Our month-long focus on Midtown West continues with a look at some of the culturally diverse restaurants you'll find on Ninth Avenue. While we've covered other places to eat with kids in the neighborhood in the past—notably family-friendly eateries near hot spots Times Square and Rockefeller Center—a stroll down Ninth Avenue can feel like taking a trip around the world. Unlike other foodie strips that focus on a specific ethnicity (see Chinatown, the Bronx's Little Italy and Little Tokyo in the East Village), Ninth Avenue is filled with eclectic eateries—there's a reason it hosts NYC's annual International Food Festival every spring.

No children's menus or chicken fingers at these spots. Instead, Ninth Avenue is a great place to introduce your brood to delicacies from Thailand, Greece, Turkey, Brazil and others—way more options than we could ever list here. Our top ten picks are all casual and kid-friendly, and located on a 12-block strip. You could even grab takeout from a few of them and throw your own international family food fest in nearby Hell's Kitchen Park.

New York City may have the Lego Store in Rockefeller Center, but if your kids are as obsessed with Legos as my eight-year-old son, it's worth taking a trip north to the brand-new Legoland Discovery Center, which opened a few weeks back in nearby Yonkers. When we set out to visit over spring break, I worried that it would just be a glorified Lego Store and not worth the schlep to Westchester's Ridge Hill mall. But I'm happy to report that the Legoland Discovery Center is a super-fun play space that has a lot more to offer than just building ith Legos.

The only Legoland Discovery Center on the entire East Coast, this new family attraction offers hours of indoor fun, including rides, interactive stations and a massive play structure to explore. Your kids don't need to be Lego nuts to enjoy themselves here: Even though there were literally hundreds of thousands of Lego pieces at my son's disposal, he didn't stick one pair of plastic bricks together during our visit. He figured why waste time on something he could do at home when there were so many unique Legoland Discovery Center experiences to try.

Of course as cool as the new Legoland Discovery Center is, there are some important things to know before you go to help you make the most of your visit. So here are my top 15 things to do at Westchester's Legoland Discovery Center as well as my insider tips as a mom who's been there, done that.

While spring brings outdoor festivals and fairs, and long days at NYC's playgrounds, it's also a great season for new museum exhibits. Alfresco sculpture installations at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden, hands-on math and science fun at the New York Hall of Science, children's artwork at the Guggenheim, the Cloister's 75th anniversary and old-school music videos at the Museum of the Moving Image are just some of what's on tap this spring. Here are the top seven museum exhibits for families making their debuts this spring in New York City.