Ever since Ty saw Night at the Museum 2 at the end of June, he has asked to go to the airplane museum – meaning the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. We showed him on his placemat map how far a way it was and that he would have to earn a trip to the museum. So for the past few weeks, Ty has consistently asked when we could go and even prayed that we could go to the museum “tomorrow” at almost every prayer.
Due to an interview opportunity, we quickly planned our trip for a week north to hit DC, NJ and NYC. We got a late start, leaving at 1:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday. After 2 hours of driving, both Ty and Kylan had a nap for an hour. The lap top took pretty good pictures, however, I was unable to get a good angle of Kylan.
Then we hit major traffic about 30 miles outside of DC. We were hoping to make it in time to go to the Air and Space Museum out at Dulles before it closed at 6:30, but it looks like we’ll have to hit it another day. Fortunately, Kylan woke up happy and was able to help Ty get happy. It also helped when we told Ty that we were close to DC.
We found our hotel, which was in Pentagon City, just across the bridge from the Mall. After we checked into our hotel, we drove over to the Mall and found a parking spot directly outside the Air and Space Museum on Jefferson. Ty had an hour to view the planes since the Museum had extended summer hours until 7:30. Ty was in awe of all the planes and rocket ships and literally pulled us from place to place.
Here is Ty in one of the rooms about flying, enjoying how the air flow can keep the ball up in the air.
Ty flying a plane – he spent a good 5 minutes playing in this plane, fortunately there was no one else who wanted to get one, unlike the line we experienced during our visit on Sunday.
When the Museum closed, we walked out to the Mall. Ty had some difficulty comprehending that the large grass area was called the Mall – he asked where all the stores were and if we were going shopping.
It was a bit of a struggle getting both boys to look at the camera at the same time.
We made our way up 7th in search of a good restaurant. I had a few in mind to try. We decided to ask a group that had just finished playing softball on the Mall for a recommendation. They highly recommended Jaleo. Ty, not being shy, started to tell them about his day and that he went to the Airplane Museum. They enjoyed letting Ty tell them about the planes he saw. We did eat at Jaleo – it is a tapas Mexican restaurant. We really enjoyed it. Ty was a little surprised by his “chicken tenders” which were actually chicken fritters. I think Chris and I ate the majority of them. Sadly, it was not Ty’s chicken nugget standards – but they were excellent. We also tried 3 different dishes, a scallop, shrimp and soup dish and really enjoyed it all.
We had a nice cool walk back to our car. We had a bit of a challenge getting the boys to sleep when we got back to the hotel, but once they feel asleep, we all slept through the night.
Wednesday, after much debate, we decided to drive into DC again and try our luck at free parking on the street. We were fortunate and found parking a few blocks below the Zoo and where we decided to eat. We were quite surprised at how big the DC Zoo was. It really is nice and you can’t beat free. Unfortunately, we had only 2 hours free parking and we were all hungry, so we didn’t quite see everything in the zoo – we’ll have to go back another day.
Ty ready to roll through the zoo with his hat and sunglasses.
A few blocks away, I had found good reviews for a restaurant called “Surfside”. We absolutely loved it! We shared between the 3 of us (Kylan would have loved to share, but not quite yet) shrimp tacos with pineapple salsa and a steak burrito. It filled us up so well we were not even hungry for dinner.
We had planned to go back to the Mall for Ty to go to the Airplane museum again, but it was almost 2:00 when we finished lunch, we thought we had better get on the road to NJ and hope we beat rush hour traffic. Sadly, there were some bad accidents and we barely made it past Baltimore, when Kylan decided he was ready to eat. So we pulled off at a good exit, because there was an IKEA right there. So we left Ty in the kids play area for an hour and walked around the store for some exercise. This was one IKEA trip where we did not purchase anything but dinner for Ty. He loves their Swedish meatballs and we like the torte.
We finally got back on the road at 7:30 and had a smooth drive up to our hotel in Bridgewater NJ. The we had in Bridgewater was great. It was a suite, so we had the boys out in the main area with Ty on a pull out couch and Kylan in the pack and play. Much better situation than the previous night where Ty was sleeping between us on a King.
Thursday morning, Chris had a phone interview with a community college in WY. I had an in person interview that afternoon. After my interview, we went into the town of Sommerville and had some good pizza upon the recommendation of the front desk staff.
Friday was our big day, New York City.
We drove to New Brunswick and caught the train into the city. Ty was excited to ride the train – his first real train with an actually destination.
We had to wait about 15 minutes for our train to arrive and we watched at least 3 trains go by in the opposite direction, so Ty kept asking when ours would arrive.
When it finally arrived, Ty was blown away by the train’s whistle as it pulled into the station. He wasn’t quite expecting such a loud whistle. But the surprise quickly passed and he was excited to climb on board. As the “conductor” came by for our tickets, we let Ty hand him our tickets. Then the “conductor” let Ty punch our tickets as well.
Of course this was a great experience for him. Ty spent the entire trip into NYC in the window of the train and watching the “conductor” at each stop.
When we arrived at Penn Station in NYC, we hopped on the 123 train north to the Museum of Natural History for our first stop. When we walked in, there was a huge wrap line just for getting tickets.
So we took a picture of the dinosaurs in the entrance, Ty asked if the dinosaurs would move (like it did in the movie – Night at the Museum) and walked back out and across the street into Central Park. We came upon the lake and found a shady spot on some rocks for a light lunch.
While we were there, Chris got a call from WY asking him to come out for an in-person interview next week. This was a quick turn around as he had just had his phone interview the day before. So as we finished our light lunch, we began discussing Chris’s trip to WY.
Chris and I had never walked through the park in our previous visits to NYC, and we were quite surprised how enjoyable it was. There are so many people walking, running, biking, roller-blading, and all kinds of recreation. After our light lunch, we proceeded on our walk through Central Park. Next we came upon a gentlemen making music with a bunch of hula hoops.
Ty and Chris made their attempts at hooping, but then the instruments quickly caught Ty’s eye and he wondered over and enjoyed playing them for about 10 minutes. Kylan watched with interest.
The guy gave Ty a toy trumpet which he wanted to open and play right away.
As we proceeded on our walk, we came upon the pond with the toy sailboats.
We watched a family of ducks swim by and saw some frogs. From there we came upon a small playground, which of course Ty wanted to go play on.
He even made a friend who shared her sand toys with Ty. It was a bit of a challenge to get Ty to leave, but he was pretty good about it.
The Zoo was supposed to be our next stop, but Chris and I were getting hungry, so we walked by and continued on to FAO Schwartz. Ty was amazed by the huge Toy Store. He enjoyed looking at everything. He found a new book, a new little Nutbrown hair story. On the 3rd floor we found the piano made famous in BIG.
Ty was a little hesitant at first and asked the store employee who was monitoring if it was okay and then still hesitated. When he finally stepped on, he ran across the piano and back and then settled on jumping on the keys one at a time.
With so many choices of restaurants and not knowing which one to try, we went back to Mario Vitali’s Otto off Washington Square. We ordered Carbonara for Ty (which we shared with him) and a Fennel pizza for us. It was all excellent. We had planned to order gelato for dessert, however, when the dessert menu came, the cherry tiramisu caught our eye. So we ordered a dish of gelato with 3 different flavors and the cherry tiramisu. The description of drunken cherries did not sink in until our dessert came. With my first bite, I realized why it said drunken cherries. So we ate the pistachio gelato and mascarpone cream and left the alcohol soaked cake. As we waited for our bill and were discussing our plans, Ty grabbed the cake and took a bite before we could stop him. He thought he had gotten away with something good until after a few bites the taste sunk in and we had him spit it back out.
At that point we were all tired. So we took the subway up to Times Square and let Ty see the crazy area with all the lighted boards, before jumping back on the subway to Penn Station. As we traveled back to New Brunswick on the train, we asked Ty what his favorite part had been. His response was no surprise, “riding the trains.”
The boys went down very quickly once we got back to the hotel. We had worn them both out. Kylan took it all in and slept maybe an hour the entire day.
Saturday morning we headed down to Princeton to visit with our friends the Rudy’s. It had been 2 years since we had seen them, but Ty and Emma quickly got re-acquainted and seemed to have a lot of fun playing together. We walked to town for lunch and ate on Princeton campus.
Ty and Emma content for a moment eating. Of course, it didn’t last long, Emma wanted Ty’s burrito and Ty wanted Jack’s snacks.
Then they were off, running around the area playing silly games.
This was a quite moment when I got the two of them to stop and sit for a minute. I asked Ty to sit by Emma, but he said he would sit in front instead.
As we walked backed to the Rudy’s house, we stopped for some ice cream.
Ty just wanted pink ice cream which ended up being raspberry cream.
This was the only time on the walk that we had to tell them to keep up. Otherwise, they were running. They had two settings, holding hands down the side walk or running down the sidewalk.
It was fun to see them together. Jack and Kylan were in need of naps, Kylan in fact feel asleep on the walk back to the house.
Ty wanted to stay and play with Emma, Emma wanted Ty to stay and play. When we got Ty to the car, he invited Emma to go to the Airplane museum with us. Emma said she would have to ask her parents. We finally got the two separated and got on our way. We had a smooth ride down to DC, about 3.5 hours – that is speaking of traffic. The boys fought sleep and Ty woke up unhappy which caused Kylan to wake up unhappy. But we were only a few minutes from the hotel, so it was not long.
The last day of our trip, we spent in DC. It was probably the earliest we had gotten up, eaten and were on the road. We got into DC about 9:30 and parked on 14th right above the Washington Monument. As we walked we passed the White House from a distance. We told Ty that is where the President lived and asked if he would like to walk closer. He responded, “No thank you, I just want to go to the airplane museum.”
We walked all the way down to the Lincoln memorial. As we got there, Ty asked me if Lincoln would talk to us (like in the movie). I asked him if statues talk, he said no. We decided that the movie was just make believe. When we got in front of Lincoln, Ty actually became a little apprehensive and hid behind me. We soon eased his fears.
From Lincoln Memorial, we walked back up the Mall all the way to the Air and Space Museum.
Which is all Ty wanted to do. Today, he saw everything. The only way we could get him to leave was because he was hungry. He was happy to get one surprise, we let him pick out a book in the store. It happened to be a Little Einstein's book about space. Which I had to read to him on the drive home.
From the Museum, we had to walk back to our car (from 7th to 14th). Ty walked the entire morning. Kylan was content as long as the sun was not directly on him. Then he slept from the Museum to our car.
We had planned to eat in DC, but decided to get on the road and head home and eat somewhere along the way. We ended up at IKEA.
We usually grab an ice cream on our way out of IKEA. Today was the first day that Kylan had ice cream. Of course, he is jealous anytime we eat and thinks he has to have what we are having, as you can see by his expressions as he watches Ty.
Surprisingly we hit horrible traffic as soon as we got on 95. We are not sure why there was so much traffic on a Sunday afternoon at 1:30. When it finally cleared up about 20-30 miles later, there was no sign of any problems explaining the slow moving traffic. Then we hit a little more right before Richmond. So we arrived over an hour later than we had hoped, but we were happy to be home. Fortunately, both boys were asleep when we got home and they both stayed asleep until 7:30 the next morning. I guess we had worn them out.
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