St Patrick's Day Parade

St Patrick's Day Parade
Originally uploaded by globalgirl246.

Last Thursday Desi and I breezed into playgroup for 15minutes and then hopped the train, meeting Emma&Jonathan and then down to 145 St. where we waited for Kendra and Lexi on the platform. We spotted them and got back on the train and headed down to 81st Street. It was a beautiful day for a walk across Central Park, no more saffron Gates, but plenty of babies and dogs and runners. We thought we'd catch the end of the parade on the east side near the Met Museum. It was probably the most popular spot to watch the parade along Fifth Avenue. There were hundreds of firefighters wearing green berets in defiance of the city who said they couldn't. The parade largely consisted of marching bands -- great rhythms and bagpipes and men-in-kilts. Desi spotted a cute littlelittle dog which he tried to make friends with (see pics) and after a bit of a lull in the parade (and hearing that it was scheduled to go till 6pm!!) we decided to find a playground in order for them to move around more freely. Emma thought she'd seen a great one just north of the museum, we had to walk through all those hundreds of firefighters to get to it -- we were all breathless with the continuous (3 blocks) proximity of such hunkygreenbereted men!!

The playground was called Ancient Playground and designed around an egyptian/pyramid theme. Desi had his first experience with sand. When I placed him in the large sand play area he didn't move for 2 minutes, sensing the uneasy footing. I finally stepped in and took big exagerated steps to encourage him. He watched me, almost seemed to shrug and then took a step. Once he got used to the sand beneath his feet he began to touch it and was quite fascinated with it. He made little piles on the slide and threw it in the air. Fun afternoon. :):) We love our city and it's so great to explore it with friends.

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