Life in Amherst

A Day of Big Decisions

I'd like to think that I'm a good decision-maker, in terms of weighing costs and benefits, and trying to really think through issues before making a decision.  I think I do this fairly well, though the part about my decision-making I've never been wild about is though I think I weigh things carefully, I'm often not firm in my decision.  I will decide one thing, and then be swayed by something else that happens, and then change my mind. The overall process is good, but the 'final answer' will often change depending on new information I get.

I/we are in a similar situation now.  Just when we were about to take our house off the market and stay put in New Haven for another year, we received an offer on our house.  It wasn't a great offer to start off with, but after working with the potential buyers for the better part of the weekend, it came to be a mostly reasonable offer (except for a time late Sunday night when they made a completely unreasonable request and we walked away from the deal-making process).

This all sounds fabulous, and exactly what we have been waiting for, and it is.  Except for two major things:  1) school starts this week up in Amherst (actually, orientation is this week and school starts Monday), and 2) we have begun visits to a private school in New Haven we like for both girls (we changed our minds about Foote and now are focusing on Cold Spring (www.coldspringschool.org).  In fact, both girls have an interview there today.  It would be nice to have both girls in one school, and in this system, they have a combined K/1 program, so Ella would spend two years in that grade (and technically repeat kindergarten, which is probably a good thing).  However, the school isn't perfect:  its a rather small building with no gym and it doesn't have its own playground, except for the park across the street.  And, its not extremely convenient for us in terms of location.  Perhaps most importantly, I fear that though I could afford it this year, I don't think I could afford it in upcoming years.  Combined, it would cost about $30,000 to send both kids there for one year.  But, its an excellent school and I think Ella would do well there academically.

Ultimately, our goal is to move to Amherst so that we can all be together, and I need to keep that in mind.  Amherst is a wonderful community, and both Kim and I think the kids would really prosper there.  It reminds both Kim and I of the places we grew up (Texas and Montana).  Its very much a farming community in some ways, and we would really live the kind of life that we want to live, based in spending a lot of time outdoors and living in a community where people are generally a bit more accepting of gay and lesbian families.  I don't feel NOT accepted in my workplace or in greater New Haven, but we still feel like total outsiders in our little neighborhood, and I am still amazed (though perhaps less shocked) that none of our neighbors really speak to us and that people drive by on our small cul-de-sac and don't wave or say hello.  I guess that saddest part is that we have gotten used to it and it doesn't really bother us anymore, but on the other hand, I don't think its the way we want to live our lives.

So, ironically, we make a visit to Cold Spring around noon, and we need to make a final decision about the housing contract by the end of the day.  At this point, I guess it could go either way, though the more I think about things, the more I think I'm leaning towards Amherst, primarily because I think its important for our family to be together, and if we don't take this opportunity now, we'll not all live together for another year, as we'd take the house off the market and just complete the school year here.  But, I'm also open to having a good look at Cold Spring, and if Ella is really taken by the school and the teachers, then I think that will be instructive as well.

Its a big day, certainly.  Wish us luck, and pray that we make the right decision.

Long Overdue Update

I've been away from the blog so long its likely that I don't have any readers left!  But, for those two or three of you that still check on occasion for updates, here they are.

• We've had a great summer, and its hard to believe that its (officially) coming to an end next week with Ella going back to school.
• We just returned early this week from our trip out to Montana for our family reunion.   Over 30 people from my mom's side of the family got together near Flathead Lake at my cousin's house.  She and her husband own a beautiful piece of property on the Flathead River, and they planned three days of delicious food, activities, and family fun (including a helicopter that landed at their house and took us all out on helicopter rides around the Flathead Valley).  The girls had a wonderful time getting to know their cousins and aunts and uncles a bit better, and I really enjoyed being able to see everybody again, too.  Lots of pictures from that time below.
• Our beloved nanny, Amy, finally returned after a month in Massachusetts working at a camp.  The girls had missed her terribly, and I am always delighted about how much they love her and the positive influence she has in their life. 
• I don't think I can emphasize enough how much Ella has enjoyed her summer camp.  In many ways she has grown up enormously over the summer and now really seems like a school-aged girl.  She has become a tremendous swimmer and has adopted various mannerism of her college-aged and high school camp counselors (all good mannerisms, but funny).  She walks around singing pop songs I've never heard of, and has all kinds of tart phrases and sayings she uses now (like when I ask her something that's apparently obvious to her, she responds with something like (with irritation in her voice) "mom, yaaahaa").  Its quite endearing, actually.  We have our last parent's day coming up on Tuesday and I'm really looking forward to that.
• Because she has enjoyed camp so much, she is not at all looking forward to going back to school.  She reports that camp is extremely fun and school is equally boring, and that she doesn't get to do anything fun in school.  This is not so far from the truth, actually.  I can see how she feels, but have been trying to explain this is what happens when you hit the big time of being a school-age kid.  I'm also quite sure that it has a lot to do with her anxiety about going back to school and having to do things (i.e. reading) that she is not entirely comfortable with.
• Along the school lines, we have been thinking this summer about the possibility of holding her back a year and having her repeat kindergarten.  Not because we think she is dumb, but rather because we wonder if she doesn't need another year to boost some self-confidence.  Also, we don't necessarily want her to struggle the entire year and feel like she is just getting concepts that other kids have gotten for awhile.  I talked to her principal at West Woods about the idea, who thought Ella was fine and should move onto first grade.  I think the biggest argument against holding her back is the stigma of repeating kindergarten when the other kids are moving on to first grade.  I don't think it would be a good idea to hold her back in the school she's currently in for this reason.
• Still along these lines, I called up two of the best private schools in New Haven the other day to see if, by chance, they happened to have any slots available in their kindergarten class for this academic year.  Normally it would be laughable to call these schools this time of year and inquire about a slot, but given the tough economic times, both of them had space in their kindergarten.  One of the schools is more convenient and better known to us than the other (www.footeschool.org).  I had a long talk with the admissions woman and she encouraged us to come in and look around the school, and to bring Ella in so they could talk to her.  The advantages of this school are that, since its a private school, they don't let kids start kindergarten until they are five (so Ella would be one of the older ones), and that many of the kids have already completed a year of kindergarten in public schools, so her abilities would be on par with many of the kids in her class.  Its also a tremendous program, with a much greater attention to the arts (which she loves), smaller class size, and more teachers in the classroom (I think that part of the problem in kindergarten last year was that there was one teacher with 20 student, and no aides to help out).  There are two obvious disadvantages:  one is the cost and the other is the quick turnaround for a decision (public school starts next Thursday and our visit to Foote is the Tuesday before the Thursday).  Much to consider.
• The other big thing on our plates in our house.  We had absolutely NO activity on our house for the better part of 4 months, and now, all of a sudden, we have people come to look at our house at least once, if not twice or three times, each week.  Nothing has turned into an offer yet, and the whole thing is leaving me feel a little unsettled.
• I am also finished teaching my health policy class at Yale next week.  The class has been really great, and I've enjoyed the students.  There's really been no better time to teach a health policy class than this summer, especially with all the health reform debates going on in DC.  However, I've got a tremendous amount of grading to do in the next week, and I think grades are due early next week.

Some photos from our trip to Montana:

Ella and Maisie in our hotel room.

 Ella learned to shoot a bow and arrow (in a dress, of course):

 

Grandma and Maisie looking for grasshoppers

Four generations of Verslands

 

Kim and dad by the campfire

 

Kim in Montana (does not like photos)

 

Maisie thinking about what to eat next

The helicopter landing at my cousin's house!

 

Ella in helicopter from outside

 

Ella in helicopter from inside

 

Ella in mountains of Montana

Maisie and her best friend Chad (notice the similarity in hat wearing)

Ella, Maisie and Chad on the last day

Parent's Day at Holiday Hill Camp

Some great pictures from Parent's Day at Ella's camp.  This camp has been really great for Ella.  The bus comes directly to our house at 8:30 in the morning, and then she gets to spend all day playing games, swimming, singing, dancing, and doing art, all in a beautiful outdoor setting.  The kids are exhausted at the end of the day when the bus drops them off at 4:30.  The camp costs an arm and a leg (literally), but I can see that its worth it.  Maisie was too young to go this year, but she'll be eligible to go next summer, and I can't wait for both girls to be able to get on the same bus and go to camp together!

We were also lucky because both mom and Howie got to come to Parent's Day, so Ella had a parent or grandparent with her the entire day.  The camp served the most spectacular lunch for all the parents and campers--delicious fried chicken, corn on the cob, clam chowder, and some great fruits and vegetables.  It was absolutely delicious.  Mom and I got to spend time watching Ella play soccer, hold lizards (!!), and take swimming lessons.  What a wonderful day!

Ella and her counselor, Stephanie, and her cabin-mates.

Grandma and Ella.

Ella in a staightjacket being attacked by lizards!

Ella and her counselor-in-training (Katie) and cabin mates

Swimming Lessons

My favorite thing to do in the world

Ella asks all kinds of really good and thought-provoking questions.  Among them are:

1.  What is the very last number in the world?
2.  Is black a color?
3.  Who was the very first person on earth?
4.  What's next to China?
5.  What was the very first toy in the world?
6.  What is your most favorite food in the world?
7.  Who are your favorite people in the whole world?
8.  How is dirt made?
9.  How is glass made?

Each of these questions is quite thought-provoking, and she usually asks me these questions when I'm driving, which gives me pause while I'm driving to try to think of the right answer.  She's a fabulous asker-of-questions, though I often have no idea where she gets her subject matter.  Worse yet, I often don't have the answer.

The other day, she asked me what my favorite thing to do in the world was.  Of course I had to say that spending time with her, Maisie, and Kim was my favorite thing (which is mostly is).  But I also started to think more carefully about the answer to this question.

After some thought, I decided that my favorite thing to do in the whole world was trail running.  Though I've run competitively on some level for over thirty years now, running on the roads just doesn't satisfy me anymore.  I would much prefer to be out in the middle of nowhere, exploring trails I've not been on before, and trying to understand how trail A may (or may not) hook up with trail B.  Fortunately, I was born with the gene to understand where I am without a map, and always seem to understand what direction I'm heading, even if I've never been on a particular trail before.  

Today was a perfect example.  I finally headed out to the trails around 4:00, with the intention of staying out running until around 6:30.  I was able to (finally) figure out how two trails I'd run on from opposite directions joined up, and ran out on the trail for about an hour and a half before turning around and heading home.  It was an amazing summer evening on a really beautiful trail, and I'm feeling pretty good that I can run for several hours without really getting tired.  I came home after running for about 2:20 and really felt great. 

So, I'm certain that's my favorite thing to do in the world.  What's yours?

In other news, our new deck is finished, and Kim did a beautiful job staining it today.  Just one more coat of stain and we're ready for the new hot tub!

Ella swimming in her gymastics outfit.  She certainly has a gymnasts' body!

Maisie, causing trouble.

Ella's picture of Maisie and I.

Howie and Ella (Maisie refusing to participate).

Me, as pseudo-stay-at-home parent

I can't remember a time since I've had both girls that I've spent so much time with them in the course of a regular 'work' day.  From the time Ella was six months old, I would march off to work around 8, drop her off at daycare, and be at work by 9 at the latest.  Then, I'd work all day, and finally leave at 5 (definitely on the early side, in the big scheme of things), and pick her up.  Its been the same with Maisie.  That time has been pushed back at least an hour since we've had great nannies, so often I don't get home until 6.

Because Amy is up in Massachusetts this month, and because Kim is no longer around to help with drop-offs or pick-ups/comings home, and because I've been teaching at Yale for the past two weeks, my schedule is really completely different.  On non-teaching mornings, I really don't arrive at work at least until 9:30, and though I've hired somebody to come by a couple days/week, I often leave work around 3:15 to pick up Maisie so I can meet Ella's camp bus at 4:30 (as it turns out, they won't let her off the bus without a parent.  The other day I was two minutes late and the bus left, went and dropped off some other kids, and then swung back around 10 minutes later.  The driver was none too pleased).

So, taken together, I'm the home frau.  Sometimes I'm good at it, and often I'm not.  Mostly, I feel like I'm the disciplinarian who is always telling the kids all the things they shouldn't be doing.  Most of what is driving me nuts about them is how much they fight, constantly.  Sometimes an hour or so goes by without them fighting about something, but this is rare.  Today I made a new rule:  whenever they fight, they must go immediately to their rooms, and not come out until they can apologize to each other, and walk down the stairs holding hands (where I shall be patiently waiting on the couch).  The other part of it is that if they fight twice, they lose their TV privileges for the night.

Tonight, they lost TV privileges.

I also do an enormous amount of laundry.  I do mountains and mountains of laundry every night.  Part of this is because Ella goes through a lot of towels, swimsuits, etc at camp, and I need to wash her camp uniform every day.  Maisie also goes through a lot of laundry, and with Kim and I upping our summer workouts, there are also lots of sweaty clothes.

So, house frau I am.  Its been fun, and despite the fighting, I do enjoy spending time with the kids, even if I am the most unpopular mother in the house on most days.

Birthday Weekend in New Hampshire

What an amazing weekend we had together.  Kim signed up for a three-day triathlon in New Hampshire (appropriately called the Black Fly Tri).  The event(s) consisted of a Friday night time trial (4 mile sprint on bike), a Saturday morning 'international' distance triathlon (0.5 mile swim, 20 mile bike, 5 mile run), and a Sunday morning 'sprint' triathlon (0.25 mile swim, 25 mile bike, 3 mile run).  Though it took an insanely long time to drive up to Waterville Valley Ski area (northern New Hampshire--about 4.5 hours away from New Haven), we arrived mid-Friday afternoon and had a couple of hours to bum around before Kim's first race.  It was a great set-up--we rented a two bedroom condo in the ski village, so we had plenty of room to spread out and the kids loved having their own bedroom with bunk beds.  The 'village' was cool in that the hotel was right next to the pond where the race start was, and where the swim took place.  The village also had all kinds of restaurants, some coffee shops, a small grocery store, and a toy/book shop, so there was no need to drive the car anywhere all weekend.  It was heaven.  We could also rent canoes, kayaks, and paddle boats, and on Friday night when Kim was out racing, I took the girls out for a paddle boat ride, and we had a great time together.

Kim did so well on all three events that she placed third overall in her age group.  For that, she got a jug of maple syrup!  She has always been a great triathlete, and despite taking a few years off for kids, she has returned in excellent form.  I am totally proud of her--she's an amazing athlete.

As for the rest of us, we had a great weekend, too.  Saturday was my birthday, so Kim arranged for the kids to attend a short day camp for a few hours in the morning while she was competing, so I headed out to the mountain trails for a run.  I ran for about two hours up and around the ski slopes on Saturday, and then looped back around to join Kim in the final miles of her running leg of the triathlon.  Though I didn't anticipate running today, I was able to head out for another hour or so, and had an amazing run on some cross-country ski trails.  After these two days of running, I'm feeling much more confident in terms of being able to do another ultramarathon in September, though I still have a lot of work to do to get here.

The cool thing about our weekend at Waterville Valley was that there were tons of families there, and lots of parents were there competing in the triathlons while their kids cheered them on.   The kids loved the atmosphere, and I think its a good and healthy thing to expose them to.  We got to spend a couple of hours on Saturday was my dear friend Kris and her cool kids, who live just an hour north of the race.  We also met a couple of cool lesbian families who were also there competing in the triathlon, and one of the families lives just a few miles up the road from us here.  I'm hoping we can get together with them, and their kids, sometime soon.

It was a really incredible birthday weekend-probably the best on record, as far as I can remember (of course, I'm 39 now, so who knows how my memory is holding up)...

Kim and the girls before before her Saturday triathlon:

Maisie and Ella in the paddle boats:

Running in the New Hampshire mountains.  I did a ton of climbing and got some really gorgeous views.

Summer

Not much to add to my previous post, except to say that despite my totally unusual schedule this summer, I'm really enjoying summer so far.  I am teaching on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at Yale until 11:00, and then am taking the rest of those days to work at home.  So, because I'm not going into work at all those days, I'm getting the opportunity to pick Maisie up from school around 3:30, and then I get to be home when Ella gets off the camp bus.  Its been fun to hang out with them on late summer afternoons, as we've taken ourselves out do dinner, enjoyed (what little) warm weather we've had, and generally just gotten to hang out with each other without being rushed.  On Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, we've been having a substitute babysitter come and pick Maisie up at noon from daycare, bring her home or to the pool, and then meet Ella off the bus.  If I completely wanted to blow off all work this summer, I would eliminate that babysitter and just work from 9:30 (when I finally get Ella on the school bus and Maisie at daycare) to 3:00 (when I need to leave work to re-pick up Maisie and meet Ella's bus.  However, I've got a couple of papers close to completion and a grant that needs to be re-written, so I do need to do some small degree of work this summer outside of class preparation.

Regardless, the girls seem to be having a good summer.  Here's them, and a neighbor, this afternoon, enjoying their 'water slide' (i.e. a garden hose attached to their playscape slide).

Happy 4th of July!

First, happy 4th of July!  We took the girls to watch their first-ever fireworks last night on the beach, and they absolutely loved it.  I am not generally a big fan of fireworks (too loud, too late, too many people), but we had a really marvelous time.  I am not wild about my neighbors shooting off incredibly loud and scary fireworks in their yard as a I write this, but I did have fun last night.

Once again, I've been thinking a lot about whether to continue the blog.  I'm having a harder time finding time to write, and I'm not even sure I've got great subject matter to write about.  The kids are doing well, Kim and I are doing well (though the house has still not sold), our jobs are going well, and generally things are great.  The blog seemed so much more relevant when the kids were really young and parenting was new and difficult.  Now, it seems like we're almost old hands at parenting, and parenting itself is much more of a joy than it is a challenge.

So, I apologize for the relative silence over the past few weeks, but the blog doesn't seem as relevant as it used to.  I'll leave you all (that is, all 16 of you), with a few updates, and then will think carefully about whether or not to continue.

• Ella is thoroughly enjoying her first summer camp experience.  A bus comes and picks her up around 8:30 every morning and drops her back off around 4:30.  While she's there, she does everything imaginable:  boating, cooking lessons, swimming twice/day, and endless sports.  She's exhausted when she comes home, and I'm delighted she gets to spend the entire day outside.
• Our wonderful nanny, Amy, is taking the month off to work at a summer camp in Massachusetts, so we're more or less without a babysitter (though I did speak with a college graduate who will work a couple days/week).  The girls miss her terribly, and in some ways I feel like we're limping through the next few weeks until Amy can come back and brighten the girls days again.
• Maisie is in a summer camp, of sorts, at her regular daycare.  None of us are completely wild about this, but its a reasonably good place and she knows everybody there, so its fine.  I'd just prefer to be at the park or the pool or somewhere outside.
• I had a very interesting conversation while I was in Chicago last weekend with somebody I greatly admire and respect.  We were comparing our daughters (hers is in high school) and I was telling her that Ella had done well enough in kindergarten, but also struggled to keep up, a bit.  She said that the best thing she could have ever done for her daughter (but didn't) was hold her back a year (so, repeat kindergarten).  One of the reasons it would have been nice to move to Amherst would have been that we would have had no choice but to have Ella repeat kindergarten because of age restrictions.  Now, if we stay, I'm wondering whether we should advance Ella to first grade or have her do kindergarten again.  I just still feel quite badly about all the pressure she felt at the end of kindergarten, and her self-consciousness about not being in the same place as the other kids.  I'm just wondering whether we can save her some years of struggle if we make this decision now?
• Work is going extremely well.  There are so many great things happening with my research that I can hardly believe it.  Way too much to go into here, but all is good.
• Kim loves Amherst, but feels badly about being gone during the week.  Damn house that's not selling.
• In the past two weeks, I've been in New York, DC, Boston, Provincetown, Long Island, and Chicago.  Next weekend we're heading to New Hampshire for Kim's triathlon, and about a month later, we're going to Montana for a family reunion.  That's a lot of travel in not much time.

Those are the big highlights.  We're all good.

 

On to first grade, toothless one

Perhaps fittingly, Ella lost her first tooth just two days before the last day of kindergarten.  She had been feeling sad for some time now that her fellow kindergarten classmates had lost various teeth, and she had yet to lose any.  She had had a wiggly tooth for a couple weeks ago now, so this weekend when she and Maisie were at my parents' house, my mom volunteered to give it a little tug to see if it would come out.  Surprisingly, she agreed (she is quite averse to pain, or blood, or the thought of pain or blood).  My mom got her tooth out with little effort, and so Ella now has a 'tooth window' (to borrow from Charlie and Lola).

So, today was Ella's official last day of kindergarten, and I think we're both a little sad.  Its hard to believe she's already off to first grade (sad for me...she's growing up so fast!), and its sad for her to be leaving her dear teacher, Mrs. Barker.  Between that, and the rain, we're both a little blue.

On the work front, its been a busy and wonderful week, though.  I spent last week in DC interviewing patients for a research study I'm doing to look at trust and endorsement of conspiracy theories among African American men living with HIV.  I had the good fortune of being able to spend three days doing in-depth interviews with these men, and heard explicit stories about their lives that have involved armed bank robberies, gun violence, years of injection drug use and unprotected sex, and just generally the difficulty of growing up in an inner city neighborhood.  The remarkable thing is that these men are all in their 40s, 50s, and 60s now and have been living with HIV since the late 1980's.  Almost to a person, they have turned their lives around, and have (by and large) quit drinking, smoking, drugging, and sleeping around.  They all made a conscious decision to live.  I'm still replaying so much of the interviews in my head, and am looking forward to getting the interviews transcribed so I can take a closer look at what we talked about.

The really amazing and wonderful part of doing this work (among other things) is that I made the realization over the weekend that I am doing exactly what I've always wanted to be doing with my career.  I remember when I first moved to the East Coast in 1994, and I first read the book And the Bank Played On (by Randy Shilts, it chronicles the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the US).  I was so taken by this book, and though I had no firm plan about what I wanted to do with my life in terms of education or job (I was 24 and working in a biotech company at the time), I decided then and there that I wanted to spend my career somehow researching or caring for people with HIV/AIDS.  I wasn't clear about the path I'd take to get there, but I remember clearly knowing that's what I wanted to do.

So imagine my surprise when I was talking with Kim this weekend about my time in DC, and she remarked that I seemed to be doing exactly the thing I had always dreamed about doing.  She was right.  It seems like its rare when you can envision a life for yourself and then wake up one day to realize you are living the life and accomplishing the goals you had set out for yourself.  Its even more remarkable that I hatched this plan, or this dream, I guess, more than 15 years ago, and am just now seeing it come to fruition (and perhaps even more remarkable that I had forgotten I had had this dream for myself in the first place, as it seems like I've taken various detours here and there).

I've got all sorts of other things to write about, but I want to stop here and celebrate Ella's last day of kindergarten.  She's done incredibly well this year, and I'm so proud of her and the amazing child she has become.  I love her, and Maisie, more than words can possibly say.

(ok...seem to be having technical difficulty uploading Ella's picture here, but will try it again later)...

Back together again, briefly

I ran into our good friend and former daycare provider, Nancy, at the playground yesterday and she reminded me I haven't updated the blog in awhile.  Guilty as charged.  I don't have a ton of time to write this morning, as I'm leaving for a trip to DC in a few hours for a week of patient interviews for a research study I'm working on.  Its an interesting study--I'm interviewing HIV-infected veterans about their beliefs regarding patient/physician trust and endorsement of government conspiracy theories regarding HIV/AIDS.  I have 17 interviews do to over a three-day period, so I'm going to be working nearly nonstop the whole time I'm there.  But, I was funded to do this study last summer and I've just now gotten through all the IRB steps to actually do the study, so I'm looking forward to it.  The downside is that Kim and Maisie just got home from Texas Saturday night, so despite spending a really nice day together yesterday, we're all heading back to our separate three corners of the earth again (Amherst, Hamden, and DC).

The pictures below are from the trip Ella and I took to New York on Saturday.  I figured she and I could do something fun together before Kim and Maisie returned.  We spent over three hours at the American Girl Doll store, and though I was firm about her NOT needing another American Girl doll (she already has three), I did let her have the doll's hair done, buy some matching doll/girl outfits (including matching pajamas for both Ella and her doll AND Maisie and her doll).  We also managed to get a lunch reservation at the store at the last minute, so we had fun dining together.  When that shopping extravaganza was all said and done, I talked her into walking up to the Central Park zoo to see the new snow leopard exhibit (which was ok, but the new baby snow monkey was the highlight of the trip). 

Ella did great in the city, as she always does.  This is our 4th trip into the city together, and everytime we're there, I wonder why I don't take her more often.  She loves it, and so do I.  On this trip, I insisted that we walk the whole way, so we walked from Grand Central (at 43rd) all the way to the zoo, and back (stopping in between at American Girl, of course).  Though she complained of her feet hurting, she did a great job.  I think this summer it would be fun to get tickets to see a Broadway show together--maybe Mary Poppins.  I think she'd like that.

Anyway, its going to be a busy week, so I'd better get moving.  Here's some pictures of Ella from the weekend.  She certainly loves to be in New York...