St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day really isn't high on our list of holiday's to celebrate in style, but we wanted to do something since its Madeline's first one. The American Museum of Natural History was having a Cherry Blossom Festival to celebrate the one year anniversary of the tsunami in Japan; they said there was going to be all kinds of crafts, storytelling, a shadow puppet show, and some folk dancing. They claimed these things were happening from noon-5 (specifcally 3-5 for the shadow puppet show, which is what we really wanted to see) so we lazily made our way into the city.

[ At the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir - I put in the picture of the back of her head so you could see how her hair is changing and kind of 3 different colors at the moment.]

We strolled through Central Park, made a few stops in some shops and a playground on the Upper West Side (somewhere we never go) and Madeline had her first rather boring experience on the slide and those horse riding things. Then we had lunch at Luke's Lobster, which was delicious, and pretty much cemented our plans to go to Maine for Derek's spring break.

[UWS scenery..it is really has a unique look and feel]

[sliding, but more interested in the kids at the park, riding the horse = time to nap, and steering the ship with daddy]

[playing on the top of the table at Luke's Lobster]

By the time we got to the museum and found the shadow puppets, the show was ending, despite only being 4. Madeline enjoyed the 30 or so seconds we saw…I think it was probably a really good show had we seen it. We bought tickets to the Planetarium show at 4:15, which meant we were missing the folk dancing, but we did see the little craft set up they had.

[outside the museum…I'm almost positive I have a picture in this exact same spot from the trip we took to NYC in 2001…I can't find it right now and I asked my mom to look for it so that I can put them side by side]

The baby slept through the Planetarium show (thank goodness) and after that we left and headed to a French restaurant called Bar Boulud, which had a little eatery attached (Derek's note - it's the sister restaurant to Daniel, which is apparently one of those most expensive restaurants in the city). We ate some really good food while wrestling with the small human being we created. She was not having the sitting and behaving thing. A couple that came after us had a highchair and I wondered where they got it and why we weren't offered one if the restaurant had them (it didn't seem like the type of place to have highchairs). Madeline "sat" in her own big girl chair and threw puffs everywhere, while pulling everything off the table and putting her hands in my plate. The reward was some beyond delicious Speculoos ice cream. It was a really nice day with my two favorite people exploring a part of the city we hardly ever visit. As the days get nicer, I hope we spend more weekends doing things like this!

[some origami, cherry blossoms, a thing they were attaching cherry blossoms that people wove in a Japanese style…they said it was a symbol of rebirth after the tsunami, the puppet show, and some kind of pretty cool Japanese instrument]