Summer Day 9/3

To assuage our disappointment over canceling our Ocean City trip, we planned a fun city excursion for Saturday. We drove in and went to the New Museum to see "The Keeper," an exhibition I've been wanting to see. I thought the girls might like it, since it's about collections and collecting, and I'd seen a writeup in the Times that there was a family event on Saturday morning--a teddy-bear-decorating workshop to complement the centerpiece of the exhibition, a collection of vintage photographs that all contained a teddy bear. L&G were thrilled when they were each handed a small white teddy bear when we got to the museum's workshop area, where tables full of art supplies had been set up, along with hot glue guns. They worked for a long time making things for their bears, less interested in making clothes and hats and more focused on making accessories--which I guess is no surprise.

Bears complete, we headed down a few floors to the exhibition, which was pretty great. L&G really liked seeing all the collections, and spotting the teddy bears in the photo collection. There was a group of photos of Holocaust children with teddy bears, and when L&G asked about them, I said that the children were prisoners and they had only one special toy. I tried to deflect their further questions about why the children were prisoners, who'd captured them, what happened to them, etc. Greta has asked about the "prisoner children" several times since then, clearly aware that there's more to the story.

After the museum, we had dumplings for lunch at a little place on the Lower East Side. That was really fun--L&G don't yet know how to use chopsticks, but they tried valiantly.

There was a small playground near where we'd parked, so we let them play for a little while before driving back home. It was a really perfect city day.

Saturday night, we invited six neighbors over for an impromptu gathering around our fire pit. We felt happy to have created a day that seemed like a perfect balance of city/suburb.