Riding the Rails

a/k/a Spring Break, Day 1.

A week off from school, a sunny day, nowhere to be, and nothing we had to see...a perfect afternoon for a make-your-own adventure! The Boy, The Girl, The Tot (Who's Not), and I set out this afternoon to see what's at the end of the Skokie Swift line. 

Skokie, of course. An aging, heavily immigrant, heavily Jewish population make this 'burb an interesting destination for our fairly young, fairly gentile, fairly bland party of four. As a nearly native South(side) Suburbaner, I never really had the occasion during my own childhood to visit Skokie, and cannot reliably remember doing so until The Dad and I moved to the northwest side in 2002. Outside of the occasional trip to Old Orchard or the Pita Inn, I've never really explored this village. Truth be told, this visit was not significantly different, although we took the CTA and walked the mile between the train depot and the now-defunct Ice Cream Shoppe along Dempster. And back. 

This gave us lots of time in the village, and walking gave us lots of opportunities to observe the little things as we walked. What we did explore was a mile-long stretch of Dempster Avenue, the inside of a Walgreen's, and the Village Market. I wanted to go to Scandinavian Designs, just adjacent to the Village Market, but The Boy was unyielding on this point. 

It's a long trip between our house and our day's destination: the 80 bus to the red line to the yellow line. Thank goodness that's not a commute I must make daily; it took over 90 minutes in one direction. The trip was not very exciting, although there were tears when we discovered the Ice Cream Shoppe had shuttered. But I find that trips like these are a good way for us to unplug as a family, relate to each other, and enjoy the ride. The Boy and The Girl had a long chat about learning the recorder. The Boy and The Tot conspired to buy The Girl a present for her upcoming birthday. And The Girl impressed us all with her ability to blow bubbles with a stick of Juicy Fruit. All in all, a good start to the week.

School's Out for the Summer

And we celebrated by lots of crying and sassing, and a single swat on the bum for good measure. Ay yi yi yi, it's going to be a long summer.

Really, we zoomed out of school at 10 a.m. and headed up to Schaumburg to go to IKEA. We had tried to go on Thursday after our playdate with Melissa, but The Tot fell asleep and we abandoned the plan, so The Boy and The Girl really wanted to go today. We got there about 11:40 and went straight for lunch, then headed back down to Smalland, which was full with a crowd of kids waiting to get in. Apparently, everyone else had the same plan to go to IKEA rather than spend another day watching the rain and shivering, even though the weather surprised us with some sun and oppressive humidity.

So we wandered around and looked at dishes, bookcases, beds, as-is, outdoor stuff, and the kids' area. I bought only dishes and placemats. The Girl decided that it would be a good idea to ram the cart containing said dishes and The Tot into bookcases and glass partitions, and would not be deterred or restrained in her pursuit of this activity. That's how she got the bum swat. And did not get our regular post-IKEA ice-cream treat. No one did, although The Boy was really well behaved. And he took the ice cream news really well.

Afterward, we drove to U.S. Toys in Skokie to buy journaling notebooks for The Boy. I suggested that he keep an occasional journal about his summer adventures, and knew they'd have teaching materials of that nature. If anyone is interested, I'll transcribe his sentiments in his blog. US Toys also has lots of toys and art supplies; The Boy spent some of his allowance money on a Playmobil racecar and I spent a lot of mine on tempera paint, Shrinky Dinks for The Girl, a Toby train for The Tot, and various other things to keep everyone occupied during the down times.

Then we went home, stopping at Dominick's on Cumberland on the way for dinner fixins and right-now snacks.

The Mall

Chicago Mama's cupboard was bare, so I took The Girl and The Tot out for lunch today. I had suggested Panera, as it's right across the street from the Market Square Pottery Barn Kids. But The Girl declared that she did not like that PBK and wanted to go to the one at Old Orchard Mall instead.

In her younger days, before we had to worry about such silly things as school pick-up times and better budgeting, we spent a lot of time at the mall (our favorite, as a group, is probably Northbrook Court, with its giant treehouse in the center court). These days, although every retailer and its cousin is trying to lure us in with sales, rewards programs, and other incentives, we don't go very often. It probably also helps that the screenprint I saw yesterday at the T-Shirt Deli ("I take the fun out of shopping") aptly describes both The Boy and The Tot, thereby rendering shopping an activity best enjoyed without the company of children, and therefore not enjoyed very often by me.

And yet: we went. And despite the rain, it was (mostly) fun. At least The Girl keeps talking about how much fun she had. We went to the infinitely more preferable (than Panera) Nordstrom Cafe for lunch: Lime-Cilantro Chicken Salad ($9) for me, Simple Turkey Sandwich ($5) for The Girl, and The Tot shared with us both. On the way in, we ran into Carrie from Disney II, a mom of a child in The Boy's class, who seems to run in the same social/activities circuit as I do, and her little boy. After lunch, we headed to PBK to spend my PBK card holder rewards coupon. It was hard to come up with something I wanted to buy -- we checked out the stuff at Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma next door before settling on a pink Farmhouse Chair to complete our set; it's the only chair that we didn't buy as a floor model. We took a quick cruise through Gap Kids, where the salesgirl made me feel bad that my 2-year-old wanted to throw every one of the bucket of small playground balls set at perfect toddler height across the store. We stopped at the E-bar at Nordstrom on the way home for a latte (me) and snack (The Girl, The Tot) and skedaddled.

Mama-Tot Playdate

Whenever I spend one-on-one time with The Girl, she calls it a Mama-Girl Playdate. Today, I had a Mama-Tot Playdate. It was nice. It wasn't fantastically exciting, but when you are 14-months-old, even mundane errands can be fun.

I took him to Nordstrom to buy (him) new shoes. The traffic on the Edens wasn't too bad, but I was starving when we got there, so we stopped into the cafe to have lunch first. He had had lunch at home with The Dad previously, but he happily ate some of my salad while sitting on my lap. I made the mistake of sitting outside, so there was a huge lag between ordering and getting my food. I finally asked the server when he brought my check before my salad. There were four chatty ladies having lunch next to us, and The Tot enjoyed flirting with them while we waited.

After lunch, we went next door to the kids' shoe department to get a matching (to The Boy) pair of green Keens for him. I also ordered a pair of baby Cons for him, since they didn't have his size in the color I wanted in-stock in the store. He also got a balloon, which I tucked into the back of his shorts so we wouldn't lose it.

I ran down to Gap to return some stuff for The Dad. The Tot rearranged the lotions bottles while I made my return. He was only 10 feet away from me, but I could see where he was going from the yellow balloon attached to his pants. We made our way back through the mall to Nordstrom. I got a snack for The Tot -- chocolate-covered graham crackers -- and an iced tea for me. He wanted to walk himself and had a mind of his own on the best way to go. He was so cute walking determinedly through Nordstrom with a chocolate-graham in hand and a balloon sticking up. When I held his hand to re-direct him, he'd stop and squat down -- his way of telling me that he wanted to do it himself.

Traffic on the Edens looked bad, so I took Route 50 home. I think it took about as much time as the Edens would have.