My sister thinks this is hysterical: a marketing firm contacted me to see if I wanted to try a Dodge Caravan 2008 for a week for FREE! She can’t believe that people really do this, let alone her little sister.  Plus, she said, "you live in the city, that’s a HUGE car." She said this living in the suburbs with a large van of her own.  We, on the other hand, are the very happy owners of a mini cooper. We can park anywhere.
It was fun to feel like my sister for a week, living in the suburbs with conveniences at your fingertips, like life was easy. Easy was: getting your child in the car seat with 4 doors that automatically open with the touch of a button. Seat warmers. A passenger seat that due to the car seat isn’t rammed up so close to the dashboard that I can never sit without getting a cramp. (It’s a good thing I’m not very tall). Oh, and a button that warms up your car before you even get in it.  Easy was: entertainment of any kind at any time.  Satellite radio, your ipod, a movie, satellite TV- sure, easy, press this button or that! The guys who dropped off the van had to explain to me what satellite radio was. And because we don’t have TV at home, I turned the sattelite TV on every chance I got. I could even watch it driving (yikes, I know!)  When we took a day trip with another family this weekend I turned the TV on to amuse the kids so we adults could talk. It was reassuring that both the 18 month olds couldn’t have cared less, cartoons or not. They were more interested in the whizzing cars. Although, later I did have to wait in the car with Birch for 15 minutes and I turned the satellite TV on for him, he did do a lot of giggling. He was watching Sponge Square Pants Bob or something like that. Wow- instant entertainment with no work on my part. No head twisting, funny-face making, peekaboo games. The Dodge "valets" explained that actually everyone has their own bluetooth headphones so that all of us could be watching, playing or hearing separate media. This reminded me of my Dad who took my family on a road trip from Chicago to Denver for us to "see the country". All 3 of us girls sat in the back listening to our own walkmans.  My Dad kept saying, "Don’t you want to see the scenery?", but none of us could hear. 

So, tomorrow I give up my easy life. But at least I won’t have to circle my neighborhood to find parking.

Here are two of the trips we took in the van.

• New York Hall of Science. First hint: get there before 11 am and you get in free. Otherwise it is a hefty $10 per adult and $8 for a child 2 years or over. Is it just me or does it seem ridiculously expensive to entertain a family now? Skip the Crystal Village, the big holiday attraction. The craft area in the Crystal Village has a nice atmosphere- moody blue paper and lighting, but the gigantic snowglobe was pronounced "Cheeseville" by my husband while Birch and I (who go for that thing) thought it was fun. The rest of it was a lot of nothing. The best part was The Preschool Place. Tons of great scientific hands-on games and experiments including a wonderful "grocery" store for pint-sized shoppers, a fantastic pulley/launching toy and nooks to discover various objects like a wooden dollhouse and a nice train table.  There must have been 2 staff members for each child, each one of them interacting with the children in a helpful and imaginative way. They were great. The rest of the museum is full of cool exhibits too. That and the Preschool were totally worth the trip. It took us 20 minutes from Ft. Greene, Williamsburg would be even faster.
  http://www.nyscience.org/
  47-01 111th Street
  Queens, NY 11366
  718-699-0005

• The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
  I feel mixed about this trip. First, I went with another mom and our 2 ailing children (hers was on antibiotics and mine was apparently festering a cold).  I called that morning to buy tickets to the train exhibit, but they said they weren’t available online at such late notice. When I inquired about reserving a spot for that morning, they said, "Oh, just come in, there aren’t lines until 12:30 pm". Well, you guessed it- bad advice! We got there at 11:30 am and couldn’t get tickets until an hour later. We messed around in the beautiful gardens (even in the winter they really were) and went to see the gingerbread house. The house was a disappointment to us moms who expected a really large construction with natural bounty decorating it, the children couldn’t have cared less. Then we went to line up for our time slot at the train show. We waited in one line, then another line. The second line was through the hot greenhouse so we stripped the children down with nowhere to put our coats. The lines took us 30 minutes. People were impatient.  This old couple behind us took every chance they got to sneak in our spot as we raced after our children. Once we got into the display however, the children were mesmerized. Trains zoomed overhead and through mysterious tunnels, they circled at every moment so if you happened to miss one, another one equally as fun chugged by. There were ladybug trains, high-speed trains, old fashioned trains: it was magical. The sets were incredible. The only bummer is that you have to push by people if you want to go at a faster pace- and with children that is inevitably the case. I think I would advise doing this with sleeping infants or children that can wait patiently in lines (do those exist?). Birch got antsy and so did his partner in crime. My advice: don’t go on a weekend or go earlier than 11:30 am.

http://www.nybg.org/

200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard

Bronx, NY 10458

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