The Easter Elephant?!

Happy Easter!

Last night, Shawn went to bed easily... the Easter Bunny wouldn't come to our house if we were still awake and might see him! Before I tucked him in, we read The Night Before Easter by Natasha Wing. It was a fitting story for the occasion.

When Shawn woke this morning, he found a basket with just two Easter eggs in it. The rest of the eggs were scattered around the house, from the hall outside his room, down the stairs, and all over the living room and dining room. It was a lot of fun watching him hunt for hidden eggs and figure out how to get to a few that were out of his reach.

Finally, when all of the eggs had been discovered, Shawn found the last of the Easter Bunny's treasures waiting for him on the kitchen table: his dump truck Easter Basket filled with a bug net, Mr. Potato Bunny, a mini-pot with seeds for planting, a bath-time book, and, of course, a chocolate bunny. He was a pretty excited little boy!

The fun didn't end there! Next, we went to the circus! The George Carden Circus Spectacular was at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates. Before the show started, Shawn and I rode a camel, While we were waiting in line for him to ride a pony (which stopped giving rides just as we approached the front of the line! Arg!), our friends Veer, Shrenik, and Heena called Raj. It turned out that they were at the circus too and had seen us walk right by their seats! They saved a few extra spaces so we could join them. While we devoured popcorn and over-sugared lemonade, we watched "enchanting elephants, tantalizing tigers, amazing acrobats, motorcycle daredevils, and performers from around the world." During the intermission, we had another chance to ride the pony and Shawn got his first face-painting.

 

Though Raj and I were sure that Shawn was going to fall asleep on the way home from the circus, he was still wide awake when we got back. While I prepared our Easter dinner, Raj and Shawn planted the seeds in the little frog pot. They played tackle-football in the backyard. Shawn got a lot of use out of his new bug net and almost caught the biggest bug I've ever seen!

Got him!

Later, we feasted on ham with pineapples, crescents, rice, and green beans. As usual, there were plenty of leftovers to last us (and the rest of the neighborhood) until the next holiday!

 

It was a successful celebration - I think the Easter Bunny would be proud.

Goebbert's Pumpkin Farm and Garden Center

After a late night with the Puri family last night, it was really nice to sleep in this morning.  At least, that is, until Raj woke me as he was leaving to watch a football game with some friends/cousins.  It was a sore subject and not a good way to start the day.
Shawn and I leisurely got ready and had breakfast before we picked up a stack of children’s books (including Curious George and Little Bear) and a Sansaveria (or ‘Mother In Law Tongue’) plant from Freecycle.  Then, the two of us went to Goebbert’s Pumpkin Farm and Garden Center in South Barrington.  The parking lot was incredibly full and we ended up in a spot on the far opposite corner from the entrance to the farm!  Oh, well.  It’s a great day to be outside (~68°F), and the walk will be good for us.

When we eventually made it to the entrance, there were vast displays of pumpkins and gourds of all shapes and sizes for sale.  Scattered throughout the pumpkin fields were wooden cut-outs of various children’s characters:  Peanuts, Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story… just to name a few.  Shawn would pose at one and then run to the next when he’d see another exhilarating character.  I had to click the shutter quickly!  He also found a fire truck among a meadow of climb-able structures.  He was trying to avoid being climbed over by a group of bigger kids, when Raj caught up to us after the football game.  We figured out which attractions we wanted to visit, so Raj and Shawn got in line for tickets, while I held a spot in line for a camel ride.  That’s when Shrenik, Heena, and Veer found us for an impromptu playdate.  By that time, we had made it close to the front of the very long line, so we offered to take Veer with us so they wouldn’t have to get in line themselves.  Veer rode with me, Shawn with Raj, and Heena and Shrenik took pictures from the ground.  It worked out very well.

Next, the kids rode ponies.  Then, we went to Animal Land.  We started by climbing up ramps to a lofted platform that brought us to eye-level with two giraffes!  A very different perspective from way up there!  We also visited with some piglets before touring three very large tents that housed 55 different types of animals.  It was a mini-zoo!  Somewhere along the way, Veer decided he had had enough and they ended up going home, but Shawn was enjoying the day, so stayed to see what else was around.

The highlight was when Shawn, Raj, and I got to have our picture taken with a 12 week old white Bengal Tiger.  The handler worked tirelessly to get the cub to look in the direction of the camera for a good picture.  (I thought it was hard to keep my own focus on the camera instead of on her or the adorable cub laying just inches away from us!)  Afterwards, she explained that when the barometric pressure changes, her cats get very excited and have a hard time paying attention and cooperating, part of their instinctual nature to find shelter before a storm.  With rain in our forecast, it made sense.

Are Shawn and the cub wearing the same expression?

I had hoped to watch the pig race, where a group of piglets race around a track for an Oreo cookie.  The description of the races said:

Come cheer on your favorite pigs. “Kermit the HOG”, “Miss Piggy”, “Hillary RodHAM Clinton”, and “Kevin BACON” are all here to race for that Oreo cookie. We are sorry but, Arnold SchwarzenHOGGER will not be competing this year due to a pulled HAMstring.

But, we spent too much time in the tents looking at animals and didn’t realize that we missed it.

Raj vetoed the corn stalk maze after he and I got lost in one a few years ago at the other Goebbert’s location in Hampshire.  Instead, Shawn and I ventured through a straw-bale maze that had an old west, kiddie-town façade.  Every once in a while, a dead end would actually be a photo-op for the friends and family outside because the kids would look through windows, which turned out to be funny props with holes for faces.  Shawn had a great time running through the maze and deciding which path to take… Until, three girls came from around a corner and bumped into him.  He was startled.  He was knocked down.  He bumped his cheek on a straw bale and got a little welt.  The maze fun was over. Luckily, I was tall enough to see over the bales, so we found our way out quickly and looked for other fun things to do.

We saw a pumpkin eating dinosaur demolish a couple of pumpkins and then belch smoke from his nostrils.  (It didn’t have any arms, legs, hands, or feet – it was just a head, neck, and small body.  It looked a bit like a small construction crane, which was draped in orange cloth to cover the mechanical workings inside.)  It would position its head over a pumpkin, open its mouth wide, then reach down to pick it up.  Then, it would lift it high over our heads and crunch its jaws until bits of pumpkin came crashing to the ground.  Sometimes, very large hunks would fall and splatter at its ‘feet.’  The ‘man behind the curtain’ must have had fun at the controls because he’d pick someone in the audience for the dinosaur to interact with.  At one point, he picked me!  I’d wave, he’d bobble his head from side to side.  I’d shake or nod my head, he’d mimic.  It was fun, though Shawn wasn’t too sure what to make of this huge creature with very large teeth, jerky movements, and growling roars.  We kept reminding him that it was just a pretend dinosaur, but even after we left Animal Land, he’d occasionally ask, “Where’d the dinosaur go?” and look around nervously.  It’s a good thing there was plenty to see and do to keep him distracted!

 

We ran out of time to go on the tractor pulled wagon ride, but Shawn played on some more on the fire trucks and a train before the staff made their rounds to announce the farm was closed.  On our way out, we picked up two large pumpkins.  (Hopefully, we’ll decorate or carve them in the next few days!)  Then, we headed back to our cars.  By the time Shawn and I hiked back to the minivan, Raj had already left the property!

I told Raj that we should get dinner before going home – partially because I knew Shawn would fall asleep on the drive home and I wanted him to eat first, but also because I simply didn’t feel like cooking!  So, we met at Chili’s for an easy dinner.  Sure enough, after filling his tummy, Shawn fell asleep on the way home (~8:00 pm).  Luckily, I managed to transfer him fairly smoothly to bed.  Later, I went to bed as a thunderstorm was starting.

I guess the Bengal cubs’ internal barometers were right!

The Chicago Botanic Garden's Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America

This morning, we drove to the Glencoe Metra Station (actually taking the Metra would’ve been fun, but incredibly inconvenient for this particular trip).  We parked a few steps from a waiting trolley, which carried us to the Chicago Botanical Gardens.  In addition to being a fun ‘adventure’ for Shawn, the trolley saved us money, too - $4 for two adults (Shawn was free) versus $25 to park the van in the Gardens’ parking lot.  (Though, we didn’t actually know that until we were already there.  We just got lucky!)
As we walked through the Visitor Center, I found a free Bingo Board to play with as we explored the grounds.  Shawn had a lot of fun placing the provided stickers on the pictures when he’d find the various objects.  When he found the very last item, just before we were leaving, he ran over to show me his completed Bingo Board and asked for a “Surprise Fruit Snack!”  How could I resist rewarding all that hard work?  (Though, I’m not sure how much of a surprise it was then…)

We sat at the edge of a pond and admired a water fountain, a rainbow in its mist, and very large fish that were inches away from our toes.  We dabbled our fingers in another water fountain for a little while before finding our friends, Shrenik, Heena, and Veer.  Then we made our way over to the Model Railroad Garden exhibit – the real reason we were there in the first place!

The Chicago Botanic Garden has a temporary exhibit (May – October) that has returned for the past few years called the Model Railroad Garden:  Landmarks of America.  The website’s description was:

The 7,500-square-foot Model Railroad Garden features 17 garden-scale (G-scale) trains on 1,600 feet of track. The garden-scale trains are 1/29th the size of life-sized trains. Train and garden enthusiasts, young and old, return year after year for the delightful sights and sounds of the miniature trains traversing high and low through tunnels, across bridges, and around buildings — all intricately handcrafted with natural materials, including twigs, bark, leaves, acorns, and pebbles. More than 5,000 tiny trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowering plants of close to 300 varieties re-create the topographical landscape of America. Vignettes of tiny people and animals give the exhibit a storybook feel, while sound effects and a working geyser capture visitors’ imaginations.

It also had two very cool videos about it:




It was a lot of fun. The train exhibit was a little smaller than Raj and I expected, but they packed a lot into the space. The attention to detail was amazing. There were landmarks from all over the country represented. (Shawn can now indentify the Statue of Liberty and when we saw the Liberty Bell from Pennsylvania, he pointed out that's where Oma and Opa live!)

(A video might be coming... if I can edit it better!)

By the end of our ‘adventure,’ my pedometer had recorded that we walked for a total of 2 hours 27 minutes 44 seconds, covering 4.247 miles, had taken 8961 steps, and burned 242.5 KCAL.  (Unfortunately, it’s a cheap pedometer and it doesn’t always register all of my steps correctly, but it at least gives us an idea of how far we walked.)  Here’s a map of the gardens to show just how big a place it is – we did a pretty good job covering most of it, too!

While we were waiting for the trolley to take us back to our car, Raj entertained Veer and Shawn.  While they sat in an empty tram that had been parked for the evening, Shawn surprised him by pointing out, “There are two bicycles on the right, Dadda!”  Raj was impressed that in fact there were two and in fact they were on the right side of them!

What a great day to spend at the Chicago Botanic Gardens with great friends!  The creativity and handiwork behind the Model Railroad Garden alone was well worth the trip, but I'm so glad we saw the other gardens and made a whole day of it.  Not many more days left like this in Chicago this year!  But, this was had another 80°F day (and 30° swing from the low to the high).  I don’t think we saw a cloud the whole day.

Back at the car, Raj drove quickly to grab dinner before Shawn fell asleep.  (He didn’t get a nap and had only snacked all day, so I didn’t want him to fall asleep before having an actual meal.)  Raj got us to Bucca di Beppo in Wheeling just in time.  I was able to hold Shawn’s interest on the way there by giving him a portable fire truck & station toy that he doesn’t get to play with very often.

For dinner, we had cheesy bread Florentine, baked rigatoni with spicy sausage, chicken stuffed with prosciutto, all served family style (and had plenty to take home when we were done).  While we ate, we tested Shawn to see if he really did know if right from his left.  He correctly identified his left and right hands, ears, eyes, and cheeks.  Just to see if he was paying attention, I asked him where his ‘left mouth’ was – he giggled, said, “Nooooooo!” but pointed to his mouth anyway.  Not bad for a two year old!

On the way home, he started off a bit wired, sang songs, and made lots of goofy noises, but when I put the toy away and out of sight, he fell asleep almost immediately.  I wasn’t able to transfer him to his bed as smoothly as I had hoped, but after just a few moments of very tired and frustrated crying, he settled down, gave me a goodnight kiss, and fell back to sleep.  The best part – it was only 8:00 pm!

After spending a gorgeous day outside, it’s an early to bed night for all of us.


Sweet dreams.

Car Seats, Costco, and Party Hostess - Phew! What a Day!

There was no Spanish class this morning.  Language Stars is on Spring Break.  Instead, we took a fieldtrip to Costco.

As we were getting in the car, both kids climbed right in to their car seats!  Surprise!  Shawn can do it now, too!  Just like Abby’s first time by herself, he got in as if he had been doing it easily for months.  The give away that it was a new conquest was his immense squeal of delight, gleaming smile from ear to ear, and contagious giggle that followed.  Now, for their next goal:  buckling themselves in!

At Costco, we found a new dog bed for Baron.  However, just like everything else sold there, it was economy sized!  Since we had already been filling the cart, there was no room inside for the gigantic cushion, so I balanced it on top of the other groceries.  It actually worked very well because when it was positioned just right, Shawn and Abby could lean way back and rest their heads on the super plush, fuzzy bed.  They had the softest shopping cart seats of any other kids in the warehouse! 

A few aisles later, I was looking for a barrel of mini pretzel squares.  (I think they’re called Snaps, but I’m not sure.)  When I couldn’t find them, Shawn caught on to my disappointment and echoed, “Bubber, bubber, bubber!” (Bummer, bummer, bummer!)  Abby giggled each time she heard us protest.  (I think we even got a couple of smiles from other shoppers walking by!)  We did find pretzel rods instead, so it wasn’t a total failure.  Shawn actually would rather have the big sticks or full sized pretzels anyway, but I still like the size of the mini shapes.  I had to distract him from seeing the new barrel in the cart, because he wanted to dive right in!

Naptime brought on more freckle kisses from Shawn.  I just wanted to give him a huge hug and not let go. 

This evening I hosted my first (and probably only) Tastefully Simple party.  Thanks to everyone who came.  Abby, Anna, Veer, and Shawn played with Raj and Veer’s Dad (Shrenik) in the basement, while the ladies sampled the goods in the living room and dining room.  I will admit that, while hosting these parties isn’t my ‘thing’, I did have fun having everyone over – to socialize if nothing else. 

When the house finally emptied and quieted down and I finished cleaning up the dishes and leftovers.  It was well past bedtime (for all of us).  Shawn had a tough time going to sleep and I had a tough time staying asleep!

Woo-Woo! Wow-Wow!

Shawn, Raj, and I spent the day at the High Wheeler Train Show at Harper College in Palatine, IL.  Veer, Heena, and Shrenik joined us to see the 20+ “spectacular operating railroad layouts”, which did not disappoint!  There were model train sets of all sizes, “from the tiniest "Z-scale" up to the popular garden sized "G-scale" - and every one in between.”  There were vendors and hobbyists with everything train related on display.  There were a few sightings of Thomas the Train, but it was much more geared towards the model train enthusiast.  The artistic talent and attention to detail that we saw in the models was incredible.  These were much more than toys, though I do think that many of the people who were involved in these incredible displays would admit to a combination of many hours of hard work with blood, sweat, and tears and a tad-bit of childish delight from “playing” with a hobby they loved. 

As mere spectators, I’m sure we didn’t comprehend all there was to offer at the show, but it was impressive to see the handy-work that was exhibited.  I’ve got next year’s show on the calendar… just in case  Shawn’s still interested in trains.

Happy Birthday, Veer!

Happy Birthday, Veer!

We celebrated Veer’s second birthday today with a party at Gyboree!  He had a train theme for the decorations (“All aboard Veer’s two-two birthday train!”).  Heena ordered the birthday cake from Deerfield’s, the same place we got Shawn’s 3-D airplane cake for his first birthday.  They also had individual cupcakes with Thomas the Train characters decorating the tops for the kids.  Though Shawn didn’t know the two teachers that led the party very well, he still had a good time, especially with the hula hoops, the rocking horse, and the parachute.  It was fun playing with his cousins, Milan, Misha, and Meera, too.  At the end of the party, we brought home a little bucket with a hand painted a train engine.  It was filled with goodies, like funny sunglasses and Thomas stickers.  We were all ready for a nap when we got home!

My Smiling Heart

Shawn had a great night’s sleep last night! He was out from 8:30 pm – 8:30 am with one quick wake up – phew!

Shawn and I met Heena and Veer in South Barrington for a free event sponsored by WTTW Kids: Readers are Leaders (a PBS television station).  Miss Lori’s Campus was presenting “sing alongs, reading, and engaging activities for kids 3-8.” AND, the first 200 kids would get a free children’s book.  Heena and I agreed that even though Shawna and Veer are still a little young for the intended audience, it wouldn’t hurt to see what it was like, especially since it was free.  There was a lot of dancing and singing, which our boys did not participate in, and Miss Lori preached the importance of being healthy by eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep.  The show was highly energetic and, although the venue could have held more people, it turned out to be a little overwhelming for both of the boys.  Shawn went into people-watching over-drive and Veer started climbing up Heena with tears in his eyes.  They stepped outside about half-way through the show so Veer could take a break and get a snack from their car.  Even though Shawn wasn’t exactly involved in the audience participation, we stayed the whole time and even went through the line at the end to get our free book, Judy the Elephant by Laura Gates Galvin, and a few other freebees on our way out.  (Oddly enough, almost of the coupons that they were giving out were expired and not just recently, but by a few months!  Oh, well, I probably wouldn’t have used them anyway.)  We also got to meet Miss Lori when we got to the end of the line.  She gave us a postcard with her picture on it and the autographed it for us.  Some families were taking their pictures with her, but I knew Shawn wouldn’t go for it, so I thanked her for the great show and we headed out the door.  We met up with Heena and Veer in the parking lot and told them about the giveaways, but Veer was content in his car-seat eating his snack.  Perhaps the event was still a little too much for our boys, but we can’t complain too much about a free afternoon out!

For dinner, we went to Shaw’s Crab House to celebrate Raj’s best month EVER at his office!  The meal was wonderful, but the best part was when Shawn got compliments from a woman dining nearby.  She stopped by our table as she was leaving the restaurant and pointed out how rarely people take the time to tell others how nice their children are and that she wanted to let us know how much she enjoyed sitting by us and watching him smile and play.  Though I don’t remember most of her exact words, one line has stuck with me:  “He made my heart smile!”  Raj said he didn’t know if I could smile any bigger or have my eyes light up any more after she said that.  Though we have had people stop by our tables at restaurants to smile at Shawn before, it never gets old.  This woman knew exactly what to say.  It made my night.