Monthly Archives: August 2025

Toddler birthday parties and “playing together”

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Kaia was talking all about Seneca’s birthday party all week. She was so excited to go to a birthday party, to see Seneca again, and to play with her and her friends. This was likely the biggest kids’ birthday party I’d been to, or that Kaia’s been to other than the school ones (which frankly, do not really count). Seneca had 11 classmates and three siblings, plus their parents, come join the party in Prospect Park. My friend’s friend brought his human-sized bubble tubs and made endless bubbles for the kids, and the kids played with ribbon wands and balls, amongst other gadgets.

So, we arrived at the party, and while Kaia eagerly gave Seneca her birthday present, after that, they didn’t seem to want anything to do with each other. Kaia wanted to play with the ribbons and some other more outgoing friends. Seneca wanted to hide away from everyone and kept running away. And when Kaia saw Seneca run away, she decided she would run, too…. along with three other kids. I definitely got my step count up today with all this running around and making sure a bunch of 2- and 3-year-olds didn’t get lost or leave the park.

When it was time to leave, Kaia was happy to hug and give Seneca a high-five, but while Seneca reluctantly engaged, she still wasn’t really into the company and was pretty shy. So, I came to this conclusion that maybe toddlers actually act out the way adults act out, but in a cuter way: we want the attention, affection, and love of others, and we want to know they are around… we just don’t want them all that close to us and in our faces. I get it. I get it.

Unexpected tears when watching the field trip bus unload the children

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On Thursday when the field trip bus was delayed coming back from the Melville farm, I stood at the other location of Kaia’s school several blocks down with the other parents and waited for the kids to arrive. As bus arrived and parked, all the parents got into a commotion in regards to where the bus would park and when they could actually collect their children. But our school had a pretty careful system: they had all the teachers get off first and arrange themselves by class. Then, they slowly asked each child to get off the bus; the child was then received by hand by another teacher to stand by their appropriate class group. When all the students were in their respective class groups and the teachers were all present, they then walked them, class by class, to the front of the school where us parents stood, and then each lead teacher or admin would release kids by class one by one.

As I saw all the kids get off the bus, I suddenly felt like my heart was heavy. My baby is 3.5 years old now, turning four this December, yet she’s already gone on three field trips with her summer camp! This means that she’s had three fun-filled experiences involving school bus transportation without me. And of course, she will have even more of this fun and learning-filled experiences without me in the future. I wasn’t able to be there to witness her excitements and little joys and new discoveries. Her teachers and classmates were, though. And as the groups approached the school building, I could see Kaia spotting me from the crowd and poking her head out as much as possible to give me a cheeky smile to let me know she knew her mummy was there waiting for her to take her home. There was just something about all this orderly off-boarding the bus and obediently walking in lines that made me feel sad, resulting in my eyes welling up with tears. My baby’s growing up so quickly, and there’s nothing I can do to pause or stop it even for a second. It was like just yesterday I pushed her out of my uterus and was struggling with breastfeeding her. Yet now, she’s already going on field trips in Long Island and acting like a real student in a real school.

I guess that’s another thing about motherhood: so many emotions all the time like a roller coaster, and like a really good roller coaster, you cannot always see all the twists, turns ahead of time. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that catch you off guard that make you cry your eyes out or feel like your baby is growing up just a little too fast for your liking.

New trends, new pizza spots, and a different kind of waiting

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Ceres Pizza opened earlier this year just a couple blocks from Kaia’s school. Every time I’d pass it, I barely even knew what I was passing back in the winter months. It was really quiet, barely had anyone in it. And then suddenly, these crazy long lines started forming, and it became the pizza spot that was showing up on every “best of” list in New York City. A major pizza critic/YouTube influencer gave it a 9.2/10 rating, thus catapulting it into “pizza nirvana.” They used to sell slices, but now given their popularity, you have to commit to a full pie. When I’ve passed it in recent months, there was never NOT a line.

Today, I passed it around lunch time to find that there were at least 20 people in line, along with all the tables fully occupied inside. A person who had already taken her pizza to go told me that she actually only waited about 20 minutes in line before ordering, and her pizza came out pretty quickly. So at around 4pm, I went to Ceres to see if I could get a to-go pizza and bring it home for dinner. When I got up to the front, I got disheartened when I heard the cashier tell the woman in front of me that if she ordered now (4pm), her pizza would not be ready until 8:30!! The woman said that would be too late, and she left. I confirmed that I heard this correctly with the cashier, and she said I did. She suggested that in the future, if I wanted to order pickup for 5pm, I’d need to get in the same single pizza line, place my order and pay by 1-1:30pm, then the pizza would definitely be ready at 5pm. They have no phone line to call, no online ordering system. It almost felt like they were manufacturing demand. Then again, given that the small kitchen is fully open and in view from the front, I guess it wasn’t like they had endless manpower or ovens to get all these pizzas cooked that quickly.

So in this case, there would be two types of waiting to get this pizza: the first wait would be to get the order in by standing in line; the second is that I’d have to come back hours later to pick up the pizza, which would be in a “to-go pizza” queue. This would necessitate being in the area for at least half the day. Granted, since Kaia is in school down there, it would be easy for me to do this on a day I’m working from the co-working space office. But if this were any other situation, it would likely never work! I’ll probably just need to throw the towel in and wait until the hype dies down in six to twelve months, but I’ll continue keeping my eye out since I’m nearby often to see if this hype ends sooner.