^ my two best sight-seeing buddies ^

all we did was walk & eat it was perfectly dreamy & low key

^ she's really getting excited about toys & books and we love watching her play^

^ she is so addicted to swings she cries the second we take her out ^

^ I couldn't bring myself to leave & take my eyes off this view ^

Dorothy Parker once said "New York is always hopeful" and we found that to be true as well after our trip to the city last week. Amid all the garbage, noise and general bustle there is the unmistakeable air of hope. It's in the twinkle lights sparkling through a shop window. It's in the kind compliment from one stranger to another. It's in the line of people waiting for something called a "cronut" for 45 minutes at 8 am in the morning on a particularly chilly day. It's in the way everyone was grinning like a kid on their birthday in Central Park because if those kind of colors don't inspire awe in you then it's all over. It's in the way your heart beats extra fast and you feel like you can do it all after all. 

I could say more but I know I could never say it as well or as beautifully as these writers so I'll just leave you with two quotes that perfectly encompass my sentiments about my second favorite city in the whole wide world:

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” 

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.” 

― Helen Keller