New York – Day 1 – Travels with Larson and Co

Our day starts at the completely reasonable 315am. We slowly pull ourselves together and wake the kiddos. They’re perfectly happy? I feel like I’m being pranked. We make it to the airport on time, get some food, and board the plane. It’s like walking into a desert climate, air so dry and hot I immediately shrivel up. Then start to sweat. People are threatening the flight attendants. One woman says that she’ll sue if she passes out. I like not being the crankiest person on a plane.

The temperature evens out once we’ve been in the air for 15min and the fight is short and sweet. LaGuardia isn’t its usual pit of hell and we get a taxi with relative ease.

Our room isn’t ready so we go and hit up some lunch in midtown.

Pizza. I dream about NYC pizza. A lot. But I digress… after I stuff myself full of greasy cheese and carbs we head to Rockefeller center with a stop at the Saks display. It’s Frozen. The kids are catatonic with glee. It takes another mom to snap them out of it, and she takes their pictures.

We head across the street to see the tree. The kids are enamored. And I find that you can weaponize a stroller in a large crowd without even meaning to. I feel powerful. We do our tourist due diligence as we head to the new FAO. The line is around the block so we just get some pictures and call it a day.

The hotel is ready for us so we head back to get a bit of rest before the afternoon. The kid that needs the nap refuses to sleep and the one who doesn’t is passed out – hard. Bedtime is going to be a pleasure.

After we settle ourselves in we are game to try a ridiculous singing restaurant for dinner. We figure that getting there at 430pm will ensure that the line is manageable. Not a chance. It’s wrapped around two city blocks with a wait time of 90 minutes. I wonder what kind of special person actually stands in a line that long for some cheesy singing with their diner food. It is not me. We head to the nearest restaurant that can seat us. Hungry kiddos make me frantic and I refuse to deal with the meltdowns while searching for a place to eat with food I want. So the kids eat mozzarella sticks, french fries, and alfredo noodles and I have cemented the fact that nutrition goes out the window while on vacation. I am temped to pick up doughnuts on the way back to the hotel, just to round us out.

But on the way back we realize that we’re pretty close to to Rockefeller Center and decide, like the naive idiots we are, to check out the tree at night. On the way we buy the kids light up unicorns that cost as much as a real unicorn probably does. But my mom never bought this shit for me so I’m naturally compelled to buy it for my kids.

We are within a block of the tree when we’re swept up into a massive crowd. Wow. I don’t think I’ve been in a literal clusterfuck before in my life. It was wall to wall people. Just a fluid body of human mass moving in a direction. Even my weaponized stroller barely made it out of that mess. On the plus side we were corralled back to Saks where they had a light show, set to the Frozen 2 soundtrack, going on the outside of their building. But the crowd was so intense that the kids didn’t even want to stay and watch. These are my kids, for sure.

Off to bed an hour late with two over-tired, maniac children. We decide this is the perfect night to see if Miles actually needs a crib, or he can sleep in the same bed as Ian. An hour of pushing, poking and kicking with intermittent snuggles punctuated with angry parental threats ends with a screaming kid in a bed and a screaming kid in a crib. G’night.

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