Here's something I prepared earlier

I was halfway through a terribly worthy and insightful post when I realised I'd said most of it before. So here's something completely different that I wrote and put elsewhere around this time last year. Apologies if you've read it already, but maybe it bears repetition.

Top Tips for Taking your Children to New York City
to Experience the Magic of Christmas

1. Don't.

2. Or at least wait a few years, till they're big enough to enjoy it and not keep needing naps.

3. Or a few years after that, when they can go on a school trip and you can catch a show and go out to dinner like real people.

4. If you must go now, try to pick a weekend with good weather.

5. When lamenting that you planned for snow but not for rain, while observing your sodden and wailing baby and mentally waving goodbye to that Best Parenting award, take a moment to check your bag and see if there might just be an umbrella in there after all.

6. Do bring a spare pair of gloves. For everyone.

7. Aim low when planning what you'll get to do.

8. Now aim even lower.

9. The queues will be insane so don't plan to do anything that other people might like to do too.

10. Remember that you have to pay money and queue up just to sit down in New York in December.

11. And that they charge in to museums in New York, because they're not the lovely Smithsonian museums of DC, so don't try to go into MOMA just to find a quiet place to sit down.

12. Especially if it's sleeting and everyone else thought the same thing.

13. Also note that you'll have to stand in line to get into FAO Schwartz, the famous toy shop where they have the giant piano that Tom Hanks played on in Big.

14. Which will then be out of order.

15. [There is even a queue to get into Abercrombie on Fifth Ave, who knows why, not that you'd ever want to go in anyway. They must have been giving away drugs, or free Robert Pattinsons or something.]

16. Do acknowledge that the most fun your three-year-old has might be riding the subway, so make the most of it.

17. Do not get crown tickets for the Statue of Liberty, because your three-year-old will languish spaghetti-like after the first two steps of the 150 or so up to the platform, and need to be carried all the way. The crown is another 300-odd after that.

18. Don't worry. So long as you come home with the same number of children you set out with, the trip was a roaring success.

Have a great time!

Me with a pretty miserable Mabel, just before the rain began.