Living it up in New York - Part 1

We arrived in New York City more than 10 days ago. I was a little tense before we left Bangalore. The husband having flown the coop, so to speak, several days earlier (on work), the whole project of packing, cleaning the house, clearing the fridge, and locking up while being on track to catch a 4 am international flight fell to me. Obviously and fortunately, this was something I'd never had to do before and I was a little paranoid that we would land up at the airport at 2 am to find that I'd left our passports behind!! As it turned out, we managed to board the flight in one piece except that as I was checking in at the Emirates Counter, I realized that I'd left my phone behind in the cab! 

Very luckily, the cab driver was someone we knew and I spent most of my waiting time at Bangalore airport trying to contact S through a pay phone so that he could alert the driver about my phone. 

Several hours of snoozing, eating and movie-watching later, we landed in NewYork, passed through immigration and hailed a cab to Manhattan, to the place of a dear friend and college batchmate, J. Day 1 was a light one (by our standards!). I took the kids to Times Square - ToysRUS, the M&M store, the Disney store. We walked around along with the teeming crowds, gawked like all the other tourists, ate lunch and were back in the apartment by afternoon. In the evening, I took the kids across the road to Hudson River Park where we walked by the waterfront, raced against each other and smelt the flowers (quite literally!).

S arrived the next day and it was such a lovely day (sunny and cloudy in turns with a sharp nip to the air) that we decided to spend it outdoors in Central Park. The cherry blossoms were in bloom and to say they were incredibly pretty would be an understatement.

View of the skyline from Central Park

Cherry blossom tree

Blue skies

The turtle pond

That evening, S and I took some rare and much-needed couple time off to catch a Broadway show (my first!) - The Phantom of the Opera. Later, we also walked around Times Square to incredulously take in the flashing neon lights and wonder at the mass of humanity abroad at 11.30 pm :)

Next day's stop was at the American Museum of Natural History. In the interests of accomodating varied interests, S volunteered to take the kids for the day to the museum while I took off with my friends to walk the Brooklyn Bridge and wander through Little Italy and Chinatown, capturing sone of the flavour of this lovely city.

Part II coming up in a day or two :)

In our own beds and happy (mostly)

The kids are now officially sleeping in their own room every night. A huge milestone for us! The one most affected will be the husband who cannot imagine how he will manage to sleep every night without his two babies to provide warmth and comfort.Yes, there appear to be THREE people in the house needing night-time comfort and cuddles! Fortunately for him, he left for the US just a day after the new arrangement came into force and hasn't had a chance to experience withdrawal symptoms yet :)

'To compensate, I'm dragging a kicking and screaming Y to bed every afternoon for a nap. It forces me to rest a while in the middle of rigorous summer days spent entirely with the kids and gives Y some much needed downtime from endless bickering with her brother. The bonus is I get some soft cheek-to-cheek time with my little girl not to mention a few moments of girlish giggling and exclusive cuddles uninterrupted by Anna.

Last night I woke up to find Ads snuggled up next to me. I woke him up and tucked him into his own bed. In the morning, he claimed that he only came into my room because he wanted some cream for a mosquito bite and that I had dragged him into bed to sleep beside me! I have no recollection of what happened but it sure looks like I am experiencing some withdrawal symptoms of my own here! :)

Bumpy-bumpy

Anna, do bumpy bumpy. 

Y orders her brother every few minutes in the swimming pool. Resigned, he stops whatever he is doing (which is trying to float on his back, and practising his freestlyle strokes), takes her in his arms, and bounces and whirls her all over the water while his sister shrieks in pure delight.

Duty calls. Even in the swimming pool!

Coming up for air

I would have blogged earlier but my laptop gave up on me and amidst the battery of chores that remain to be accomplished when trying to settle down in a new home/city, I've been on the phone with Dell tech support a lot! 

So. Here we are. A crazy couple of weeks of work and more work. A week at the hotel until our goods arrived, move-in cleaning of the new apartment, unpacking the cartons and getting the house in shape while simultaneously dealing with the Bangalore weather (Hot!! I feel cheated!) and follow ups with all the vendors and service providers we need. Think carpenters, plumbers, electricians, the water purifier guy, the TV guy, the broadband guy. Hiring maids, cook, driver and getting their ID cards done. Buying furniture, putting up pictures, making the house look like home. 

I told S the other day - Moving is like giving birth. You do it once and you swear you will never go through that pain again. But then some people like us never learn. Gluttons for punishment is the phrase they use for people like us.

Anyway, this is probably the nicest house we've ever lived in, a sprawling place with enough nooks and corners for everybody. The kids have their own bunk beds and for the last week, have been sleeping all night on their own, which is a VERY BIG DEAL for us indeed!

I'll get started with regular programming soon, hopefully. We have another week before we fly to New York City for a long-awaited trip. It's going to be my first long-haul flight without S so keeping fingers crossed, though I bet Disney Pixar will take care of most of the entertainment needs. At the end of the trip is our meeting with my mint-new niece, my brother and SIL -and my kids and I are super-excited at the bought of holding and playing with the little one.

Off I go now, to call some more people who haven't delivered stuff that was supposed to be here a week ago :)