New York, New York! (Part 2)

So, we made it to New York (after passing through Newark). The RWA annual conference didn't start for three days. You know what that meant, right? VACATION, baby!

(Luckily for you, I got my pictures off my camera!)

Here's the trick to travelling in a large city with a small child: Plan your trip around things said child has seen in movies. Hence, the first tourist thing we did was have dinner at Sardi's, because Kermit goes there in The Muppets Take Manhattan. I gave The Kid the camera while we were waiting for our tasty food:

Every place I've ever given that Kid a camera, and the first thing he takes a picture of is the carpeting.

Here he wanted to remember not the people, but the wall of glasses. "Cool!"

And a close of up a glass. Because everything's better when you're on vacation!

Dinner was wonderful, except when The Kid dropped his glass of milk on my brand-new, never-before-worn, first-pair-since-before-he-was-born white jeans. Luckily for everyone involved, it was white milk.

Then, once my pants were dry, we went to see the Lion King.

Trust me, I've broken my long-standing rule about putting The Kid's face on this blog. He's there. You just can't see him.

The show was great, but it had been such a long day that The Kid fell asleep during a slow number and no amount of singing, dancing animals could rouse him. Which saved us from having to buy a $20 stuffed animal, so I'm okay with that.

The next day, we got up and hit every Kid's favorite museum: The Guggenheim.

This picture is entitled "Mommy telling me what to do."

Despite it popping up in Men in Black and Mr. Popper's Penguins, the Guggenheim is a little, ah, challenging for your average short person. Luckily, they had a Family Fun Sunday going on, so for 1/2 the adult admission, we got to walk around with an enthusiastic young college art student and occasionally color. It wasn't a bad deal, but by the end of three hours, The Kid was about to melt. So, in exchange for him not trashing priceless pieces of art, we went to the destination in New York:

Yes. Lego Land. If you look under the dragon and between the Lego-ized Rockafeller Center, you'll see me and The Kid, reveling in the tiny-block glory of it all. We bought Legos. Of course we did. We even kicked back a little to The Kid for helping us getting us into the Guggenheim cheaper.

Then we went to the top of our hotel, which had a revolving restaurant.

I'll spare you the carpet picture. Please note the sheepish look on my husband's face. That's because about 15 min. before The Kid snapped this picture, he'd knocked his glass of red wine over. Into my lap. Making the family 2 for 2 in spilling on Mommy. At least my skirt was black that night. And I also got to see the Top of the Chrysler Building shine like a song from Annie.

The next day was the big one--Statue of Liberty Day.

We were a little excited. Okay, a lot. We were going to check an important item off my bucket list: Climbing to the top of Lady Liberty herself.

So we climbed.

And we climbed.

And we climbed. I was bringing up the rear. Please hold all your jokes until the end of the blog.

It's 354 stairs to the top. As we went up, the stairs got narrower and narrower, and the air got hotter and hotter. We were in a metal object, after all, climbing up the Spinal Column, as The Kid so aptly observed. 

Climbing up the Statue is all about lung power--slow and steady wins this race. Finally, we made it to the top.

It was a clear day--good for seeing the harbor and the city, bad for sweating. The side of Liberty's head facing the sun was just shy of egg-frying--at 9:45 in the morning. BUT WE MADE IT!

Note the sweaty exuberance on my face. I DID IT! Notice, also, how close our heads are to the ceiling. Yeah, we bumped our noggins several times. 

So we made it up! Now came the hard part.

Getting down. Going up was all about lungs; going down was all about muscle control--one misplaced step, and it was a long 354 stairs until I hit the bottom. I was going very, very slowly--the guys were probably 15 steps ahead of me--when I heard the most ferocious clatter over my head. The ranger who'd been up in the crown was coming down--at full speed! "I'm not going that fast!" I shouted, ever aware that there was still a LONG way down to go. He's a pro at this, though, and I shouldn't have worried. He got stopped with at least two steps to spare. Whew!

So we made it down, which was almost as big of an accomplishment as making it up. When we got out onto the pedestal, we kept taking pictures like this one from every angle and going, We climbed all the way UP THERE.

We celebrated in the traditional way:

We tried on silly hats. Ah, America! 

Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion to the Authorial Mom vacation, "Taking The Publishing World By Storm (Or at least by a light rain)."