My Papi Made This!

Here is Dorian posing with JP's latest masterpiece: an electric upright bass.

more pics to come...

Dorian has friends too

Here's Dorian getting taken for a ride by his little girlfriend Maisie ;-)

Lil' Buddy Jacob

Here's G and his little buddy Jacob from school. They have a very special bond because they share the same birthday! April 9th! So very soon they'll both be 4!
Jacob came over for a playdate, and instead of being silly they took a break and climbed into G's bed to read a very interesting story about a Matzoh Ball Boy.

Girls are COOL!!!

I don't know where Giacomo got this from, but lately he's been saying that he doesn't want to play with girls! I guess he has forged so many boy friendships at school and they just play so much together, he feels like he just wants to play with boys?! I dunno, maybe its typical for this age. But it doesn't help me any when most of my friends have daughters!! So I invited over Giacomo's school-mate Kaila Rose and his old school-mate Maxine for a playdate. Let me just tell you that Giacomo was in his room for 30 minutes refusing to come out because there were girls here! I had to talk to him and try to convince him over and over that "Girls are COOL!!! They can be as silly as boys! Mommy's a girl!! Your best cousin in the world Seda is a girl!" etc, etc...................... It was a little embarrassing...

Well he finally came out of his room and ofcourse had the best time ever! The 3 of them were hugging and jumping up and down when the playdate was over. And now Giacomo and Kaila Rose play all the time in school and he's even asked me to go to her house.

So there: Girls are COOL.

NYC International Children's Film Festival

Last Sunday we went to the NYCICFF. We saw about 12 'shorts for tots', movies ranging from 1 to 10 minutes in length. We went with about 18 kids from our playgroup, and all of them girls!!! There are boys in the playgroup, but I must say, the girls do outnumber us! The best film, I thought, was actually a music video from Japan all out of finger puppets!

Planetarium

Giacomo's been learning all about the planets in his class, so the school took the kids on a field trip to the Newark Museum's Planetarium. It was just right for their age. They explained the sun, the moon, how to spot contsellations like the Big Dipper and Orion and other celestial what-have-you's. He was very fascinated and hopefully we'll be able this summer to actually see some stars and constellations, upstate of course - for there are are too many city lights here to see any.

Painting Party for the Moms!

About once a month, I go out with a group of moms for a Mom's Night Out. It's not the playgroup Giacomo's been in since he was an infant, but some moms I recently met over the past year since he's been in pre-school. Usually we go to a bar or restaurant, but this time one of the moms suggested we go to an art studio and paint! So, being a former art history student, and not having made any art in quite a few years, I thought it would be great fun. Everyone was to pay $40 for supplies and instruction, and to bring a bottle of wine and some food to share. I thought we'd be painting a still-life, or something there. But we just could paint whatever we wanted. The instructors had prepped a few of the canvases to be made into 8X10 picture frames. I don't know why but I thought this would be easier for me, not so challenging to create a great piece of art with nothing really to inspire me or work with, except the thoughts in my head - which are always KID related - go figure. Anyhoo - I think I made a fun picture frame for the kids to enjoy for years, the tried and true animalia I always draw for G and I stuck his school picture in it. I think it was pretty successful!