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[ add comment ]a study in a mood change
August 28, 2006, 12:41 pm
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[ 4 comments ] ( 36 views )nine years
August 26, 2006, 2:49 pm
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Nine years ago today Troy and my Aunt Dottie, along with Max and Molly, drove from Summit, New Jersey with a car full of our things and moved us into a one bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive up in Inwood, about 20 blocks from where we live now. I was busy starting a temp job and couldn’t help them, but I spent the day with a pounding heart and butterflies in my stomach as a lifelong dream was about to come true. I was going to live in New York City! I remember taking the subway home for the first time ever and practically running down the street, and as I opened the door of our sublet Troy and the dogs greeted me excitedly with Billy Joel singing “New York State of Mind” in the background.
(He wasn’t really there in the apartment. The moment was magical, but not THAT magical.)
Sometimes I get anxious when I have to celebrate lots of years. The older I get the less exciting my birthday feels, and in recent years I’ve felt disappointed that we’ve been in this wonderful town for so long and had so little to show for it. No big Broadway careers, no big-time agents calling. But now I’m a proud 36 year old mother of an almost one and a half year old and I’ve decided to really celebrate this aging thing.
Here’s what Troy and I have to show for nine years of living in New York City. We have a neighborhood that we are CRAZY about. I sometimes have nightmares that I'm being forced to move away from this place. People ask how we can be okay raising Huck here and I honestly don’t know how to answer them. It seems so obvious why we would want Huck to grow up in our very favorite place on earth.
We have friends in this neighborhood and in this city that are like our home away from home. Last week "Chalk" was shown down in Greenwich Village and we felt like we were in our wedding receiving line, being hugged and kissed and congratulated by so many people we love. And just yesterday we got a call from a few who had been in line at Central Park since 1:45AM to get free tickets to “Mother Courage and Her Children” starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, and they had an extra ticket for one of us. Troy very sweetly insisted that I go and have this amazing experience and so I did! It was beautifully chilly and I had to wear a sweater as I ate food and drank wine provided by my friends and sat under the stars watching possibly the best actress in the world perform in one of my favorite plays. And it happened in my town!
We have a church family that is such a part of our everyday lives that I almost take it for granted. We have best friends that live right here in our building and often we hang out with each other in pajamas and take turns making coffee while the babies play. We sit out on the terrace together and have cookouts while we look over the Hudson River and the GW Bridge and make “oooo” sounds as the sun sets. We have a Starbucks on the corner and our favorite Indian restaurant down the street and trees outside all of our windows and playgrounds full of other mommies and daddies and kids and dogs and our very own river. We have it all really.
So Huck, here's to your hometown!
[ 8 comments ] ( 56 views )
some fun huck facts
August 20, 2006, 8:43 am
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First of all, Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa!
Now then, here are a few things about Huck.
When you ask him how old he is, he happily holds up a finger and says, “ONE!” Then he says, “TWO!” and then he says, “SIX!” and sometimes he ends with “NINE!” He’s growing up so fast.
He’s also adding some pretty fancy words to his ever increasing vocabulary, and my favorites are lello (yellow), eyebo (eyebrow), pee-goo (peekaboo), a-pane (airplane), awanna (the other one), something that sounds like helicopter and something that kind of sounds like watermelon. Nowadays Troy and I work very, very hard to figure out the many exciting things Huck tells us. Oh, the frustrated looks we get from him as he tries to communicate, sometimes even resorting to inventing new sign language in hopes of making us understand. He’s now saying tiny sentences, with his first being “I peed!” (He was naked and proud of himself for peeing on the floor.) My favorite is "La-Lu," which is "I love you." And he says “WHOA!” and “WOW!” about a hundred times a day. Turns out I do, too!
Huck is crazy about colors and likes to point to things and make excited guesses. He almost always gets black right, but he tends to think that everything else is yellow or green.
His newest body part fascination is the arm pit, which he calls PIT (or sometimes PIP). There’s lots of pit tickling going on in our house these days.
And last of all I would like you to try this: take your right arm and do a little chicken wing move with it, up and down and up and down real fast. And every time your chicken wing goes down it slaps against your side real loud. And your wrist is kind of jutting back and forth, too, giving the impression that you think you’re snapping. Then nod your head real slow with a sly look on your face. That is Huck’s famous dance move and I predict it’s about to sweep the nation and be the next big thing.
[ 5 comments ] ( 52 views )
a song and a dance to guatemala
August 15, 2006, 1:01 pm
I believe Huck is singing something like this:HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!!
(Wild Applause & Over the Top Giggling)
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[ 6 comments ] ( 55 views )dada, dada, dada, dada, dada, dada
August 13, 2006, 7:02 pm
Huck has always loved his Pappy T very much, but lately he has become extremely attached to him. Maybe because for most of Monday and Wednesday he gets his daddy all to himself while I'm teaching, maybe because he's now at the age when he can fully appreciate how fun his dad is, maybe because he's realized he's a boy. Whatever the reason, when he goes to bed at night he nestles next to Daddy, and when he wakes up in the night he calls for Dada and only Dada will do. When walking outside he often holds up his little hand for Pappy to hold, and when Paps leaves for work or to swim in the Hudson River, Huck cries for Dada to come back. Pappy T and Huck are best friends now, and there's nothing sweeter to Mammy J.(Besides, he still laughs more at my hilarious sense of humor. Keep trying, Pappy.)
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[ 7 comments ] ( 53 views )huck's girlfriends
August 10, 2006, 10:17 pm
Here's Huck with our wonderful friends Betty and Amanda, who take care of him on Thursdays. Once I get home around 3:00 Huck begins telling me all about his fun day. His eyes really light up when he talks about his Betty and 'Manda, and frankly I think he wishes my work day was longer.;)
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[ 5 comments ] ( 42 views )another seventh
August 7, 2006, 6:28 am
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Happy 17 month birthday, Huck! (And Happy 12 year anniversary, Max!)
Huck really, really likes me to explain how milk goes into his mouth, down to his tummy and finally out into his diaper. He also runs now. And he’s possibly the best dancer we’ve ever seen.
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[ 5 comments ] ( 58 views )