The next morning we lazed around the apartment before getting up and finally deciding to go do something. It was really nice to have a lazy morning!
This is Lauren’s apartment building:
We had our first train ride, which the kids thought was super cool, but it made me really anxious, so I didn’t take any photos. For some reason (maybe it’s because he’s a kid, haha) Logan thinks it’s super cool to touch everything as we are walking along the streets. This grosses me out so, so much! I’m not usually a huge germaphobe, but I seriously want to bathe him in hand sanitizer every few minutes.
On our first adventure out into public, I decided that I was going to smile at everyone. I don’t know why I had this thought– it just popped into my head. I guess maybe I had this preconceived notion that all New Yorkers were unfriendly and bad tempered. Lauren was giving me crap for smiling at everyone– she said that New Yorkers don’t really smile and that I was letting everyone know that I was from out of town. So what? I made it my goal to spread a little smiliness to the surly people I would surely meet along the way.
But it didn’t happen. There weren’t hoards of rude people walking down the street. In fact, I encountered quite the opposite. On the train, I smiled at a man and he gave me his seat. I did have Lorelei strapped to my back, so that might have had something to do with it. Every single person I smiled at, smiled back.
Our train took us close to the museum, but we had to walk about 6 blocks to get there. While walking, I continued my quest of spreading smiliness. And then it happened–the most magical experience of the trip so far. We were walking towards an older woman pushing a cart and I met her eyes. We smiled at each other at the same time and she stopped. She told us to come over and talk to her. She proceeded to tell us that smiling is awesome and she also makes it a point to smile at people to spread love and happiness. She said that we have beautiful smiles and we should share them with everyone and not care if people say we look like a hyena, haha. Apparently, she’s been called a hyena for smiling so much. She introduced herself as Ms. Mildred and reemphasized that we need to keep on smiling. We chatted for a little bit longer. She had the kindest eyes and positive energy and love was radiating from her. As we parted ways, she told us that she loved us and to not to forget to keep on smiling. <3
Wow. Just wow.
As she walked away, I snapped a photo to help me preserve this memory forever.
We made it to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and holy crap it was crowded. We stayed for a couple of hours playing until everyone was feeling pretty overwhelmed. At one point, poor little Logan put his fingers in his ears and started trying to fold into himself because it was so overstimulating. My poor buddy. I felt the same way though. It was way too peopley for my liking.
The next day, we decided to stay home and work on packing up some of Lauren’s stuff and do a little schoolwork with the kids. The goal was to have a kind of lazy day to prepare for Chris flying out the next morning. I didn’t want to completely wear the kids out before he arrived!
We had lots of snuggles in the morning. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
Lazy day, indeed.
Meet Aria, Aunt Pucci’s cat. She’s a sweet little kitty and tolerates the kids really well.
We did a little bit of school work. The plan was to see the Statue of Liberty with Daddy the next day. We watched a couple of Youtube videos, drew some pictures, and worked on our handwriting.
We ended our day with more snuggles and a little blogging. <3