with Co, I haven’t had a chance to cuddle and just generally love on her the way I was able to with Mo, seeing as Mo was an only child at that age. It’s not that I look forward to these early morning wake-ups, but I’m do remind myself, it won’t be forever. I mean, if she starts Harvard Business school still waking up at 4:30am to chat, I think I’m the one that needs to be committed (a grown ass woman still living at home? I don’t think so, but that’s another blog for another day).

So, as dawn broke over our still sleeping neighborhood this morning, I’m thinking about how this would be good fodder for you folks. And then I stopped. I tucked Co a little closer to my chest and breathed in the scent of her curly ‘do. She sighed, eyes wide open, and manipulated her plug to just the right position in her mouth. She patted my shoulder with one of her little hands, as if to say, “Thanks, Mom.” I’m crushed with fatigue, with love, with the overwhelming desire to stop time and be thankful for this little sleep fighting warrior, my little Sleeps She Will Not.

So I had planned to write at length about the glorious day we had at the beach today. Yes, we went back to the scene of the crime, where the waves knocked me down again and again. Even as we were in the midst of jumping waves and trying to get sand out of every crack and crevice on Co’s body, I was thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait to write about this”.

Then, something even better happened, effectively wiping the slate. Late this afternoon, while we were waiting for my folks to come over for dinner, DH, Mo, Co and I were hanging out with our neighbors, K and C, and one of their kids, H. H is a freshly turned four year old, and a boys boy from the top of his fireman helmet head down to his ubiquitous fireman boots. Most days, we see him and his little sister, R, careening down the sidewalk, just being kids the way kids are supposed to be — carefree, laughing, dusty from playing so hard.

He and Mo were digging in K and C’s front flower bed, running in the front yard, down the sidewalk and back again. As per her usual, Mo had her pink blankie (lovey, wubby, security blanket) with her, trailing behind as she chased H down the block. Somehow or another H managed to get her to part with it and he laid it over his face, over his stomach as he lay in the grass. As K and I talked about this that and the other, C and DH compared favorite restaurants in Richmond. H and Mo were in the backyard, pulling toys out of the garage to play with. Several times Mo would run back to the front, just to make sure we were still there, before running back to whatever mischief there was to be had with H.

She and H returned to the front and continued to dig up the flower bed, spraying mulch and dirt over the grass and one another. I turned to Mo and, I asked her where her blankie was. No answer. At the same time I was asking her that, C asks his son H, “Hey H, what’s that in the front of your pants?”

All eyes on H and the curious bulge that has suddenly inflated his shorts. “Well,” he begins, unconciously jutting his pelvis forward, “Mo asked me to hold her blankie and I don’t have any pockets, so I put it in my pants.”

Oh. . . .my. . . .goodness. . . . Such a thoughtful little boy, that H.

Note to self: Before you ask someone to hold something for you, check to see if they have pockets.

One thing I didn’t have to really deal with when we lived in an apartment were bugs. There was a silverfish chilling on the wall one time and another doing laps in the tub, but after that, I’m hard pressed to come up with any ideas. I’m no entomophobic (yeah, say that three times fast) or anything, but I just prefer that my multi-legged friends keep to their side of the tracks and I keep to mine.

When I was 13 years old, I did a summer program at W&M for about two weeks in the middle of July. The girls all stayed in one of the dorms, which oddly enough became my freshman hall four years later when Mom and Dad stroked a check to the bursar and kicked me out. The dorms were the stuff of stereotypes — cinder block walls, prison cell beds, and I’m pretty sure, army issue desks, circa 1920. Anyway, the dorm also played Holiday Inn to a rather large family of cockroaches. This family liked to congregate at night by the pool (a.k.a the communal bathroom down the hall from our room). Honestly, not a night went by when some poor teenage girl was seen hugging the wall on her way to the toilet for fear of tripping over, stepping on, falling in step with, or even be seen by a towel clad cockroach on their way to party.

Those jokers were all over the place and really, there was nothing we could do but co-exist. Still, a line had been crossed when one night, my roommate and I come back from dinner only to find a little bugger in our room talking about, “Got some messages!” and handing us a While You Were Out slip. WTF? I’m sure this is how Joe’s Apartment got started.

Anyway, back to the here and now (the roaches all migrated to DC; Sorry, Lil’ Sass). Maybe it’s a “city bug” versus “suburb bug” kind of thing. These bugs over at the new house are as brazen as the apartment bugs were hermitic. I open the door to the house and there are about four flies with our storm door propped open like, “Man, didn’t you hear us knocking?”.

I step outside to put out the trash and the mosquitoes settle around me like powered sugar on a cake because yes, I am that sweet. Having grown up in New Jersey, I’ve seen skeeters as big F-16s; they’re not called the New Jersey Air Force for nothing. Here in the VA, though, the skeeters are small, so they attack in droves. In the five minutes it takes me to put out the trash, I’ve been eaten so badly, I look like the post-lunch rush at a Chinese food buffet. And my poor Mo and Co! The bug-spray clearly isn’t working because Mo’s got one right next to her eye and Co’s got one on the corner of her mouth. And see, here I thought we’d kissed all the sweet right off of their faces.

Oooohhh and the itching. All this talk about bugs and bites has kicked up the urge to run a cheese grater or swatch of sandpaper over my arms and legs. There is NOTHING better than scratching the crap out of a mosquito bite. I gotta go; there’s a block party tonight, the hardware store it about to close and I’m all out of Craftsman Assorted Grit.

So, this past Saturday, we loaded up the car and spent some time at the beach with the a colleague of DH and his family. DH realized that he hadn’t been to this particular beach since 1995. After a more thoughtful introspection, DH decided he’d spent more time on foreign beaches since being married to me, than on US beaches. *Ahhh, stick with me kid, I’ll show you the world*