Fall Family Fun in NYC

I guess I've been a bit preoccupied with being 40 weeks pregnant lately, but really, there are other things going on in life. So here's an attempt at posting something completely un-baby related. If the mad squirming sensations in my belly allow me to sit here long enough to post it, that is.

Saturday we decided to take a Family Fun Day. I was a bit bummed because I had been planning a trip to Boston, but thought better of it when early morning contractions (or "pressure waves," as my Hypnobabies course calls them) reminded me that I probably shouldn't be leaving town--or at very least sitting on a Chinatown bus for four+ hours--so close to my due date. (My only mention of pregnancy, I promise.)

So instead, Pete and I determined to find some fun things to do around here--it is New York City after all, and one is rarely strapped for something to do.

First we hit the Harlem Harvest Festival. It included a small Farmers' Market and featured booths from some local Soul Food restaurants. It was my first time having fried catfish and grits for breakfast. Not bad really. But the best part was after Pete bought a plate for us to share he noticed the scruffy, probably homeless man sitting on the other end of our bunch eyeing our food, and he quietly got up and bought another plate. He does stuff like that all the time and it makes me so proud of him.

A booth at the Harvest Festival was handing out free small pumpkins for kids and Amelia was completely delighted. She took at least five whole minutes choosing out her pumpkin and spent the rest of the morning strapping her pumpkin into the stroller and making sure it was safe and secure. She also was loving the music blaring from the speakers (an eclectic mix of Old School Whitney Houston, authentic African music and ghetto thug music that I couldn't begin to identify).

Happily, the festival wore her out and she came home to take a fabulous nap--which meant I got one too.

That afternoon we decided to check out the Central Park Zoo. I recently bought a family pass membership to all the zoos in the city (there are five scattered throughout the boroughs) and it felt like a good day to start getting our money's worth.

I shouldn't have mentioned the word "zoo" to my two-year-old, she got pretty excited to see the lions and the elephants--which there aren't any at the Central Park Zoo. It's a small zoo, with more petting zoo type animals than typical zoo animals, but there are Polar Bears and monkeys and seals and penguins, so she was pacified. (However, when we got home and I asked her what her favorite part of the zoo was, she kept saying, "I like the elephants and lions.")

After the zoo closed we took a leisurely walk through the park looking for signs of fall--I hadn't seen any yet, but was able to find ONE tree that had started turning colors--when we stumbled across the Central Park Skaters. I forgot how much I love these guys. They set up a makeshift skating rink in the park on Saturdays and blast disco music and skate like their lives depended on it. All different styles of skaters congregate; there are the proper disco skaters with super long skinny legs sporting huge afro hairstyles. There are the older, chubbier set wearing workout clothes straight from a Richard Simmons video. There are figure skaters who are lean and graceful. There are even latin dancer couple skaters who make me blush a bit and wonder if I should cover my toddler's eyes.

After leaving the park we walked a few blocks to 72nd and Broadway and stopped at a little pizza joint for dinner. Amelia thought she was out very late because it was getting so dark, but it was really only about 7ish when we left the pizza place. It was a perfect day with my family and made me feel better about missing my trip to Boston.

Now, if only this baby would hatch, I could get out to enjoy more of Fall and Halloween in New York City, as at the moment my ankles are a bit too squishy to enjoy much of anything except a good nap.