visiting nana and nonno

we got to montauk in time for a lentil soup dinner and a game of cards afterwards. it's beautiful out here, with a little fog which makes it very peaceful.

jack is ready for montauk

jack is ready with the bags to be loaded into the car. we're going to montauk to visit nana and nonno.

and the fall classes begin

this morning was our first morning of classes. we were off to third street music school for c's violin repertory class followed by her very first day of orchestra. it felt good to be out early and setting off for class. the air felt crisp and wonderfully autumnal! after dropping c at third street i went over to the library and checked out several books about the pueblo indians for m's dance research. then i traipsed to my favorite coffee shop in the city these days:

mudspot!

mudspot plays great music and is always busy. (so they do a good business and can pay their rent and won't close? right?)

i made it back in time to third street for the orchestra class. i'm excited because orchestra is in the auditorium which means there's lots of room for the parents to sit down, hang out, and listen to the students' beautiful music and steve's (the orchestra teacher's) amusing anecdotes!

a grey wednesday

today was the first day of the girls' isadora duncan dance class at the Y. afterwards, c went uptown to play at her friend's playground. m and i went home to make dinner. afterwards, we went for a bike ride. the colors were steel blue and grey. it was so beautiful.

reading at the research library

one of my favorite books from my childhood is the lost queen of egypt, by lucile morrison. it's out of print now, and the library's copy is only available for reading in-house. i've been thinking about making a trip uptown to the research library for awhile now to read it with m and c. today we finally did it. (the lion above is fortitude. he is the northern-most lion on the steps).

the book is longer than i remembered! we only made it a quarter of the way through. it's not the easiest thing, traveling to the library everyday to read a book, so i don't know if we will finish it! m was not happy about that, but we did enjoy what we read today. and picking up the book at the rose reading room was very interesting!

luckily, they allowed us to take it downstairs to the children's section to read it together.

labor day picnic and playground trip

riding back from bowling green yesterday, we were inspired to plan a picnic for this morning. we made some bagels with cream cheese (i had a fried egg on some of my sour dough bread) and headed out for the weeping willow picnic spot. m and c and i are in the middle of dodie smith's hundred and one dalmations, so we had fun reading that for a little while. i also did a little bit of knitting on c's jumper with the blue pronto which i am quickly running out of (and it's no longer being made!) afterwards, we met our friends at the water park. it was unusually crowded so the children played in the boat area of the pier and janet and i sat on the ground with our backs to the park, looking towards new jersey. it was a very pretty view! at one point the security men came by in their cart and we both stopped talking and watched them drive by. "whew," i said, when they had gone, "i thought we were going to get yelled at for sitting on the ground outside the park." "so did i," said janet, and we both laughed rather madly. how pathetic is it that the park guards make us so paranoid?! ah. "living in the city is certainly filled with many thrills and chills," (i think that's from lou reed's sweet jane).

(m made this water bottle cover for me awhile ago. i love the colors!)

so i didn't take any pictures of the children running around today! just pics from my seated vantage point. the cake is janet's carrot cake that she made with her family. they did a delicious job!

a little dutch . . village

we took a bike ride down to bowling green to see the "dutch village" that has been put up for the commemoration of henry hudson's explorations of manhattan island and the hudson river. luckily, i looked up the "village' online before going over and was prepared for the little wooden facades housing dutch imports! (my friend and i thought we would have a nice dutch history lesson about what it was like for the early settlers of manhattan. ha!)

well, we did learn a little bit . . about dutch dresses and . . poffertjes! (little dutch pancakes). we had to twist g's arm to try the poffertjes, (he said they really didn't exist in the netherlands, they were only created for gullible nyc tourists), but we're glad we did because they were very yummy! (i can't remember if g admitted to that!)

the talk about the womens' dresses of holland was interesting. the material was beautiful! (though i felt for sure the fluffy hat she held up would be for the sunday, not the working day) and we enjoyed listening to the little carousel-like organ they had set up. (here it's playing one of my favorite songs by matty malnick and johnny mercer, goody goody.)

the day started out sunny, but by the time we were heading home it was beautifully grey. the statue of liberty has some odd looking metal grasshoppers hanging out behind her!