The second of two wonderful weeks

After a lovely Shabbat in Sharon with our family, we turned around and headed back to New York with Ella, stopping in Mystic just two days after our day there with Maya.

On Monday we went to the Museum of Natural History. We basically saw all the main exhibits we have seen with the other children.

Each of the children is unique. One way in which Ella differs from the others is that she enjoys eating out. The others are happy to have a lunch packed at home and eaten at a museum or in a park, or to pick up pizza to share outside on a nice day, but they do not seem to have much patience for the formality of dining at a restaurant. Further, Ella and I are 100% on the same page with food: other than an occasional hot dog (seems odd, but maybe hot dogs are not really food anyway) she is also a vegetarian.  So our first meal out was an early dinner at Noi Due, the dairy Italian restaurant that is one of our favorites. Last year we dined there after a far too busy day, so this year we made it a point to be sure we left plenty of relaxed time and she thoroughly enjoyed it.

We spent Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We discovered that the special exhibit we had enjoyed with Maya was far more extensive and accessible than we had realized when we were there with her. In fact, we got there just in time to see it with Ella:

The Met announced that “Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology” notched in as its seventh most visited show of all time after closing over Labor Day weekend. More than three quarters of a million visitors—752,995 to be exact—turned out to see the Andrew Bolton-curated Costume Institute show dedicated to the use of technology in high fashion.

We ended up staying for quite a while and got to things that Barry and I had not seen in years, including the “Temple of Dendur.” Ella looks so grown up in this picture!

We also enjoyed the Tiffany stain glass windows.

Barry taught his class early on Wednesday and I had my monthly injection scheduled for late morning, so Ella and I took a car service into the City and met up with him at Mount Sinai. We had lunch at the Great American Health Bar and then Ella and I went to see “Fiddler on the Roof.” I probably know almost every word of every song of that musical and it is always a heartwarming experience. It was a great joy to share that with Ella.

On Thursday we went to the Museum of Modern Art.

  

We headed back to Riverdale and had dinner at Corner Café, another of Ella’s favorite places where she especially enjoys the blintzes and the baked ziti.

On Friday we went to the Bronx Zoo. 

We had a lovely Shabbat, spending much of the afternoon with a new Lego kit we had bought for Ella to build, the Heartlake Shopping Mall.

First thing Sunday morning, Barry and Ella caught the train from New Rochelle to Route 128 (south of Boston). Once she was back with her family, Barry returned to New York. We had thought about going to the Mets game that evening but it is just as well we did not plan on it because we were both just too exhausted!

We just hope we will continue to have the energy to spend this time with our grandchildren. It is hard to know how this will look with Julia and Gd willing her little brother. But for now, every year that we can manage to do this is simply priceless for us.

Love,

Rebecca