FIFTY-ONE

Santa rides around on a fire truck in our town, because Lewisville is clearly The Coolest. V was in heaven with the lights and noises and Santa.

 2014 week fifty-one

Vera and I limped all over magical Christmasy NYC this week (limping, because so. many. blisters.) In lieu of a story I'll just caption all 32 photos and that will have to do. :) Merry Christmas!

Dear Everyone. Buy a box of wipes specifically for the plane. It is the cheapest, quietest, longest-lasting airplane toy around. And then collect the ones you'll need in a ziplock and use them for the rest of the week. OR leave the box in the plane lavatory and go back to find that your fellow travelers have been using them for the past 2 hours...

We walked far too long to find this place that was extremely close to us, but worth it for the black and white milkshake and garlicky special sauce on Shake Shack's delicious burger. Once V discovered what the ketchup was for, no fry was sufficient without a lot of it. 

Running through the Museum of Natural History. She stopped at every (I'm serious) light to say, "Light!" until I thought I would explode and picked her up. Then she screamed "Liiiiiiiiiiiiights! Liiiiiiiiights!" like I was dragging her away from her family for good.  

This museum was the best. V was beside herself with all of the animals. She would race from one to another and try to repeat the sometimes crazy sounding names of all the animals. Two funny stories here. A group of teenagers was standing beside a case of kudu talking and saying, "wow." Veronica walked up to them, pushed herself in beside two of them and started to loudly say, "Wooooooooow! Wow!" They thought it was hilarious. Then on the birds of North America floor, she lifted up her shirt and walked into a group of people pointing to her belly and shouting "Poop!"

 About the poop. Because this is important. Obviously. This amazing creature kept her pants dry the ENTIRE trip to New York. All day, every day, on bus, or train, or park. Dry pants. Then she was totally cool using any and every public toilet that we frequented. I couldn't believe it. But you know, toddlers are strange creatures and once we got home she peed in her pants about 5 times in the first 24 hours. Sigh.

One night she was really tired and slept through a subway ride, dinner, and a very raucous singles ward party, only to go on to sleep the whole night through. I may have cried a little bit from how incredible that was. Also, people on the subway were so amazingly nice! It took me two days to realize that the subway map is marked with symbols for handicap or stroller friendly stations. In the meantime, people rushed to help us up and down the stairs. I never even had to ask. 

Giant brioche roll that resulted in finding crumbles everywhere for the rest of the trip. 

"Angel Face" as she was dubbed by one of the workers really loved her Ess-A-Bagel. 

We found these sweet bears in Central Park. After seeing them for 5 minutes, V wouldn't stop talking about "Bears. Park." Three days later, "Vera, do you want to go to the park?" "Bears?!"

Quiet and lovely 5th Avenue.

At FAO Schwartz. She had a meltdown in the baby aisle and had to be dragged away screaming.

Laduree. I would have stood in line for hours just to look around this shop and leave with a...

gorgeous box, full of...

my favorite treat, period. Probably that's cliche but I don't care. Give me some macarons. Especially the vanilla sesame and cassis. Heaven. Also the workers were so lovely and snobby and beautifully French. Worth $3 each? Yes. Always. 

At lunch in a French bistro where everyone was speaking French. And V decided to quit this "I'm a perfect toddler" schtick just in time to be judged by all of these people.

After falling off her chair, hitting her chin on the table (Twice) and pouring water all over the stroller all while screaming, the food came and she became adorable once more. I sacrificed a macaron to keep her quiet. It was Rose Petal and a piece of my heart broke to give it to her. After that though, I gave that sneak a taste for expensive cookies and she kept rooting the box out of our luggage and begging for cookies. I savored the rest on the flight home during her two hour nap.

At a restaurant called "Chocolate by the Bald Man." I didn't even get any chocolate. I did, however, get this delicious salad with arugula, goat cheese, tomatoes and corn on a corn bread waffle. And yes, Mom, we do actually like goat cheese, and yes, even Vera actually liked it and ate it. People actually do like goat cheese. This is real. 

Poppy seed asteroid.

Chelsea Market Fish market. Glory in a fish market.

This is a creep picture. Those blue buckets to the right are full of live lobsters with stream of cold water running into them from the ceiling. These asian people are ordering whole steamed lobster and eating every single bit of it. At 10am. That part is important. 

A $20 lobster roll smaller than my fist. But a fantastically delicious lobster roll that V wanted nothing to do with so I got to eat all by myself, while the Philistine happily munched on chips. 

A walk in Central Park.

A park in Central Park! Those boots were the talk of the town, at least a dozen people commented on their cuteness or how much they wanted some for themselves. V was most gracious and would wave and say hi to everyone. So all in all, V was extremely popular in the city. And people loved her. 

Radio City and creepy large hand. 

The blurry tree at Rockefeller Center. 

My father in law's favorite restaurant where when you order a pastrami sandwich you get...

a huge pile of pastrami with four tiny pieces of bread. And we were so hungry from walking so much we ate the whole thing. I cannot stress enough how much we walked. The minute we got into the city and unloaded our stuff at my friend's (who is also named Veronica) apartment I weighed myself. The morning we left I weighed myself again. Just to see. It wasn't a plan or anything just curiosity. Almost 7 pounds lighter in 3 days. But then again it was probably just working off that pastrami sandwich. 

The requisite Black and White cookie. It was really tasty. I wanted to leave half for our generous hostess, so I cut it in half and gave the other half to V. 

She refused the offering. And cried about her violated cookie for 15 minutes. Then she changed her mind and ate it without complaint.

Luckily Veronica (the elder) was so thoughtful and had this pad of paper and box of crayons. Veronica (the younger) spent as many waking minutes in the apartment as I allowed on the ground using up every page and happily chanting, "Color. color. color." to herself.

Sunday was our 4 year anniversary. On Friday we went to a gross Mexican place, but had fun laughing about how many pieces of fat we kept pulling out of our meat. I presented my best of them all husband with hand made leather slippers. He presented me with a

handmade cutting board. You can't "win" an anniversary, but he won. I am so lucky. Really no one looses when someone wins an anniversary. I love him so much. I can't believe it's already been 4 years. Hooray! 

Merry Christmas this week!