New York à la Keiko: nykeiko plays: Dia:Beacon, NY

Now that my baby girl is entering toddlerhood, I savor the time I get to spend time with her on weekends. She likes to be out of our small apartment and explore so we always make an effort to take her somewhere fun on the weekends. We also enjoy exploring the city with her. She's very acquainted with all the parks we visit, she loves to point at every pigeon in sight and practices her barking at dog parks. She can nap through loud subway trains and honking cars. Swings are always a highlight and water sprinklers are never to be missed. It's not possible for us to sleep in on the weekends anymore so it is easy for us to get out of the house early and be home for dinner. I think we're better at packing on the fly and taking less time to finally leave the house. We might always forget a thing or two but as long as we have her diapers and wipes, everything else doesn't seem to matter. Okay, I lie, we need to bring a bunch of crap like sun lotion, water bottle, hat, extra change of clothes, bib, snacks and more!

To celebrate the end of Summer, we have been setting out doing mini getaways outside the city.

This past labor day weekend, we decided to visit the Hudson Valley and stay a night in Poughkeepsie from Sunday to Monday. What is there to do there you ask? I wasn't sure. Dave did all the research. Our goal was to visit a Children's museum, a farm and then walk around Beacon on the second day. Since it was raining on Sunday, we just ate lunch and then checked in the hotel where we had a good 2 hour nap with the baby. She had 3.5 hours. After that, we went out for dinner at Mill House Brewery which was excellent and I'll blog about that later, and then came back to the hotel for dip in their indoor pool. Since she had a long nap, she was wide away after dinner and stayed up until 10 p.m. Her normal bedtime is 8:30-9 p.m. so it wasn't so bad. She passed out like a baby and slept through the night. The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel and went to Beacon to take a walk on the Main street. It's not our first time there and it's nice to visit the small boutiques but with a curious toddler in tow, it's not fun to shop. So, on a whim, we decided to visit Dia:Beacon art museum which was really the highlight of our trip. I've read about how great this museum is and I'm so glad we got to go. I would visit again if I had the change. The large scale installations are just impressive and immersive. The baby loved it too. She would have probably enjoyed it a lot more if we could let her touch anything at all. All the art was obviously off limits except the interactive ones. The space was so large so she was happy to be able to run around and also scream out loud to hear her own echo. Not sure if others minded (Probably not except those who had kids!).

We spent a couple of hours wandering the museum and then grabbed lunch before heading back to the city. It isn't American Labor Day weekend without some shopping. We stopped by REI to check out their Labor Day clearance and got my baby girl snow pants on sale for $15 (from $60). We are ready for her Winter adventures! (Still missing boots, gloves, hats...). I've been shopping every season for her because nothing fits obviously from even three months ago.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our visit to the museum. I put toddler in photos to put size in perspective. All photos are taken on the iPhone.