Indeed time flies when you are having fun. Here's recap of some of our fun moments this summer.


He did lots of great project, such as this one: King Potato. I tried to get King Potato to sprout afterwards, but he sort of melted in the heat instead. Here's another fantastic thing he built.

He not only learned to swim but to float on water.


and to wrangle some birds.

His favorite Dragon ride at Renaissance Faire:


Close encounter with a bear at Central Park- fortunately there was a sheet of glass between them.

Corpse flower was a stink of town, although it wasn't stinky when we got there, fortunately. I wonder if it was as bad as ginkgo nuts.
And there were many food adventures, of course.




Some pasta place in East Village

Lombardi's. I took him there since it's one of NYC's icons. But personally I think it's so over-rated. If it's pizza, he doesn't need assistance.



No pictures please while I have my mango!

And fun will continue with my high school friend from Tokyo.

Taiyo is doing "Restaurant camp" this year at SOY and he's already making spicy tuna bowls! Oh yes, he's been quite helpful these days. As soon as we walk in the restaurant he'd ask, "Mommy, can I have a snack?" "After you help me set up." "Then you will give me a snack?" "Yes, I will give you a snack." So then he would help with taking down the chairs (at least half,) wiping the tables, and sweeping the sidewalk. This of course puts smile on faces of people passing by. I look at him sweeping in some funny motion and feel so good that it's finally beginning to pay off. Oh, motherhood.

But seriously, we've been having great summer fun. I've been running to the East River with Taiyo leading me on his bike. Boy, how he makes me run! We've already started a Friday summer tradition of bringing breakfast sandwiches from the corner deli and having a breakfast picnic by the river. We visited Brooklyn Museum, par Taiyo's request over the weekend. It was wonderfully quiet there, perhaps because it was such a sunny outdoorsy summer holiday weekend and Taiyo got to ran around a bit (quite a bit) in the beautfil Beau-Arts court. We made it out to the fireworks but couldn't get to the best view area- we couldn't access FDR drive from Houston street!

Then we even hit the beach! We spent all day on Coney Island on Wednesday. It was like a perfect mini vacation. Ocean breeze was wonderfully soothing. Ocean was calm and surprisingly clean. We went up on the ferris wheel, then I had oysters and he had a cone dog on boardwalk. Only a 45-minute subway ride. Why don't we do this more often?

And of course we've been having lots of ice cream. This one was Van Leeuwen on East 7th Street. Flavors were wonderful but I thought it was too sweet. But life is never too sweet!

I've installed a new "SOY" sign above the restaurant this morning. It's made of plastic mega blocks I've been trying to get rid of since early this year. I finally found perfect use for them! It was a fun project, and I got so many compliments while installing them.

This picture from last Halloween turned out to be the last photo I have of the previous sign. It was completely destroyed during the building exterior clean-up a few months ago, and the contractors scraped everything off and painted over.

This sign was the first one from the very beginning of SOY in 2002. I've made them with glass tile pieces. Some of the tiles had fallen off, and paint was peeling all over the place in such a beautiful way. Some people had suggested maybe it was time to re-do. But I loved it since it looked old, and scenes of urban decay and ruins were my deep attraction to this neighborhood when I arrived here in 1990.
Recently I discovered that you can see the history of the street view on google maps. When you look up 102 Suffolk Street, the current view is from 2014. Then there's pull-down menu on upper left hand corner where you can pick the view from previous photos starting 2007. In 2007, you don't see SOY at all because there was a big moving truck parked in front. In 2011, I had a "caught on camera" moment walking out of SOY with an empty stroller. I was puzzled to see an empty stroller- where was Taiyo? Well, he was way ahead of me, walking toward Delancey. A lady walking behind him if worried and turning behind her to see if anyone is running after him.

By the way, the strange art/toy installation almost made the whole month. Elmo in the middle was stolen about a week ago. I will have to fill the void.

Last weekend, Taiyo and I did "toys in trays" installation on our gate. I placed Taiyo's toys on blue plastic trays and fastened them around the gate of the restaurant. It was grey Saturday afternoon. People immediately stopped and took pictures. Little kids and babies pointed at each toy. There were Sponge Bob, Baby Jack Jack (from a Pixer movie Incredibles,) Grover, headless painted torso of a super hero (I have no idea what it was), a finger puppet monster, a bird guy who used to be on a bike, and a Mexican wrestler. By next morning, half of them were gone. Monday morning, all were missing but the wooden robot on top too high to reach for a normal person.

They were simply ripped off the tray. Some were gone with the tray. Although only the figure we were sad to lose was the Mexican wrestler, it was upsetting nevertheless. Even a duckie I put on the menu holder was ripped off the fastener.


This was definitely "smad" moment as Taiyo would put it. Sad+mad=smad. Is it an act by self-destructive neighborhood teenagers or newly arriving hipsters who are ruining our neighborhood?
Whoever the enemy it was, I had to challenge again. I continued on the experiment with strange art objects (yarn covered light bulbs) and little toys in enclosed shrines you cannot stick your hands in. So far it's working and they are untouched for a week now. Does this mean stranger art lives longer? Or is it so bad no one wants to touch?

Time is going extremely fast these days. Almost the ends of April! No wonder Taiyo is growing up fast. It's been beautiful long spring. Flowers are in full bloom everywhere. Pigeons are mating like there's no tomorrow in the air shaft. I voted for Bernie on Tuesday but later that day I realized, "Bernie's ideals are great, but American people are not oppressed enough for a revolution!" So I hired a little cardboard robot to pimp customers outside of the restaurant. Yes, it's a tough business.

It was Valentine's Day. Escaping another icy cold spell, we were back in Sunshine State visiting Tampa and vicinity. First destination: Legoland for some serious awesomeness. And it was a perfect sunny day, not hot, not cold. Crowd: enough, but not overwhelming. It was a very well designed cute theme park perfect for families with small children. There were no serious roller coasters or nothing a small child was not allowed to ride. (or at least I didn't notice anything Taiyo wasn't allowed to ride.) There were play areas with big legos among the waiting corrals. And of course Lego store was everywhere. Especially the main store had the most variety of lego sets we ever seen in one place. So yes, Taiyo had the awesomest time. He actually spent quality time at "Miniland," U.S. Cities and their architectural icons built with ordinary Lego pieces. We especially loved seeing familiar structures of New York City.


Then there were scenes from Star Wars! With sounds and strobe lights and smoke rising out of them. So he spent some more quality time in this section. He wasn't so into the rides anyway. I couldn't talk him into getting on a wimpiest roller coaster. Anyway, Florida is great. Warm, sunny, although some things are horrible like ... food. We ate at many chain restaurants and most of the things I ate I wish I'd never have them again. We also dined at an average Chinese-owned Japanese restaurant. They also make great Cuban sandwich there. Cigar rolling Cubans used to have a community in Tampa, and so did Greek Sponge Divers. It's true. But Florida is really great. We visited Honeymoon Island and took a very, very long walk on the beach collecting shells. The beach was dotted with sunset viewing swings and benches facing the Gulf. How adorable! And there were plenty of old folks everywhere. 80 percent of work force were well above 60 years of age. That wasn't a bad thing because they were all so courteous. Yet there were enough reckless crazy drivers, some redneck in road rage, or menstruating female. So Florida seems almost livable if there weren't so many republicans. But it's always great to visit. No commitment.

So someone obviously heard my voice and decided to name the storm- "Jonas" arrived Saturday morning and snow was already knee deep for Taiyo at 9 o'clock in the morning. I've already told my staff at SOY not to come in on Saturday, since they were coming from Brooklyn and New Jersey. And Jonas was upon us and the scaffolding for the building didn't prevent the snow from falling onto my sidewalk. I still had to shovel every hour. We walked around the neighborhood a few times in beautiful new snow. Taiyo was so excited because it was truly the lldeepest snow ever for him! Dogs and kids were happiest everywhere, and even for adults- as long as we don't have to go to work and it's before the messy reality kicks in.