Busy weekend!

This weekend, we ran around like decapitated chickens. Dad arrived Friday night to spend the weekend with us. Now, this weekend was the 13th annual Piedmont Farm Tour, and we've been attending ever since the spring I was pregnant and woozy. So, not wanting to break tradition, we loaded Sadie and my Dad in the car and visited two of
our regular farms- Celebrity Dairy Goat Farm and Benjamin Vineyards. You might remember the two other years we blogged after visiting these two farms.

Then, on Sunday, we joined some friends over at Dana and Finley's house in Raleigh to meet their new daughter, Amelia. She is between 2 and 3 months old. Dana and Finley are Griffin's parents. While Sadie was happy as a clam for the farm tours, she was a bit cranky and fussy on Sunday. I'm not sure what was up with that- she still can be a bit out of sorts in crowd situations.

We were chagrined when Dana called us when we had almost arrived home to tell us that we left our diaper bag and my wallet at their house. So, after we put Sadie down for her nap, I had to turn around and drive the 30-some odd miles back to Raleigh to pick it up. And I treasure my weekend nap opportunities, let me tell you!

Sunday night, I took a candidate for our Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian out to dinner at the Washington Duke Inn. On the way to Durham, there was a severe thunderstorm that passed overhead and dropped some big, scary hail on my windshield. It sounded like rocks!

Here are some pictures from this weekend...

On the way to the farms... Sadie heard we'd be seeing goats and she was quite excited.

Dad makes his way over to the chickens.

Sadie first spots the chickens.



Every year, the peacock shows his stuff!

Sadie's reaction at first goat sighting...



Sadie chases a rooster.


A couple of films of Sadie petting a baby goat. In the first one, she tentatively touches a goat. In the second one, a lady actually offers to let her hold the goat. Watch how she reacts at the end of the clip! I guess she'd had enough baby goat.

Baby goat, part 1



Baby goat, part 2



Still pictures of said goat petting...



Sadie looks as if she's conspiring to run off with a baby goat...

This little guy was quite a nibbler!

As were these two...

Sadie enjoyed feeding the goats...

This little baby goat was only one day old... So cute!


I think we may have to weed Sadie from watching the Wonder Pets. Each episode has an animal in trouble, and the three little pets always sing "There's an animal in trouble!". Note that Sadie is concerned about this...




Here we are at Benjamin Vineyards. Sadie spots a tractor and makes a beeline!
And plays on it- just like Mommy used to do on the farm in Vermont when she was a little girl...

Sadie rides a tractor



There she is, "driving the tractor".
Peepaw makes sure she doesn't tumble off...


In her own world...
And running around barefoot....

On Sunday morning, we headed to Raleigh. I'm not sure if she was horrified or yawning when Redmond snapped this picture... I was in Bruegger's Bagels, picking up something for brunch..

She still likes the baby swing sometimes...

Griffin, driving without a license...

Here is little Reilly, Sean and Siobhan's little girl. She's about 18 months old. What a cutie!

Here is Sadie on the steps, right before she tried to sneak indoors. For some reason, she didn't want to stay outside with everyone else. She tried to play a bunch of musical instruments, and we had to stop her and say "Shhhh... the baby's sleeping." So whenever someone walked through the living room, she'd loudly say "SHHH! THE BABY IS SLEEPING!!!!"

Sean, Siobhan and Reilly
Here is Lila, who is about 18 months old as well. Look how much she's grown! She has such a sweet smile.
Sadie playing peek-a-boo.

And admiring the beautiful azaleas. She kept telling me there was an owl in the garden, and I finally realized she was referring to Dana and Finley's gargoyle statue.

Dana, Amelia, Lila, Missy, Reilly and Sean.

Amelia is just starting to wake up...
Sadie and Griffin play in Griffin's bed. This is acceptable behavior now, but in 10 years or so, it won't fly.
There's Amelia! What a darling! She looks so much like Griffin.

yes- another zoo trip!

As a parent, at least a parent who lives in a smallish metropolitan area like Raleigh/Durham, it's inevitable that we're going to end up taking pictures of the same child-friendly places over and over. So, we end up going to zoos, a limited number of museums, and parks repeatedly. Once in a blue moon we go to the beach, and then you get a squillion pictures of sand, water, and aquariums. So, until we take that exotic vacation to climb a child-friendly peak in the Himalayans, this is what you get to see, folks. We did our first zoo trip of 2008 last weekend. Each time we go, Sadie is more excited about the animals. She really wants to identify all the animals, and it's very important for her to try to figure out the familial relationships of the animals she sees. She often wants to know if she's seeing a "mommy and a baby" or a "daddy and a baby". Here are some pictures and videos from our trip. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to convince a two year old to look directly at a camera when there are such distractions as polar bears and alligators!

Whew! Long drive! Am I ecstatic to be out of this cotton picking car!



Sadie has her first glimpse of the alligators.

I believe these two were deemed by Sadie to be a Mommy and a baby alligator.

I'll avoid making silly dentist jokes, but wow!



Sadie watches the alligators



In Montana, we called these cats mountain lions. Here, I guess we refer to them as cougars. Sadie said "Look at the lion- it's so CUTE!"


Here, Sadie expresses her frustration at not being able to climb these very steep rocks.



Here, Sadie is playing in the innovative "Garden Friends" playground, which looks like a field of vegetables on the vine.



Contemplating climbing an acorn squash...


And enjoying the vine slide...



Crawling up the tube slide... I'm not sure what it is about kids, but 9 times out of 10, they prefer going UP slides rather than down...

The polar bear put on quite a show for us. Sadly, this bear's backstory is not a happy one. Wilhem was one of six polar bears that US Fish & Wildlife Officials confiscated from a Mexican traveling circus that was mistreating the bears. He has put on a good deal of weight since arriving here and is in better health, though he appears to be stuck in a loop performing the same tricks over and over. I hope he's happy.



Sadie really enjoyed watching the sea lions....



That's some REALLY green, murky water.




On other news fronts, Sadie seems to finally be adjusting to her new school. She didn't cry at all the past two days upon arriving, and she doesn't follow us around saying "NO LIBRARY!" all evening. She realizes now that she's going to school, not the library, and she realizes that it can be a lot of fun playing with other kids and making messy crafts.

More New York pics

So, it's now been so long since our New York trip that I've already forgotten what half of these pictures represent! I'll try my best!

This is the front of the Dakota, the apartment building where John Lennon lived and where he was shot. He was shot in front of the planter with the small shrub, to the right of the entrance. There is now a commemorative garden for him in a nearby section of Central Park called "Strawberry Fields".

This is Trump Tower. A tiny one bedroom condo here will set you back at least 1.2 million dollars.
The crazy two dimensional looking Time Warner buildings.
Some cool looking skyscraper I can't quite recall.


Here are a few pictures I snapped at MoMA. I wish I had more time in the museum- I was working with a few hours to spare while Redmond attended a taping of David Letterman with a work buddy who happened to be in the area and had a spare ticket. I never did locate Dali's "Persistence of Memory", you know, the painting with the melting clocks... I guess I'll have to go back, eh?

If you want to have a chuckle, stand by any Jackson Pollack painting and count how many times a passer-by remarks to his or her buddy "I could have painted that!"


Yay! Gold Marilyn Monroe, by Andy Warhol!
And, of course, the Campbell soup cans. Warhol was one of the first artists I really noticed as a child. We had a couple of Warhols at Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, and I remember being quite drawn to them when I was young.



Lovely view from the museum courtyard.

Here's a picture of the WTC building site. It was somewhat surreal to be that up close and personal.


This is a lot in lower Manhattan where tiles made by schoolchildren across the country to show their respects after 9-11 have been displayed. Sadly, our tour guide informed us that people are beginning to steal them.
Workers high up in the sky. It's interesting- many iron workers in Manhattan are Mohawk/Iroquois. Apparently, they have little fear of heights. I felt my heart palpitate just looking up there!
How soon we forget- I totally knew what that building was in the distance, but now I've forgotten. Met Life?



Random sumo wrestler on the side of a building.

The NY Museum of Natural History/Rose Center for Earth and Space. We spent the good part of an entire day here, and enjoyed the planetarium and IMAX offerings.

Every building should have its own personal robot.
Redmond couldn't resist this billboard. I think he first discovered women when he saw Princess Leia and the gold bikini in "Return of the Jedi".

The giant screens all over Times Square are mesmerizing. Times Square is like a ginormous shrine to consumerism.



And, we're on Broadway.

The Shubert Theater, home to Monty Python's "Spamalot". Redmond and I both enjoyed the play. North Carolina's own Clay Aiken played the role of Sir Robin.


We visited the "Top of the Rock" at the Rockefeller Center. There is an amazing observation deck at the top of the building. Here is some crystal that was embedded in the walls inside the building.

The Empire State Building from the Top of the Rock.
A couple of pictures that show the city lights at night.


The arch in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. I fell in love with Brooklyn. We spent an evening walking around Prospect Park and Park Slope. I wish our pictures had turned out. The brownstones and tree lined streets are lovely.