Weekend highlights

After a somewhat frantic week, we had a much needed lazy weekend. No plans, no schedule, no running around. We needed to refill our batteries in a calmly way.
Here are some snapshots from the weekend.

Saturday morning

New shoes for the boys

Nice party favor after a great birthday party

Central Park on Sunday

The crowd cheering up the Marathon runners

Sunday afternoon

With Daddy on a plane once again, we are the three of us on our own for another whole week. The story seems to repeat itself more often than we'd like to.  

Have a wonderful week!

Picasso and the High Line

What does Picasso have to do with the High Line in New York? Absolutely nothing. It's just that I went to see the Picasso exhibit at the Frick Collection on Wednesday and I went to the High Line yesterday. If you've just arrived on my blog, you may think that I'm either a tourist in New York, trying to see everything in a few days or just a very active person. I'm neither of the two options. My mother was visiting, so it was an atypically active week.

Although I'm a little bit mad with the Frick Collection (here's why), I'm too much of a Picasso fan to miss their special exhibition. The show concentrates on drawings from Picasso's first three decades of his career as an artist. Whether you like Picasso's art or not, if you have any doubt left that the man was a genius, you should take a look at those drawings. It is simply amazing and unbelievable what he could do with a pencil at only fourteen years-old.

For me, Picasso was an acquired taste. Hence my argument that children should be introduced to art at a very early age. Sometimes it takes years and some studying to understand and appreciate an artist work and sometimes is just love at first sight. In my case, it took me some years and a lot of exhibitions to understand what a true genius Picasso was.

What I love about art in general is that is an endless source of knowledge. The more you see, the more you want to learn. Tastes also evolve with time, which makes the discussion of art even more interesting. For instance, as a teenager, I was a huge fan of Renoir and, nowadays, although I still appreciate his art and understand his importance in History, he's not in my top list anymore. Throughout all these years, I have been exposed to new forms of art, new artists and my perception of beauty changed as I grew older. My relationship with Picasso grew in the opposite direction.

So, if you have the opportunity, don't miss the exhibit: Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition, at the Frick Collection, until January 8, 2012 (remember that children under ten are not allowed in the museum).

***

Posmanbooks in Chelsea Market

Thursday we spent the morning in Chelsea. We walked on the High line, which is a magnificent project and example of urbanisation. Then we went to the very charming Chelsea Market, where we had lunch (the restaurant is not worth mentioning here) and spent some time in one of my favorite libraries in New York (Posman books). This is a nice and easy outing to do with kids. P loved to run on the High line and the library has a big children's section.

Here are some pics that I took of the High line.

Any plans for the weekend?
We are starting with a nice dinner at David Burke's new restaurant Fishtail (I actually have to run, otherwise I'll be late). For the kids, we have a birthday party tomorrow and, other than that, we'll see where the wind will take us.

Have a great weekend!

Does melancholy attracts melancholy?

Today I feel melancholic. I woke up just fine and started my day as usual. Fed my kids breakfast, put F into his school bus, finished breakfast with P and went to my Pilates class (love, love, love!). Afterwords, I went grocery shopping. And, suddenly, while I was "strolling" (my favorite word lately) in the supermarket, a big feeling of sadness took me by surprise. I can't explain what was the trigger, I just know that by the time I arrived at the register I was almost bursting into tears. Does this happen to you or am I just weird?

As soon as I got back home, P's smile and happiness pushed away all my feelings of sadness (I'm convinced that children are magicians). As I was scrolling through the blogs list I usually like to follow, I saw this post about "melancholy". It's not exactly the same kind of melancholic feelings I felt earlier this morning, but still I thought it was pretty close. Hence my question in the title of this post. Was it because I felt melancholic that I clicked on this specific post instead of another? Or is it just a melancholic day? I would probably go with the first explanation.

It was actually a happy coincidence, because by reading what Marina Pontieri had to say I discovered the amazing Dear Photograph. Isn't that a great idea?

Sad sad sad...

My mother has just left. We had such a great week. The children were happy to spend some time with their grand-mother and I was extremely happy to have some company. You see, my husband works long hours. And when he's not in the office, he's up on a plane. So it was quite nice to have someone to talk to during dinner, to take P to the park with me, go to the museums, pick-up F at school.
In other words, it was good to have company while I was strolling around.
 

Halloween on E 78th st.



The witch, the crying lion and
Darth Vader

Yesterday it was Halloween. And, as most of you are probably aware, it is a big thing here in the United States. People of all ages dress-up in costumes and celebrate. Grown-ups usually gather in a bar or at a friends house to party. And kids do the traditional "Treat or Trick". I'm not a big fun of Halloween and my husband would never be caught dead wearing any kind of costume. However, my oldest son, as any normal kid of his age, was super excited waiting for Halloween. And, something that you quickly learn when you become a mother is that you will probably do things that you had never imagined you would be doing one day. So there I was yesterday evening, wearing my witch costume while pushing a crying lion in his stroller and a happy Darth Vader standing on the back of the stroller. 
We headed to the upper east side where I had been told there was a special street to do the "treat or trick". We passed by all kind of characters, monsters, superheroes, dinosaurs and what not. And it was actually fun. Everybody was enjoying the Halloween spirit, and nobody cared if they looked ridiculous under their masks or like me wearing this huge black cape, pointy shoes, triangular hat while holding my broom on one hand and pushing the stroller with the other hand.

We arrived at 78th with Lexington and what I saw was beyond my imagination. All the townhouses on the street had a special Halloween decoration, some of them were very impressive and sophisticated (my pictures are terrible - I used my blackberry, the light was bad and I was trying to keep the kids close to me). The owners (like the old pirate below) were happily and patiently distributing candies on their doorsteps, to hundreds of "trick-or-treaters". Apart from the fact that there is too much people, so going with two small kids can be a little bit stressful (I almost lost F), I loved the experience.

P.S: Would I do it again? If it depended on me, probably not. But having two young kids, I believe that I'll have a lot more Halloweens ahead of me. However, out of curiosity, I think it is worth doing it at least once.

Cultural Monday - William deKooning

My "Cultural Thursdays" are not working out, but I still managed to go to the Moma today to see the deKooning's retrospective. Worth going!

I shouldn't actually comment on this, since I'm cheating. None of my kids were with me today and I was supposed to write about the "cultural" visits WITH the kids. My mother is visiting just for a week, the boys were both at school and, after a weekend full of activities, we were quite happy to be able to go somewhere without pushing a stroller.

Weekend update - Puppetworks, a must!

Now that the week has started and Halloween is over, I finally have some minutes to write about our weekend.

Puppetworks in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Given that it snowed on Saturday and it got really cold during the weekend, we decided not to visit the Bronx zoo on Sunday. Instead, we went to Park Slope in Brooklyn to see a puppet show. I really really recommend Puppetworks.

The suggested ages for the audience are 3 to 8. However, both my sons (who are two and four), my mother and I loved the show. I think there is no age restriction for puppet or marionette shows (marionette is the correct way of calling the kind of puppets used at puppetworks, which are the ones controlled by strings). Before the session started, F and especially P (the youngest) were running all around the room, with no perspective of calming down whatsoever. But, as soon as the lights went down and the puppets appeared on stage they sat quietly and stayed like that during the whole play. As for me, I felt like a child again. In fact, since I was a little girl, I've always been mesmerized by the puppeteer's ability on making wood dolls become so expressive just by pulling some strings. It's still magic for me.



All the puppets hanging on the wall of the theatre

The Reluctant Dragon

 The puppets are all handmade and some of them have been in use for more than 38 years. They are currently playing The Reluctant Dragon, but their program changes regularly (all the information is on their website). You can bet we'll be in the front row of each new show coming up. I'm their newest fan!

Have a great week!

Snow in October

Happy Halloween!