Little Moments

On Thursday, I spent much of the day running around, with The Boy, The Girl, and The Baby in tow, in preparation for my weekend trip to Seattle. But there were a few quiet moments here and here in which I got to enjoy my children and the city of Chicago.

In the morning, to celebrate the end of "school" and the beginning of summer for her, I took The Girl to Piggy Toes in Lincoln Square, to get her a pair of sandals. The owner of Piggy Toes was there, along with her 3 kids (who were to be picked up by a babysitter shortly), so it was a somewhat crazy morning of rambunctious boys (her two, The Boy and The Baby) among shoe fittings for The Girl. Her medium-narrow foot width was somewhat of an issue, so we ended up with a pair of sandal-sneakers by German brand Ricosta. They were more than I wanted to spend, but the owner gave me a $20-off postcard. Afterwards, we walked up Western Avenue a bit to the Dunkin Donuts in the Western Avenue Brown Line station, to get a donut each for the kids and an iced coffee for me. We sat on the somewhat awkwardly placed bench just outside the station, to watch traffic go by and eat our donuts. It was a warm morning, but the breeze was nice and I enjoyed looking to my left to see The Baby, The Boy, and The Girl all lined up on the bench, happily and calmly consuming their little nuggets of fried dough and sugar.

We went to playgroup for a bit, and then out to the O'Hare Oasis to meet Grandma Naperville, who was taking The Girl home for a sleepover. Once we dropped off The Girl, I laid the bomb on The Boy: he was coming with me to Seattle this weekend. I had told him to be quiet so as not to wake The Baby, so the look on his face was priceless. It was pure glee.

And the news made our shopping trip at Target that much easier, because we were buying things for The Boy to do on the airplane, and not just a random, unnecessary (in his mind) errand. We went to one of my favorite (but usually out-of-the-way) Targets, which is the one in Rosemont, just in the landing pattern of O'Hare (we actually went over it when we landed yesterday -- it has a giant Target logo on its roof). When it's nice, I like to sit in the parking lot with the kids and watch the planes land. The Baby was in no mood to sit in the cart; he wanted to rearrange everything! It was hot and we were all thirsty when we left, so we ran through the Starbucks drive-through for iced tea on the way home.