Chautauqua

We flew up to Buffalo on Friday and drove to the Chautauqua Institute to see Zess, Zames, Zara, Zryce and Zryce's parents. What is the Chautauqua Institute you might ask? It's best described as a cultural Disneyland or an Utopian cultural village. You pay a gate entrance fee to get in, people own homes inside the institute and during the summer, there is cultural programming of all sorts. They have operas, orchestras, ballets, art galleries...basically lots of cultural activities in this little village where you can walk everywhere and where people don't lock their doors.

We had a really fun time hanging out and taking in the whole experience. Zames is a very active almost two year old who's obsessed with planes, trains and automobiles. He's gotten into watching "choo choo" video clips on You Tube. The other night, Zames was out past sunset which was clearly a new experience. I guess he's never outside when it's dark. He kept pointing at the sky muttering "dark dark dark dark." He tried to convince Zryce that they should lie down on the park bench because it was dark and time to go to sleep. He was genuinely befuddled by dark and super adorable.

Zess is into the idea of being fast, she has her "fast shoes," which are her pink athletic style Mary Janes. She likes to tell me she's faster than me which I seriously doubted, but I didn't debate her on that. I mean, I'm slow, but heck, I'm faster than any three year old at least for short distances. I'll be faster and taller than Zess for at least another year, maybe two. I timed her riding her tricycle up and down the driveway...took her around 10 seconds. She kept peddling faster and faster and [sorry Zara] almost ran into a wall because she wasn't looking. Good thing I reached out and caught her before she hit something. Shortly after that near miss, we tried timing her riding really slow...40 seconds. I also got her to help me put away the toys really fast. Then there was timing her putting on an outfit...30 seconds. Would have been 15 seconds had she not gotton stuck putting on her skort. Now that we know how fast she can get herself dressed, she has no excuses getting ready in the morning.