Here’s a little video of Josie running the bases at the previously mentioned game. Sorry for all the people who liked to keep getting in my shot. She liked to run fast, but then just wanted to play with the dirt. Then some kids would come by and she’d join in the pack. I have to imagine her legs were sore the next day, but she didn’t mention it. She also did all this running after eating a slice of pizza, a (veggie) hot dog, and an ice cream. Dinner of champions of course.

Baseball! We spent a great week on Cape Cod last week renting a house in Mashpee. The second day we were there we caught a game of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Josie spent most of the game eating and then running back and forth — later she went out and ran the bases, 3 times.

Monday, we were still in New York, but Jordi had to work, so it was just me and Josie hanging out. I was not brave enough to bring out Josie and the big camera at the same time and have to keep my eye on two valuable things at once. So the camera stayed home and there are no pictures.

You might be wondering what is Ew Ork? That’s how Josie says New York. I guess the hard N and Y are too tough right now to say. She’s also developed the habit of saying ‘my’ to mean all of the following: my, me, mine, I. As in “That’s mys!”, “daddy pick my up!”.

Meanwhile, back in Ew Ork. Josie and I went out for breakfast at a place called “Eat Here Now”, just a little diner on Lexington Ave, conveniently near the central park zoo. We had a nice quick breakfast where Josie tried and rejected grapefruit for the first time. We heckled a local who was bemoaning the Red Sox winning the game the night before but didn’t get kicked out.

We moseyed over a few blocks to the zoo, but it was only 9am and it didn’t open till 10 so we killed some time watching the sea lions from the sidewalk and trying to pet people’s dogs that walked by. We enjoyed the main part of the zoo in the morning, Josie’s favorites were the sea lions and the snow monkeys. I have really loved the polar bears in the past but they were drastically unexciting this time, spending their entire time sleeping other than one rubbing his neck on a rock for about 5 minutes straight.

The only incident was with the penguins. We went in, Josie really liked watching them and we were awaiting the feeding demonstration. Then I had to mention what penguins eat, fish of course. Josie said ‘swim swim fish?’, and I confirmed that fish swim and she quickly started asking to see any other animal she could think of “go see lion? go see polar bears? go see sea lion?”. Seems my daughter isn’t too fond of the idea that penguins eat fish. Good thing she doesn’t seem to be bothered by the cats eating tuna FISH, or you know grandma and grandpa although she probably hasn’t seen them do it. So we had to leave, even though I really wanted to see the feeding. I learned to keep my mouth shut for the sea lion demonstration where they were again serving fish of course and we really enjoyed it.

Mid-day we went back to the hotel, grabbed some soup and sandwiches on the way, had lunch and took a nap. We definitely made the right move getting to the zoo right when it opened, it was a mob scene by noon.

In the afternoon, we (read I, pushing a stroller) walked back to the zoo to visit the children’s zoo section, which is separate. We saw yet more ducks and then found the feeding farm animals section which was Josie’s favorite. We fed the sheep and a very slobbery cow. Josie also learned how to wait for someone else to feed a sheep, then take advantage to pet the sheep while the sheep is busy eating. They had an alpaca which “Josie no like” because the thing wouldn’t come over to eat or be pet, it just looked scared stiff. They kicked us all out at 5, we played at a nearby park for a little while and we hopped a bus back to the hotel to have dinner with Jordi, considering it was our wedding anniversary and all!

The next morning I packed us up and Josie and I took the train back home while Jordi stayed for some more work. Thankfully the trip home was perfectly on-time and uneventful.

Sunday morning, we slept in a bit after our long day at the zoo and out to dinner. We took our time and ambled around the area of the southeast corner of central park. Jordi and Josie played in a dry fountain climbing up high.

I hung around trying to take pictures surreptitiously. Josie often tells us to put the camera away when she see’s me with it or she’ll just avoid looking at me completely. Once I was at a distance I was able to actually take some pictures. Back to NYC… Josie was a huge fan of the horses with carriages at central park and we visited them every day to see them. Sunday evening, to celebrate our anniversary, we took a ride on the horses too. This one in particular.

They’ve got a bit of a racket going on with the horses as the signs all say $34 for half an hour, and you get in the carriage and they tell you $40 for 20 minutes. Because the trip around does only take twenty minutes, but perhaps with the loading and unloading it’s about half an hour and since this place is mostly tourists, often international ones, they’re ‘including’ their tip in the price. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the ride through the park on our horse Rudy.

In the middle of the day we also took Josie to F.A.O. to see all the crazy toys. She liked the trucks section, the art supplies and the stuffed animals the most. We had a big parade of hugs through the stuffed animals. First it was the panda’s.

Then the turtle

Then back to the panda’s

And onto the zebra stacking. Apparently zebra’s are for riding, by dolphins,

And clifford the dog got in on the action too.

Finally we said goodbye to the llama and headed out for lunch

And after all that, what did we buy her? Nada, nothing. And she didn’t even ask for anything actually which was lucky because she certainly knows the words ‘Mommy buy it’. I guess she just enjoyed the experience and so did we. Later that night we met up with my cousin Will and had dinner at a nice Mexican place on 1st avenue.

Yes the place was really that pink. They were also in a New York frame of mind it seems with the bill, because the tax they put on the bill could be most accurately called a round estimate rather than a calculation. This was unfortunately the end of our play time with Daddy because he was off to work the next day and Josie and I had the day to ourselves.

Saturday morning we were in New York we went out to the Bronx Zoo to check out the animals. That place is big and after we got past our transportation issues (hint, don’t take the bus, take the subway) we dug into the zoo. We saw tigers and spent lots of time in the children’s zoo section. There we saw the prairie dogs (got to pretend to be one), feed the goats and ride down a big huge slide built into a tree. They also had some great bigger-than-life pictures of the caterpillar from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” which Josie enjoyed giving hugs and kisses too. Josie managed to take a nap her in stroller, we rode the carousel, had some ice cream and the afternoon was over far too quickly! We took the subway back home and met up with Larry and his girlfriend for dinner, they both deftly avoided the camera which we were too exhausted to remember to pull out. After a full day in the sun walking around we were beat and slept like rocks that night and had an extra long nap the following day too.

Here we are at the prairie dog exhibit, it sure is convenient to have one tall and one short parent. Jordi couldn’t squeeze into these kid size tunnels, but I sure could!

Here is Josie at the bottom of the big tree slide. You should have heard the collective gasp of all the women waiting at the bottom for their kids when Josie slid down like this. Thankfully she stopped at the point you see her there, and I was able to grab her before anyone came down behind her!

It was hard to convince Josie to open her fingers up for the goats to eat, because the food would start to drop, but we figured it out. We fed sheep, goats and looked at the chickens and the pigs.

Shortly there after, Josie took a nap, Jordi made some phone calls for work and I played with the camera and my depth of field adjustments.

Here’s the caterpillar and Josie posing with it. She really started to ham it up for her audience as people coo’d at her kissing and hugging it.

More PDA for the pictures.

We successfully rode on the carousel. Josie was on a ladybug which we ran to get for her, not wanting to find out the consequences of not securing the right ‘ride’ for her. We took the tram to another part of the park, found out they close some exhibits earlier than the official closing time (argh!) and missed the monkey exhibit she’d been asking for. We’re learning better that time just gets away from you with a toddler so do the most important things first, always even if it’s not most efficient. Also toddlers like walking through the nature path playing with acorns about as much as seeing the animals, so don’t make things too crazy.

To celebrate Jordi’s birthday (and Chanh’s) we packed up this weekend and went back to the Cape Codder Resort with our neighbors and friends Christina, Chanh, Zach and Ethan.

Jordi, Josie and I drove up early Friday afternoon and Jordi crashed for some much needed sleep after burning the midnight oil several days in a row. I took Josie to the wave pool which she loved just like last year. Each time we went she was more and more ready to get into the pool immediately. She liked to kick and hit the waves.

Later in the afternoon Christina and family joined us. Our two families had connecting rooms and the kids were crazy just running back and forth and all around. It worked out really well to have the extra space to move and playmates to have fun with.

Our rooms were also really well located just upstairs from the wave pool, as demonstrated by the photo from our room!

We had cupcakes, which made me Ethan and Zach’s best friend for a few minutes. It was tough keeping their hands out of the cup cakes while trying to light them on fire though! I slightly surprised Christina by getting her name on a cup cake too since her birthday was only the weekend before!

We did a tiny bit of sight seeing around Hyannis, but mostly everything is closed this time of year except for restaurants. Jordi was especially disappointed in all the closed ice cream shops. Looking at this picture of the beach I took you almost can’t even tell it’s winter, it looks downright inviting if I couldn’t still imagine the freezing winter beach breeze while I took it!

Even though we were staying right on the beach  (bay side) at Cape Cod we still took one day to go over to an ocean side beach for the waves and hopefully fewer rocks. We were not disappointed. We went to coast guard beach which is part of the national sea shore. It was beautiful and very exciting. The pictures can’t do it justice but the waves were huge and unforgiving when they crashed on you. The water level would go from nothing to up to your waist in almost an instant. It is a great fun place to go with older kids and adults that want to play in the (cold) water. Once you got past where the waves broke it was very deep but very calm and relaxing. We also saw a seal playing just a bit off shore!

Josie didn’t really want to go swimming anyway so the waves didn’t bother her, although she got wet without planning on it at times.

At one point I was trying to amuse her by running towards the water when the waves went out and away when they came in. I did this a few times but eventually lost my balance in the soft sand and a big wave came in and creamed me. I went under, flipped over, and waited until the wave subsided to surface. I get up and find Josie with a huge smile and signing ‘more’, meaning that I should do it again. I declined.