Travel Log: New York City, Day 3

I think that on most trips with little kids, you'll end up having one day live in infamy.

Today was that day for us.

It started out innocently enough. We slept in a little bit while Uncle Patrick went to work. I let the kids eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast and we just relaxed around the apartment for a while. But then it was time to do something we should have been doing for the last couple of days.

We had schlepped the kids violins all the way from Louisiana so that they could stay up with their practicing. My daughter went first and we actually worked through quite a bit of her newest song.

Then my son took out his violin. But something didn't look quite right. His bridge had slid a good inch or so. I tried to fix it and was doing okay until I tried to tune the E string. It popped right off the peg.

So now we would be spending the next few hours tracking down someone who could fix his violin.

It was actually sort of an exciting adventure for me. It made me feel like a real New Yorker to find a shop, navigate our way there on the subway and get myself into the building all on my own.

The shop itself was fascinating. It was on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in the theater district. There were all sorts of shops for musicians and dancers in the building. The Japanese man's tiny shop was filled with hundreds of violins and autographed pictures of apparently famous violinists. He played music for the kids and asked them about their training.

My son was funny though. He didn't like giving his violin over to someone else. He was quite concerned that there were so many violins in the shop. "I don't think he ever fixes them," he said. "I don't think I'm going to get my violin back."

Of course he did fix it, while we waited.

On our way out of the building, Uncle Patrick called to let us know that he was out of work early. We met up at a Starbucks to plan the rest of our day.

We decided to go to the South Street Seaport where there were ships to look at for my son and shops to look at for my daughter. But this is where our day started to go downhill.

My son wasn't too happy that he couldn't board the ships. And he wasn't too happy with our intent to look in shops. He got whiny. He developed quite a little attitude, bad enough for me to stand him in a quiet corner for a talking-to and a time out.

Which apparently made no impression on him. On the way back to the subway he had the kind of screaming tantrum that most of us only read about. Uncle Patrick even tried to pick him up to move him along to the subway station but he only kicked and screamed louder.

I ended up sitting him on a random door step and giving him the talking-to of his life. In public. On a New York City street!

This made my daughter cry too, because she was embarrassed.

Of course by this point I had realized that we'd only had Pop-Tarts and Starbucks cookies to eat all day. We headed to a Jackson Hole for a quick dinner and then home to put my little monster to bed.

Both kids were asleep before 7 p.m. Patrick and I ordered some dessert and watched the Food Network for the rest of the night.

I went to bed early that night too, only to dream about my life being taken over by a screaming demon child. Hopefully, the demon would leave us and my own sweet child would return for Thanksgiving.