Plans for the weekend

Our weekend just started with a nice dinner at Brasserie Beaumarchais, located in the middle of super trendy Midpacking district. The food is very good. And if you like extremely loud disco music while you are eating you should check it out. I'm the kind of person who likes to separate restaurants from nightclubs. Restaurants, in my opinion, are places where you should have a good meal while talking with the other persons at the table without having to scream during the whole dinner. However, by looking around me, people didn't seem bothered with the high decibels of the place and, apparently, the kind of clients who go to this kind of restaurant don't really go for the company or to have a conversion, since in every single table I saw people more interested on their blackberries, iPhones or whatever their mobile phones were, than on the other persons at the table (would it be possible that they were on Facebook chatting with their online friends?).

Plans for this freezing weekend:

For the kids, our plans for the weekend include a birthday party, baking some Halloween cookies and a possible trip to the Bronx Zoo (depending on the weather).

As for the grown ups, tomorrow night we are going to see the play Freud's Last Session. The reviews were good and I don't go as often as I'd like/should to the theatre, so I'm quite excited with this program.

Under ten? No Frick for you!

Marimekko

Apparently children under 10 cannot enter the Frick collection. Can you believe this? I personally think it's outrageous. Parents should be able to educate their kids to appreciate Art since an early age. I've been taking my kids to museums since both were just a few months old and of course I know that at their age they don't understand the importance of a Picasso or a Rembrandt or to distinguish a Pollock from a Matisse. Nonetheless, I'm quite certain that little by little I'm educating their senses, guiding their eyes, inculcating a notion of Beauty so later on they'll be able to appreciate all form of Art and understand it. Museums and galleries are part of our daily life. We don't usually stay for long hours, because young kids (and even adults) get tired pretty quickly. Therefore, I usually do frequent but short visits. Hence my discontentment with the Frick's decision of not letting children have access to its beautiful collection - we probably wouldn't have stayed for more than half an hour.

Here's what happened. This morning, my mother, P and I, left the house very excited about our plans and the (cold) bright sunny day. We would first go to see the Picasso's exhibit at the Frick and then we would take P to Central Park. Well, plans didn't went accordingly. Since P is only 2, we weren't allowed to enter the museum. When the doorman told me that children under 10 weren't admitted I was very surprised and asked him if it was a recent rule. I was even more surprised when he told me that it had been in effect for years. I replied that the information was wrong given that I had already been there several times with my older son (who's only 4) when he was a baby. He looked at me as if I had imagined the whole thing and told me that it was just impossible. No children under 10 had been allowed in the galleries for many years, but if we wanted, we could still buy one ticket, so one of us could go inside, while the other would wait with the baby in the stroller. We laughed at the suggestion and we left frustrated.

Since I'm pretty sure that I had been there before with F, because it is (should I say was now?) one of my favorite museums here in New York, when I checked the museum's visit information last night, clicking on the admission option never crossed my mind. Lesson learned, I will always check that now. We ended up taking P to the park and he had a great time while we were freezing (Winter has arrived without giving any warnings). There is this very nice playground inside the park at 72nd street and fifth avenue, where I take the kids from time to time.

On our way back home, to cheer us up a little bit after our frustrating morning, we stopped at Marimekko on third avenue. Our new darling. Yesterday we had already been to the new flagship store on 5th with 23rd street. Patterns, patterns and more patterns. Beautiful and joyful patterns everywhere.

"Cultural Thursdays" - not working out...

Another not-so-cultural-Thursday... The weather was awful today and... my mother arrived. Therefore, I'll be strolling much more than I usually do this week and I will probably be posting less.

I'll try to catch up with my cultural plans tomorrow. We are planning on visiting the Frick collection where they are currently showing some drawings by Picasso and it looks like a "must go" exhibit.

Books of the week

We love books! I have lots of them and my kids already have a respectable library as well. I'm a compulsive book buyer and I have to confess that I spoil my children with them. I just can't help myself, whenever I see a nice book for them, I just have to buy it.

Right before bedtime, F., P. and I cuddle in F's bed and we read some books together. At the beginning it would only be one or maybe two stories each night. But, now they keep asking me to read more and more books, so I let them choose two books each (sometimes more). In addition, F comes back from school each week with five books in his special "library bag" that we alse need to read and comment. If you do the math that is quite a lot of reading. It is, however, one of the best moment of the day.

So, I've decided to post weekly some of our recent readings or some of my recent purchases. Hope you'll enjoy them and that my little list will help you start your own children's library or add to the existing one.

By the way, have I told that we speak french at home and my kids also speak portuguese because of their father? This is quite an important detail, because our library is composed of French, Portuguese and English books.

Lately, P is in love with this book: Go away, Big Green Monster!. We have to read it every single night, otherwise he can't go to sleep.
F is into the creation of the world, the big bang theory, dinosaurs and so on. The story of everything gives you a fun and quick summary on that subject.

Here are my latest purchases:

• A zeal of zebras: a book about the alphabet with beautiful illustrations;
• Goldilocks and the three bears: a tale modern - different version of the classic story, with a lot of modern design elements (funnier for the adults than for the kids, but the story is still good);

Relocating... never easy

At age 31, I have already moved six times to five different countries. Does this make me an expert in relocation? Certainly not. But I think I can be of some help in case you need some advice.

You may be wondering what this post has to do with the description of my blog. Well, the answer would be everything and nothing at the same time. This is just a post about random thoughts (I may publish one from time to time). However, since my two recent moves involved my children I could also tag this post as something related to kids.

This morning I received an e-mail from a very good friend of mine who has just moved from New York to London. She told me that although the city is fantastic, the adaptation has not been as easy as planned. She's not happy with her apartment, the neighborhood, her son's school and so on. I know exactly what she's been going through and I know how hard it can be to start all over again when you had such a nice and adjusted life - especially with a toddler by your side.

Two years ago, for many different reasons, my husband and I decided to leave New York and move back to Sao Paulo (where my husband is originally from and where my parents, after 20 years of nomad life, have finally decided to settle down). We had left Sao Paulo in 2005 as students and young married couple, full of plans for the future and excited about our new adventure. We would be living in New York! The capital of the world, where everything takes place in a blink of an eye, where there is this magical energy all around you and where you can really feel that you can achieve all  your dreams (at least this is how I felt when I was 25 and I still do... sometimes). Now we were going back to Brazil as young adults who had started their careers and their family. F was two and I was six months pregnant with P.

Needless to say that after New York is hard, nearly impossible, to live somewhere else. This is exactly what my friend is going through. But, eventually, we adjust. It may take some time. My mother always said that you need at least one year. After the first year, you start to enjoy your new life and after the second year you start to feel you belong to the new place. Another friend, who had also gone through the same experience of moving back to Sao Paulo after living for ten years in New York, where she got married and became mother of two, told me that it took her exactly a year to accept and get used to her new life.

One year may seem like a long time and it is. Nonetheless, I have to say that after that time I had my life back in tracks and I started to be more positive about the place. Last year, as I was still adjusting to my new life, my husband received a job offer in New York and we decided to come back. However, I know that this is just temporary and that we will eventually go back to Sao Paulo. I just hope that the second time around (actually third time, since I first moved to Brazil with my parents when I was thirteen and it wasn't easy as well), will be smoother for all of us.

After reading my friend’s e-mail, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and what I could say to comfort her. I've been thinking of what tips I could give out of my personal experience and this is the list I came up with (I wish someone had invented a "mind recorder", because I have been thinking about this list all day long and I hope that I will not forget some of the points that I thought were important):

1. Live one day at a time: try to give you some objectives for each day, even if it is just a trip to the local supermarket. This will keep you busy and you will have less time to think how miserable your new life is.
2. Explore the new city: buy a guide (city walks guides are great) and each week visit a new place. You could actually start a blog (like this one) - it would maybe give you some motivation to explore your new city. I have several guides of New York and I'm always referring to them to have ideas of new places to go, especially with the kids.
3. Meet someone of your same nationality. You'll eventually also meet some locals, but at the beginning having someone who understands what you are going through helps a lot. It gives you moral support and you can help each other to get adjusted to the new environment or if the other person is already well established she could be of great help giving you tips about the new city (where to find a cleaning lady, where to buy furniture, which are the good schools, etc).
4. Try not to think about your previous city. You probably have fond memories and you wish you were there right now, but it is past and you need to move on. My mother once told me that when we moved from Mexico to Switzerland, she would look at her watch and imagine what she would be doing at that specific time in Mexico. I did the same mistake and it just makes you miss even more your former life.
5. Try to focus on the positives and try to remember the things you used to hate about your previous place. I can tell you beforehand that this is a hard task to do. I've always hated cold weather, especially winters in New York. Well, while in Brazil, I found myself missing that. Now that I’m back in New York and that winter is around the corner, I can't possibly imagine how I was able to miss it.
6. Life must go on, especially if you have small kids. They depend completely on you and (okay, I used to hate the advice that I am about to give here, so you are completely entitled to ignore it) they will be fine as long as the mother is fine (see, it made me feel even more miserable, because not only I was unhappy with my new life but I was also affecting my kids' happiness). My kids were actually very happy (at least I like to believe they were), because I tried to give them my best when I was with them and at night I would cry over my husband's shoulder.
7. You are responsible for your own happiness wherever you are and you live only once. Try to make the most out of this new experience. This may sound as cliché, but you know I'm right about it.

Moving around is never easy. I suffered quite a bit as a child each time we had to say goodbye to our friends and leave a life that for me was already perfect. As I grew up it got harder and harder to make new friends and having to adjust to new places, new customs and sometimes new languages. It took a lot of effort and willingness. But, eventually, I always managed to adapt.

Nowadays I sometimes envy people who grew up in one place, with their family around and the same childhood friends all their lives. But, I am extremely grateful to my parents for the life experience they provided us. I speak fluently French, Spanish, Portuguese and English (and I'm very advanced in Italian). If I hadn't moved so much I would never had known all those languages as well as I do now. Even though I was very young, I have vivid memories of all the countries I lived in and I have friends almost everywhere. So, if you have children, as hard as the move can be, remember how good this experience will be for them in the future.

Life is too short to stay in one place. If I could, I would love to spend some years in Asia and also in Europe. I'm still young, so who knows... maybe one day.

Music class

Every Tuesday I go to a music class with P at Hands On and we just love it. I started with F when he was one and we took the classes until he was 2 and then we moved back to Brazil. As soon as we came back to New York in April, I found out there was a location three blocks away from our new apartment. I was thrilled, because I believe that music at an early age is very good.
The classes have an ideal duration of 40 minutes and they are led by two teachers - one singing and the other one at the piano. Throughout the class, the teachers engage the children through different songs, rhythms and instruments. The kids receive all kind of instruments adapted for young kids but they also have the opportunity to see, listen and touch real instruments.
 I'm not sure how much of all this my son is learning, but I do know that music can't harm anybody. And by participating in these music classes I have actually learnt some things myself.

Weekend update

Here's where we've been strolling around this weekend.

With the kids:

The Aquarium at Coney Island.

I also have to confess that it was my first time in Coney Island. We will definitely need to come back to see more.

On sunday we went to see a great play for kids from 2 to 5 years-old. My two boys just loved it! And I think it's quite fun for adults too. If you are interested, don't wait. White is playing until November 13th and the tickets are selling fast.

 Grown ups only:

1. Dinner at Milo's - one of my favorite restaurants. The spreads and the Milo's special as appetizers were delicious and the St. Pierre was delightful. As a dessert, I always order their Greek yogurt with honey.
2. Margin call - available on Apple TV. Good movie about the last financial crisis.

Oh, and I was almost forgetting. We baked some cookies for F's bake sale at school. We frequently bake cookies together. It's a fun activity to do with the kids.
Imagine how proud F. was this morning when we told his teachers that some of the cookies had been prepared by him.

It seems that these where a success and sold out fast.