NYC - Thank You

I am unbelievably impressed with how kid friendly NYC citizens are !

We went for 4 days and stayed with a friend who has a condo on the West New York, NJ side. (Great view of the Hudson. ) Though I think our Stokke Explori Stroller would of done well in NYC we would of never been able to get it on the plane. So, we stopped off at Babies R Us and picked up a highly visible yellow Chicco folding stroller with a sun visor. The wheels were larger then the $20 stroller and I believe did a much better job getting around town. Though while in the store I saw several of the Explori on display and it made me miss mine. The steering on the Chicco was what I expected normal for a less then $100 stroller BUT the easily swiveling front wheels did get the job done. Also if you are a fast or long stride walker you will step on the back wheels. But hey, it was $60 and it meant not hauling our tall stroller on the plane. (We were worried about it getting banged up when checked at the gate.)

Our Britax Diplomat car seat traveled better then I expected. It was recommended to me by car-seat.org.We used it in the car to and then on the plane. We were going to leave the car seat in a locker at JFK airport and take public transport. Then we found out that the wedding (in NJ) was a 40 minute drive from where we were staying. NJ does not have the easy transportation that NYC has. We expected to have to travel by car so we took the car seat with us. As a side note we bought the Diplomat due to easy of use, ease of installation in multiple transport vehicles, and side impact protection. Many car seats do not have side impact protection. We live in an area that gets icy roads and many cars slide through stop sign & red lights causing side impacts.

I have a pull along suitcase that has a strap to attach other pieces of luggage to the front of it. I saw the horizontal bar on the back of the car seat. I thought I might be able to attach the seat to my suitcase. I attached the strap to the car seat first the clipped it to my suitcase. Voila It worked! Wasn't perfect but it stayed on. I grabbed my suitcase's handle and the car seat lifted up and laid on the suitcase. Off we went to our friend's condo.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and our baby went nuts. She insisted on stopping and see every statue. We turned the corner into one of the Egyptian rooms and she was beaming, screeching and laughing. She kept pointing and saying "LOOK!" I was worried we would be bothering other patrons. But that was not the case. People actually turned towards her smiling saying that it was a good thing to see someone so young get so excited about art. I went from being worried to bliss. She made friends with the security guards in two of the Egyptian rooms, the Japanese, Korean and Indonesian arts departments. She kept walking up to them smiling, taking their finger and pointing to all the art she liked. Luckily they were genuinely happy and made a point of showing her a couple pieces they really liked too.

We took planes, trains, rail, taxis, and buses and we had friendly people everywhere. The taxi driver was exceptionally great. He had 12 grand children. Even the ladies who looked exceedingly upper East side at the Met were very soft on DD.

I LOVE NY !