A New York minute — Baby edition
So, I spent the last couple of weeks in New York. Which you might have guessed if you follow me on Instagram. If you don’t, you should: I’m so good someone complimented me once. By the way, I will keep on posting New York pics for the foreseeable future because there are just too many. And I do select the ones I post, thank you very much.
But back to New York, as it were. It had been a few years, since my then-fiancée and I went there for new year’s. This time around, a few things were different:
We’d gotten married since — then again, you’d assume an engagement will lead to that;
For the more perceptive among you, new year’s is winter while August is not. And, for the even more perceptive, that makes quite a big difference given how New York’s climate tends to swing;
We got in with our 17-month old baby girl. Well, she was 16-months old when we arrived, 17 when we left. The point is — we had a small child with us, which somewhat cramps your style if your style is all about clubbing, bar-hopping and/or queuing to get in the new “IT” restaurant. Luckily, we are about none of those things. Especially me: I’m turning 41 soon, so my idea of a good time involves a couch and herbal tea. And ice cream if I’m really indulging. Living the life.
Turns out, incredibly, going around New York with a toddler is not that terrible. I mean, it is demonstrably harder than without: there are very few “accessible stations” in town, babies tend not to care about a skyline and they’d rather go to a playground than walk up 5th Avenue. Luckily, there are playgrounds literally everywhere, even on 5th: at it happens, you’re always 5 to 10 minutes away from a kid-friendly park in New York, i.e. a place where your toddler can run around joyfully climbing up structures involving stairs, ropes and/or slides. In Paris, you will find a bunch of beautiful, historical gardens with impeccably kept rows of trees and statues of kings on horses in them — but no playgrounds. And then there are the swings: you find way more of those than in Paris, including the baby-sized ones. And we know: Sophia loves that sh*t. Like, a lot.
There are other things we understood a little less in those New York playgrounds, admittedly: for some reason, most/all of them feature animal statues. I mean, I get the idea of an object that is more or less their size that they’d want to touch and walk around, perhaps climb over if they’re older, but a miniature bear statue doesn’t exactly do much to a kid in the long run. Nevertheless, they are very much there, showing a different animal in each it seems. Must have been some urban planning work setting all of those up. Not all public jobs are boring.
The best part, though, has to be those sprinklers. In most New York parks, you’ll have water sprinklers so strong you can get pool-wet in a matter of seconds if you do it right. Or wrong, depending how you feel about it. In Paris, the best you can find is super-light, intermittent water sprayers in a couple of spots for a couple of months — that’s it. Not surprisingly, our daughter loved playing with those sprinklers, so we had to carry around 2 different sets of clothes: the city-appropriate onesie and leather shoes and the polyester UV-protective shirt + beach-friendly flip-flops. Because it was pretty much that every day: going to an appropriately kid-sized beach of sorts. Which she loved like you have no idea. Actually, you probably have an idea if you have a kid. That loves water as much as ice cream. If not more.
We actually went to the beach once as well, in Coney Island, like the locals do. And, lo and behold, she loved it. Perhaps not as much as those sprinklers…