Urban Baby

Not only is she international, Sabrina is now a city babe. She does taxi cabs, subways, sidewalks (even over those scary grate thingies), elevators, tall buildings and museums.



Friday night we took in the Free Friday session at the MoMA (Sabrina napped through that), then visited the 5th Avenue Apple Store (aka Brent Mecca...Sabrina woke up for that) and wrapped up the night with Chino Latino on the Upper West Side and dessert at Cafe Lalo. We left Sabrina back in the hotel after putting her to sleep on Friday night, thinking that Nana would just have to listen to the monitor..."She NEVER wakes up"...but instead Sabrina had other plans. She woke up about 20 minutes after we left and challenged Nana's already taxed brain. But by the time we got home after dinner and dessert, Sabrina was asleep soundly. She didn't sleep all that well any night that we were there (hard to blame her) and she woke up once or twice each night. We are not used to that! But usually feeding her and bouncing her on the ball (yes, we even travel to NYC with a Fit Ball) calmed her down and she went back to sleep. Brent and I realized how incredibly lucky we are that she sleeps through the night. We were both pretty useless when she woke up in the middle of the night. We are out of practice! Hopefully this doesn't become a habit.

Saturday we had the service for Tommy in the East Village, then we walked over to SoHo to his favorite restaurant called Mezzogiorno for an early dinner reception. He sure had great taste in food. The service was very nice with several people speaking, reading, crying and laughing about their memories of Tommy (Thomas H. Connell III). Sabrina got to meet his incredible daughters, Megan and Phoebe, their loving husbands, Ben and Jake, his adorable granddaughter, Lucy, his hysterical sisters, Nancy and Abigail, and fabulous ex-wives, Katherine and Stevie. What a wonderful family he left behind. Despite the occasion, it was a gorgeous spring day in New York City and the city was teeming with people out and about. We had a wonderful walk through the Village after a successful (though crowded) first subway ride for Sabrina.

That night we learned that Pam and Tom were out in NYC visiting Trevor, Liz and Lily for Lily's christening on Sunday. So we scooted uptown to Times Square and had a great French dinner with all of them. Lily and Sabrina are 6 days apart and seem to be lockstep with development and cuteness. They made a very cute pair.

Sunday we woke up to pouring rain and much cooler weather. We wandered over to a very New York style diner for breakfast, then we met up with our friends John & Don and Jill & Bryan for Indian food for lunch. Jill & Bryan showed us a swanky hotel that had a well-known coffee shop in it called Stumptown. Unfortunately Brent wasn't too impressed with the coffee there. For my part, the Earl Grey tea was fine but that's pretty hard to mess up. We went up to visit Jill & Bryan's apartment in Spanish Harlem (or SpaHa as they call it...not sure that's stuck yet!) where we got picked up by one of Brent's friends from Janesville (high school), John Zolidis. John took us to his apartment on the Upper West Side where we met his wife, Alexandra, and adorable daughters Ophelie (7) and Amelia (5). They played a very cute doll game with Sabrina and we had a very sweet little cocktail hour with them. Then down to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center to visit the fountain (and think about Tommy once again) and have dinner with Tim and Erica, Mom & Dad, Ash, and the Sandmans.

Monday we had even worse weather with rain and grey skies. We went up to the Guggenheim (finally! I had never been), then down to the World Trade Center to see the status of the construction on the Memorial. We visited a small museum showing the future memorial site and museum. They had architectural models and renderings of the site, plus videos, photos and interviews from 9/11. It was hard, as always, but good to see and remember.

Then home, on Sabrina's 6th flight, but once again she was a trooper. This was probably our most difficult flight with her awake the entire 5+ hours on the plane, but we can't complain. She's amazing. We can't believe that we've been able to pull off these past three weeks without more difficulty from her. She sure does make it easy on us sometimes. Now we'll see how another week at daycare goes. Think bottle baby!!