Jonah turns 3

This post is a bit overdue... I've been really lazy about blogging lately, but I'm trying to catch up I guess.

My sweet boy, Jonah Samuel, turned 3 on December 18th. I am so blessed to be his Mama. I honestly do not know what I would do without him. We didn't have an official birthday party for him, we just invited some friends from church to go out to lunch with us after church since his birthday was on a Sunday. We had about 20 people come and we really had a great time. Despite Jonah's complete obsession with all things trains, he requested a Lightening McQueen birthday cake... so that's what he got! Our friend from church, Jen Maala, made the cake for us and we took it to the restaurant for all to enjoy.


The fabulous cake by Jen Maala


As you can see, Jonah was pretty excited about his cake.


some of the crew at lunch


Opening a few gifts at home...




Jonah, you have changed my life in so many ways. You have made my life richer and fuller. Who would ever know that being your mother would be so amazing? You are full of life and full of love. I enjoy every moment that I spend with you. The past year of your life has been full of fun! You have been a great 2 year old and I am admittedly a bit sad to see this year come to a close. Of course, I am thrilled with what the next year(s) of your life will hold!

You will soon be a big brother. You seem excited about this and I am excited about this adventure for you. I know you will love your little sister and help Mommy and Daddy take care of her. I am so proud of you for all you do and I know I will be proud of the big brother you are going to be for the rest of your life. I have often wondered how it will be possible to love 2 children equally... I just want you to know that the love I have for you will not be touched. The love I have for you is your love and the love I have for your sister is her love. I will always love both of you more than words can say. YOU, will always be Mama's sweet boy and no one can take that title away from you. I love you with all my heart Jonah Samuel and I can't wait to see what this 3rd year of your life will hold.

The New York Transit Museum

Mark took the past couple of days off work and it has been wonderful! We have really enjoyed all the family time. Sadly, he has to return to work tomorrow, but we are excited that he has one more day off next week to hang out with us before the new addition arrives.

Today we took a trip to Brooklyn to the New York Transit Museum. It was a great decision. Jonah really had a blast. The museum was located in an old subway station, which was really cool. There were all sorts of things for kids to do. The best way to tell you about the day is through the pictures, so here ya go...


'pumping' gas into the bus


riding in the bus with daddy-- the museum had actual buses and trains in it for the kids to play around in... Jonah was in heaven!


Jonah driving the bus


riding the bus with mommy


driving another bus


Model of an old trolley car


Playing in the subway turnstiles


You can tell here that the museum is in an old subway station


Mark and Jonah on an old subway car... the oldest ones that were there were from 1904-1905... pretty cool!


Jonah and Daddy looking at the map together-- Jonah is fascinated with maps, just like his Daddy.


Jonah playing in the ticket booth


Jonah made me and Mark take turns playing conductor on each of the subway cars. He was loving it!! I think he got the concept from 'The Polar Express' because he would step on the train and say "Everybody take your seats!.... Tickets, Please!" It was cute!


Mark and Jonah on one of the older subway cars


I found the old advertisements in the subway cars interesting, so I took some pictures of a few of them....






the old cars even had ceiling fans!

Prospect Park

For several months, my friend Jill and I have been trying to plan a day to meet at Prospect Park to go to the zoo. For one reason after another we hadn't been able to coordinate. Finally, today we made it happen! The weather, for NYC in November, was Ahhmazing! It was a glorious fall day. This was my first trip to Prospect Park. It should have taken me about 1 hour by subway, but due to multiple factors, it took me 2 hours to get from my apartment to the Prospect Park zoo entrance. Exhausted at 31 weeks pregnant? yes. Was it worth it? Totally.

One of the contributing factors to the fact that it took me so long to get to the zoo entrance was that I ended up entering the park at an entrance that was not so close to the zoo. So, I had a 20 minute walk through the park to get to the zoo. I had no idea where I was going initially till I finally found a map and a few friendly Brooklynites to point me in the right direction. To this fall-lovin' girls' delight, the 20 minute walk was worth the long commute to Brooklyn. The leaves were gorgeous and the weather was perfect. Jonah really seemed to enjoy himself too. He was convinced that although this too, was his first trip to Prospect Park, he knew the way to the zoo, even though Mommy did not. He would say, "Mommy, you just need to go through that tunnel right over there and we'll get to the zoo." He has most likely inherited his sense of direction from his daddy, so no doubt, he will know his way around NYC better than me in no time. He is constantly asking where we are 'on the map' when he sees a map... he also asks what streets we are walking on and what streets we are going to. He has a love of maps and geography like his daddy does.

On a similar note, but kind of a side story for this blog post-- he has picked up on what Mark and I say when we get in a taxi to go home, ya know, what we say to the driver when we get in -- "93rd and 3rd please", which is the intersection where our apartment building is located. He now, usually beats me to telling the driver where we need to go. The funny thing is, he will blurt out "ninety-thuwrd and thuwrd please" even if we are getting in a cab to go somewhere besides home, so I have to quickly correct him and tell the driver the appropriate address. So cute (and kind of amazing) what they pick up on!

Back to the current topic....Jonah had a great time at the zoo, once we finally made it there. He and Even toddled around after each other and had fun pointing out the animals and showing each other the different animals that they liked. It was really cute and fun watching them interact with each other. They also decided to switch strollers 1/2 way through the day so that Even was riding in Jonah's stroller and Jonah in Even's :)

Here are some pictures from our fun day!


Pathway through Prospect Park that we walked on to get to the zoo


Gorgeous fall leaves




Jonah liked this little tree and wanted his picture by it


Jonah spotted this very large leaf on the pathway through the park and hung onto it all day


Turtle Even :)


Jonah and Even in the Turtle shell together


Jonah acting like a turtle ;)


Jonah and Even looking at something in this tank... there were fish in there, but none showed up in the picture... I think it looks like there's a snake down in the bottom of the tank too :P


Jonah with his leaf


Jonah in the prarie dog play tunnels


More fall leaves


So, I think this large bird is an Emu -- but I asked Jonah what he thought it was and he said.... "hmmmmmm.... maybe a goat?" and Even chimed in with "Cow!"


Jonah cheezin for the camera

Trick or Treat! in NYC

The trick or treating experience in NYC is a bit different... just like most things in NYC.
Obviously in NYC the door to door trick or treating is different because there aren't houses like there are in most other places in America. There are townhouses, so certain areas are designated for trick or treaters to go to. Because these areas are designated and because there are ALOT of people in NYC, these areas are quite crowded. We took Jonah to a designated area, that consisted of a couple of blocks of town houses that were giving out candy. The streets in these areas were closed down and yes, they were quite crowded.

Jonah went trick or treating last year, but I'm pretty certain he had no recollection of doing so. This year, he was not sure what was going on. He didn't want to hold his bag at first and he certainly did not want to walk up to a door and say 'trick or treat'! Once he realized that the people at the doors were giving him candy for holding out his bag and saying 'trick or treat' he decided to willingly participate! So, for the first hour of our night that is what we did...and Jonah filled up his candy bag.

The second hour of the designated trick or treating time was spent inside our building. I went back to our apartment to hand out candy and Jonah and Mark went floor to floor for several floors accepting candy from the residents in our building that decided to participate in the distribution of candy. Jonah ended up filling his candy bag twice in one night, so needless to say he (we) have plenty of candy to last us awhile!

Here are a few pictures from our night with our sweet little train conductor!




Needing a little encouragment to go up to a stranger and ask for candy :)




Fighting his way through a crowded door step to get candy




These last two were taken on Mark's phone at our apartment. They seem blurry on here although they are quite clear on the phone :(

What I made during 'Irene'

As I'm sure all of you know, this past weekend, Hurricane Irene was projected to hit NYC. It did hit NYC, enough to make us stay inside pretty much all weekend, but fortunately, not badly enough to do as much damage (in NYC) as they were projecting. Because we were inside all weekend... I had a productive weekend in the area of sewing. :)

You all may remember this post
http://amanhattanmomma.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-2nd-sewing-project.html

Well, I had been thinking for awhile that I needed to make another caddy for Jonah, only this one should be for his trains. Jonah is pretty much obsessed with trains. We don't leave home without one or two in hand, so I thought some sort of carrying device for his trains would be a good idea. The car caddy that I made previously with my friend Susan would only need minimal changes to accomodate Jonah's trains-on-the-go. Although I am in no way an expert seamstress, I thought that I could probably figure out how to make those changes to the caddy.

I do need to give additional credit to Jill of 'Homemade by Jill' because she is where this idea orginated from. Although I do not know Jill personally, she is inspiring and creative. She is generous enough to post tutorials for sewing on her blog that allow non-creative copycats like me to make the stuff she is designing and making. Maybe one day I will have that kind of creativity, but realistically, I do not think so. I am thankful for the world of blogging... it has really helped me in my sewing adventures thus far. I'm enjoying sewing more and more and even have the itch to attempt to make many things for my baby on the way, possibly even some of the bedding... we shall see and if I do successfully make this bedding, believe me, you'll here about it on here.

Until then, here are a few pictures of the 'train caddy'.

Front of train caddy


Inside of train caddy ~ pockets to carry his trains and tracks for the trains to travel on


Jonah playing with his train caddy

StoryBook Land

Last weekend Mark, Jonah, and I were able to get out of the city for the weekend! I love these weekends! For me, there is a sense of freedom that comes from riding around in a car. I did not even know this feeling until living the past 3 years without a car. I get quite excited about the thought of just being in a car and driving on an open highway. Anyways, we headed to New Jersey for the weekend and had a great time!

Mark's boss owns a house on the Jersey Shore at Long Beach Island. The house is beautiful and so is the beach there. We went down for an afternoon last summer and went again this past weekend. We spent the afternoon on the beach with a few of Mark's co-workers. The weather was great and the afternoon was relaxing. We then had dinner back at Mark's boss' beach house, which was really nice. After dinner we headed out to a hotel near Atlantic City, NJ, but not before Jonah gave every last one of Mark's co-workers and their family members a hug to say his goodbyes.


Here's Jonah playing in the sand at the beach. He loved the sand and the waves! Makes me really excited about our trip to Florida in a couple of weeks!

Sunday morning we drove a little through Atlantic City, NJ just to see it. We got out and walked on the boarwalk for just a few minutes, which was nice.
The main event for the day was taking Jonah to a little theme park called 'StoryBook Land'. It is a theme parked geared for children 5 or 6 and under. It was really cute. The theme is obviously storybooks... all the traditional stories, like 'Mary had a little lamb', 'Goldilocks and the 3 bears', 'Jack and Jill', etc. All the rides there are pretty much appropriate for Jonah, although there was 1 or 2 that he decided not to ride.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend.


This ride was a boat that rocked and kind of twirled around. I sat across from Mark and Jonah and was able to watch Jonah's expressions... SO cute!


Mark and Jonah on the boat ride


Jonah milking a mechanical cow :)


Mark and Jonah on the Balloon ride


Mary's schoolhouse from 'Mary had a Little Lamb'. Jonah kept calling it the barn. There was a live sheep outside of the house, so I can see why he thought it was a barn, especially since it is bright red! Jonah loved the little schoolhouse though, it was just his size.


Jonah was SO excited to go in the little school house. I acted like I was the teacher and had him sing his 'ABC's'... he was so proud of himself -- on the other hand, Mark reminds me a little bit of the character 'Billy Madison' in this pic :)


Jack and Jill's Hill had a big slide on it!



Here's the roller coaster that Jonah said he wanted to ride... he was all smiles at the beginning, but all tears and crying for Mama when he got off. Although, later he said he wanted to ride the 'faster, faster ride' again.. We didn't let him b/c we weren't sure if he really knew what he was saying. Now, if you ask him what is favorite ride was, he says, 'the faster, faster ride!!'.


At the top of the hill


There were multiple displays such as this one-- you can't really tell what Jonah is looking at, but he is looking into the home of the '3 bears'. If you pushed the button on the outside of the house, it told the story of 'Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. It was pretty cute. This story seemed to be Jonah's favorite. He is still talking about how Goldilocks broke Baby Bear's chair.


Jonah driving Mommy around in the 'Old Cars' as he called them


Jonah and Daddy riding the 'Choo-Choo'!


Jonah and Daddy inside the pumpkin of 'Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater'


We had a great time at StoryBook Land!