during the night around 3am william woke up crying. aren't the first few months of having a baby the hardest? after he stopped crying i went back to sleep. talking with cymara i knew newborns need to feed every 3 hours or so. i wonder if he'll cry again? i thought to myself. sure enough, around 6am, william was crying once more. after he stopped, i heard john take him outside and didn't come back until 2 hours later. i woke up around 9am, deflated the aero bed and put it back in its storage bag. john came down and apologized for the crying and not realizing that the downstairs baby monitor was turned on throughout the night, so i was able to hear everything as if i was in the room. i didn't mind, i think i still got a good night's rest compared to john and deanna. john said he took william out in the baby bjorn so deanna and i could get some rest at least.

john made some blueberry pancakes for breakfast. after that (about 11am) i left for the city to meet up with dan and deanna. i took the F train to the lexington avenue/63rd street stop and walked across to central park. there was a japanese festival going on but the line into the pavilion stage was so long there was no way i'd be able to get in so i just wandered around the park, eventually sitting down at a bench to people watch and write a little bit in my journal.

i got in touch with dan via cellphone and we managed to rendezvous outside of central park on fifth avenue as he drove down in the car. we then headed to a hotel near time square where cymara went to confirm the reservations for rooms they'd booked for next month for themselves and some out-of-town relatives visiting the US. from there we went back up central park west and then to fifth avenue again. after a stressful search we finally found a parking spot on 85th and madison, and walked into central park. the place was crowded with people enjoying the nice sunday weather. we visited turtle pond briefly before cutting across the park and out to columbus avenue to look for a place to have lunch. we settled for a pizzeria uno behind the natural history museum. cymara ordered some macaroni and cheese for clarissa, which wasn't on the menu. she told me that most restaurants have macaroni and cheese for babies, a secret dish that people who don't have children would never know about. after we ate it started to drizzle a little bit. we decided to wait out the rain in the museum. we managed to sneak inside without paying (even though admission is optional). i've been to the museum a few times but it was the first for dan and cymara.

the last time i came, the ocean life exhibition hall was closed for renovations but now it was open again. the new design looked like the inside of a large UFO, with tiled lcd screens on the ceiling that mimicked the effect of being underwater.

we went looking for the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton but couldn't fine it before the museum closed. back outside, cymara waited underneath the awning of a nearby residential condominium while dan and i (armed with umbrellas) cut across central park to go get the car and drive back to pick up his family.

by then it was around 6pm and we decided to go back home (we managed to arrive and leave new york in almost exactly 24 hours). figuring we could do one last spot of sightseeing from the car, we decided to drive down to time square. big mistake. with the horrible weekend traffic combined with the slight rain (and a touch of bad map navigation on my part), we didn't actually exit manhattan and get on some decent stretch of highway until 8pm.

we stopped only once at an off-highway rest stop so dan could get some coffee to ease his caffeine addiction. coming out of the dunkin' donuts, cymara spilled her coffee coolatta but managed to get a replacement anyway. we listened to the red sox yankees game the rest of the way, first with NY broadcast, then switching over to boston broadcast when we got to connecticut. it was a real nail biter. by the time i got back to cambridge close to midnight the game wasn't over yet. as i stepped into the door and turned on the television, i saw a-rod jack the game winning homerun to end the series.