Stuff I Find

The Boy and The Girl have taken to walking to school in the morning. Originally, The Dad and I had approved only The Boy for this privilege/responsibility, but one day last week, The Girl wanted to walk and The Tot Who's Not wanted to drive, so I let my little rule-follower accompany her big brother on the walk to school. I suspect this enthusiasm for walking (and early morning brotherly-sisterly affection) will drop when the temperatures do, but for now, I'm enjoying The Boy's and The Girl's newfound independence.

It also gives me some one-on-one time with The Tot Who's Not. While I wasn't at all teary-eyed on The Tot's first (or fifth) day of K drop-off, I'm still feeling a bit lost without a little partner in crime. I find myself flirting with babies on the train, or sympathizing with other mothers at the grocery store. I'm starting to understand why generations of women begin pestering their daughters to have children as soon as they get married. I have to wait another 20+ years for grand babies? (Please let me wait at least another 15 years for grand babies...) I suppose I could nanny, but given my views of childbearing, I doubt anyone would hire me.

So I find myself ready to enjoy snippets of time with my youngest child -- such as in the car on the way to school. Yesterday, we stopped to salvage a dresser from the curbside trash. The Tot Who's Not has watched me do this often enough; he waited patiently while I found space for 5 drawers and the case piece itself. Once we were back on our way, I thanked him for his patience. He told me he has a lot of patience.

After he was safely with his class, I went home to unload the car and inspect my find. While some may be horrified by my trash-picking ways, they are probably not on the low-budget side of Apartment Therapy's readers. I get a kind of acquisitive or satisfied high when I find something usable or pretty in the alley. I didn't realize this before now, but it's apparently a trend to do this. I'm not brave enough to look inside cans or dumpsters. I'm pretty sure that Chicago residents, like those of other large cities such as NYC , Philly, or their environs, leave large pieces outside the cans for this reason. I know it's the reason that I left my broken-down Mac Volo stroller outside after a recent garage clean-out.

Like these writers, I get a thrill in finding something useable and unique in the alleyways around my neighborhood. Over the years, I've managed to amass two wooden chairs, one sewing table, an IKEA dresser, a teak side table, a giant wooden built-in cabinet, a chair and a half, two storagalooza bins, a white toy bin, a wooden rung ladder, cabinet doors, two IKEA wooden storage units, a wooden nightstand, a 1905 oak interior door, and a wooden file bin. Some things I've since given away via freecycle. Others have become projects in The Boy's and The Girl's nascent interest in woodcraft. The rest have been repaired, painted, refinished, or recovered in some fashion and put to use in our tiny Chicago Foursquare. Or, in the case of this week's finds, are in my garage awaiting their transformation. There are many things that I do better than this, but this is not a bad way to feed my creative soul or familial predisposition to putter. I do have a couple of rules for how I find and treat my alleyway treasures:

- do not pick up upholstery, carpets, or other soft items

- do not sand painted or stained wood

- air out all items in the garage for a bit

- inspect everything in the alley and when home to determine what/how to fix

- clean everything with hot water and/or vinegar and/or oxyclean before it comes inside

- list it on freecycle if I don't love it and/or use it within a year

Look for a "stuff I found" tag soon.

Horrifying Hyde Park

The Tot (Who's Not) is less than 3 weeks away from his 5th birthday. This means, of course, that he's teetering on the edge of a developmental cusp, which is making him irritable, irrational. and just plain cranky. Yesterday's tantrum through Trader Joe's, which gradually abated after a well-meaning older gentleman told him that The Tot's screams were hurting his ears, was nothing compared to the doozy he threw today in Hyde Park. 

For some reason (my dad!), I have an enduring affinity for Hyde Park and the U. of Chicago. This started long before Obama lived there, or his kids or Emmanuel's went to Lab. I have been on campus on only a handful of occasions, and have little occasion to even visit Hyde Park these days except on a casual detour on the way to or from MSI. 

But with a trip to MSI planned for today, and a late start caused by a too-late bedtime (mine), I was able to make such a detour this morning. 

Hyde Park will never want to see us again. 

We ate lunch at Medici on 57th Street, splitting two huge sandwiches between the four of us to save room (and cash) for dessert from among the bakery's delectable pastries. Unfortunately, this arrangement did not suit The Tot and he spent the next 20 minutes screeching while a steady stream of UC students, grad students, and their parents looked on with reactions ranging from bemused understanding to confusion to annoyance to abject horror. I'm taking a page from the Scandinavian parenting playbook and resolutely ignoring this behavior, allowing my child to act like a child even in public. 

The Tot's tantrum continued to the car, across the Midway Plaisance to MSI, ad for 5 minutes after we'd parked, punctuated only by ear-piercing screams and the removal of his shoes (and socks) to fling at me. Eventually, after The Girl, The Boy, and I sat on the curb for quite some time, he realized that he was cold and deemed to put on his socks and shoes and walk (quite nicely, I might add) to the museum with the rest of us (holding hands, in chronological order, as The Girl pointed out. It was like someone had flipped a switch. 

We let our MSI membership lapse due to a glitch with Groupon and the membership department at MSI (I'm not paying $100 every 6 months for a membership), so we entered the museum today on a CPL pass, and purchased tickets ($10 adults, $8 kids 3-11y) to the Mythbusters exhibition separately. We got to the museum at just before 1, and our entry time to Mythbusters was not until 4 p.m., so we spent a very long three hours in the museum, waiting for the chance to see the big stuff. It was crazy crowded with families on spring break from within the city and outside of Illinois, and several private school groups. We ran into some school friends in the line at Finnegan's Ice Cream Parlor, where The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot enjoyed $3 ice-creams-in-a-dish and I finished the other half of our sandwich from Medici.

I kind of thought the Mythbusters exhibit was overrated, but The Girl and The Boy, marathon watchers of the show itself, really enjoyed it.  The Tot just ran around like a maniac through the walking-versus-running rainwater space. There were a few "try it yourself" interactive stations within the exhibit, lots of props, and a live Mythbusters-style show. It was as well done as the MSI's previous special exhibits that I've seen, such as Harry Potter and Body Worlds.


We were all pretty exhausted by the time we finally left the museum at just after 5 p.m.

The Kids

Ask The Tot where his mama was on Saturday morning and he’ll proudly tell you, “Education.” He knows that has something to do with school, and that it’s important, but he probably can’t tell you what exactly Mama’s work for education means. I’m not sure I can either, but it feels good to at least learn what the heck is going on.

On Saturday morning, I was down on the south side, at Ariel Academy in Kenwood. Sonia Kwon, Jill Wohl and I bypassed the floods and the Cubs traffic and made it to the humid, slippery auditorium in time to hear Karen Lewis’ rousing speech about CPS, the state of Illinois and the state of education. Lewis reported that the powers that be at CPS are repeating the same, tired schpiel that all people in power repeat when their motives or actions are called into question: Won’t someone please think about the children? Oh, please. Like CPS teachers are in it for the money? Like involved parents’ primary motivation are not their children? Were we all giving up a couple of hours smack-dab in the middle of a summer Saturday for some other reason but the children? As Lewis said, it’s about money and power. Like everything else in Chicago, it seems. Same-old, same-old.

Lewis also said something that struck me as pretty powerful. In 2004, she said, 62% of the CPS budget went to personnel costs. In 2009, that number dropped to 49%. What changed? Why? I wish I could say that I checked her facts against existing data to substantiate her claim, but getting the city to share its “datapoints” is harder than getting a willful toddler to eat smashed peas.

But her ire was not directed only at CPS, but at the state as well. She suggested that we all call our state representatives and senators and tell them that they are late in their payments. “And we’re not even charging you interest.” Good point.

These Are Days

Recently, a high school friend wrote that the best songs are the ones that you continue to listen to in the car after arriving at your destination (instead of turning the engine off and getting out immediately when you arrive). I had one of those moments this afternoon on my way to Lowe's to pick up polycrylic gloss and a new toilet. 10,000 Maniacs' These Are Days was playing on XRT; I cranked up the volume, sang at the top of my lungs, and simply, enjoyed it. It was the song that played at my wedding. And it's the song that sums up my life now: content with my children, my husband, my friends, my job, my house, my neighborhood. Things are good for me right now and I don't recognize or verbalize it often enough.


This morning, Grandma and Grandpa Naperville took The Boy to Legoland in honor of his birthday next week.  And I took The Girl and The Tot on an outing to the Shedd Aquarium.  (The Dad slept in and watched football.) I hadn't been to the Aquarium since they updated the Oceanarium, although the kids have been a few times with Natty.

Note to self: do not go to the Shedd during a cold winter weekend. Our visit today was kind of a mixed-bag. I have been very spoiled by years of going to museums on weekdays, so the crowds there really threw me. At 9:45 a.m., I was able to park along Solidarity Drive at a LAZ meter, which broke after I dumped about $4 worth of quarters in it. But even at 9:45 a.m., the line was out-the-door to buy tickets at the accessible-stroller entrance, and we had to wait in line even to get our member wristbands.

We headed pretty much immediately to the Oceanarium to catch the 10:30 Fantasea show. Wow! That is really a show. No cute dolphin tricks to an Enya soundtrack. This show is a production. Imaginary characters, lights, an Oceanarium-wide roller screen - wow! I can't want to see it. They had technical difficulties about 1/3 of the way into the show, so they rolled back to a showcase of the animals talents with the trainers. Afterward, we went down to the new underwater play area, where The Tot happily moved rubber shells from one freezing-cold "tide pool" to another for about 20 minutes.

Although I had brought snacks with us, it was now after 11 a.m. and The Girl was cranky, so I gave it up and got lunch at the new-and-improved Bubblenet food court (smaller food area, larger and airier eating area): kids' mac & cheese plate for The Tot and kids' chicken fingers plate for The Girl, a hummus-and-veggie wrap (and coffee!) for me, and chocolate-milk for both kids. Total with our membership discount: $21.

After lunch, The Tot was not to be deterred: he wanted to see the sharks! So we headed back over to the aquarium to the Underwater Reef, the exhibit that features coral, stingray, and sharks. We spent a good bit of time sitting on the floor in front of the tank glass, watching the fish and again watching the sharks. We also oogled the garden eels for awhile. The Tot was scared of the faux tides in the entrance.

The Girl complained all the way back to the car that she was too hot (earlier, it had been too cold). Our trip back home was just short enough that she didn't fall asleep, but she really needed to do so.

PFA Redux

I sighed in relief in August, when Springfield's budgetary wrangling saved PFA. But the question remains: what will happen to PFA next year and beyond?