Birthday Monkeyshines

This week's episode of Monkeyshines featured the special guest appearances of Grandpa Monty and Grandma Fredi, which made the weekend just unbelievably fun!








Our adventures started, as always, on Friday evening when Daddy picked up two smiling little people, and whisked them away to Daddy's play palace. We had only a brief visit from our Pittsburgh-based benefactors on Friday night, but it was enough to really excite young Master Zechariah and Miss Miranda. In fact, they were so wound up that they ended up staying up way past their bedtimes.
In spite of this, and much to Daddy's chagrin, Zach was up bright and early the next morning (5am) ready to start his day and hit the Sensory Gym. We had a nutritious breakfast, watched a little Wonderpets, and proceeded to get ready.

Saturday was kind of a mixed weather day, but the rain held off for our walk to the gym where we found Mommy already waiting for us. We got Zach into his session, then Miranda and Daddy went off around the corner to Daddy's cookie-meeting, where Miranda is now something of a celebrity (especially with the ladies - who needs a puppy, huh?). She did a great job of being quiet as a mouse, though I don't think she quite got the idea - she kept telling everybody in a really loud stage whisper, "Quiet, there's a mouse over there!"

We left the meeting a bit early so that we could pay our usual visit to the pet store and say "hi" to our friends the kitties, the doggies, the birds and the lizards. Two of the Siamese kittens remained and had been joined by a small tabby, the lizards were mostly sleeping - that's what lizards do most of the time - and the dogs went generally berserk upon seeing Miranda, which or course scared the sh@! out of the birds. It was therefore a very successful visit.

We went straight to the park after collecting Zach, because everyone had eaten a late and huge breakfast, and because the weather was threatening some rain. We stopped by the Gregory Hotel on the way and collected Grandpa Monty and Grandma Fredi, and off we went. I know that you all are probably getting tired of all the park pictures, but that is something that we do a lot of and park pictures are less boring than pictures in Daddy's small Brooklyn apartment.



Eventually the rain started but it came on really slowly, so we had time to pack it up and retreat from the park in an orderly fashion. We went back to Daddy's house and had a wonderful lunch. Miranda couldn't decide what to have so Grandma Fredi (who is a world-famous cook) made her a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. Zach plowed through some chicken and other things.

After lunch it was time for some presents (that's "presentos" to our friends South of the border). Grandma and Grandpa had come bearing gifts for the young lord and lady. Miranda got a huge book full of thousands of stickers - pictures of all kinds of items. She immediately peeled of some stickers of some olives and set about redecorating Daddy's apartment. Zachy got some Thomas the Train pieces which came with two videos - Grandma and Grandpa chose very well. While the grown folk were busy trying to figure out how to get past the tamper-proof packaging on the DVD's, the re was a knock at the door which turned out to be the mailman with a package full of birthday cheer for all from Aunt Susie, Uncle Wayne, Samantha and Leah. It was like Christmas all over again. Inside the package we found four wonderful books, two of which came with CD's that went along with them. We also found a gear set that Zachy had admired on his last visit to Aunt Susie's house, and that the Childers had brought back all the way from London just for our little people.

Opening all of these presents and playing with all of these new things was completely exhausting, so some naps were in order, not just for the little ones. We didn't want to mess up our bed times and have a repeat of the night before, so we held it to only an hour, then got up and had our baths, playtime, dinner and a quiet evening - bedtimes were mercifully early.

Grandma and Grandpa wanted to get some clothing for Zachy and Miranda so we got up Sunday morning, had our breakfasts, then went to collect Grandma and Grandpa for a trip to Century 21. We found out that it opened later than we expected so we decided to take a walk to the park by Zachy's school. We played there for a while then went to Century. Each of the kids got an outfit and Daddy even got to new shirts to wear to work - thanks Grams and Gramps!

Lunch was next on the agenda and then another trip to another park. We went to the park by Fort Hamilton High School and played on everything, then Zachy led us down to the field where Miranda spent some time casting about, looking for additions to her rock collection. She made several good finds.

The weather was much better on Sunday and before long we had all shed our jackets, sweatshirts and whatnot. Unfortunately, as the afternoon wore on. Grandma and Grandpa had to start getting ready to hit the road and Daddy had to start thinking about returning the monkeys to Monkey Central so we strolled back to Daddy's house where we said a fond farewell to the elder Millers then had some quiet playtime and cuddle time.

At 4:30 we loaded up all the monkey paraphernalia and marched down 3rd Avenue, stopping briefly at the bakery and laundromat, and made back to Monkey Central by 5pm. Miranda had nodded out about 10 minutes before we arrived so Daddy kissed her as she lay in bed, got a smooch and a high five from Zach and said "see ya soon" on our next adventure with Monkeyshines.

Happy Birthday To Me

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the characters visit the legendary planet Magrathea, home to the now-collapsed planet building industry, and meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway. Through archival recordings, he relates the story of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer the size of a planet named Deep Thought to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer was revealed as 42.

"So what?" you say, "Why do I care?" Well, today I am 42 years old (1965 in case you were busy doing the math) and my age is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Unfortunately, like the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built Deep Thought, I am not sure what the question is. They were forced to build an even more powerful computer to work out what the Ultimate Question actually was, but their plans never come to fruition, as Earth was destroyed by a Vogon construction fleet to build a hyperspace freeway bypass. Some posit that the question is: "how many roads must a man walk down," but no really knows for sure.

Listening

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant" ~ Robert McCloskey

I thought I'd share this - it sums up a lot of my interactions with certain fellow humans.

Monkey Update

I had another very brief Wednesday evening visit with my little ones yesterday and it went a bit better than the first attempt two weeks ago, in spite of some interference from Mother Nature. The kids were ready this time and waiting for me when I arrived at 6pm, although Zach was just about asleep, with eyes at half-mast. As soon as we stepped out onto the street and into the steady cold May rain, however, he woke right up.

But both kids really like the rain and Miranda especially though it was quite hilarious as the stroller splashed through the puddles and Daddy sang the same refrain (the only one he could remember) of Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, over and over again.

Fortunately we made it to Daddy's Fun Factory just as the lightning started and shed our soaking shoes and clothes. We had some snacks, Miranda played with her family of stuffed animals and Zach played with his Matchbox cars and Goofy Faces gear set.

It was a nice visit, even though we only had an hour before having to pack up and head back to Mommy's house. If anything, it was raining even harder during the walk back, but both little ones were delivered safe and sound back to Mommy by 8pm. We said "see ya later alligator - in a while crocodile" until Friday evening - when our Monkeys shine again.

Contemplating Age

I turn 42 one week from today and, on the down-side:

"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half." ~ Feodor Dostoevski

But, on the more positive side:

"Forty is the old age of youth;fifty the youth of old age." ~ Victor Hugo

Hell, I'm just looking forward to a cupcake or two.

Maypole Monkeyshines

This weekend past was another beautiful spring weekend and Daddy spent it with two beautiful little people - Zach and Miranda. We began our adventures Friday night at 7pm, when Daddy picked up the wild monkeys at monkey-central. We walked up to 3rd Avenue then over to Daddy's cookie meeting. The church basement is also used as a daycare/preschool and is geared for kids with mats, a basketball hoop, etc. They both had fun playing on the slide, but the real fun was the giant stage with its star-spangled curtain. Zach loves playing peek-a-boo and this was industrial-strength peek-a-boo.

We left before the meeting started and followed the moon to Daddy's house. Both little people stayed up pretty late, but we were all up and stuffed with yummy (and nutritious) breakfast in time to make it to the Sensory Freeway for Zach's sensory gym session. While Zach was doing this, Miranda and Daddy went for a walk - we said "hi!" to some of Daddy's friends, Miranda learned how to be quiet as a mouse (she thought this was hilarious) and we even went to the pet store where Miss Miranda was quite taken with a cage full of Siamese kittens.

After Zachy was done with his gym session, we stopped by the realty office so Daddy could drop off his rent, then went to meet our friend Gannon (pictured) and his twin boys Barry and James (not pictured - they were moving too fast) at the 79th Street park on Shore Road.








This is our favoritest park of them all and we come here whenever possible. The first stop was the swings - and swing we did (by the end of the weekend Daddy actually had tennis elbow from pushing swings too much). But eventually even these two hard-core swingers need a change, so it was off to the monkey bars and slides.

We did a lot of really good climbing and sliding and Zach made friends with a boy named George, who kind of forced himself on Zach, which is exactly what Zach needed. They played on the overhead monkey bars together for 20 or 25 minutes and Zach seemed happy to have the company and someone to share his grapes with. Miranda loves to climb and went up and down the spiral slide so many times that Daddy got dizzy. We spent several hours at the park, taking breaks for snacks and rests, then packed it up and headed for Daddy's house.

Of course we were sweaty and dirty after all the horseplay, so a good scrubbing was in order and both little people were eager and ready for a bath. Afterwards we had some dinner and decided to go out for our evening walk. It was really nice out Saturday evening, so we walked around for quite a while, until it was time to follow the moon back to Daddy's house once again. We had story time and music time - Miranda does not "play" instruments, she "sings" them. When she wants me to play the guitar, she will say, "Daddy can you sing the guitar?" It's very cute!

Zach went to bed on the early side but Miranda stayed up way late and hung out with Daddy. Predictably, Zach was up about 6:30am the next morning and was raring to go. He is usually sensitive about others' needs though, and will lie in bed with you for a while to give you the chance to wake up (or grab another half hour of sleep). Eventually, we all got up, had another breakfast that couldn't be beat and set about the business of the day. It got pretty cold out Saturday night, so even though we wanted to go to the park, we waited a while for the world to warm up. We played with our Playdoh pump, making some yummy blue and yellow spaghetti, and we did some coloring with our colored pencils.

By about 10 am we could wait no more, so we headed to another of our favorite places, the Fort Hamilton High School park on Colonial. We had the park mostly to ourselves when we got there, but it got steadily busier throughout the morning. We did it all - swinging, climbing, running, jumping and sliding.

After quite a while, Zach lead us down to the field where we finally managed to get the old kite up into the sky. Zach did a great job of flying the kite and was able to manage it all by himself! We had a couple of crashes and one string-breakage incident (the fence saved the kite) but all in all it was a successful flying day.

We had kind of a picnic on the field and played in the sand/gravel/dirt on the baseball field with all the toy Matchbox cars that Zach had brought along.

While we were having our lunch/snack on the field we saw all kinds of firetrucks and helicopters doing their thing - the house at 86th and Colonial had caught fire and had been pretty well gutted - we saw this as we walked by on our way back to Daddy's house, admiring all of the shiny equipment. Fortunately, we were told that no one was hurt.

We went back to Daddy's house and relaxed for a while, playing with our toys and generally just being silly, until it was time to say farewell to Daddy's house for another fortnight - when we meet again for that wonderful time together I fondly call: Monkeyshines.