Queuing Up

From Blogger Photos

Yesterday, I had a completely new parenting experience: queuing up to get good seats at The Boy's and The Girl's holiday concert/show at school. The photo above shows the line stretching around the corner as we eager parents waited for 1/2 an hour or more in the 6-degree weather for a seat in the gymatorium. I don't think I've ever waited in such conditions for anything, having been blissfully unaware of the music scene until well into my college years, at which time ticket-by-phone was available. 

But: Elfis and the Sleigh Riders was well-worth the wait. My space in line gave me a seat in the third row, so I could see everyone fairly well. The Boy had a tiny speaking part, and both The Girl and The Boy sang one or more of the 5 songs in the set. It was very cute.

I took the day off of work to see the show, but I also got to have coffee with my friend Becky in the morning and take a long nap in the afternoon. The Girl was wiped from the show, so we all settled in for a long afternoon nap.

Disney II in the News

Along with the rest of the school and its community, the PR machine at Disney II works. Disney II was the lead in today's New York Times story about parent-led fundraising and Arne Duncan/President Obama's developing push for an extended school day. The Boy's class is pictured in the accompanying photograph.

Mama-Boy Playdate

Yesterday, I enjoyed a rare treat: an afternoon out, one-on-one, with The Boy. We drove The Girl out to Oakbrook to meet Grandma-and-Grandpa Naperville for the weekend. And then spent a couple of hours bumming around together.

The Boy is just learning how to read and having some trouble with it. I love to read, and I really want The Boy to discover this joy as well. So I took him to Borders in Oakbrook. We started with a snack (cherry Italian soda and a marshmallow square for The Boy, hot tea and a snickerdoodle for me) and talked about school, Bakugan characters, and how he missed The Girl already.

Then we headed to the children's section, where we looked at picture books and easy readers. The Boy got a Henry and Mudge book as well as a more mature (but more appealing to my sensibilities) chapter book called The Magician's Boy, and a Star Wars Clone Wars comic book. It's funny, but having a challenged reader has changed my perspective on comic books completely. I refused to buy them when The Boy was younger, but I now think that anything that gets him to read is a good thing, even if the lead is "General Grievous," followed by lots of gobbledy-gook, complicated names.

I picked out a Little Golden Book for The Girl in the vintage style of which are both somewhat fond (Little Mommy), and another Max and Ruby book (Bunny Mail) for The Tot. Then we headed over to the literature section for about 5 minutes so that I could pick out books - the new Audrey Niffenegger and two novels by Alice Siddon and Ann Patchett.

The Boy declared that he was hungry and asked if we could go to McDonald's. Where better to go the golden arches than in their hometown? So we went to McDonald's flagship, where we both had chicken McNuggets and largely ignored each other while watching McDonald's TV on large flat screens mounted to the wall. We listened to music and talked a bit on the drive home.

Working Moms Circuit

As recent posts would indicate, I went back to work earlier this month. A job opportunity fell in my lap and it seemed wise to take it, especially in this economy. There are lots of things I missed about not working, especially as it became harder to execute adventures between The Boy's schedule and The Tot's nap.

Although I miss spending quantity time with my children, going back to an office after 6 years at home/working evenings is a new adventure of sorts. I'm used to running into random friends on weekdays at the treasure store, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, the park, etc. Now I run into fellow working moms, our children in tow, at odd times and places, like Target at 7:30 on a Friday night. And there's the new adventure of finding, hiring and, well, having a nanny, tossing about phrases like, "My nanny can pick The Girl up," while arranging playdates with my SAHM friends. (The Tot and The Girl like Natty a lot [I can't make myself use "The Nanny;" it's too The Nanny Diaries for me and I'm sooo not Mrs. X]. The Boy is mostly in aftercare at Disney II.

Wandering in Wicker Park

The Girl went back to camp today. I had planned to take The Boy and The Tot to Des Plaines' Choo-Choo Cafe, but after reading several Yelp reviews that panned the restaurant, I abandoned the plan. I went in a different direction to achieve the same end: a train ride and lunch.

So we took the L to Wicker Park -- The Tot was both excited and mildly freaked out by the train -- and bummed around. I completely forgot that nothing in Wicker Park really opens before 11 a.m. and it started to rain just as we exited the Damen station, so going to the playground was out. We got coffee and pastry (and cupcakes, for The Boy and The Tot) at Red Hen Bread and had just started to wander aimlessly when The Boy and I remembered that Wicker Park is the site of The Boring Store. So we trekked down Milwaukee to go to the store, but discovered that it opened even later than the rest of Wicker Park.

Back down Milwaukee to kill more time, we stopped into Urban Outfitters, one of the only stores open at the normal retail hour of 10 a.m. I tried on skinny jeans and decided they look ridiculous on someone my age. The Tot wanted to walk upstairs, so we did and looked at the tchotckes there. Then we had lunch at Penny's Noodles at The Boy's request, and went back to The Boring Store.

The Library

Hell hath no fury like the woman whose child's first and most recent library experience was marred by a crabby security guard. I keep trying to like the Independence branch of the CPL, I really do. But it's darn hard when I have an unpleasant encounter with a staff member (usually the same security guard) about once each year. I'd complain to the higher-ups if I knew to whom I should direct my complaint. The head librarian at Independence is about 5 years younger than the folios at the Rare Books Room; I don't think she cares.

But I just had another run-in with the security guard at Independence and I'm fed up. I stopped going to that particular branch for about 2 years after my last major encounter (in which same security guard told me that I "had" to cover my nursing baby's head with a blanket because I was nursing him in the library. My response:"No, and it's illegal for you to suggest that"), but slowly returned to my closest branch after racking up major fines in forgetting to return my books on time to Sulzer.

What was the problem today? I walked in to the library at 4:25 p.m. with three kids, a stroller, and a Razor scooter, the latter of which I planned to fold up and put into the stroller, but didn't yet do so because The Boy was so excited to enter the library and get his first library card. Security guard: "You have to leave that behind the desk." Me: "I was going to fold it up and put into the stroller." Guard: "That's OK for today, but you can't have that in here." If I folded it up and put it in the stroller before I entered the library, they'd never know it was there. Nit-picking at its finest. Next, the guard tells The Tot that he can't be around the corner from the desk; he has to be with me. Does she not work with children? How does she not know that 2-year-olds do not necessarily stay with their mothers?!? The librarian who was helping us fill out The Boy's library card application told us that the library was closing at 5 p.m., so we went around the corner to look at books.

We ran into The Girl's classmate's dad, and he tells me that the Independence branch is so much better in terms of book quality than the Austin-Irving branch. Meanwhile, The Boy and The Girl pick out books.

At 4:45 p.m., the guard comes over to tell us that the library is closing in 15 minutes and that if we want to check out books, we should do so now, and if we aren't checking out books, we should gather our things. There are two other patrons in the library, including our acquaintance. The Girl starts to freak out that she's going to be locked in the library, pulling on me and crying, despite the fact that it's now only 4:47 p.m. and we have to wait for the people in front of us to finish checking out. (She gets really anxious the end of any event -- movie, concert, flight, etc.) In the middle of this, The Boy leaves his books in The Tot's stroller seat because he doesn't want to carry them, and The Tot gets mad and tosses them out. So then the guard is chastizing him/us for that, The Girl is freaking out, and I am ready to lose it. At 4:50 p.m., we get to the checkout desk and there are no other patrons in the library. I asked the librarian calmly and nicely if she could refrain from pushing us out the door as my daughter gets very anxious about being locked in, etc. The security guard overhears me and says, rudely, "We close at 5 p.m. I do this every day." As if I was somehow calling her experience into question; I was just asking, very nicely, for a little accommodation for a scared 4-year-old girl.

The best part of this? I walked into my house at 5:04 p.m., and we live about a 6-7 block walk from the library.

What Makes a School Good?

Disney II's first academic year is only 6 weeks away from its conclusion. Acceptance letters have gone out for next year's class of kindergarteners, and I find myself fielding questions about what the school is like by their parents, when I happen to meet them at neighborhood events or via Facebook connections. Is it a good school? What makes a school good? What makes a school bad, or just adequate? These are hard questions for me to answer. I don't yet have the perspective of time and experience to make a good judge. In addition, Disney II is my first real experience as a parent with a CPS school, so I have nothing to which I can compare. And, I've already invested a significant amount of time into Disney II, with plans to do more, so I am biased in terms of its virtues.

What I really want out of any school The Boy attends, and what, in my Philistinistic opinion, makes a school good is its ability to foster its students' love of learning. I don't know that Disney II has done that yet, but The Boy told me about 2 weeks ago that he loves school. I'll take what I can get out of a child who cried every morning at drop-off for the first month of kindergarten.

From talking to friends with children at other up-and-coming CPS schools (Skinner, Nettlehorst, Ravenswood, to name a few), it would seem that the universal standard that CPS seeks to attain in kindergarteners is to get them reading-ready, if not actually reading by the end of that first year of elementary school. As this author points out, the kindergarten of my youth, which involved learning learning not to eat the paste* and introduced the idea of children-in-groups to my only-child (at the time) personality, disappeared somewhere in the 1990s. Although some relics of Kindergarten Past remain (shoe-tying is a progress-report item on The Boy's list; my mother-in-law remembers that she received low marks in skipping in kindergarten), the emphasis of kindergarten at most northside CPS elementary schools, including Disney II, is on literacy.

As an avid reader and formerly "gifted" child myself, I struggle with the early-reading component. I did not learn to read well, by which I mean I was in the high/advanced reading groups, until I was in 3rd grade -- and even then, I had problems with reading comprehension in some areas (my strong aversion to Greek myths persists 20+ years after Miss Commandella's unit on the subject) in 5th grade. And yet, I am living proof that early reading can mean very little in terms of future success: by trade, I am a reader and a writer. These activities are my passion in life; I would and, indeed do, practice them even in the absence of payment.

At the end of the day, I can say with confidence that The Boy likes Disney II and is doing well there. His progress is on-par with those of his peers, and despite the pressure I feel for him to be reading already, I'm confident that he will read (and tie his shoes!) on his own, internal development barometer. He likes the school, he likes his classmates, he likes his teacher. He is exposed to music, art, and technology. He gets to run around every day, and I reserve time for him at the end of the school day for more open/free play. In today's society, with our economic means, that is the best that we can achieve for/with him.

* For the record, I've never tried it.

Clean & Green

Although our participation in the official Clean & Green events in both Old Irving Park and Greater Independence Park was a bit of a bust, our family did manage to do a little gardening/improvement of our own today. We were hampered by the weather (on and off rain) as well as The Boy's Saturday morning soccer game, arriving at the GIPNA table too late to register or pick up trash bags. Our neighbors had come to similar fates, so we all cleaned the breezeways next to garages instead. I pulled out all the weeds, rocks, garbage and whatnot from the breezeway next to our garage, then installed our rain barrel on the alley side of the fence, leaving a good receptacle for rain runoff from the garage and giving us easy access to the spigot for gardening use when the weather dries up.

We went over to the OIPA potluck picnic about 12:30. My friend CD had asked me to have my bags available for green-minded folk, but when we arrived, the scant population was packing up to leave. So we went to lunch at Target. Despite the snags, it was a nice day.

Peggy Notebaert

This morning, we all (even The Dad!) piled in the Great White Moose and drove down to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. It's among my favorite spots for children aged 18 months to 8 years or so. Apparently, given the number of young families waiting in line (to get in, at coat check, for the bathroom), I am not the only parent to feel this way. Sunday mornings are an ideal time to visit the Field and the Shedd, but I suspect that many others feel that the butterfly museum is less of a (time) committment than Chicago's powerhouse sites on the museum campus.

The Boy, The Girl and The Tot were fairly cooperative in setting the day's agenda for our visit. We first went to the slide section, on to the water section, up to the butterflies, through the Amazing Amphibians special exhibit (the zip line was an immediate hit!), and down for lunch as the smell emanating from the caterers prepping for the day's private event inspired immediate hunger. After lunch, we went back briefly to the slide area, but The Tot began to rub his eyes after only about 15 minutes, so we called it a day. The Boy is starting to understand some of the science/learning aspects behind the exhibits, which is nice for me. Maybe one day soon, they'll stand still enough for me to read the placards, if not to pay attention to them themselves.

fish! fish! fish!

It's been too long since The Boy, The Girl, The Tot and I have had a real outing. So today, we got up and went museuming. I gave The Boy and The Girl a choice between the Field, the Shedd, MSI and the Nature Museum. They chose the aquarium. So that's where we went.

I managed to get 3 kids and myself out of the house pretty darn close to 9 a.m., so we arrived at the aquarium on a Sunday morning not long after it opened. My kids will grow up to pay full price because they can, a side-effect of having a mother who is too cheap to pay for parking when there is a cheaper/free alternate nearby. We parked at Meigs Field and walked over to the aquarium. I was a bit scared that you can no longer park there; there were about 20 Park District security vehicles in the lot. One of them stopped us on the walk over to say hello, but he said it was fine to park in that lot.

The Oceanarium is closed for renovations, so we spent most of our time in the main halls. It seemed to be Volunteer Day at the aquarium. We watched Nickel for awhile in the main tank -- The Tot was not at all cognizant of the tape line on the floor around the main tank during the presentation and was pressed up against the glass anyway. We also did a couple animal discovery centers, learning about turtles and skinks. The Tot and The Girl both touched the skink. The Boy and I were wimps and didn't want to touch it.

We also went downstairs to the Underwater Reef exhibit, which was unusually crowded as the Shedd apparently just started doing guided talks of that exhibit.

Total expenditure: $1.75 for a box of popcorn. We are members and parking was free.

LEGO

Today, The Dad took The Girl and The Boy to Schaumburg's Legoland Discovery Centre. The Boy has been begging to go to Legoland since before it opened. Allison had taken her crew to visit earlier in the fall and pronounced it a nightmare for the toddler crowd, so The Tot and I stayed home to pack, nap, and rattle around the house together.

The Dad got there at 10 a.m. when it opened and reported that the place was mobbed, with an entry line that stretched around the corner. He had a coupon for discounted entry, bringing the total for the 3 of them to $34. You can also buy tickets online for about the same price (plus a $3.75 convenience fee), which I will likely do in the future if we go again, as print-at-home tickets allow you to skip most of the entry line.

Since I wasn't there, I cannot report on the best parts of the center. However, The Boy really liked the make-your-own racecar and race-them exhibit. The Girl and The Dad liked the dragon ride. The Dad also reported that there is a cafe within the center, serving yummy sandwiches (and probably other things). Total for lunch was about $20 for the three of them, which seems about par for museum things.

I lied

I did not stay home today. But I did not take the kids sledding either. The Boy woke up in the night with some goop in his eye, and I have been wheezing pretty badly for the past month, so I took us both to Urgent Care in Six Corners. The Boy was quickly diagnosed with pink eye; it took a bit longer for the doctor to determine that I have pneumonia. Now we can rest.

The Girl Has a Crush

...on N., who is The Boy's age. And for his part, N. is happy to accept The Girl's affection/attention. N. and his sister, M., (who is also 3.5) came over this afternoon for a little playdate. The Boy was a bit of a pill, but the girls and N. all had fun playing Candyland, dressing up, building with Magna-Tiles, and watching a movie. Many giggles were heard in our house this afternoon.

It was a nice addition to our day. The Dad took The Great White Moose out to the 'burbs today, so we were completely housebound. I have not left the house since Saturday evening, and although a pajamas-and-housework day was rather nice, I am ready to go somewhere tomorrow.

What a difference a year makes

During The Girl's ballet class this morning, I spoke with Beth T. about the neighborhood, schools, and Australia. She had gone on a tour of Disney II yesterday, and reported that she saw both The Girl and The Boy happily engaged in their respective classrooms. Our conversation reminded me how stressed I was last year over applying to and visiting schools, The Boy's Options for Knowledge Test date, etc. While next year, I may very well be back in the same boat*, it's been nice to be blissfully ignorant of the flurry of activity occurring right now in rising-kindergartener households all over the city of Chicago.

Disney II is on course to be a good, sought-after school. Beth shared that the school has already received 550 applications -- and there's still a week to go before the December 19th deadline. So far, I am happy with the level of education that The Boy is receiving. His teacher, Mrs. Callaghan, is phenomenal. I'd like to see her nominated for a Golden Apple award, but I don't want the school to lose her for the year that she'd be on sabbatical as a result. He's halfway through the year and I can see that he'll be reading at the end of it.

The Girl is an enthusiastic preschooler. Her teacher, Mr. Manesis, has nothing but good things to say about her behavior and interest in the various activities offered by the Preschool for All program. She is eager to go to school each day, and was more upset about missing school last week during a bout of mycoplasma than she was about feeling crummy for 5 days straight.

As for me, I've joined the school community wholeheartedly. Although it's difficult for me to volunteer in the classroom, I've gone on a field trip with The Boy's class, volunteered at the fall book fair, and am serving on the newly formed Disney II PTA. For those reading who are looking for involvement opportunities at Disney II, there is also an Interim Advisory Committee (IAC), which is a precursor to the LSC.

* Although there is a sibling preference system in place at Disney II, it's still a lottery system when there are more siblings than there are holdback spots for them. With many of The Boy's peers' siblings set to enter kindergarten in the fall of 2010, like The Girl, there's bound to be competition and angst over available spots. In addition, I'd like to have The Girl tested for gifted/classical schools, adding another potential element to the decision.

The Tower

Today, I went on a field trip with The Boy's class to the Sears Tower. It was a field trip that is only possible in the city; it was very different from the field trips of my youth, which invariably involved a sack lunch and a big yellow schoolbus. Instead, 50 kindergarteners, 2 teachers, 1 aide, and about 30 other parents walked two blocks from the school to the Metra station and climbed aboard a fairly crowded train to Ogilivie Station. We disembarked downtown and walked the 6 blocks to the Sears Tower. I had charge of two kids -- The Boy and another little boy in his class (J).

It was great fun to parade through the city to the Sears Tower. There was a huge caravan of kid-parent-kid trios; our party took up most of the length of a city block. Our walk was primarily through the financial district, so we passed a lot of suits. They didn't seem particularly amused, but when the market is in the can, it may be hard to appreciate a bunch of little kids taking over the sidewalk.

It was gray and overcast so the Sky Deck wasn't particularly crowded, but there were a lot of turnstiles, etc. to go through before we could actually reach the big, bad elevator. We went through security, had tourist photos taken, watched a (really very interesting) video (by the History channel) about the Sears Tower's construction, and waited in line before we finally made it up to the top. Most of the kids were pretty hungry by the time we actually got to the top so it seemed like a very short visit up there.

The Boy's teacher, Mrs. Callaghan, had prepared a worksheet of things the kids should look for when they got to the top. When we initially got out of the elevator and out by the glass, The Boy was pretty scared. He did not want to go near the windows. J., on the other hand, was crawling under the railing to lean his body directly on the glass. The Boy warmed up to coming to the railing a bit later. He and I had great fun finding the landmarks from the worksheet -- Marina Towers, Buckingham Fountain, the United Center, Wrigley Building, Merchandise Mart, etc. My other little charge, J., pointed out the boats along the river and the trains. The field trip was the end note of a unit on community. The height of the tower allowed the kids to see just how big their community really is.

By then, everyone was hungry and the kids were having trouble maintaining a good behavior standard. We hauled back to Ogilvie Station to have lunch at McDonald's in the food court on the first floor. Unfortunately, it was 12:30 when we arrived and the food court was packed with office workers, so it was hard to get seats. However, we did manage to get all the kids seated and eating their McNugget meals. The Dad came over from his office to meet us and I dashed over to Arby's to get something for myself. I bought both The Boy and J. a cookie from Mrs. Field's to eat on the train, inadvertently sparking a trend among other parents on the trip.

We managed to score most of a car to ourselves for the train ride back. With full tummies, the kids' energy returned and the ride back was noisy with the energetic chattering of 50 happy kindergarteners. It started to rain just as we pulled into the station, so The Boy, J., and I raced back to school before the sky really opened up. It was a lot of fun.

Fevers

After The Girl's ballet class, The Boy went over to play at Enver's house while The Tot, The Girl, and I went home to get ready for a birthday party. We were all cranky. The Tot slept for 1/2 an hour and woke up crying. The Dad asked me if I thought The Tot felt feverish. I said no, but then The Dad realized that I felt feverish. The Tot kept rubbing his eye and crying; we had just missed his pediatrician's Saturday hours, so we went to Urgent Care at Children's Memorial Hospital. The Girl stayed home with The Dad.

It turns out that The Tot had only a virus and had irritated his own eye from rubbing it so much. I'd like to point out now how much I am impressed by pediatricians in general, and the pediatrician at CMH who we saw today. They have such great tricks for engaging little people, making them comfortable with the doctor, and thus being allowed to examine the child. For some reason, this amazes me.

Afterward, I cruised through Whole Foods for chicken noodle soup and dinner, and picked up The Boy on the way home. Not surprisingly, The Tot fell asleep in the car and woke up in a much better mood.

Labor Day

This year's Labor Day was momentous in that it was the first time that it was the last day of summer for us. The Boy officially starts school as a Kindergartener tomorrow. As such, we had a very low-key, relaxed sort of day.

I made a salad caprese in the morning and we packed it, The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot into the car and headed to Cara's house for a Labor Day cookout. We stopped at Oakbrook Centre so that I could make a return, and to have lunch (Nordstrom Cafe; it was The Dad's first time!) beforehand. We had planned to leave the cookout by 5 or so to ensure that The Boy and The Girl got into bed on-time and with routines intact, but it didn't work out that way. All three kids fell asleep on the car ride home. The Boy was so exhausted that he transferred into his bed, but The Tot came with me to Walgreen's and The Girl stayed up watching TV before she tiring out enough to go back to bed.

Back to School Carnival

On Tuesday, we will officially be Disney II parents. Last night was the "back to school" carnival, a somewhat chaotic, but very fun and neighborly 2-hour event in and around the new Disney II. The Dad, The Boy, The Girl, The Tot, and I caravanned over to the school at 5 p.m. for the start of the carnival. The Dad pushed the stroller, while I pulled The Boy's filled-to-the-brim blue IKEA bag of school supplies in the wagon.

We saw The Boy's new classroom (a modified "pod" structure that uses a partition to separate two kindergarten classrooms) and met his teacher, and ran our eyes over the class list. I think I knew one person in my class on the first day of kindergarten; The Boy will know five. All summer long he has declared that he doesn't want to go to school, but either its inevitability finally dawned on him or he found the carnival super fun because this morning he told Grandma Texas that he is going to kindergarten on Tuesday. Phew!

The Dad has been volunteering with the technology coordinator in the building all week; he was impressed by how much they had gotten done renovations-wise in only 48 hours. The Girl's classroom was still under construction, so she didn't get to see it. But she did get to meet her teacher, Mr. Manesis, again and ended up playing with his 3-y/o girl on the playground.

We saw the building, dropped off supplies, ran into lots and lots of people we knew, ate food from Smoque and Chicago's Pizza & Pasta, watched the Jesse White Tumblers, and ran ourselves crazy on the playground. The Tot, The Girl, and The Boy were all exhausted by the time we left and got them all into bed.

Sundays with The Boy

Last summer, I was pretty good about getting one-on-one time with The Boy. Time and scheduling conflicts have interfered with my "Sundays with The Boy" plan, but I am able to sneak in a few dates with my boy. Thanks to Grandma Naperville, who came in to spend today and tomorrow with us while The Dad is in Cali, I was able to do so this afternoon.

We went to the 2008 Chicago Air & Water Show to watch the Red Baron do loop-de-loops and an F/A-18 buzz the beach. Despite the fact that the Air Show is the military's recruiting tool and propaganda, I am a sucker for it. I blame it entirely on being a midshipman's daughter; I grew up sailing on Lake Michigan and watching the air show every year.

The Girl emphatically did not want to see the airplanes and I feared that the engine noise would scare The Tot, so The Boy and I left them behind with Grandma and hopped the L to Oak Street Beach. The Boy insisted on holding my hand the entire trip down there, which is uncharacteristic for him. It was very hot on the beach when we got there, but we managed to find a place on the concrete step to sit down, and later, a bench in the shade. We stayed for about an hour before The Boy decided that he had seen enough and asked to return home.

On the walk back to Chicago Avenue, I stopped in H&M to look at some pants for The Girl. It made us a bit late, so we cabbed over to the blue line. The Boy was very excited to take a taxicab ride. We normally do not take cabs with the kids because of the carseat issue, but I felt safer with him in a cab today than I did when I had to take The Tot with me in one to the hospital last year.
The Boy was pretty tired by the time we got home; I carried him on my back for part of the walk back to our house.

One on One

Today was a lovely day. I started out the day by taking The Boy to his STEP UP literacy assessment at Disney 2. I chatted with some other moms, including Ms. Sandra from CFC, as we waited for our almost-Kindergarteners to be assessed. Afterwards, I extended our one-on-one time by taking The Boy to our neighborhood Starbucks for a lemonade and seasonal cookie (him) and latte and seasonal cookie (me). There was a kid with his tutor at the next table over, and The Boy was more interested in what was happening over there than in talking much to me, but it was a nice day and we were sitting outside, so it was cool to just spend easy time together. Then, Mario Greco, our old Realtor happened by. I hadn't seen him since 2002. He and his wife left Lincoln Park to build a place in Old Irving Park. It was nice to see him and catch up a bit. I feel like the fact that Mario is moving to my neighborhood is a sign that it's no longer up and coming, it is there.

We bummed around at home for a bit. The Tot got a nap. We all had lunch. And then I took The Tot, The Boy, and The Girl to run a bunch of errands, including a trip to Costco for ice cream, to Office Max for school supplies, and to Gymboree to exchange The Girl's first-day-of-school dress.

After errands, I dropped The Boy and The Tot back off at home. And The Girl and I went on a Mommy-The Girl playdate. It wasn't much -- just dinner and a bit of shopping at Target. But it was fun to go out with The Girl alone. She is very chatty, and also enjoys helping me (thank you Eloise Wilkin's We Help Mommy). Plus, when left as the director of an outing, she's much more likely to listen to what her body is telling her; at 7:30, she told me that she was ready to go home and go to bed. So we did.