this morning started off with a bang with fynn getting orange juice poured in his hair, and then tripping and falling backwards into to cat's water dish, rendering his as-yet-unchanged soggy diaper even more soggy. a banner moment. so i choose to regress ..
michael got home wednesday night, a day earlier than he'd originally thought :) most lovely. that meant we could go to a free concert last night in Battery Park, where his favorite banjo player Bela Fleck was part of the Sparrow Quartet that was performing. we had to go at 5pm to stand in line for tickets, the doors opened at 6 (it was inside Castle Clinton)", and the show started at 7. a lot of waiting around with kids! we got our tickets and i hit the store for sandwiches while m trucked the boys to the playground. we headed into the venue just after 6, got a row of seats near the back (and in the shade!) to ourselves. near enough to the back to make a quick exit if needed. fynn was eating one of those candy necklaces, and happy as a clam. douglas was getting taught how to write cursive (at his request).
by the time the show started they were both tired, and the opening group was not very kid friendly at all, and they got more antsy as time went on. toys, paper helicopters, flirting with the neighbors, and playing "drop the toy" were reaching the limit of their effectiveness when my FIL called (he lives across the street) and came in and found us. at the break, he took the boys for a walk, one on a sugar high, and both tired as it was already past their bedtime.
then the bliss of listening without ansty whiny kids! the venue was amazingly sound-proof for an open-air place, meaning the sounds were pure and clean with NO ambient noise, despite the view of skyscrapers over the slate shingle roof, and the staten island ferry just a few hundred yards away. it felt like being in a fishbowl or on a movie set, not quite real. utterly clear sky, fading light, and a few pigeons swooping in the dusk.
the boys came back in time to hear the last 3 or 4 songs, and were tired and raptly attentive. fynn was on my lap, and immediately insisted that he SEE, so i propped him up enough to see the stage. he hardly let out a peep. except for the cackles of laughter near the end as he turned around again to play drop-the-pillow with an unsuspecting man behind us who felt compelled to play along.
the playing was amazing, not just bela's banjo, but Casey Driessen's fiddle especially was incredible on this song (Click on Working on a Building). delightful.
the lingering enjoyment made this morning's OJ/cat dish incident not quite the drama it might have tended to be otherwise :)