Tag: pushchair

Top family friendly cafes in NYC

There are precisely two – TWO – foods that all three of my kids will happily eat. Porridge and pancakes. That’s it. So, like true New Yorkers, we eat out a lot.

I’m constantly on the look out for good places to eat out with the kids, especially now that Baby J, 7 months, is also on the solids. It’s surprisingly rare to find fresh veg or fruit on children’s menus here in New York. Lots of places don’t have kids portions at all, so you have to order full size portions and take home the leftovers in doggy bags.

Here are my top picks for the most family-friendly places to eat in Lower Manhattan. If any of you have your own favourites, please add them in the comments at the bottom. Continue reading “Top family friendly cafes in NYC”

MoMath – perhaps Maths can be fun after all

We’re finally back in New York after a gloriously long stint in the UK.  B’s daycare is open pretty much all year round, but T’s school shuts for a staggering twelve weeks over the summer. It has been quite a challenge to keep her occupied all that time, even with our trip home, and without spending a fortune. (New York is quite extraordinarily expensive – $7 for a tiny punnet of raspberries).

One particularly successful outing was to MoMath – the Museum of Mathematics. Its strap line is “The coolest thing that ever happened to math!”, which I was v skeptical about. But actually, it really was cool. Even for me, who has to sit and concentrate to work out what 18% tip should be.
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Exploring the Bronx Zoo

We’ve lived here almost a year now, astoundingly, and realised we still hadn’t ventured north of Central Park. So we decided to go really far north, all the way up to The Bronx for the famous Bronx Zoo. And so glad we did, as it’s the best zoo we’ve ever visited.

We took the number 5 train all the way up to 180th East Street (hadn’t realised before this that the street numbers continue right off Manhattan up into The Bronx), which took well over an hour. The station was a little run down, with lots of posters warning you to ‘be smart and not to flash your smart phone around’. But just a few minutes’ walk away we reached the zoo, and were wrapped up in all the wildlife and greenery. Such a treat to escape the pressure cooker that is Manhattan in July for a few hours.
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Our favourite playgrounds in Lower Manhattan

In a city where hardly anyone gets a garden, playgrounds are essential. Luckily, they’re everywhere, squeezed into unlikely corners between busy roads or empty building lots. The water fountains have just been turned on, so Summer is just around the corner. (Spring and Autumn are ridiculously quick seasons here). Have now added swimming costumes, flannels and suncream to the general clutter under the pushchair, ready for impromptu drenchings in the fountains.

I love this about New York playgrounds, almost all of them include water play. The kids are entertained for hours, joyfully skipping under the cold water and rushing out again with shocked expressions, before heading straight back in again. B’s nappies get so waterlogged, they drag around her knees. It keeps the kids in one place, too, so much less stressful for me trying to keep track on where each child is at any given moment. On the downside, it’s even harder to get them to leave. Resorted to striding into the water to catch slippery, giggling children and frogmarch them home for supper, covered in wet sand. At home in England I could have hosed them down in the garden, but that’s not possible on the 38th floor. Instead it’s gritting your teeth and holding them in the water stream as you get completely soaked too.
Continue reading “Our favourite playgrounds in Lower Manhattan”