museums

there are literally hundreds of museums in new york. we are saving visits to most of them for the winter, but saturday was free museum day so we decided to check out the intrepid. william was excited.

it's an old naval ship with lots of planes and guns and exhibits.

william got to sit in his first helicopter. and we even found a plane with his initials.

earlier in the week william and i headed up to central park so we decided to also check out the museum of natural history. 

the realistic looking animals made william a little nervous.

so we spent most of the time looking at the many great dinosaur bones. 

 we are looking forward to lots more museum trips - they may be our salvation this winter.

summer wrap up

today is the first day of fall. to celebrate i'm doing a summer wrap-up of other adventures we had in the warm weather. it was a good summer. we did lots of swinging. william is now king of the swings.

william was introduced to walter the muppet.

we took the ferry to governors island and saw the vw traffic jam.

teddy yin visited again, yay!

and labor day mini golf. 

please don't get too cold too fast new york. we loved you in the summer.

9/11 video

ben and i teach the 9 turning 10 year olds in primary, for a few more weeks at least. at the start of each class we always ask the kids about their weeks. yesterday one of our students, sammy, told us he did this...

we couldn't believe it! i loved it. almost got me teary-eyed in class. sammy's the boy with the mop-top, he's such a great kid. i love our primary class and new york.

9 months

william made it to 9 months. he's growing well, especially in height. he's 30.4 inches which is in the 97% and 19.8 pounds being 39%.

he continues to love any and all food. this month he mastered being able to pick up food and get it into his mouth. as a result blueberries became a fast favorite.

he loves to turn the pages when reading. his current favorite books are peek-a-hoo?, the very hungry caterpillar, and i'm the biggest thing in the ocean. other favorites are the subway trains, his zebra, and going outside. we've even had some long happy stroller rides lately.

this month he learned how to give high fives, scoot backward, and do lots of rolling.

we love our little blue eyes!

9/11/11

it was very interesting to be in new york for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, especially in our downtown neighborhood. from our apartment we could hear the names being read at the memorial. multiple roads were shut down and there was a huge increase in the number of police on the streets. in battery park a flag was placed for each victim.

each night for the week the twin tower lights were on. 

and the new world trade center tower was lit in red, white, and blue. 

we are now looking forward to visiting the memorial. the first available tickets are in october, so it is looking to be a late fall venture for us.  

birthday weekend

we celebrated ben's 34th birthday this weekend! it started out with william and i arriving at his office with balloons. 

then that evening we headed to the us open tennis event. we loved walking around the grounds and being able to watch the matches on the smaller courts from up close. in arthur ashe our seats were near the top, but it was still great fun watching roddick beat sock. we may need to make this a tradition.

our friend josh also came in for the weekend and to celebrate ben's birthday. one day we took william on his first carousel ride. it happened to be a solar powered carousel that was fast!

on the way home we took a little tour of downtown to washington's inaugural site and the new york stock exchange.

happy birthday b. i think the cougars won just for you. we love you! 

staten island ferry

on ben's nyc wish list was to ride the staten island ferry with william. so last week we took him on his first and most likely not last ride.

the ferry is a great and free way to see the statue of liberty.

william really didn't care about lady liberty, but he does care about standing.

the view of downtown manhattan and our building.