Beloved Emily and Dinosaurs

So last weekend Dermot attended his friend Emily's fifth birthday party. It was at a real nice place with token-fed games downstairs and soft mat play upstairs where the party itself was held. Dermot loved running around and being crazy with his daycare friends. The funny thing to Ethan and I is that Dermot loves Emily. Ever since they moved him up to preschool, he has been talking about how much he loves Emily. And to his credit, she is a smart, mature, cutie. He seems to have his dad's taste:) But, even though he claims to love Emily, he didn't talk to her at all at her party. He spent the whole time running around like a lunatic with two boys his age. They were having a great time. It was fun to watch Dermot being a normal little boy with his friends.

I hate to admit this, but buying Emily's gift was hard on me. I had to go into the girl section of Toys R us and find something for a girl who likes ponies and princesses. I have gotten really used to Dermot's boy toy section. All the princesses, pink, and fake make up (for preschoolers!) was nauseating to me. Maybe I am better off with a boy. I always figured that if I had a girl, she would be super girly just for karma to get back at me. My mother was always upset that I wasn't the girly-girl she had wanted. I honestly like legos, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and super heroes. This stuff is fun. I just wish that Dermot would like cares more, but maybe that's in the future. I loved laying down race car tracks.

On Sunday of last weekend, we went to New York. Dermot has been asking to see the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History, and we thought that last weekend might be the last nice weather weekend to go. It turns out that the weather was just right for a day trip to the big city. We got a late start because Dermot actually slept until almost 8! We went right to the museum from our train stop. We walked in to see the largest dinosaur and a baby. Dermot loved it. Then as we were walking around, Dermot was mad there were no dinosaurs. So we checked the map and they were all on the fourth floor. So up we went. Then he was mad because we didn't see any pterodactyls. He loves the flying dinosaurs. Actually, it turns out they are not really dinosaurs, but that's a different story. At the museum we bought Dermot a couple of books on dinosaurs, a poster of dinosaurs, and a stuffed stegosaurus. Whichever idiot (me) wanted to buy Dermot the books forgot that it's almost impossible to pronounce most of the names of the damn dinosaurs. From the museum it was off to lunch at Cafe Blossom - an all vegan restaurant on the upper west side. Yum. I had the soup of the day which was sweet potato puree, ginger, and coconut milk. Ethan had a Cajun seitan sandwich and sweet potato fries. Yum. From lunch we went to Toys R Us in Times Square. They actually didn't have a lot of interesting stuff. Usually we find some great stuff that we can't find near us, but they didn't even have some of the TRU exclusive toys that we had hoped to get. The weird thing was the amount of crap they had. For the Clone Wars figures they had about 200 figures of one guy, and no one else. Why would they stock that much? Weird. Dermot ended up getting a lego garbage truck and a Batman lego set. Even poor Dermot was upset at the selection. We had better luck at our last trip to Target when we found the next round of Ben 10 Alien Force toys. I also want to point that Dermot was really good on the whole trip. He's starting to take direction a little better and he's starting to reign in some of his crummier tendencies. At home we still see some of that, but out and about he's working on making everything more pleasant. I'm trying to encourage that and I'm putting a bug in his ear about Boston. I would love to take a real family vacation to Boston next summer. We can take a train like he's used to. He hates being stuck in a plane, and we can take trains pretty easily to either Boston or DC, but I think I want to start with Boston.