The weight settled onto my chest as I woke in the gray bedroom light. Butchie was dressed and a little loopy. I kissed him, stroked his hair so he almost fell back to sleep, and sang him little songs and booped his nose, and then Mommy said "We're running late" and they were gone, heading to their 7:00 AM flight to Phoenix.

Mac, who had a night of screams and soothings that left me with 3 hours total sleep, woke at 7:30 to one of the best days he can remember. I'm confident in this point-of-view violation because at 17 months, Mac remembers maybe the last 3 minutes.

So we walked--not strolled!--to Starbucks, Macky yakking the whole way and performing many sudden switchbacks in order to walk again over something he'd just walked over; and then he had Cheerios and stomped around the tiled floor; and then we experienced several friendly dogs, a bunch of letters in colorful circles (subway signs), and a detour into the noisy, fascinating transit underworld on our Brownian journey to the playground, where, it being Saturday and this being a neighborhood of Orthodox Jews, he comprised half the population.

The swings, they were empty. The little yellow plastic slides, they were empty. The big metal spiral slide, it was ventured down without assistance. Heaven, it was attained.

Stop home, pick up the stroller, head into the city to the new 24-hour Apple Store on 5th Ave. with Auntie Denise, whose birthday is tomorrow, and who celebrated by taking a subway ride with us. The Apple Store had another friendly dog in it (the pet of someone being served at the Genius Bar), multiplying Macky's integral bliss into exponential range--and as if that weren't enough:

Who knew FAO Schwarz was next door?

Several minutes of trauma were unavoidably unavoided on the sidewalk while Daddy patiently ovecame the insane packing on Macky's new toy, but then--oh my; the pure joy of this thing. It goes boing. It goes beep. It goes dinga-dinga-dinga-ding. It plays tootly music. It lights up. It sort of fits on the little stroller tray. Thirty-five bucks, the boy's in love. An hour home, and he never stopped playing with it.

It's afternoon naptime and he's asleep in his crib. I'm working on a training presentation for my day gig client. When he wakes up, I think we'll be couch vegetables the rest of the day.

But tomorrow's the Dora exhibit.

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