In Toronto!

Kate and I are finally in Ontario! We flew in this morning and are spending the night in Toronto so that we can go to the passport office in the morning. From there, we'll head to the cottage.

At some point I'll download our New York photos and post a bunch of them. We had a great time.

Now it's time for some knitting and a cuppa. It's been two long travel days.

New York!

We're here! And Karen and John are here! And Kate. Oh well, not exactly as planned. But, still, we're here!

We are staying in a great basement apartment in Brooklyn, just off a street full of a mix of restaurants, shops, hair places, etc. It has a real neighbourhood feel, and it seems like a lot of the neighbours are from the Caribbean. Which means that for dinner tonight we saw a bbq out on the sidewalk with amazing jerk chicken in it. It was awesome. And a whole clamshell of meat was $8. Compare that to the $14 I paid this afternoon for a hamburger and french fries. Yikes. I'll stick with the neighbourhood eats.

This morning, before K&J arrived, we spent the morning wandering around Central Park. We saw the ducks, played at the sand box, watched the turtles and just enjoyed it. Then, we had a pretty awful time finding the apartment, but it was pretty much par for the course for this trip. I'm hoping that all the problems are now done and we can just enjoy the weekend.

After we finally met up with K&J, we headed towards the Brooklyn Bridge. The plan was to walk across, but due to a cranky toddler who woke up way too early this morning, K&J went on their own and we hung out at a park and then played by the waterfront. It was actually really fun, and a good reminder to just slow down and not try to force too much schedule on Kate. To just let her be nearly-2, and enjoy what that means.

Which means we don't have much of a plan for tomorrow. We will go out for breakfast, and then we were talking about maybe going to a museum. The forecast is for rain, so that might be a good idea. Kate had two short naps in the Ergo, so we'll try that again. And tomorrow we'll do a better job of keeping her fed (and me too. We're bad at that when we're travelling).

This is a very disjointed post. Karen wrote a better one, so you can go read it.

All the lists in the world

will not get you on your flight on time if you fail to check your passport expiration.

Ooops. I didn't even believe the ticket agent when she told me my passport was expired. That's how sure I was. There must be a mistake, I was thinking. But, there wasn't. It expired in May. If I'd had my birth certificate with me, we could have gone to Toronto. But I didn't. And even if I had, that would have doomed the NYC trip since I couldn't re-enter the US on an invalid passport. So, after half an hour of rescheduling flights, etc. etc., lovely Catherine came and got us from the airport and brought us home.

Then I spent over an hour and too much money to get it all fixed. I am going to NYC, but now Kate is coming along and then we will go to Toronto on Tuesday. And I will apply for a new passport on Wednesday morning.

Sigh.

Get me out of this heat!

Summer has hit Austin with 100+ temperatures forecasted for the rest of the week. We've been at the pool every day for nearly two weeks. The pool definitely helps, but what helps more is leaving. Tomorrow we're heading north to the motherland for seven weeks (with a brief jaunt to NYC). Posting will be sporadic. But you should be used to that.

Note to self

If Kate takes something potentially messy and ducks out of sight and then gets quiet for five minutes, chances are it will take longer than five minutes to clean up the mess.

Yes, that is yogurt.

Memorial Day Weekend

Last weekend was the long weekend and we had a great time. We went out a few time with friends, went swimming, went to the sprinkler park, ate yummy food and generally had a fun weekend. Here are some pictures.

Blossoming vocabulary

A few days ago, I was marvelling (again) at the pace at which Kate is learning words. A few every day, and she is now finally starting to put them together into two word sentences. It's really amazing to see. I wanted to jot down her vocabulary to get a sense of how many words she has now. I'm sure I'll forget a whole bunch, but here is my attempt at a list:

Daddy
Baboo
Mummy
Mine
No
Yes
Dog
Cat
Cow
Horse
Fish
Cereal
Banana
Toast
Bath
Water
Juice
Milk
Sleep
Blanket
Book
Bucket
Pool
Park
Show
Away
Raisin
Pie
Cake
Cookie
Grapefruit
Hat
Bag
Up
Down
Hot
Walk
Car
Bus
Truck
Train
Chair
Potty
Pee
Poo
Wagon
Clay
Felix
Beck
Again
More
Wet
Tea
Oma
Shirt
Shorts
Pants
Doll
Bike
Computer
Bottle
Shoe
Sock
Airplane
Hi
Bye


I know I'm forgetting some, and I also can't figure out how to put it in columns so it's not the longest post ever, but oh well.