Mika’s old preschool celebrated their annual Fall Picnic again, and Ms. Ela generously extended the invite to all alumni and their families. A perfect chance for Mika to reconnect with her good friends and classmates Gaang, Kai, Diego, Madeleine, Jacob, Olivia, and Blossom. Tobin particularly enjoyed seeing his old love Suko again…

On this exceptionally cold and rainy day, Tobin met Bruno at one of his favorite places of all time, the New York Transit Museum. The boys egged each other on and didn’t stop moving (or screaming) for the entire visit. They had so much fun – especially on the old station platform which houses a wide variety of trains spanning more than a century of subway history. The icing on their cake: playing with Bruno’s cars right inside and in front of the historic trains…

Mika and Esmé didn’t get placed into the same Kindergarten class at PS 29, but they take two after school classes together every week. Wednesdays, it’s Piano until 5:00 pm. Afterwards, we take turns hosting a wild 4-kid dinner with our wound-up girls and their tired little siblings…

Who says you have to bake cookies or pizza with Play-Doh? Tobin obviously can’t build little creatures yet, but the stuff keeps his construction site going for hours every week. His latest game: pressing the dough through a ricer and using the little bits as ‘rocks’.

It’s been two years since we went apple picking with Santiago’s family, and we’ve added two people to the group since then: Tobin and Nico. Technically, Tobin was part of the group already last time …

Today, the four kids sampled countless varieties of apples, picked their own pumpkins, fed farm animals, and met the super sized (but very friendly) farm dog. On the way out, Tobin picked his vehicle of choice, the pumpkin-colored version of his old love, Ford Bronco.

We’re continuing our play dates with Kai while he is still in town. Today we met up in DUMBO for a thorough playground visit, some pebble throwing, and lunch at Rice. Perfect weather, although decidedly more Fall than Summer.

After school, we dropped by Lillian’s house for our first post Choo Choo Train play date. The girls gravitated towards a wild dress up session again, but this time they were joined by Lillian’s 18-month old brother Henry. Although Tobin loves to wear Mikas fairy clothes at our home, he kept a low profile and stuck to the ride-on vehicles (not pictured)…

Car enthusiasts Bruno and Tobin took their newest possessions for a ride at Mother Cabrini playground. After a few heated arguments over the same vehicle, friendship trumped ownership and peace was restored.

Kai is back in town for a couple of weeks, and the kids are making the most of it. Here you can see them using every second of a one hour after school play date on the playground. We’ll see you again this weekend!

Today, Tobin surprised me by casually applying a German grammar quirk that brings grown language students to their knees. He completed a separable verb at the end of my sentence (which could’ve been a standalone, but is more to the point the way he completed it).

Me: “Luna leckt Tobin’s Hand”
Tobin: “… ab!”

It translates into “Luna is licking Tobin’s hand”. There is a general verb for licking (lecken) that i used in my sentence. Then there is one specific verb that can be used for animals licking objects, or people licking their plates like animals (ablecken).
The tricky part is that ablecken often gets separated, with the first syllable closing the sentence: leckt […] ab.

I was quite surprised to see Tobin upgrading my simple sentence to the next level – especially since he doesn’t speak in grammatically correct sentences quite yet. His daily chatter is mostly three to five word baby string sentences…

The weather donated another ‘Bonus Summer Day’ for the biggest street festival in Brooklyn, the Atlantic Antic. We didn’t even make it all the way East to 4th Ave, but had hours of fun anyway. We bumped into many friends and neighbors and teamed up with Olivia and her parents for a few blocks (and the bouncy castles!). Tobin ate three freshly grilled sardines all by himself and was most fascinated by the collection of vintage buses the Transit Museum had brought out. Mika was looking forward to decorating one of the cupcakes we had baked for PS 29’s fundraiser stand, but after three bites of sugary evilness she handed it over to me and had no desire to finish her work of art. Good girl.

This time our package for you made it over in time, but we’ll still be sleeping when you start the day. Have a great Birthday morning and talk to you later via iChat! @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MiNiToSu