May 9, 2005 - Monday
The boys' second day in New York was mostly about going back to Central Park. My plan, with mommy going off to her business obligations, was to just go hang out at the Central Park Zoo, stopping at Rockefeller Plaza on the way. But we were kind of slow getting started and I made a couple of miscalculations that made the time too short for more. Children's Zoo turned out to be all we saw.

The first mistake was thinking that Rockefeller Plaza held any interest for two little boys. With the warm weather the skating rink is gone and there's really nothing there. Worse, even though Rockefeller Plaza was half way to the park and not a bad walk, the rest of the way pushed the boys' patience. By the time we got to the park and navigated our way to the zoo, we only had a little time before we had to go back to check out of the hotel. That was my second mistake: I should have done that before we left, but somehow I thought the boys might need a place to go back to.

On the other hand, getting back to the hotel to check out meant taking a city bus down 5th Ave, something the boys hadn't done yet. In fact, we took another bus back to Central Park to meet mommy (on the way into the back this second time I saw Tony Bennett sitting with his dog on a park bench).

We had no real plan for leaving the city, but the next couple of hours consisted of the boys being boys, climbing the rocks in the park, riding on the carousel again, and Harry chasing flocks of pigeons. We could have stayed in the city for dinner, but that would have meant getting home very late. Besides, after last night the boys needed a nap and getting in the car sooner seemed like the right thing to do. So we took one last taxi back to the hotel and took one more picture of one more thing the boys both loved about our stay in New York.

The trip home was pretty uneventful with both Harry and Jeremy sleeping at least half of the way, but Jeremy did do something quite remarkable as we were leaving the city. That red thing he's holding is really a flip top stopwatch, but I'm seen him use it like this as a cell phone before, albeit only briefly. This time, however, he carried on a very long conversation with himself, recapping what we did, asking himself about lunch, and just chit-chatting the way I am absolutely sure he hears Mary do often. Although, thinking the whole thing charming, his mother asked whether it was Mary he was talking to. His response, in a tone that clearly suggested that mommy was being silly, was something like: "it's no one. It's not a real phone." Well, of course...


Comments, Opinions?