Category: Uncategorized

Amy & Dan were in town last week to see the Daily Show and other stuff and stopped by to see us. After his customary two minute warm-up, M put on a little show. Here he is singing along to Kaiser Chiefs which we recorded a few weeks ago and that he’s been watching at least a few times every week since, rehearsing for his big moment, to such an extent that he knows the gestures of the lead singer, as you can see here and especially here.

Well he took to it like, well a boy to a bicycle. No sooner was he on it than he was speeding down the street with us jogging to keep up with him (that’s his mother’s helmet he has on, needs a little adjusting but not much!).

I guess those miles clocked up on the tricycle paid off (that will now be readjusted for her for later in the year).

What awaits one young boy tomorrow…

It’s not his birthday for a few months, but by then the temperatures will be dropping (thankfully!) and the nights will be considerably shorter. Given all that and his interest in the Tour de France, we decided to get him his first bike (after his great Kettler trike, which will now be passed down the line, as she’s already trying to climb aboard). It’s hidden in the closet for now until we get a chance to take him out on it tomorrow night for a bit of urban cycling down by the East River.

We once bought some software for Miles to play with on the computer when he was about 18 months old – one of those Fisher Price things with a big keyboard overlay thing to help them learn to type the letters. He never showed a glimmer of interest in it. He just wanted to “play letters,” as he describned his process of learning to type on the century-old Qwerty keyboard.

Instead, now at just over 3 and a half years old he has been able to type all the names of the kids in his class for a few months now, can color them in (both the font and the background colors in Word) can start Winamp and play his favorite songs from long playlists and has managed to change our user icons in Windows XP many times, but does so deliberately.

His latest thing is that “planet thing where we can see Nanny & Grandad’s house,” by which he means Google Earth. If you want to teach your kids that there quite literally is a whole other world out there, I can’t think of a better way of doing it. The Fisher Price software is probably headed towards eBay.

He likes nothing better than starting at his house and flying across the ocean to Nanny & Grandad’s, ending here:

Just so you all know, more or less since we returned from Fire Island on June 29, she has been ‘officially’ walking. We’re assuming the sand and risk of splinters set her back slightly while at the beach house. But as soon as we set foot back home, she was off. And now, resplendent in a new pair of Pedoodles, she is walking the length & breadth of the apartment.

Well it seems like such a long time ago now, but it wasn’t really. We spent 5 days or so on Fire Island at the end of June – and mighty fine it was too. There’s lot of pictures of the kids here (usual caveat about username & password applies, so if you need a password etc, email us).

The weather was great except one day when it rained, which was OK because we went to the Sunken Forest. And on the water taxi ride, Sally made a celebrity sighting, which I must admit completely passed me by, but that’s nothing new – ‘they’ were getting off the water taxi as we were getting on.

We were joined for the first two nights by Simon and Stacy, which was great, because not only did we get to show some more friends how great Fire Island is, but we also got some help entertaining the kids and doing the cooking. Simon even found some time to tame some of the Atlantic Ocean’s fish.

Good times and lots of pictures followed. Here’s one, though there’s a lot more if you log in and go to the June 2005 pictures.

We had a busy Fourth of July. Out on my bike again in the afternoon, I took advantage of the light traffic due to the holiday to head up to Central Park, where we’d all been the day before, incidentally. Back in the day (i.e. before kids arrived and I started to feel responsible for others than just myself) I used to regualrly take a hairy ride up to, then round, then back from Central Park in the rush hour traffic. Coming back down 7th Avenue, especially where it intersects Broadway was one of the silliest things to do on a bike.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon all was relatively quiet. Going up 8th Ave you pass some garish architecture and examples of dot com hubris Once in Central Park, though you never quite forget where you are – the number of crazy people will never let you forget that – it certainly doesn’t look like New York in parts, like this. Anyway more pictures of the day here.

While in Central Park on Sunday Miles had learned a new word – blimp – after we saw one circling the Great Lawn. So you can imagine his excitement when he caught up with the same thing yesterday, spotting it out of our window and tracking its progress as it circled around ahead of the fireworks.

Every couple of years we seem to move closer and closer to the fireworks and now our building has a proper roof and a good vantage point. But Miles was keeping his eye in that blimp…

…then it all went bang

The single most annoying thing for me (amid some strong competition) of MTV’s treatment of Live8 was that in almost all cases, they never let the song finish, preferring to cut instead to somebody asking somebody else how long it took them to get to Philadelphia that morning, over and over again, as if any of that mattered.

Perish the thought that rather than filling space between commercials with inane banter – juxtaposed by the occasional lecture from a 20-something presenter with no last name about how they really cared about African poverty- they might show some music?

Still, now African poverty’s dealt with, it’s time to get back to Real World, Date My Mom and Punk’d. Phew.

This was dinner Saturday night.

Another stab at a Strawberry tart, this time from this NY Times recipe, which I made ahead of time and much more successful than the previous attempt.

Later on I made this Courgette, Tomato and Basil tart, which are three words that don’t cross the Atlantic well!

This was accompanied by sugar snap peas, fresh from Union Square Greenmarket. Like most tarts, pies etc, it seemed to taste better the second night when the side was fresh peas from the same source as their sugar snap cousin. Strangely they’re described by the couple of farmers that sell them in the market as “English-style peas.” Are the English the only ones that eat fresh peas from the pod?

We were recently in Philadelphia for the day, having a look around. After enduring a security process that took longer than walking around the exhibits themselves (irony fully recognized), we reached the Liberty Bell itself.

At which point the little man viewed the flimsy ribbon barrier thing as an insuffucient deterrent to him reaching out and touching the old bell itself, stopping just short as Sally grabbed him just in time. Before, with the bell in the background and with mischief on his mind…

….and after, feeling duly sheepish….

These and more pictures up here (password required), plus some of the little lady, such as this one:

As usual you’ll have to log in to see them so if you need a password etc, email us.

Once you log in, click on ‘May 2005’ for these pictures. One day it’ll be more integrated, but in the mean time, I’m sure you can figure it out.