Play Day

Although I love a good playdate, I'm always reluctant to plan vacation days from school around or dependent upon classmates and friends. It's a tactic that can easily backfire as family visits, doctor appointments, or sudden illness bump out even the most carefully planned playdate. I've learned the hard way not to rely on friends to provide our children with mutual entertainment during a school break. 

But the stars happen to have aligned for everyone today, and The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot all had playdates. The Girl and The Tot went over to a friends' house in the morning, while The Boy's good friend came over for Lego and other 9-year-old boy pursuits in the afternoon. 

We capped off the day with a 3-kid trip to Trader Joe's, where The Tot proceeded to throw a massive temper tantrum fueled, in part, by hunger and fatigue. 

Too Good to Be Real

That's how The Girl described her Snookelfritz sweet mint ice cream. I would describe it as too rich for my milk-intolerant self (the things we do as parents...stopped drinking milk when The Tot was a babe and haven't been able to tolerate much of it since), but: if you love milk, ice cream, and fresh ingredients, I highly recommend that you try it. We found Snookelfritz and lots of other organic goodies (farm eggs! fresh cream! a giant pretzel bun! arugula!) at the April Green City Market at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, where The Girl and I began our long Saturday morning Mama-The Girl playdate. (Yes, my five-year-old is weird: her idea of a good time is helping me at the grocery store, do the laundry, etc. I hope as her abilities grow, she'll start thinking that a mother's chores include going to work as well.)

Anyway, we went to the Green City Market. For some reason, I thought it was outside and found primo parking just off North Avenue. We ended up walking all the way up to the butterfly museum and back, passing tons of joggers and families of three pushing strollers. It was a long walk for me, let alone a not-quite 5-year-old with short legs. It was a beautiful day, but quite windy. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced tea on the long walk back. The side trip sparked a conversation about the origin of the name Starbuck. The Girl's theory is that it's called Starbucks because you can get drinks for a buck there. 

By the time we returned to the car, we were both pretty tired, but still had to go to Trader Joe's to do the bulk of our food shopping. A man about my father's age heard our conversation and was chuckling at the girl's reasoning for what went in my cart versus hers. I'm glad that we are so amusing, but it was actually quite refreshing to run errands with just one fairly helpful little person, in the city on a gorgeous spring day.

Karma at Northbrook Court

Today, I took The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot with me to Northbrook Court to (finally!) pick up the photographs from our post-Thanksgiving photo shoot. It was surprisingly empty at around 10:30 a.m. when we arrived and pretty much remained that way until we left around 2 p.m. The Tot spilled orange juice all over his pants and The Girl had a wee accident, so I stopped into Gymboree to buy replacements for both; the sales associate confirmed that it had been slow, but seemed to think that it was too early for crowds.

No problem with me. I was able to get The Boy and The Girl in for haircuts at Snippets with only a short wait (which we passed around the corner at Hanna Andersson, looking for requests [and coming up empty] for the CC girls). We finally made it to the LEGO store at The Boy's request (although he was sad that we did not buy anything -- I told him that he could put it on his birthday wish list). The line at Corner Bakery went quickly, and we had no problems finding a table adjacent to the center treehouse at which we ate our pesto cavatappi (The Tot and The Girl), Santa Fe Ranch salad (me), and kids' PB&J (The Boy).

After lunch, the kids played at the treehouse for close to an hour. I witnessed my first instant-friendship moment that moms of girls have always told me about: The Girl walking around with another little girl who I've never seen before in my life, holding her hand. It was quite cute, actually. At one point, they were deep in conversation about god-only-knows-what. The lady next to me's toddler found my planner and pen while I was distracted by The Tot, who was busy pulling on the mitten strings on someone else's stroller.

But then... then... I have to rant for a bit on holiday rudeness: this woman plopped herself down on the bench that I was sitting on, invading my personal space so that her friend -- who showed some degree of manners by saying that the empty bench she was on was fine (or at least I think this is what she said; they were speaking another language [I would guess Farsi] and I could only judge by body language what was actually said) -- could sit down. This was annoying, but was not worth saying something or ruining my day over, but I ran into her again as I was waiting in the long line at the tiny Banana Republic just off the center court.

She sidled in to look at a sweater on a table just to the left of the one line and then proceeded to stand there with her item as if she was in the check-out line. As there were about 8 people behind me at that point and I found her behavior unaccountably rude, once I realized that she meant to cut in line, I said something to her, loudly: "Excuse me, but I and all the people behind me have been waiting in line to pay. If you want to get in line, it ends back there." She immediately started yelling, saying that she was in the other line, that she had been waiting, that I was lying, etc. Unfortunately, I was irritated and my kids were tired, so I continued the escalation instead of just letting it go. As The Boy said, she was a "liar, liar, pants on fire!" Fortunately, the BR people believed me, told the rude lady that there was only one line, and a manager showed up to defuse the situation. The lady who was in front of us confirmed that I was, in fact, telling the truth, when the rude lady called into question my honesty. What really made me mad about it was when she told me that my behavior would come back to me. I try to let stuff like this go and not harp about it, but it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

At least it ended up a teachable moment for The Boy and The Girl: this is why you use good manners and tell the truth. Even The Boy knew that she was lying as he later told me that Rude Lady had asked him to move over so that she could get to the table with the sweaters.

After that, we left the mall and headed to Glenview in the snow and slush to buy more groceries at Trader Joe's. TJ's was crowded and The Tot was crabby, but the TJ's employees were festive and engaging. One man even brought The Tot a balloon to cheer him up. It took me 45 minutes to get home via Waukegan Road, Dempster, and I-94. And I'm not leaving the house until noonish on Christmas Day, for the long-haul drive to the 'burbs*.


* OK, I might take The Boy and The Girl sledding tomorrow morning. But only if The Dad has the day off to watch The Tot.

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.

Day 1

Today was really the first day that I felt like I was flying solo with The Dad out of town. While Grandma Naperville took her first L ride to the Art Institute for the day, I took The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot to Trader Joe's to stock the larder. When we arrived, there was only 1 kiddie cart available, so we left it for the next family to squabble over. Mercifully, The Boy and The Girl were OK with that decision, although The Tot was pretty upset at having to sit in the cart while we shopped. A banana and cookies mollified him a bit.

After TJ's, we headed home for lunch and a nap. We had planned to go to Adams Playground Park with Becky and S&F, but of course The Tot took a super long nap and by the time he woke up, it was too late to haul ourselves down to Lincoln Park (especially as Becky and I had planned to take all 6 kids on the L rather than park 2 minivans in that area).

Instead, we spent the late afternoon running around the spray park/splash pad at River Park. The Boy and S. and The Girl and F. were ecstatic to see one another. They all played quite happily in and around (The Girl, The Tot) the area together for about 90 minutes and in the middle we had a snack of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, chocolate milk, cookies, and blueberry cereal bars. Toward the end of our visit, an older boy was deliberately knocking over The Boy as they slid through one of the water elements. It was the kind of move that was deliberate, but made to look accidental. Since it didn't seem to bother The Boy, I refrained from stepping in.

We headed home about 4:30 to see Grandma Naperville and have dinner. The Boy and Grandma had a nice cuddle and talked about K before he went to bed. She had wanted to see his new school, but he'll have to show her another time.

Suburbs!

Today, we went to visit our playgroup expats in the 'burbs. Darien, to be exact. As I turned onto the highway on-ramp, The Boy asked if we were going to the suburbs. When I responded in the affirmative, both he and The Girl shouted "hooray!" Half an hour later, they asked the inevitable: "Are we there yet?"

The answer was no, but 45 minutes later we were in Oakbrook; I stopped in the mall to make a return and buy a present for The Dad. On cue, The Girl declared that she was hungry. So we all got a healthful snack (Clif Kid Z-Bar for The Girl and The Baby, Organic Ducks for The Boy, a veggie wrap for me) and split a gigantic iced tea from the Nordstrom Cafe. The Girl ate half my wrap on the walk back to the car. That kid will eat anything.

We went over to Beebalm's house for an afternoon playgroup that included lunch, time in A.'s swingset "clubhouse," a crazy game of hide-and-seek, bubbles, and seeing old friends. Plus popsicles and rice-marshmallow treats. What could be better? I took the Stevenson home; they all fell asleep.

I made a pit-stop at Trader Joe's on Clybourn to load up on groceries for the crew. It was a mad shopping trip, with The Boy and The Girl each pushing a tiny cart and The Baby in the main cart squawking for more snacks. But we finished quickly and made our way home. The most interesting part of the last leg was driving parallel to two giant semi-trucks filled with...

bees! The Boy noticed all the bees flying around first. Then the rest of us began gaping. The Boy was afraid that the bees would come into our car and sting him. It was the strangest thing. The trucks were carrying stacks of large white containers, covered entirely with a blue mesh canvas, and each had a swarm of bees visible on the sides, around the canvas, and stuck in large pockets of the fabric near the bottom of the flat bed. The trucks had Maryland plates, which added to this curiosity.