First night in New York

I've been lame about posting, but my days have been insane. I've been rising between 4 .m. and 5 a.m. to work on "Italian time" and then going about my day and to bed on U.S. time. I am beyond exhausted. Did I mention I spent the last two days in the car alternating driving while trying to translate and write articles "on the road" with a laptop whose battery dies after about 15 minutes? By about mid next week work should slow down, and the vacation portion of this trip should begin. Today is our first day in New York. We were really sad to leave friends and family in green, leafy Ohio. Dylan had a fantastic time. I hope we are able to make New York kid-friendly and fun for him. Here we are tonight having Pinkberry frozen yogurt after our Chinese food dinner. If you look closely you'll see that my black circles have black circles.

Two beds are not necessarily better than one

Dylan has two beds here. One is the toddler bed that is going to stay at Grandma Mimi's and the other is his inflatable bed that we are going to use in New York. We have both out just for fun and so that Dylan gets used to them. You'd think having two beds would (perhaps) make him a better sleeper. Naw, no such luck. He likes to alternate between the two but he prefers the bigger toddler bed. That is when he is not stealthily climbing into bed with us while we sleep and waking us up with his tossing and turning. You can see both beds have the same theme - Cars! It's to the point where he actually quotes the movie running around the house saying: "I ain't no Mac. I'm a Peterbilt!"

Dylan in the toddler bed with my flowery childhood blanket he's become extremely attached to

Dylan zipped into the Cars inflatable bed with the Cars pillow and looking like he's ready to nod off. Don't let him fool you!

Fun stuff!

We are having a great time exploring new parks, new pools, new museums and new "spraygrounds" every day. This is the one nearest our apartment. Dylan loves it!

More sprayground from Michelle Marie on Vimeo.

Very first haircut!

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Originally uploaded by michellanea

Sprayground

My big new discovery is the "sprayground." It's a playground with water features for the kiddies. There are tons of them here in Ohio, and so I'm realizing that we are going to need to have a swimsuit (or swim diapers as it were), sunscreen and towel at the ready at all times. Today we encountered one at a shopping center. Tomorrow we move into our new rental apartment where we will have a little "office" making it easier for the two of us to juggle working and taking care of Dylan, and I just found out that there's a huge park nearby with gigantic "sprayground." Here's a slide show of some of our adventures so far, many of them involving water. Some I've already published in the previous post but there are a few new ones from the Cincinnati Children's Museum and other random spraygrounds we've encountered.

U.S. fun

Our plane touched down on U.S. soil exactly a week ago. I think we are finally over the hellacious trip and jet lag. Here are some pics of our week. I love the parks and pools here. Life just seems so much easier with a kid here, and it makes me realize even more the things that are lacking in Italy. Cristiano and I are balancing working from "home" and getting to spend lots of quality time with Dylan. It's working out great, and I love that I can do my job from anywhere. Here are some pics of our week!

Cool local park with water features

Fun with water at the park on a hot day

The Kettering pool. This is the pool I went to as a kid, where I learned to swim and where I used to scope out boys as a teenager.

Everyone in this pool is a cousin of Dylan's. How fun!

Pool from Michelle Marie on Vimeo.

This pool has EVERYTHING. Multiple shallow pools for the kids, free lawn chairs and a huge playground and sand pit. Dylan gets in free. In Italy, going to the pool costs a lot and the pools near us are usually Olympic-sized indoor pools (no shallow kiddie part) and they let you sit outside on the concrete if you want. You pay extra for a lawn chair.