Happy Friday

After a very wet week, the sun has finally appeared to brightened our lives. It was cold though, very cold. I went for a stroll all by myself and I found a very much changed park. There are many more naked trees and the fallen leaves have formed a yellow and brownish carpet on the ground.

Mixed feelings. Loveliness. Sadness. Winter will be here any moment now.

Any plans for the weekend?
F has a playdate tomorrow afternoon and Sunday we are planning on going to the movies to finally see "Puss in Boots" (F has been asking for some time now to see it). Nothing very different on our side. What about you?

Cheers!

Puppet show - free your kids imagination

My kids not only love going to see puppet shows, but they also like performing at home. We bought a little puppet theatre and we have a basket full of different puppets and stuffed animals. You won't believe how entertaining this can be and where you little one's imagination can take you, or even your imagination. Give it a try. This is guaranteed quality time for the whole family.

And, what does the duck say? "Laaadies aaannnd geeentlemen, take a sit and let the shoooow begiiinnn!"

Children's artwork - where to put it?

I've been talking a lot about Art lately. I can't help it, is one of my favorite subjects. I'm not an artist and I don't have any artistic talent, but I just like it.

As soon as my little ones were big enough to put their fingers in the paint I started buying all kind of art supplies for them. The problem is that my little Picassos are very productive, the "artworks" started piling up pretty soon. And I either don't have the courage to do a proper clean-up or if I decide to do one, then I can be sure that F will suddenly inquire about a specific drawing (read here: a single blue line on a purple paper). And watch out if we don't find it!

At some point, when I couldn't stand seeing all these loose papers dispersed around the house anymore, I decided to buy some boxes to organize the drawings. This has worked out well, but sometimes they like so much their pictures (or mommy thinks they are true masterpieces), they want to see them hanging on a wall (and daddy doesn't think they are really worth hanging in the living room). So here's the solution I found. We've installed a wire in our hallway (see pictures below), that came with two nice little planes to secure it on both ends, where we can hang some of the paintings or drawings. The good thing is that whenever we are tired of one of them or we need some space to put a new one, we can easily change them.

New Museum - Carsten Höller - New experience

New Museum - picture of the façade (from the museum's website)

Today I went with a friend to see a totally different kind of exhibition at the New Museum. It had been a while since I wanted to visit this museum, mainly because of its architecture. The building was completed in 2007 and designed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who won the Pritzker Price in 2010 (this is the equivalent to a Nobel price for Architecture).

The museum is the only one in Manhattan specialized exclusively in contemporary art. By looking at the picture above, you may see that the architecture of the building is quite simple and looks like piled up boxes. Inside is no different. The rooms are white, windowless and spacious. And the museum doesn't have a permanent collection. All these features makes it very attractive for contemporary exhibitions that usually require more space. And this is exactly the case for the one they are currently showing, Carsten Höller: Experience.

The description of the exhibition in the museum's website will explain much better than I will what it's all about. But, basically, the artist wants the public to interact with his art by "experiencing" time and space. So he plays with the viewers senses throughout the whole exhibition. The main works exposed included a carousel, a "Giant Psycho Tank", a fake corridor that would make you dizzy when the walls moved and a huge slide going down from the 4th floor to the 2nd floor. There are also some strange goggles that have mirrors inside, so they make you see everything upside down.

Here's my point of view. The carousel is the opposite of a traditional carousel. It's all white, there is no music and it turns at a very tedious pace - thus quite boring. The tank is a huge white box where you can go inside and float in saline water - I didn't try it so I can't comment on that. But the idea would be that after going there you would feel very relaxed and weightless. We asked a girl that had just been inside and she didn't look very convinced about those sensations. The goggles are interesting, but just for 5 minutes. Finally, the slide is fantastic. It goes very fast and it makes some unexpected turns at some point. Really really fun. It is worth going just for the slide. 

I was telling my friend while we were at the museum that sometimes I have some difficulty to understand contemporary art. I know that artists use Art as a way to express themselves, their feelings, their views on a certain matter or to make us feel something new, look into an object through a different point of view, make us aware of a dysfunction in our modern societies and so on. But I have to confess that I don't always get the artists' messages and I usually feel that their work is a little bit pointless (I'm referring here to current artists).

However, I still want to learn about contemporary art. So here's something that I've been willing to do for some time and I hope I'll start to do soon: visit art galleries that are specialized on the subject, but with someone that understands it and explains it to me. As I said in a previous post, we need to educate our eyes so they can become more sensible and appreciate new forms of Art and sometimes it takes some time and studying. So maybe this is what I've been missing.


The slide between the 4th and 3rd floor with someone inside

Me using the Upside Down Goggles

Playdates - improvise a picnic

Yesterday we hosted another fun playdate. This time it was for P, so a different age range than what we are usually use to (we do more playdates with F's friends). So there were 3 very excited 2 year-old boys plus my always hyperactive F. I had prepare a nice snack for the kids (and the moms of course) and my friends also brought a lot of delicious treats to eat. However, I had completely forgotten that when they are so young they just want to play and they need full supervision all the time. You see, when the kids reach F's age, they also need attention, but you don't necessarily need to be with them all the time. So, you can actually enjoy a nice cup of coffee while the kids are playing around.

So here's a tip that worked really good yesterday. When you have delicious cookies (especially if they come from Levain's bakery, they are amazing) waiting for you on the table, but you can't get to them, bring the food to you. We improvised a great picnic in the kids bedroom. We brought juices, cake, fruit and the famous cookies. The kids loved it and we (the moms) could sweetened our very active tongues. Too bad I have no pictures...

The only picture I remembered to take was when almost all the kids (there's one more cautious missing there) decided to enter into P's crib. Boy, it was a fun afternoon. They all went to bed exhausted and happy.

Books of the week - "This is" series

I was a little bit reluctant about starting a blog. I didn't really know what to talk about, I didn't want to expose my life to strangers, I didn't know if I would have the time and willingness to write frequently and so on. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try; mainly because I thought that it could bring me some kind of satisfaction. Well, so far, it has been an extremely pleasant activity. I enjoy writing, taking pictures, visiting new places and sharing all this here.

Once I've decided to start something, I always try to give my best at it and with this blog it hasn't been different (unfortunately the result is not always at the same level as the effort to accomplish the goal). Therefore, so far, while preparing my posts, I usually need to do some research. Some posts require more than others but almost all of them have had some background work.

Having said that, today, I discovered a new feature about this blog that got me even more motivated to continue. I can actually learn from it. When I discovered this I was thrilled. I always thought that blogs were a one-way communication tool that we could use to share something (an idea, an experience, a book, a restaurant, etc) with people that we may or may not know. But I never thought I would learn anything new from my own blog.

The subject of this post today is about the series of books "This is (and here usually comes the name of a city or region)", written by Miroslav Sasek. As the title points out, the books are about important cities/regions around the world. I love these books, because even if they are somewhat outdated (they were all written between 1959 and 1974), they still describe very well, with humor and beautiful illustrations the characteristics of all the places that are part of the collection.

The first book of the series I bought, when F was still a baby, was the one about New York. Then I decided to collect all of them. And the way I do it is that whenever we visit one of the places with the kids, I buy the book. Preferably before going, so that we can prepare for the trip and take it with us.

And this is what I learned today: while searching for some covers to illustrate this post, I discovered that there are almost 20 books in this series. I already have 3 and I always thought that there were around 5 or 6 or maybe 10 at most. Okay, you may think, this is not necessarily an extremely relevant information or you probably were already aware of it and you are thinking right now that I'm a complete ignorant. Nonetheless it's new information for me and I wouldn't have known it unless I would have checked Mr. Sasek's website (that I googled and found out, because I had no idea that there was actually a website about him) to write this post. Which brings me to the beginning of this post when I stated that I could learn new things through my blog.

The other important information that I became aware of today is that I need to travel a lot with my children in order to complete our collection. Not a bad problem to have, right?

Weekend highlights

Lollipop lollipop
Oh lolli lolli lolli
Lollipop lollipop.....

You probably all know the tune. This is also the opening and closing song for the Lolli-pops concerts, where we went on Sunday. It is a very engaging show in which they make the audience participate through songs, rhythms and questions, so the kids won't get bored. The one that we attended was about the orchestra. In a very simple way, they presented the different families of instruments that exist in an orchestra and explained how they all work together to create music. They performed from well known children rhymes to Mozart and finished up with a Can-Can dance. I personally think it's a fun way to introduce classical music to children. Who organizes this is The Little Orchestra Society and it has two series of concerts for children: the Lolli-Pops Concerts that are recommended for 3 to 5 year old and the Happy Concerts for Young People that are more appropriate for 6 to 12 year old. I may be new to it, but this not-for-profit organization has been around for 64 years and the Lolli-Pops Concerts have just celebrated their 25th anniversary. The season usually goes from October to April with a series of 5 concerts for the younger and 3 concerts for the Happy Concerts.

For my Brazilian readers, in São Paulo, there's a similar program for children that is absolutely fantastic (imperdível) - TUCCA - Aprendiz de Maestro. These are also educational concerts for children (and grown-ups). The concerts are presented in the beautiful Sala São Paulo (São Paulo's concert hall - see picture below) and they are really well organized and performed. The season usually starts in February and finishes in December, with a series of 10 concerts. We started going with F when he was only 2 and P went for the first time when he was around 6 months. Both my sons used to love these concerts and stayed (almost) quiet for the whole 45 minutes. However, the good thing about this kind of concerts is that since the audience is composed mostly of young children, it is not a problem if your child talks to you to ask you a question or at some points even starts crying (as a courtesy to the other spectators you just go out quietly for some minutes until he/she calms down). In addition, all the money collected from the tickets and products sold (DVDs, CDs, etc) goes to this non-for-profit organization TUCCA which takes care of children with cancer. This was by far one of our favorite activities to do with kids in São Paulo - we actually liked it so much that we tried not to miss any of the concerts, which sometimes meant having to change our plans for the weekend. Give it a try, I'm sure you won't regret it.

Sala São Paulo

 
On another note, on Saturday, as I mentioned in my previous post, F ran the Ronald McDonald Kids Charity Fun Run. It was a lot of fun and since I'm a very proud mom I couldn't not mention this here (I'm going to lower my voice now): F arrived 2nd of his group. But... Shhhh! This was a politically correct race, so there were actually no winners or losers, they all got the same blue ribbon at the end. But, like I said, I'm a very proud mom!

Oh, and have I mentioned how gorgeous the park looks these days? I couldn't help myself and I had to take tens of new pictures...

Have a happy week!