A November Visit to the Second City

Man do we love Chicago. This past trip was filled with excellent food, surprisingly fabulous weather, fancy hotel with very comfortable king size bed, and so many sites to see and most within walking distance. Sigh. But now we're home and that means I'm duty bound to post pics of everyone's favorite Lima Bean. But first, a little info on the trip.

Ian's conference trip started on Tuesday morning, so it was just me, Adelaide and Hank until Thursday morning. On Tuesday night I learned that it is much easier to pick her up from daycare if you have a new toy to distract her from the fact that Daddy is not there, too. My boss brought back a toy mountain goat that Adelaide now calls Doggie - this was good for about 20 minutes of distraction. Then I learned that it is very difficult to get home at 5:00, unload the car, let the dog out, feed the dog, calm the kid, and fix dinner all before 6:00. Again, hats off to single moms. I was able to get her to bed before 8pm, though, so that was good.

Wednesday night I picked up pizza . Adelaide was distracted with a coloring book and crayons. She was treated to her first bite of pepperoni. She approved, as did Hank. Then we played on the floor until bath time. She was in bed before 7:45, so that was even better.

Thursday morning was eventful. Wake up, give Adelaide her 1st breakfast (cereal), pack up everyone into the car to take Hank to Doggie Days on the Farm (25min each way), back home to change diaper, back out to the Pancake House for 2nd breakfast (silver dollar pancakes - of which she ate none and only wanted my scrambled eggs), back to the house to change yet another diaper, then off to the Amtrak station (the train was 30 minutes late).

Adelaide did great on the train to Chicago and was very happy to see Daddy waiting for us at Union Station, and I was grateful for the second set of hands and moral support. We had a late lunch and then we all settled in for a LONG nap. Dinner at a delicious (and crowded) asian restaurant where Adelaide ate an entire serving of edamame and rice. She LOVES edamame. Then we went back to the hotel and played in the lobby. This is the lobby (although now there are many more seats, booths, and escalators):

She really enjoyed playing on the steps, up and down and up and down 100 times, much to the amusement of the other guests and staff, but down right exhausting for us. We really thought that her hour long stair adventure would make it easier for her to go to sleep. Silly us. It was 11pm before she was out. Surely she would have slept until 8am, right? NOPE! Up at 6:45am. Must have known that we were going to the Shedd Aquarium. So we had a nice breakfast (of which she ate some bacon and blueberry bagel) and off we went to the Aquarium.

We seriously misjudged just how far that venue was from the hotel. And we should have asked around to find out the best and least hectic route for a stroller because after 30 minutes Adelaide was quite upset and we had to carry her the rest of the way (20 minutes of passing her back and forth). When we got to the Aquarium we were surprised to see so many people waiting outside considering the doors opened at 9:00 and it was almost 9:20. They don't really advertise to anyone that fire drills are required. So we waited, and waited, and waited until finally we were let in and the fun could begin. At least the weather was gorgeous.

She had a blast. Once she figured out that there were things more interesting than climbing the benches there was no stopping her.

Watching some fishes

Catching rainbow trout

Penguin play area for kiddies - given the flu season we opted to NOT dress her in the public penguin costumes.

Going up the slide

The next play area had live starfish. We saw one attach its suckers to a parent's hand. The parent was not amused, and the staff were trying to decide the best way to coax the starfish's suckers off his hand. Perhaps they are still trying to figure that out, but I'm sure the starfish got a stern lecture and was thrown back into the non-interactive area until it could learn to play nice.

By far her favorite exhibit was the sting rays. The floor is glass and she spent about 30-45 minutes running back and forth.

Ian was exhausted, but at least it was better than carrying her around.


***back later - bath time for Lima Bean.