New York City! - Part 1

Sunday - 6.27.10

This time a week ago, I was on a direct flight to New York City (rather I was when I started writing this post at 9 am on Sunday).  It was the first time I've traveled by plane since my honeymoon in March 2008.  It was also the first time I was away from Mungee for more than a few hours.

My best friend is a category manager for a major grocery store chain, and therefore attends several food-related trade shows a year.  She's invited me to go along on this trip previously, however, there's always been something preventing me from going.  Last year I was 34 weeks pregnant.  The year before that, I think the trip fell during DH's birthday weekend.  A few months back she emailed me and said, "You're going with me this year.  Mungee will be almost 11 months old, so you'll probably have her weaned by then, or her Pa can give her some formula".  I nervously excitedly booked a ticket.

We arrived at the airport and immediately made our way to the taxi line.  Neither of us checked luggage so we avoided the baggage claim area altogether (definitely a smart move).  We got to the hotel and our room wasn't ready yet, so I changed outfits in the bathroom (I'm resourceful like that).  We made our way to a kosher restaurant (oh, did I mention that my best friend keeps strict kosher, so NYC is like a smorgasbord for her - we have ZERO kosher restaurants where we live).  Aforementioned kosher restaurant was not where it was supposed to be and we didn't have the map of other nearby kosher restaurants with us, so we wound up a little behind schedule and had less time available to spend way too much money in browse around F.A.O. Schwartz.  That was probably a good thing.

 

We had to leave the toy store to make our way to see these guys:

Have you seen them?  It was a great show, but the theater was small - as in, your knees were in the neck of the person in front of you. I'd recommend seeing it in a bigger venue.

After the show ended, we cabbed it (I'm SO New York) back to the hotel and changed for dinner with my friend's colleague's vendor.  We ate at Solo, which is located in the atrium of the Sony Building.  Solo is a swanky, upscale kosher restaurant.  It was absolutely delicious.  As I usually do, when other people are paying I ate way too much.  Normally I take a picture of my meals at fancy restaurants but I didn't want to seem like a dork unprofessional since this was a business dinner.

After dinner we walked around Times Square and visited Hershey's, the m&m's store and Toys 'R Us.  Did you know there is a full-size Ferris Wheel there?

Here we are in Times Square.  

(One of the rare occasions I wear my hair down)

 

P.S.  I am actually taller than my friend in real life.  Yes, it was necessary to mention that.

 

  

Image Source

By this time, it was after 11 pm.  We headed back to our hotel, where we met up with my friend's colleague and a couple of the people we had dined with earlier.  They were having a drink and shooting the breeze, but we were too tired to hang for very long.  We went up to the room to turn in for the night.

New York City! - Part Two - Coming Soon

An Anomoly or a Break for Mommy?

I'm hesitant to say anything for fear that it may have been a fluke, but yesterday, Mungee took two 1.5+ hour naps in her crib and slept through the night.  DH put her to bed (which is spectacular since I've been nursing her to sleep for months) so I could go to the 2nd Annual National Mom's Nite Out at my local mall.

I met up with my mom and we sampled some items from the few vendors who were set up in the center court of the mall.  It was hardly transformed into "mom central" as the event listing had put it.  I had planned on going by myself, which would have wound up being pretty boring, so I'm lucky my mom decided to meet me there.

What trip to the mall would be complete without some retail therapy?  We headed to NY&Company, which is having a 50% off the entire store sale through this weekend.  I tried on several pairs of shorts and some camisoles (mine are all way too short and ride up over my post-baby blump  - bump, lump, whatever you want to call it).  After picking out what I wanted, my mom suggested we ask the cashiers to hold it so I could go check on another size.  She took the clothes to the checkout counter and I went to the front of the store to look for another pair of shorts.  When I came back up to the counter, she was buying my clothes!  "Surprise!  Happy 1st Mother's Day!"  "Thanks Mom!"  To which she replied, "Now let's go get my gift :)"

Mom wanted a new bundt cake pan (boooondt cake - quick, name the movie!), so we went to Williams-Sonoma, where we sampled virgin (boo) sangria and lemon cupcakes.  They had a pretty nice bundt pan, but my mom felt bad about asking for it since it was a little pricey.  I said we'd go look somewhere else and if we didn't find another one she liked we'd come back for that one.  We did wind up finding another one for much less, but it looked and felt like it should cost much less.  Back to Williams-Sonoma for the pricier, yet much better quality pan.

Mom's night out turned out to be a nice night hanging out and bonding with my mom.  It wasn't what I envisioned when I initially asked DH for a break ... it was better. 

On an unrelated note, I found a booger in Mungee's belly button when I was changing her diaper before her morning nap.  I am not even going to try and figure out how that got there.