Can't Get You Out of My Head

Ben actually had to take a quick jaunt to Austin during our time in McCall (more about that to come), and it was when he was away - and I still had to find a way to get some emails out - that I discovered that Noa LOVES hanging out at the Fogg Lifter (a great coffee/breakfast/lunch place that has internet!) Last year Noa couldn't sit still for 5 minutes in the Fogg Lifter - she was just bored out of her mind there. But this year we couldn't get her out of the place. In fact, one morning we went had breakfast at a friend's house and I think she spent the first half hour there just being pissed that she wasn't at Fogg Lifter! (I can get that way about coffee shops too)

This video is actually from that first successful visit. Noa is sitting at the kiddie table and you can see she is digging flipping through this book (which is not her book, but one of the pile of kids books they have there) and rocking back and forth to the music. This spot is also near a window - so there is a breeze - and she finds the sound of the esperesso machine endlessly fascinating as well.

The next day we sat at the table you see in the background - a full sized table - and Noa liked that even more. She liked it so much that more than once my poor computer would run out of juice before Noa was ready to go.

Aside from the fact that it was just nice to be able to be out in a public space with Noa and getting some time to send a few emails, being at the Fogg Lifter also meant Noa had to stand in line (something which she really needed to practice as patience is not her strong suit), and had to let me focus on things like getting out my wallet and paying for things. This seems like simple stuff, but it's really stuff that Noa doesn't get a lot of exposure to in NYC. We get our groceries delivered here - most markets are in basements so it's a pain to come and go with a wheelchair or stroller, and hard to manauever both a chair and a shopping cart in narrow aisles; even going to the drug store usually involves a wheelchair because it would take so long to walk there an back (even though it's around the corner), and then of course you have to carry whatever you buy and try to keep her from falling. Plus if she wigs out trying to wait in line, then you're kind of stuck in a bad situation because the lines are long and carrying her back home would be back-breaking... so Fogg Lifter was like training wheels for being out in public, and we needed that!