Pokemon Go

Zoey and I have started playing Pokemon Go together. It's a good father-daughter bonding experience.

She's actually surprisingly good at catching Pokemon. I was surprised, she's got a knack for it. The only difficult thing is she gets easily frustrated when she "catches" a Pokemon, and he escapes, and then she catches him again and he escapes again.

I let her catch a higher-level new Pokemon that I really wanted, and she was tossing Great Balls.

Bop ... got him on the head. He got out. Zoey stomps a foot in frustration. She throws another ... Bop on the nead again. He gets out again.

Now, she's frustrated at this point.

• FLING ... WIDE RIGHT...
• FLING ... not even on the screen ...
• FLING ...

I'm watching our very limited supply of Great Balls get rapidly depleted.

• FLING ...
• FLING ...
• FLING ...

At that point I had to say "great try, sweetheart, let Daddy get him" and gently take away the phone, while we still had some Pokeballs remaining.

New York City Trip - Return

Last year when we went to New York, we flew out of LaGuardia. This time, we arrived at and left from JFK Airport.

For some reason, everyone woke up early, around 6 AM, even though our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until noon.

The grown-ups in the family discussed, and our reasoning was that we'd have to sit around and wait anyway, better to wait at the airport (where you KNOW you'll catch your flight), than sit around the hotel and wait. More to see and do at the airport anyway.

We caught the Subway blue E Line to the Air Train, and then to JFK Airport.

We ended up arriving at the airport ridiculously early. We arrived 4 hours before our flight and just walked around and spent time at JFK Airport. I personally like JFK much better than LaGuardia. It feels newer and bigger. They had a cool water bottle refiller attached to a drinking fountain, so we were supplied with water. We just got cups at the Wendy's fast food restaurant in our terminal.

We weren't able to all sit together on the return flight. Zoey sat with Mommy and Grandma, while I sat with her big brother.

We got lots of Briscoff Delta-branded cookies, which made Zoey happy. She really likes those cookies.

New York City Trip - Day 7

Monday (7/18) was our last full day in the big city.

We slept in and went to Chinatown for lunch, back to Jing Fong. While we were eating, my wife got a call from her classmate that she had not seen for over 20 years.

Michael and I were both a bit burned out on eating in Chinatown, so my wife took her family and Zoey to have dinner with her friend (and his family), while I took Michael to Rockefeller Center and the Lego Store. He had been asking to go back.

Wife said that Zoey had a nice time. Her friends have a young boy about Zoey's age, and he kept wanting to play with Zoey, but she was a bit shy.

They had an incredible amount of food, and Zoey had a good time. I wasn't there since I was taking her big brother out for a guy's adventure to the Lego Store in Rockefeller Center.

They ended up coming back quite a bit after we did. Zoey seemed to be in good spirits when she came back, so I figure she had a good time.

New York City Trip - Day 6

Sunday was a very nice, quiet day. Well at least as quiet as Sunday can be in Manhattan.

I woke up and felt better. We went to Grand Central Station so everyone could see the main terminal, it's really beautiful.

We ate at the food court there. Had Chinese fast food, kind of like the mall-style food courts.

We went to Times Square. Surprisingly, there were a lot fewer of the costumed people that entice tourists to take photos for tips.

I think the police have been cracking down on them.

Came back and took a nap this afternoon.

We woke up around 5 PM and my wife took her parents and little sister to Chinatown for dinner, while Michael and I had an adventure, back to Central Park to drive the model boats.

Zoey is pretty over the model boats, she never really took to driving them, but Michael and I had a great time.

Zoey and Michael needed separate time anyway ... They were fighting a lot in the hotel room this afternoon.

Zoey's pretty aggressive, and strong at arguing. She talks fast and assertively, she told Michael "No Michael I found this paper first, it's mine, you have to find your own."

Even when I told her she had to share, she stood her ground and said "I found this first, Michael has to go get his own."

She is a very strong communicator and really assertive.

At home, I've seen the 2 of them argue, and watched her get the last word, and Michael get flummoxed and not know what to say back, and break down and start sticking his tongue out and blowing raspberries at Zoey.

New York City Trip - Day 5

We went to the Empire State Building in the morning.

It was great ... we arrived around 9 AM and there was NO line whatsoever.

My wife and I went 11 years ago, at night, and we waited 1 hour (or more) in line to go up the elevators.

We walked right past all those waiting areas, and right up the elevators.

It was a nice day, got to walk around the entire observatory area and take lots of pictures.

After the Empire State Building and walking down Koreatown, we went to Jing Fong restaurant in Chinatown (our regular spot in New York) for Dim Sum lunch.

They had the Dim Sum carts. Zoey's a very good eater, she eats everything.

I still think the kids favorite thing is playing with Duplos in the hotel room. They were moody/unhappy all day, but perked up when we went back to the hotel to take a rest and they played Legos.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this afternoon, and I started feeling sick.

Either that or I'm really allergic to museums. Thought it was allergies at first since there is so much dust there (they've got 4,000 year old artifacts after all). Couldn't stop sneezing and nose running.

One high point for the kids was the the Temple of Dendur. This was a really big, open area where they ran around pushing strollers and racing each other. Probably not what they were supposed to be doing, but nobody said anything to us.

We've finally used up our CityPasses. I guess it was an okay purchase overall, had I not bought them, probably wouldn't have gone to the Met Museum today.

I was pretty burned out on museums after the American Museum of Natural History, that was a major bust. Had such high hopes for that one, even had a coworker recommend it for kids.

New York City Trip - Day 4

On Friday 7/15, we switched hotels.  Went back to the Marriott Courtyard we stayed in last year.

Oh, we took an Uber over!

We were very impressed with Uber, it's a cool technology and a great idea ... You can watch your Uber driving up on the app, literally see it moving down the street roads, and you get your driver's name and they have your name so they say "Is this (your name)?" I seriously was impressed by the whole Uber thing.

We went to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  I explained 9/11 to both kids.  It was a very well done memorial, and the museum was actually very interesting, really took you back to that day.

Zoey was asleep through most of the experience.  When she woke up the first thing she asked was if she was in Legoland.  She was certain she was in Legoland.

New York City Trip - Day 3

On the 3rd day of our trip (Thu, 7/14), we spent all day at the American Museum of Natural History.

Zoey didn't really care for it.  It was dark and had lots of fake animals in displays that look like their natural settings.

Pretty boring for the kids (and grown-ups as well).  We saw a 3-D IMAX about National Parks that managed to scare Michael, the part about Forest Fires.  Once he started saying "I'm scared", Zoey started as well and soon both of them were clamoring about being scared.

Zoey fell asleep in her stroller toward the end of the Museum trip, so Michael and I did a little more exploring on our own.  She probably had a better time (napping) than we did (exploring the museum).

In the evening, we went to the Top of the Rock around sunset.

There is a small (but very busy) Lego Store in Rockefeller Center.  We went there and both kids wanted to buy Duplos.

I let them buy Duplos with the caveat that they were something that could not be found in our hometown cheaper.

They managed to pick out 2 sets that I have never seen in our local Toys R Us, and they sit on the bed in the hotel room and play and play and have a great time. Zoey got a set with a horse that has a cool red cloak and fences.

That seems to be the highlight of their trip, and when we're out sightseeing, they are clamoring to go back to the hotel to play with Legos.

New York City Trip - Day 2

The second day (Wed, 7/13) was boat day. We went to Central Park, did the rowboats first thing in the morning, did the toy model boats, and in the evening went and did the Circle Line Cruise - it's an evening 7 PM - 9 PM cruise around the Hudson called the "Harbor Lights Cruise". Zoey liked the rowboats.  She sat in the back with Mommy.  I rowed.  Michael sat in the front and we called him "Captain Michael" which he got a kick out of.  Zoey liked seeing the turtles as we were rowing. She was not terribly enamored with driving the model sailboats.  I think she is not old enough to make the association between her moving the control and the boat moving, since it's wind-powered and there are a lot of boats on the pond.  She does know how radio controlled vehicles work since she can drive our toy RC car at home great. We bought 4 CityPass New York booklets.  They're a pretty good discount ... You get tickets for 6 places for about the price of 4.  It cost $116 for each person's.  We only bought 4 for the adults, since many of the places were free for kids under a certain age.  For the kids, we just paid for the events that required kids their age to pay. The Circle Line Cruise was 1 of the 6 items in the City Pass booklet. The only problem with the CityPass is then you feel a sense of pressure to use up all 6 tickets to get your money's worth. It rained a little bit on the Harbor Lights Cruise.  It was a 1 hour 45 minute cruise.  Zoey seemed to like being held and looking at the city with the wind in her hair.

New York City Trip - Day 1

We just took a family trip to New York City (Manhattan) for 7 days. Zoey gets tired easily (she's still young), and will often fall asleep mid-excursion.  She's pretty much able to fall asleep on the spot at any given time in her little aqua-colored umbrella stroller. On the first day (Tue, 7/12), we arrived, took the Air Train to the Jamaica, Queens station.  Original plan was to take the Air Train to the Howard Beach station, but for some reason that wasn't available, so changed up, took the Air Train (it's a cool train that's like an above-ground Subway) to Jamaica, than took the E all the way to our hotel. We stayed at the Skyline Hotel on 10th Ave and 50th St.  It was kind of inconvenient, quite a long walk from the nearest Subway stop. We actually went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden the first day (felt like we sleep-walked through it, since we were up at 3 AM that morning).

Counting down and singing songs

Zoey has learned how to count down from 10 to 0.

We were going bowling on Saturday, and as we were driving to the bowling alley, she was counting down ... 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

She also likes to make up her own songs and sing.  A few days ago she was jumping on our bed, bouncing in a circle and singing,

"Fe Fi Fum Fum ... I'm big Dinosaur ... here I come!"