Chloe's Birthday

Chloe is officially two (even though she has been telling everyone that she is 2 for the last 5 months).We had two celebrations for Chloe's 2nd birthday. On her actual b-day, the 14th, we had a cake. Chloe's favorite part was blowing out her two candles. We had to do it twice. I bought the cake for her actual birthday. I decided to go for "mother of the year" and make her a cake to celebrate when BeBe came. Since Chloe was born in the year of the monkey and we call her our little monkey, I decided to make all from scratch a monkey cake. It was a Martha Stewart recipe. And, as it goes with Martha Stewart, some of the items for the cake could not be found...the black licorice drops for the eyes and the 1 cup muffin pan. Nevertheless, I proceeded and found out that I got in over my head! It came out ok, it looked like a monkey, but it didn't look as good as Martha's (of course). Chloe recognized it as a monkey and referred to it all week as "Chloe's monkey cake". She once again enjoyed blowing out her candles on her 2nd cake.

We got Chloe a motorized Dora the Explorer four-wheeler. She jumped right on it when she saw it, but when she pressed the button and it started off, she decided it wasn't for her. It has been in the garage ever since. When we try and coax her on it, we get a very dramatic, head-shaking, "NO!" (which is her favorite new response). Chloe also got a soccer goal and soccer ball. But, her favorite gift from mom and dad is the covered swing we got her for the patio. She likes it so much that she took a nap on it last week while BeBe was swinging her.

Chloe's BeBe came to Jersey last week. I think BeBe was pleasantly surprised by Jersey and she liked our little village. Her only complaint was the humidity, which was at its worst. We spent most of the week in NYC. Chloe was a little trooper as BeBe and mommy took her to see the sites. At Matt's suggestion, we took the GrayLine double-decker bus tour. It was really a great way to see the city. It also beat trying to figure out the buses and conquer the subway with a toddler and a stroller. You can just jump on and off the tour as you desire. Chloe liked the view from top deck and was really well-behaved on our tours.

Matt and I celebrated our 8th anniversary on the 20th. Since BeBe was here to watch Chloe, we were able to go out to eat on our own. We went to a very nice restaurant in our village and were seated next to two, very nice elderly gentlemen. Because the restaurant is so small and intimate, we struck up a conversation with the two men. They were old friends who went to dinner once a month to catch up and share in their favorite pastime, collecting wine. Over dinner, they would share 2 bottles of wine, each one bringing a bottle from his cellar (our community is BYO at restaurants). The two men wanted us to celebrate and since they had farther to drive than us, decided to share their 1975 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1987 Chateau Montelena. Even if you don't know wine, you can tell that they are both very old bottles of wine. For those of you who know wine, you would also know that that they are VERY expensive bottles of wine. These two guys weren't just playing around with wine, they were connisseurs of wine, each having about 4000 bottles in his collection that they had each been collecting for over 30 years. It was a great anniversary gift from 2 very nice strangers with whom we had a nice conversation about their lives, grandchildren, travels, the Andy Warhol painting that one owned & our daughter Chloe. We just had to save the empty bottles of wine as a souvenir of such generosity and of course to prove the story. All in all, it made for a memorable anniversary. Oh, and BTW, they were both fantastic wines. The Silver Oak was fantastic as it should be for a $1000 bottle of wine.

BeBe left on Saturday.The weather for the week was nice (but hot and humid) but it started to rain on Saturday and is supposed to keep raining for the next 5 days! Yikes!