v.2

Sunday we had a playdate with Raya, the 3.5 year old daughter to my old friend Tami. Tami and I were best friends in elementary school. We hooked up again around 2001 because she knows Tommy from college, what a small world. We lost touch after that and then hooked up again because of Facebook. We met at the playground by the Brooklyn Bridge. I love that playground mostly because I love the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s my favorite bridge. Afterwards, we had lunch at Bubby’s.

I love that smile on her face in this shot!

Tami and Raya

Robert and Raya (and my shadow)

Raya kisses Sienna

Going down the slide

Sienna eating a biscuit at Bubby’s. She got a scrape on the side of her face from a fall.

Yves cutting up Sienna’s french toast

Even though Yves cut up little pieces, Sienna grabs the big piece he didn’t cut up!

My smoked chicken salad sandwich

Comments(0)

Once again I am behind in my posts so I will try to catch up in the next couple of days. A lot has happened last week! On Tuesday I met up with Pete for lunch at our favorite Shopsin’s. It’s been awhile since we have gone! We have to get back on going regularly again. We opted to get some sandwiches and share them. We decided on the Rooster, chicken salad with avocado on cheesy garlic bread. YUM. Then also we got High School, turkey and sausage with mushroom gravy. YUM.

The rooster came first and I was pleasantly surprised that the chicken salad was warm! OH MY GOSH! Heaven! I would never have thought something as simple as warm chicken salad would make such a big difference. Then the High School came out. It was in a bowl!! It had bread in there but I guess they put it in a bowl because of the gravy. Thick and gooey gravy. Delicious!!

Pete was on his lunch hour so we started heading back. I got home to find that Sienna has a fever (she had felt a tad warm when I left but I was hoping it would subside). More on that in the next post.

Comments(3)

Sunday I went to see Dark Was The Night at Radio City with Joy. She first lured me to go by saying that Ben Harper was supposed to play it. He didn’t - DOY! (I think he was at the Pete Seeger celebration at the Garden) but it was a great show anyway! It started around 8:15, had a 20 minute intermission and ended about 11:115ish. We had pretty good seats, first mezz in row C. Alison was there with Josh in the orchestra. ;-p~

Dark Was The Night is a compilation that benefits the Red Hot Charity Organization and all the benefits go to prevent Aids and for Aids research (I believe). You might  remember past compilations such as Red, Hot and Blue or Red, Hot and Rio.

Stand outs for me were David Byrne (I was surprised at how good his voice sounded as I’ve only seen him live with Talking Heads), My Brightest Diamond, Feist, Bon Iver, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Honestly, I really enjoyed everyone!Here is the setlist taken from brooklynvegan.

Dark Was The Night @ Radio City Music Hall 5/3/09 - Setlist (started by Happy Genius Heroes)
1. Dirty Projectors - “useful chamber” and ’stillness”
2. Dirty Projectors - “Stillness Is the Move”
3. Dirty Projectors - “Ambulance Man” w/ David Byrne
4. Dirty Projectors - “Knotty Pine” w/ David Byrne
5. My Brightest Diamond - “Feeling Good”
6. The National - “Slow Show”
7. The National - “England”
8. The National - “So Far Around The Bend”
9. The National - “Vanderlylle Cry Baby” w/ My Brightest Diamond
10. Dave Sitek - “With A Girl Like You”
11. David Byrne - “Don’t Fence Me In”
12. David Byrne - “Dreamworld: Marco de Canavezes” w/ Justin Vernon
13. David Byrne - “Waters Of March” w/ Leslie Feist
14. Bon Iver - “Brackett, WI”
15. Bon Iver - “Blood Bank”
16. Bon Iver - “Big Red Machine” w/ Matt Berninger
17. Bon Iver - “Flume” w/ My Brightest Diamond
18. Feist - “The Wagoner’s Lad”
19. Feist - “Look At What the Light Did Now”
20. Feist - “Train Song” w/ Justin Vernon
21. Feist - “Someday Baby”
22. Sharon Jones - “Not Gonna Cry”
23. Sharon Jones - “When I Come Home”
24. Sharon Jones - “Inspiration Information”
25. Sharon Jones - “100 Days, 100 Nights”
Encore
All - “This Land Is Our Land”
(they were playing the song rather mellow and then Sharon Jones came out to show them how to really sing it!)

David Byrne with the Dirty Projectors

My Brightest Diamond

The National and My Brightest Diamond

Feist

David Sitek of TV on the Radio

I loved these drummers that came out with David Byrne and I loved that he played 2 songs from past compilations that were never heard live!

Bon Iver and My Brightest Diamond

Sharon Jones

The Finale

Comments(0)

Some cute photos of Sienna and Grandma that I wanted to post before I forget about them! It’s amazing how fast Sienna has grown!

Comments(1)

Here are some holgas I took in Jamaica. I’ve never been a beach person but I’m sure that would be different if I grew up with beaches like the ones in Jamaica!

Comments(1)

Saturday we met up with Tammy, Mark and Vitamin Z at the Queens County Farm Museum for some pumpkin picking (or pumpkin picking upping as corrected by Yves as we weren’t literally picking pumpkins, just picking them up off the ground) I was unsure about the place, it being Queens and all, but it wasn’t bad! It was actually perfect for Sienna. Not too overwhelming but enough things to entertain her. There were farm animals (a cow, sheep and horses) and some sort of birds roaming around (which I thought were turkeys but no one agreed with me) and chickens and roosters. There is a corn maze but there was a sign that said it was a bit muddy so we didn’t bother. And we picked up lunch at the lone food stand where they made gyros and kebabs which were actually pretty good! Go figure! Zack ended up having to leave a bit early as he was cranky from being woken up from his nap to meet us.

running after the unidentified birds

Mark and mini Mark

Zack as snuggle bunny

Sienna kept trying to pick up huge pumpkins!

So many pumpkins! Which one to pick?

This one!

Tammy & Mark choose 3 pumpkins. I asked what they were going to do with them and Tammy said roast the seeds. She asked what I was going to do with ours and I said ‘decorate it and let it rot!’

At first Sienna didn’t want to go up to the chickens or the cow. We had to convince her it was ok.

Comments(0)

We finally headed over to Brooklyn Bridge Park so I can check out the waterfalls art exhibit. There has been some controversy surrounding it. It seems the salt water splashing up from the ocean is killing all the greenery and turning it brown. I still wanted to check it out before they shut it down. What can I say, I have a thing for waterfalls. Well, it wasn’t on! I was a little bummed as I just wanted to see it even though Yves thinks it’s a farce. Oh well. We headed over to the playground! We don’t come down this way too often as it is a little bit of a trek but I do love this area. The Brooklyn Bridge is my favorite bridge so any shot with it in the background, I love! Like this one!

And to be fair, here’s a shot with the Manhattan Bridge in the background. I think Sienna liked the sounds of the train as she kept looking up and pointing to it whenever the trains came by and saying some semblance of the word ‘train’.

We decided to go to Bubby’s for lunch. The good thing about having lunch at around 11ish, there isn’t a wait! By the time we came out, there was a little bit of a wait for a table. I give it a A+ for the super kid friendly atmosphere (they even gave Sienna water in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw! This was given with our water for the table!) and the fact that the men’s room also had a diaper changing station! And they get another A+ for great food! I got a turkey blt and Yves got a grilled ham and cheese. My turkey blt was awesome! Yves’ was good but a little bit on the salty side (from the mustard and the pickles, not from the ham!) But the fries were fabulous! Needs no ketchup fabulous! And for Sienna we got a side of french toast and apple cider. She ate more than I thought she would!

I also want to document something that happened last Friday, the 12th.  Something I call the ‘poop incident.’  Normally Yves does the bathing duties during the week but he was working late that night (as well as Wednesday and on Saturday!) So I’m bathing Sienna, everything is going as it usually does when I smell a foul odor. Sienna farts. No biggie, not the first time. I joked with her that I didn’t see any bubbles! Then next thing I know, I hear a plop. Then another plop and Sienna is standing there looking back toward her butt. She’s taking a poop in the bath!! I was so dumbfounded I just did not know what to do! This has never happened before nor have I even read about something like this in all the motherhood stuff that I read! I was frozen in shock. I didn’t know whether to laugh or freak out (I did both!) I went with my first instinct and got some toilet tissue and scooped it up. Yes, I know, not a very smart move as the tissue fell apart once it hit the water. Oh well. I just proceeded to pick it all up with the tissue anyway and threw it in the toilet. Thankfully it wasn’t a mushy poop! I drained all the water out and basically re-bathed her. What a memory!

Comments(1)

Saturday we took Sienna to the New York Aquarium. This was her first visit so we weren’t sure what her reaction would be. We were hoping she would get excited and amazed seeing all the fish and underwater life. She was more like ‘yeah, that’s cool. What’s next?’ or ‘I wanna run around!’ I guess she won’t be a marine biologist! HA! But she is still young. I can’t remember the last time I was there or if I ever even went there but it was relatively small. I actually got excited by the fish and seals and walrus sightings. I could have stayed a little longer than the hour and 20 minutes but I’m sure we’ll go back once Sienna is a little older. We wanted to get tacos for lunch but the taco stand I had in mind didn’t open for another 30 minutes when we got there. Sienna had fallen asleep so we didn’t really want to wait around. Instead we headed over to Golden Krust bakery for patties. She woke up when we got on the subway and tried hard dough bread for the first time. I’m not surprised that she liked it!

Sienna touching a big hermit crab!

We got Sienna a super soft stuffed turtle

Asleep at Golden Krust!

Enjoying Hard Dough bread

Comments(3)

August marks the 4 year anniversary of the CD mix of the month group and we celebrated it in the daylight at Coney Island this past Saturday. What fun! Me, Robyn, Brenda, Alison, Carrie, Nuno, Alan and Gio were the attendees. Me and Robyn were the only ones brave enough to ride the Cyclone (Nuno was running late so he rode later). The Wonder Wheel was super (swingy) fun, the Freak show was goofy and not really so freaky (or maybe I’m just jaded?), the bumper cars were fun but I was disappointed Nuno couldn’t get on (the car he was in didn’t work and then all the cars filled up). There are more pics in my flickr here as I am too lazy to repost them here. I admit I was feeling a bit achy on the home later that afternoon but I would still do it again!

Comments(1)

GO Giants!, originally uploaded by luluvision.

No words are needed for this picture!

Comments(2)