New York and Boston May 2025 Part II Boston

On The MIT Campus

Friday May 16

Yesterday was a long, tiring day. Getting to the train was easy in retrospect, but I was nervous because it was an unfamiliar process and Dan and Kelsey had so much paraphernalia for Emi. But they knew what they were doing; I shouldn’t have worried. Even with two suitcases, backpacks, a diaper bag, a stroller, a pack and play and a car seat, they were only a couple of minutes behind us in their Uber.

We went to the Amtrak waiting room and just like the instructions said, our train was called a few minutes before departure. They told us our track and there we were. We found our car, our seats, and got settled. At first Emi was very busy. We walked up and down the aisle several times, read books, played with toys, ate some snacks. Finally she got fussy and tired and fell asleep off to the side in her stroller. She slept for over an hour, which was good.

We decided to get off at Back Bay instead of going all the way to South Station because it was a little closer to Cambridge. Lee and I were trying to remember the last time we were in Boston proper. We’ve been back to New Hampshire several times but we don’t think we’ve been in the city since we left.

By the time we got settled in our hotel it was close to 3 pm. The hotel is right by the MIT campus. Daniel was finished working for the day so we took a walk to find some coffee. We found a playground but it was kind of drizzly so we headed to the MIT campus instead. There Emi could run around, pick up rocks, and climb steps to burn off some energy.

That night Dan and Kelsey went out with friends, and we took Emi to Legal Seafood for dinner. We ordered a Sole to share with broccoli and rice pilaf. I thought the sole was inedible but Lee thought it was ok. I mainly ate rice, broccoli and bread, haha. We got Emi a kid's plate. The pasta was terrible but she ate all the rice and a lot of our rice pilaf and bread too. Then we went back to our room and listened to music and played until Dan and Kelsey came back.

I was in bed by 9, and asleep shortly after that. I woke up at 6. I wouldn’t have minded sleeping more but that’s actually plenty of sleep. We’re just relaxing and hanging out now until it’s time to start our day.

We bought a $4 self guided walking tour and strolled around the MIT campus. Lee and I have done this before but it’s been a long time. We love the Frank Gehry building that’s like a cartoon building. We saw the man statue made out of equations, the MIT chapel that is a round brick building surrounded by a moat. Emi liked the ducks on the green lawn a lot, and the small Adirondack chairs that she could climb on easily. 

We walked over to the MIT dome and then to the Charles. We walked across the Charles to Back Bay and Newbury street on the Smoot Bridge, and then strolled up Newbury to the Public Garden. The Smoot bridge is kind of a joke. A smoot is actually an official length of measurement, named after an MIT student that measured the bridge by laying down on it over and over. It's about 360 smooth long, by the way. They are even marked on the bridge! This was back in the 1890's so the smoot has been around for a while. Lee commented that he was kind of short.

We stopped several times along Newbury Street, once to get a burger for me, once to get chicken tenders at Shake Shack for Emi. There was a Beard Papa right next to the Shake Shack so of course we had to get cream puffs. I tried the green tea ones but I always like the plain ones with powdered sugar the best. And then there was a Levain cookie place. Dan says they’re better than Crumbi so I got one to try later with my afternoon coffee. Turns out a coconut-chocolate-caramel cookie is pretty great.

Right when we got to the Public Garden the sun came out and it suddenly got HOT! Lee and I were both tired so we said goodbye to Dan, Kelsey and Emi for the time being and proceeded to  wander all over the commons looking for the T Station for the Red Line. I was sweating like crazy; it was terrible. We finally found it. Boston has recently implemented transit  express just like New York so getting on the train was simple and pretty soon we were back in Cambridge, taking it easy until dinner time.

Sunday May 18

We are home now, but I’ll fill you in on the rest of Friday and Saturday.

For dinner on Friday we took the T back to Back Bay and went to the Salty Pig. Not realizing that it was graduation weekend in Boston we didn’t try to make dinner reservations in time and the best places in the North End were already booked. Oh well! The Salty Pig was just fine, imo. We got a variety of things to share. We got a meatball appetizer that I think everyone else liked more than I did. We got a salad that had too much dressing on it, sigh. We got a pizza that Emi loved. We got two different pasta dishes, a bucatini which was ok, and a mushroom ragu that I thought was fabulous. Then we took the T back to Cambridge and called it a night. With each subsequent T experience we improved, lol.

We pretty much had Saturday to ourselves, while they went to a baby shower and hung out with friends. In the morning I went for a long run along the Charles, 8 miles. It went ok, but it was pretty humid. I gradually sped up, but only a little, and then slowed back down at the end.Then at noon we walked back over the Charles to eat lunch at an oyster bar called Select Oysters. Neptune has changed their policy. They still don’t take reservations but now they don’t take your phone number either so you have to stand in line. This place that we went to instead was really great. The oysters were awesome and so was the lobster roll. The lobster roll was crazy expensive though, $60!! We split it, but still. We also got white anchovies on toast. Lee has decided he likes fancy anchovies in his old age. Yay!

Running Along the Charles

We also used an app called InKind to pay for the restaurant. The restaurant gets free adversing through their app and we got $50 off a $160 bill! Not bad. Unfortunately not many restaurants in the Twin Cities use it so we probably won't have a chance to use it again unless we're on the east coast.

We walked from there back to Levain and I bought a lemon cookie this time. Also very good! Then we took the T back to Cambridge. This time we took the Green Line from Copley Square. I got us on the right train (there are multiple green line trains) but initially going the wrong direction. Fortunately I realized it after one stop so we got off and got back on going the right way. The train was very slow, stopping a lot, but that’s the Green line for you. Its old. Once we got back to Cambridge we basically laid around the rest of the afternoon.

For dinner we went to a chinese restaurant  nearby that Lee had found online. Very popular, and everyone there was Asian. We didn’t have to wait but it was very crowded and hot inside. Emi had kind of had it, so we took turns taking her outside to run around a little bit. When the food came she must have been starving. She ate 4 dumplings, fried rice and white rice too!

That was the end of the trip for everyone. We all had early flights on Sunday so we said goodnight. We’ll see them again in a little over a month when they come to Minnesota for the 4th of July. I wonder how Emi will have changed by then?

MIT Dome

Fall in California 2024

Saturday October 26

We flew here today. Nice weather, easy flight. It was chilly in Minnesota when we left; 30’s to 50’s. It’s a little warmer here, 40’s to 70’s. We arrived here around 2. Dan picked us up in their new car, a Mercedes hybrid/electric plugin SUV. It’s very nice! Roomie, all kinds of new bells and whistles. They say it will park itself if you want it to, but I haven’t seen that yet.

On the way here there was a perfect circular rainbow around the sun. I got some pictures. I looked it up; it’s called a solar halo and it’s pretty uncommon, only happens a few times a year at most.

Solar Halo

Once here we ate a late lunch and then played with Emi and talked to Dan and Kelsey for most of the rest of the afternoon. Emi has changed a bunch since August! She’s less chill, more opinionated, more insistent on what she wants. She crawls fast, with ease. She cruises around tables and loves her walker toy. She’ll walk holding on to Daniel’s fingers but not anyone else’s! (actually by the end of the week she was walking with my fingers, and Lee's too!)  We all thought she’d be walking by now because she stood so early but no. She’s very talkative, and will babble conversationally. She’s also hungry! She’s very into solid food and eager to try new things. We did go on a walk around the neighborhood and threw a ball for Rossi in the school yard.

For dinner we went to a Pakistani restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. It wasn’t fancy, you stood in line to order, chose a table outside and displayed your number and they brought your food to you. It was very similar to Indian food. It was very good, especially their naan. Emi mostly ate baby food but she did try naan, and a little bit of Lee’s dahl. She made a funny face at the dahl, and then wanted more!

Monday October 28

Today we’ll start babysitting Emi. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4:15. I went ahead and got up instead of trying to go back to sleep because I had a long run to do (8 miles). I ran to the Byxbee Trails park, a wetlands with lots of trails. Its about 3 miles there and the one other time I’ve run there I was only doing 6 miles so I turned around right after I got there, but this time I was able to run a couple miles into the park. It’s really beautiful, all these rolling hills of grassland, and so many birds! I saw a heron but couldn’t get close enough to get a picture.

Byxbee Trails

When I got back the others were just leaving to go for a walk and to get coffee and sweet rolls. They brought me back some, so I had a second breakfast. 

We mostly hung out all day. We went into Palo Alto for lunch at a diner, and then later we went to San Jose, hoping to eat at Din Tai Fung but apparently half of the Bay Area had the same idea. We got there at around 5:15 and the wait time for a table was over 3 hours!. We put our name on the list but we ended up eating at a french restaurant nearby named Left Bank instead. We hoped that some people in front of us would have given up but our wait time never really changed. 

The restaurant we ate at was ok. Lee got a salad lyonnnaise and french onion soup. Daniel and Kelsey got steak frites. I got a beet salad and mussels. The mussels were inedible, fishy and tough. I sent them back and Dan and Kelsey gave me bites of their steak instead. I was fine! There was plenty of food.

They had profiteroles and I thought I would get one for dessert but the waitress took so long to come back and get our dessert order that I changed my mind. We went to an ice cream place called Summit instead, where they make your ice cream order on the spot with dry ice. I got roasted banana with chocolate sauce. It was good, but I think I might like Sugar and Salt better. I’ll have to do a taste comparison to be sure!

Emi was very busy yesterday, exploring all sorts of things she shouldn’t. Periodically we’d have to trap her in the play room where there isn’t anything off limits, except that she’s starting to try to figure out how to climb up on things, such as her cookstove! She also fought her naps tooth and nail, and ended up taking both of them in the car. I think she might still be dealing with a little jet lag from their trip to Japan.

Emi Showing Rossi What's What

Tuesday October 29

Monday was a day off from running. I went on a morning walk to park with Lee, Rossi and Emi.  Emi took her nap in  the stroller, which was fine with us. We put Emi on one of the little rocking animals in the park. They are in a sand pit and Rossi thought the sand was lots of fun, tossing it up in the air with her nose and running around madly. 

For lunch I got a Bahn Mi from LeQuy, a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. In the afternoon we took a walk to get coffee at Covour and Emi took another stroller nap. In the evening we met Craig and Jean at a northern Italian restaurant, Che Fi. There were lots of small plates and antipasti. It was all very good, and we shared everything so we got to taste a variety of food.

This morning I had a good run. I mostly ran around Mitchell Park to stay close to known bathrooms because my stomach was a little upset, but I was ok. Then we took Emi to story time at the library. She was mostly interested in the other kids, sitting quietly with her thumb in her mouth, observing. There were a lot of out of control toddlers. The story teller was very patient with them! She did a combination of singing and stories. I thought that the caregivers of the misbehaving toddlers were sort of negligent but Dan pointed out later that they were probably nannies and didn't feel like they had the authority to discipline their charges, at least not in public. 

Wednesday October 30

We took another walk to get coffee yesterday afternoon, then Lee made dinner, chicken ala becca. Kelsey, Dan and Emi went to get their covid and flu shots yesterday afternoon. After dinner Daniel, Kelsey, Emi and I went to get gelato at the gelateria run by the same Italian restaurant we went to last night (Dan wanted to go yesterday but we were too full!). We all got small cups and none of us could finish it. I don’t know why places give people so much ice cream. We all would have gotten kiddie cones if they had had them.

I did a 4 mile easy run this am, then went on a walk with Lee, Emi and Rossi, to Mitchell Park and back. Lee made tostadas for lunch. I was starving and afraid I would get cranky waiting, but I made it. Even after 2 tostadas and a big cookie I was still kind of hungry, but I’ll live. In a little while we’ll go on our afternoon coffee walk. Maybe I’ll get a snack too. I wonder what we’ll do for dinner?

Thursday October 31

I tried the Honey Financier at Covour; it was yummy and filling. I wasn’t hungry any more after that! Our afternoon walk was a little early and Emi didn’t fall asleep so we put her down for a nap in her crib around 3. Boyoboy did she fight it! They let her fuss for 15 minutes and she used every single minute before she gave up. I watched her on the baby monitor. She would stand in her crib, crying, sit down for a second, stand back up, over and over. Gradually the sit downs got a little longer and she started laying her head down too, until finally down she stayed. Whew!

We hadn’t seen Kelsey all day and it turns out she had a reaction to her shot and had been sick all day. We decided to get pho delivered for dinner. It was very good and hit the spot. Even Emi liked the meat.

Then they decided they had better carve their pumpkins. They had a pumpkin carving kit from last year but we couldn’t find it so Dan and Lee winged it. I thought they came out pretty good considering. 

Pumpkins

Friday November 1

Thursday morning I slept in a little bit (5:45 AM lol) and procrastinated so by the time I got started I needed to abbreviate my run a little so that I would be available to babysit Emi by 9. I did a 1 mile warmup, then about 3.40 miles at half marathon pace and didn’t do a cooldown. Better than nothing!

We did our morning walk with Emi and timed it right so she fell asleep right away. She slept the whole walk and another hour at least once we got back to the house, close to 2 hours! That’s a very long nap for her! Lee went and got us InandOut burgers for lunch and Emi had some too, torn up hamburger mostly, although Lee gave her some of a french fry and she really liked them! She wanted them instead of the hamburger but we held tough and told her no more french fries!

Then in the afternoon we did another coffee walk. She fell asleep for that one too. We went there a different way that was slightly longer so we ended up walking closer to 2.2 miles. I have good intentions to continue with these walks in Minnesota, but we’ll see. I tried a pumpkin creme latte in honor of Halloween. It was delicious!

Craig came over for dinner, with pizza, salad, and halloween cupcakes. Jean couldn’t come because she wasn’t feeling well. After dinner Kelsey, Dan and Emi put on their costumes. Kelsey was Sully, Daniel was Mike Wazowski, and Emi was Boo, from the movie Monsters, Inc. Emi's costume consisted of a long t-shirt (a 2T that almost fit her!) and pink pom poms on her little pony tails! Rossi was very tolerant of her little monster costume. They left to go trick or treating with some friends and we stayed behind to give out candy. 

Happy Halloween From Monster's Inc!

At first there were hardly any kids, but then more and more started showing up. Their front door is in a courtyard, so we opened the gate and I sat in the gateway with the candy so they could see me! There were a lot of cute costumes but my favorite was a girl that was dressed as a jellyfish. She had a transparent umbrella and had strung twinkly lights from it to look like a jellyfish’s tentacles. It looked great and she was very easy to see.

We were down to just a few pieces of candy when a very large group of kids started coming down the street. We didn’t have enough candy left for all of them so I quickly closed the gate and we turned off the lights and went inside. Whew!

It was lots of fun doing halloween. We never get trick or treaters at our house so I was happy to get to hand out candy for the first time since we lived in Waconia. Back in Minnesota they had snow for halloween, something of a tradition. Leo was Darth Vader, Kirby was a storm trooper, Sarah was princess Leia and Erik was Luke. The boys are very into Star Wars right now, thanks to Erik. The pictures were pretty awesome!

Herberg Star Wars

Now we’re back in Minnesota where it’s cold but not too bad. Someone tore up my homemade Harris/Walz sign but a neighbor left us another and the one I ordered came, so now we have 2 nice signs. I hope they last til election day.

Palo Alto in August

We leave this afternoon. It’s been a nice visit. Emi has changed so much! When we arrived on Sunday she seemed a little shy and hesitant. Dan thinks it was because he told her that ”grandma and grandpa” were coming and she was expecting Craig and Jeanne! Although Jeanne is Bauchan (Japanese for grandma). We thought maybe it was because she was surprised that we were real big people, and not little things in the phone! Ha.

Anyway, she is crawling easily, which she was still figuring out at the beginning of July. And she is standing! She can stand holding on to all sorts of things, but while we were here she learned to stand holding on to the coffee table and the couch. Those kind of things are harder because you have to reach up and then pull yourself up. She also reached from the coffee table to the couch and stood holding on to each one! And she just turned 8 months.

She makes lots of different sounds. She can make a clicking sound with her tongue and loves if you make that sound back to her. She does lots of pretend talking, something I remember Sarah doing. The closest she gets to actual words is maybe making a dada sound occasionally. And when Rossi barks, if you go “woof woof” she will try to say “woof woof” too.

She loves Rossi. She thinks Rossi is hilarious. Rossi is still not thrilled with Emi, however. She is barely tolerant of her. If Emi gets too close Rossi growls. We have to watch them both; tell Emi to be gentle and to let Rossi have some space if she growls. And telling Rossi to go away if she doesn’t want Emi too close. I’m sure eventually Rossi will decide Emi is part of the family and love her just like she loves Kelsey and Daniel, but for now we have to watch her. Rossi is not at all like my dogs when it comes to babies!

Emi is eating bombas, the weird peanut butter puffs that Leo used to love. She can eat teething crackers, but you have to watch her, and take the cracker away when it gets small, otherwise she’ll try to cram the whole thing in her mouth and choke! She’s eating a fair amount of baby food too, but still gets most of her nutrition from formula and breast milk.

She’s still a very chill little girl, only crying if she’s hungry or tired. She’s easy to put down for a nap, but they’re usually not very long, 20 minutes to an hour tops. She takes 2-3 naps a day and then sleeps well at night, close to 10 hours.

We watched her most days, with a few breaks here and there. She’s easier than she was even a month ago, but you still have to watch her constantly of course. They’ve put up a baby gate between the kitchen and the playroom, mainly so that Rossi can have some peace and quiet.

I went to Rinconada Pool one morning to swim. This time I thought the water was chilly, although it’s supposed to be 80 degrees. The sun was warm, however. I did a ladder workout this time, laps of 25-50-75-100-125-150-125-100-75-50-25, all with 20 seconds of rest between. You were supposed to try to do them all at the same pace but I’m nowhere near being able to judge my pace very well at all. it was fun, though, and not very difficult. I’m to the point now where the swim distance for the triathlon (750 yards) seems very doable. My biggest problem is swimming in a straight line in open water. I drift to one side a LOT, which means I have to sight a lot, which messes up my pace. I’m going to practice OWS a bunch until the tri, and then I may never do it again!

We didn’t go on any big adventures this time, just hung out with Emi, went for walks, took her to go swing. She likes it but not for very long. I think she might have a tendency toward motion sickness, like her dad. We’ll find that out soon enough!

We’ll be back here again at the end of October, for Halloween, and then again at the beginning of December for Emi’s first birthday! I bet she’ll be walking when we come back next time.