Ghosttown

To compensate for our disastrous afternoon yesterday, I took The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot to the Field Museum this afternoon. It's not The Boy's favorite thing to do, but I parked in the lot by Northerly Island and we all walked over to the museum together. We walked along the lakefront, which was really quite pleasant, although I bored the kids by telling them yet again that Mama used to come down to this harbor when she was a little girl to go out on Grandpa Texas' sailboat. (The Boy: "Mom, you told us that last time.") The weather was lovely -- sunny, warm in the sun, cool in the shade with a nice breeze. We stopped to admire the view of the city:





before continuing on to the museum. As we flashed our membership, there was someone in front of us with her kids who I knew, but I cannot remember from where. We ran into them repeatedly throughout the museum today. The museum was a ghost town.

First up was a visit to the Crown Family Playlab. The Girl misheard me and wanted to know where the playland was. After I cleared that up, we had a great time inside the playlab. The Girl, The Boy, and The Tot had great fun in the Pueblo, moving corn cobs from room to room. The Tot, who loves corn on the cob, repeatedly tried to eat the different pieces -- maybe he was hoping that one of them would be real? We also played the drums in the Rhythm Section and read a book in the book corner before we moved outside the lab to have a snack.

While we were sitting on the living room suite outside the playlab, eating our cheese sticks and cookies, Jessica and Lil E walked by on their way out. Everybody's museuming before school starts!

After our snack, we went upstairs. The Boy wanted to see Evolving Planet, The Girl wanted to see the gems. Neither wanted to go to the other's choice. But we did both, plus a gander at Sue. The gems hall is missing several gems, plus The Tot did not want to be held and I did not feel comfortable letting him wander around a dark room alone, so it was a rather mad dash through the gems hall. Or as mad it could be with The Girl asking me to read every placard. Then we went to see Evolving Planet, although The Boy did not want me to read any of the placards and he went racing through.

The Tot was getting to the end of his rope in Evolving Planet, so we skedaddled. I carried The Girl most of the way back to the car, while The Tot rode in the stroller. It was a chilly walk. The Tot fell asleep in the car. We stopped at Trader Joe's in Lincoln Park on the way home.

Camp!

Today was a crazy day. Both The Boy and The Girl started camp (at different parks), so I spent half my day dropping someone off or picking him/her up. A preview to next year, when I will have two kids at Disney II and one down the street at CFC. But back to today: despite all the running around, I saw lots of people I knew, but hadn't seen since the school year's close. The Boy has a ton of mates at camp, and The Girl shares the 2.5-hour playcamp with at least three friends.

The Boy went home with Enver after camp, so I took The Baby to the Treasure Store. He is just done with TS runs.* While there, I ran into Ms. Sarah, The Boy's pre-K teacher from St. Bart's. I found a pair of shorts and some cool red patent leather flats for me, a toy camera for The Baby (what was I just saying about not buying toys?), and some cute kid clothing.


* He also seems to be going through a growth spurt and losing a layer of baby fat. He looks taller and thinner, and seems to have lost that compact new-walker look. His size-21 sandals, the ones that the sales guy at Alamo Shoes assured me would "last through the summer" are already too small, less than a month later. I think it's time to change his blog name to The Tot.

The end is nigh

The Boy has 3 days left of school before summer vacation begins. Talk on the playground at pick-up has dwindled away from fall 2008 matriculation and toward summer vacation plans. I have so many things I want to do this summer, although I'm sure that I have not adequately prepared for any of them:

• join a pool
• go to Kiddieland
• rent/borrow a beach cottage in Michigan/Indiana/Wisconsin for a week
• hire a babysitter once/week
• visit Super Grandpa in Indiana
• visit family in Michigan on Lake St. Clair
  
• go to Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit The Girl's birthday twin and her parents
• take the water taxi between Navy Pier and the museum campus peninsula
  
• go to lots of museums and parks
  

The Boy and The Girl are going to daycamp through the park district (at different parks) for 6 weeks. And The Boy and I are going to Seattle to visit Uncle Chris for a weekend in June. How is it that summer is upon us already?

Cheap Day at the Shedd

Ah memberships to museums, how I do love you.

Today, I pulled The Boy out of school for a special treat: a day at the Shedd Aquarium with me, The Girl, The Baby, Grandma Naperville, and Super-Grandma. I dropped $2 in quarters in the parking meter, spent $1.75 for popcorn inside, and that was my total expenditure for the outing (plus gas, of course, which at $4+/gallon, is no small expense these days).

We met the grandmas there about 10:30 a.m. While there were lots of school groups, it was still significantly less crowded there than it is on the average weekend (the only other time we've really gone). The Boy wanted to see everything and we did our best to accommodate that desire. There was a bit of fear of missing something that he wasn't always able to fully enjoy (or let us enjoy) whatever we were doing at the moment, but we did get to see pretty much everything (except the IMAX movie, which I always skip because I find them nauseating).

First, we saw the old-fashioned aquarium bits: the center tank (The Baby was entranced), the frogs, fish and iguanas. The Boy really liked the wave machine in the iguana habitat. Then we went down to the Coral Reef to watch the sharks. The Baby was scared by the wave machine down there, so we quickly moved on. They were cleaning the coral, so there were several divers in the tanks, their pates exposed by the water's motion, scrubbing the habitat's rocks with little bristly brushes and wiping down the glass of the tank that is in the ceiling. A couple of them waved to The Boy, so now we know that the fish can see us just as we see them.

After the coral reef, we went over to the Oceanarium to check out the penguins and belugas, including baby Miki. It was quite peaceful to see the belugas swimming around in the underwater viewing area, Miki swimming just under his mother and, at one point, nursing. I thought that was rather neat, being a nursing mother myself. Super Grandma treated us to lunch in the Bubblenet Cafe. Then we sat down to wait for the Dolphin Show to begin. The Dolphin Show was quite different than the ones we've seen thus far; it was more about how they train the dolphins to do "tricks" for the crowds.

At that point, I was pretty tired, and so were The Baby, The Girl and Super Grandma, so we did a quick tour through the Dragon exhibit and called it a day. It was a good one.