at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!
Miles and his friend Beni (from gym class) visit the MET.
Last Days of Summer and on to Fall
…finally some pictures!
We managed to get out of the city the weekend AFTER Labor Day, and headed to Sandy Hook, a beautiful beach in NJ. Auntie Lali, and our friends the Potenzas made it a great trip! Miles and Lucy Potenza especially enjoyed the large sand pit.
Other pictures are from Miles’s room redecoration (pictures to follow), cooking with Grandpa, playground shots, and Miles’s Birthday yesterday. He’s getting the hang of his new bike and loves his saftey helmet 😉 And he got to eat chicken fingers, fries, and chocolate milk (mostly fries), on his birthday…
Miles’s Fabulous Summer
It’s been hot in NYC! Luckily, we have great parks and great escapes.
The two story slide is TearDrop Park
Miles and Rocket played at Teardrop and then ran around together in Battery Park! The Hippos are from Hippo playground a few blocks away, the kiddie pool is on Auntie Lali’s deck, the photos of lawn and mowing skills at Nana’s, and lake swimming and train rides in Connecticut.
Oh and Miles climbed into Grandpa’s car!
And he got a very handsome haircut! It will be surfer-ready by December!
Paris, a la fin….
Crepes, Arc de Triumph and more park time in Paris!
We are now back to NYC and are settling into our daily routine once again!
Paris, avec Soeur
We had a visit from Auntie Sara, or “Auntie Sa” as Miles calls her!
Sara arrived late Friday night and it was fabulous to meet her at CDG airport! Sara brought the nice, hot weather. It’s been 80 degrees. Luckily, we have our own personal drain inspector and water fountain spotter and Miles kept us hydrated.
Miles and Sara got re-acquainted quickly, and Sara invented many new games such as “Don’t fall off the edge lego car” = “No fall edge, ahhhhh!” and “these stairs, those stairs”. We also put on some CDs and had a dance party = “dance par”…
Saturday we headed out to see the Moulin Rouge, Sacre Coeur, et le Tour Eiffel. Had a nice stroller nap/brunch at a restaurant on the hill in Montmartre.
On Sunday we again strolled to Miles’s favorite gardens, the Luxembourg gardens. Miles got to feed the ducks, pet ponies, and hang out at the playground. While Miles stroller napped, we took a nice leisurely walk to Musee D’Orsay, and AGAIN, if you have a stroller, you get to jump the line, cut the queue and get right in! Miles was great in the museum. He was quite observant with the statues: a boy playing the lyre was “play tar” = play guitar, a hooded peasant had bare “feet, hands”, and a little boy with a dog had “nose, ears, touch doggie”… He also surprised me with several paintings, pointing out elephants and camels in the Orient wing. In a Greek painting of a naked woman with a pitcher, I thought for sure Miles would say that she was taking a bath, but instead he said “pour, pour”! After the museum we hit the Tulleries again for some garden time and late lunch. Miles discovered he liked blackberry sorbet and caramel ice cream!
Today we took advantage of two hidden secrets by the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Miles go to play in the sandbox in the shadow of some flying buttresses, and ride bouncy spring bunnies under the Rosetta windows while Auntie Sa had a look around. We had a nice stroller nap/lunch (duck confit, roquette ravioli, salade) and then hit up Le Place des Vosages, Paris’s oldest planned city square…
Sara is flying out tonight, and we really enjoyed her visit! Miss you!!
Paris Day 4-8
Miles loves the Luxembourg Gardens…! Not only are there ducks swimming in Medici fountains, but there are pony rides, puppet shows and a huge playground with trains and truck climbing structures.
We tried to take Miles to “Les Trois Cochons” (Three Little Pigs) puppet show, but once we got inside with 1,000 French school children, he got a little worried about the dark theater. The show started and while he seemed to briefly enjoy the dancing pigs, he started to say “outside, outside” in a very worried voice, at which point 1,000 French school children turned around and said “shhhh”. So we left and Miles played in the sandbox. We also managed to take Miles out to eat during dinner at a traditional galette (like a crepe) restaurant….he did very well!
We took the TGV (train grande vitesse = super-fast 190MPH train) to Lyon to see Genevieve, my “French mom” from Lyon. She was thrilled to meet Miles and Brett and I practiced my French. True to her style, she threw a nice dinner party with a few friends, a Dartmouth professor, and some kids. There were a few doctors in the mix, so I did my best in French to defend Obama’s health care efforts … Miles charmed Genevieve with his French, saying “grand-mere” and playing happily in “my” old apartment. Genevieve had borrowed a high chair, crib, carseat, and some toys so it made the visit even pleasanter.
Finally, we had to return a little early because of a strike (public sector workers striking for the right to retire at age 60 instead of 62), but Miles slept on the train.
We went to Versailles the next day…Miles really was not into the Hall of Mirrors, but he did enjoy the gardens outside.
His vocabulary seems to be really exploding, and he has added words like “bull, antelope, chateau” to his vocabulary. He is able to tell us what he has done like “take fast train, off train, grand-mere car, playground … ” which just seems super exciting to us. He also said to us the other day that his “nose fall down” implying a runny nose!!!
OK, finally some pictures:
Mona Lisa….
Miles’s favorite part of the Louvre….
Mona Lisa and Construction Equipment from Brett Kiefer on Vimeo.
Paris Day 2 and 3
Day 2: Musée des Arts et Métiers, Robot Parade
Since I had a recently read Foucault’s Pendulum and am a big ol’ technology nerd, we checked out the Musée des Arts et Métiers. We had a very nice brunch down the street beforehand, and Miles woke up just in time to terrorize the museum. He knows what a touch screen is from his frequent jaunts to the Museum of Natural History with Grandpa John, and no locomotive, no steam-powered omnibus from the turn of the century, not even a moon-explorer robot could stop him in his quest to find the next ‘ta scee’. So that made the museum an athletic as well as a historical experience.
The church with the actual pendulum and the active model one is way cool.
We walked on down to the Pompadou Center and there was some kind of crazy cardboard robot parade (political?) going on outside with a brass band. They were shooting off confetti and flares, and we all thought it was neat, especially Miles, until it it got ‘too lou’. He’s told us about it a few times now: ‘Robot Paray. Throw paper. Too lou.’
So we checked out the Stravinsky fountain, hung out at a playground, and went for some tasty gallettes at Breizh Cafe.
Day 3: Le Louvre, Notre Dame
We went to the Tuileries in the morning for some park time and a nice coffee outdoors. They had another cool carousel, and we tried that. Miles does not like carousels yet, it turns out. We had accidentally left all of the diapers at home, but Lizzie made a brave foray to find some more.
Thus armed, we headed for the Louvre, just as Miles was settling down for a nap. Now this is one enormous museum, and it’s true, you DO get to skip the lines if you have a stroller. As we live walking distance from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I have to say that while the Louvre’s collection is definitely more impressive, I was mostly there for the building itself, and was not disappointed at all. Miles seemed to agree; once he woke up, he was pretty done with the museum, except that there was a major construction project in one of the courtyards (right out the window beside the most famous painting in the world), with three excavators, a skid steer, and a dump truck all working AT THE SAME TIME. This was pretty much Miles’s dream, so we stayed there for a while and watched.
Then we took a nice walk along the Seine to Notre Dame, checked out the cathedral, and headed ‘er on back to the apartment, as Miles was out of sorts. He threw up when we got home, and was hot, so it seems possible he has a stomach bug. He’s old enough to be a little bit distressed about it for a while after (‘Throw up! Miles throw up. Daddy clean.’), but snapped out of it and got back to Legos pretty quick.
http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
-Brett
Paris Day 1
We woke up this morning at 10am, after giving Miles a second bath last night at 10pm in order to redo his routine to get him back to sleep….Groundhog Day! The apartment we are staying in is nice, clean, and has tons of toys, including a helicopter, tractor, and plastic farm animals. Miles has a new favorite game invented by Daddy called, “is this a zebra?” (response! no, it’s cow!!!)
Had some coffee and croissants at a nice outdoor cafe, and hopped on the Metro. Miles loved the trains!
We visited the Champs de Mars park, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, which Miles calls “Big Tower”. There were so many kid friendly things — big playground with a train and bouncy spring riders, a merry go round, donkeys to pet, grass to run around on, and even a go-kart track! We were able to run around the base of the Eiffel Tower and Miles checked out the drains…FYI, they did have “wa-tah”.
There were lots of statues to look at (can’t believe Miles pointed to one and said “statue” but he does live in NYC), including a little naked boy, obviously about to take a bath per Miles. Lauren and Ivan: to the statue holding up his hands, Miles remarked, AFUFUFU!!!
Miles took a stroller nap and we ducked into a brasserie for some lunch. Unfortunately it turned cloudy, but we called it a day around 6:30!
A bientot!
Miles 20 Months
Hi Everyone!
Here are some photos of the last few weeks.
We spent Memorial Day with Great Uncle Peter and Great Aunt Esther, and her side of the family in Connecticut.
We spent one humid afternoon at the Scandinavia House, a well-kept, well-air-conditioned NYC secret. On the 4th floor of this museum they had a drop-in play space with Vikings made out of Legos, giant Legos, a “Walk through the Swedish Countryside” with a weird cat that Miles took a liking to, and lots of wooden trains.
We’ve also spent a lot of time in Central Park with Lauren and Ivan and have been enjoying their outdoor deck!
Finally, after seeing peacocks at St. John the Divine with Grandpa, Miles was hankerin’ for more animals. We took a quick trip to the Central Park Zoo, where Miles got to feed some goats and see his favorite clock, the Delacorte Clock, or the Monkey Clock, as he calls it. There are bronze monkeys that hit the bell, bears, elephants, goats, and a penguin who dance to nursery rhymes.
Oh, and Miles had his first toasted almond ice cream bar.
Enjoy!
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