MSI

The Boy, The Girl, The Tot, and I observed today's CPS professional development day, which gives The Boy and The Girl the day off, by going on an old-fashioned museum outing. We met Cara and Gracie at the Museum of Science and Industry, using The Boy's first-day-of-school voucher to gain admittance to the museum gratis.

As usual, parking on Hyde Park's streets was easy to find, so we skipped $13 underground museum garage and trekked the block or so to the museum's main entrance. Fortunately, my kids are pretty used to my cheapskate ways about parking; they didn't even complain about the walk, although it was quite cold on the return trip. The landscape of the area -- LSD dividing a treeless lakefront from the wide lawn of MSI creates a wind tunnel: it is always blustery and windy down there. It was also overcast and the temperature dropped all day, so it was windier and colder than usual today.

We had arranged to meet Cara and Grace in front of the Jollyball, but ran into them in the elevator instead. The Boy was thrilled to see that the Jollyball was fixed and all 4 kids spent the better part of 1/2 an hour glued to the rail in front of it. It was The Tot's first real viewing of the contraption and he took it in silently, pulled up to the railing with a serious look on his face. Meanwhile, I enjoyed a cup of coffee from the nearby Brain Cafe and marveled at the lit and decorated Christmas trees already dotting the interior of the museum.

After my cuppa, we went upstairs to The Great Train Story exhibit, otherwise known in our household as "the choo-choo hall." It is an area that can (and has) easily occupy The Boy for most or all of our visits. The Tot, who has just discovered trains himself, was similarly enthralled with the trains. Unlike The Boy and The Girl, however, who run from step to step around the exhibit to see the trains from different vantage points, The Tot was content to watch everything go by from a single location.Alas, the girls were not content to watch trains all day and we moved on to the Genetics exhibit to watch the baby chicks come out of their shells. The Tot liked this as well. There were a few small school groups in the museum and one of them had named all of the hatching chicks, which was kind of cute. One of these days, perhaps on a future football Sunday, I'm going to have to go back to these museums without the kids so that I can actually explore the exhibits on my own timetable. The kids were completely uninterested in learning about the double helix structure of DNA, genes, genomes, etc. All in good time, I suppose.

Next, we went downstairs to the Idea Factory, which was mobbed. They were at maximum capacity, so we actually had to wait a few minutes to gain entry into the area. I barely saw The Boy once he got in -- he was quite happy "running the factory" toward the back of the exhibit. The Tot spent most of his time getting utterly drenched, taking balls out of the river and putting them into the air tube.

We all had lunch and then did a quick twirl through Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle. Twice (for The Girl -- Cara, Gracie and the boys checked out the fireman's area just outside of it). By then, we were all pretty tired so we decided to call it a day. On the way out, The Tot noticed the Silver Bullet/Zephyr; I told him that it would have to wait for another day.

California Dreaming

This morning, The Dad left for 6 days in San Francisco. I'm jealous. Although I love my life in Chicago, I've been missing San Francisco a lot lately. For me, San Francisco is inextricably linked to life before children. It's not just The City's great restaurants that appeal to me these days, it's getting to eat a leisurely dinner at 8 p.m. in one of them.

The Tot, The Girl, The Boy, and I brought The Dad to the airport, took The Girl to ballet class (and had Starbucks with Allison and her boys), and then managed to find parking near our playgroup friend's place to have a Saturday playgroup. It was R.'s birthday, so we had lunch, cake, ice cream, and the kids even beat a pinata open (a silly gift from a silly friend of R.'s). We saw our Italian playgroup friends, who we hadn't seen since August 2007. Rather unusually for him, The Tot sat on S.'s lap for quite awhile during lunch.

I had planned to take The Boy over to the lakefront to see the air show, but The Girl didn't want to go, and The Tot would have been frightened by the noise/people/constriction, so we went home instead.

We got home around 3 and were pretty much slugs for the rest of the afternoon.

Life's a Beach

Thanks to the generosity of my mom's best friend, who loaned us her "cottage" for the length of our stay, our family just returned from a 4-day lake vacation in Michigan. It was heavenly. This cottage is a 3-bedroom house in the woods about 1/2 mile from Weko Beach -- the house is bigger than our Chicago Foursquare and decorated in a unique combination of painted shabby chic-vintage and original 60s and 70s Danish modern, with comfy couches and tons of magazines. No TV, no Internet, no phone. It's perfect. If I could afford a lake cottage, it would look like that. We read books, napped, played in the sand, body surfed (The Boy and The Dad), ate ice cream, grilled out, made s'mores, visited picturesque South Haven, and generally took it easy.

Playgroup Turns 5!

On Wednesday, July 24, 2003, six moms and their infants (2-6 months) met at the totem pole along the Lakefront (at approximately Addison) to talk about our babies, our births, our nascent motherhood. Five years later, we're still meeting to talk about our children, ourselves, and everything in between. Today marked the 5th anniversary of our playgroup. We celebrated with a BYO picnic and lots of shared desserts at the place where it all began. Five of the original six remain in the Chicago area; four of them came to playgroup today. In 2003, we were all new moms with a single baby each. Since then, we've grown to include four other moms with 23 kids between us.

Twelve of those kids romped in the grass after our picnic in the grass. Then, much like our first meeting, we did a stroller caravan over to the playground.

Surrounded by his friends, The Boy was aggressive toward another little boy who wanted to play with them. All four swings were occupied, so he demanded that this little kid get off the swing so that he could get on. Twenty minutes later, a swing opened up and one of two boys in another party got on. The Boy was on the swing next to it, and this other kid started demanding that The Boy get off it. I had to laugh. I guess The Boy is your archtypical 5-6-year-old.

Parking in the lakefront areas is free during the week before 6 p.m.

Necessary Errands on a Gorgeous Day

This morning, we ran a necessary errand of taking The Boy to buy a pair of new shoes. Unbeknownst to me, his other pair were too small and, as a result, he had developed some blisters on his toes, which must have gotten scraped open at the water park. So we took him to Alamo Shoes to pick out a new pair. He chose Stride Rite Superballs, which make him run really fast. While there, I also picked out a new pair of shoes. The Baby and The Girl each got balloons.

After shoe-shopping, we headed down to the lake to enjoy the gorgeous, sunny, spring weather. We parked near Montrose Beach and spent an hour digging in the sand. Then we went to join Uncle Bad for lunch at Fat Cat.