Kiddie Klub Lane and NO COATS!

Shawn called out for Oma and Opa’s dog, Gambol, last night/early this morning.  Normally, it seems like Buddy is his favorite of their two Brittany Spaniels, but, for whatever reason, Gambol was on his mind this time!  Must be time to visit again…

Mothers & More had a Mom & Tot outing to Kiddie Klub Lane in Lombard this morning.  I planned that we would stay for about an hour and then go to music class Gymboree just down the street... but it turned out that we stayed all day!  The center was set up like a small village with cottages lining the walls.  Each cottage had a different theme: bait shop, diner, fire department, gas station, grocery store, vet’s office, etc. and each was had a variety of themed toys that went along with it.  There was even a small area with toys for less mobile infants.  There were also a few tables so the adults to sit and relax while the kids played freely.  In the back was a party room, which was also were Mothers & More provided snacks for any of our little ones who was interested.  It was definitely a family owned place, but I was impressed with the creativity behind its design.  I only wished it had an outdoor area, so we could enjoy the gorgeous weather today!  It was 59 F outside, so it was a shame we spent so many hours inside… though it was a lot of fun.

When Shawn woke up from his nap, we went for a walk.  I just couldn’t let this beautiful day pass by without taking advantage!  It was the first day of the year that we went out without a coat.  We played at park, watched trains, gazed at and heard geese at the pond, and watched dogs playing at the dog park.  By the time we got home, we had spent 2 hours on our wonderful walk enjoying being outside again.

We could have spent all day outside! (could’ve, should’ve, would’ve…)

Cumpleaños Felices, Raj!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAJ!

Shawn made a birthday banner last night, so I snuck that into Raj’s lunch this morning.  I also ordered a birthday bouquet of flowers and balloons to be delivered to his office - hopefully while there are plenty of patients around to witness! 

In Spanish class this morning, the topic was emotions.  We focused on happy/feliz, sad/triste, tired/cansado, and angry/enojado.  We sang If You’re Happy and You Know It / Si Estás Feliz y Lo Sabes, which I’ve listened to countless times on the Language Stars CD that we have in the car.  It’s one of those songs that I know the words and I understand (knowing the English version helps), but I can’t get my mouth to form the correct words fast enough to be able to actually sing along!  Oh, well.  Here are the lyrics:

If You’re Happy and You Know It If you’re happy and you know it, you will clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will show it, If you’re happy and you know it, you will clap your hands. If you’re sad and you know it, you will cry…. If you’re angry and you know it, you will stomp your feet…. If you’re tired and you know it, you will yawn….

Si Estás Feliz y Lo Sabes Si estás feliz y lo sabes, aplaudirás. Si estás feliz y lo sabes, tu cara lo mostrará, Si estás feliz y lo sabes, aplaudirás. Si estás triste y lo sabes, llorarás... Si estás enojado y lo sabes, pisarás... Si estás cansado y lo sabes, bostezarás...

For our project, we made ‘paper plate face flips.’  We glued happy and sad faces on opposite sides of a paper plate and then attached a popsicle stick handle.  They weren’t really masks, since there aren’t any eye holes, but close enough!

In the evening, Raj and Shawn went to Open Gym at Gymboree while I made a birthday dinner – BBQ brats (in the broiler).  After dinner, Raj opened presents and we had dessert:  a homemade mini chocolate cake with a layer of butterscotch pudding in the middle and topped with homemade icing – YUM!. 

Here is Shawn saying Happy Birthday to Raj when he got home from work:

Very Sticky Thank Yous

This morning, both kids took turns sitting on our new potty seat.  Neither of them did anything while on there, but it was very exciting!

In the car on the way to Open Gym at Gymboree, Abby counted, “Uno, dos, tres!”  Diego would be very impressed, I’ll be sure to let him know tomorrow!

At Open gym, Abby rode a teeter-totter/rocking horse and exclaimed, “Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!...”  One of the other moms jokingly asked, “So, she likes horses, eh?”  On the other side of the room, Shawn climbed up an A-frame.  It had skinny round rungs instead of slots for the steps on each side, so it was a little more tricky than what he normally climbs.  Still, he managed to climb up and down “all by my-self!”  I think I held my breath a little while he did it, but boy was he proud of himself afterwards!  There was a parachute flung over the monkey bars by the A-frame.  It generated some major static electricity and Shawn fell victim to it while he played under it.

Shawn and Abby also had fun going down the slides.  Shawn made sure to give another friend a chance by saying, “Sundus’s turn!”  Later, when she and her mother were getting ready to leave, he said, “Bye-bye, Sundus!” though he was rather quiet, so I don’t think they could hear him.

After Open Gym, we stopped by Dominicks for some groceries.  The check-out clerk thought Abby and Shawn were “absolutely adorable!” and gave them “Thank you!” stickers used to mark over-sized purchases.  Abby and Shawn were thrilled with their sticky accolades.

      

Shawn, Baron, and I took a two hour walk after Abby went home.  It was just to the park by the train station and back, but stopping to look at every pine cone, branch, and fallen leaf along the route took a very long time.  Shawn has gotten very confident climbing the playground equipment to get to the slides.  He has no interest in the short slides at all – only the big, bumpy, and spiraling ones for this big boy!  It was getting pretty chilly on our walk home and definitely time for dinner.  It’s just so hard to leave the park behind, so we walked home via the path by the dog park to help distract Shawn from having to say bye to his slides.  The dog park was busy, so there were lots of dogs to see as they ran over each other to greet us at the fence.  I felt bad for Baron since we weren’t actually going into the dog park – such a tease, I know.  Sorry, buddy.  Shawn’s still at eye-level with most of the dogs there and can barely hold his own against Baron (or his tail!) when he gets excited.  When he gets a little older, I’ll reinstate our dog park membership and we’ll all go play in there.  In the meantime, it's time for dinner!

Maple Sugaring at Kline Creek Farm

Waa-Hoo!  Shawn slept through the night last night!

This morning, we went to Kline Creek Farm (part of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County) for a Maple Sugaring event.  The blurb I read about it said, “See how 1890s farm families tapped trees and boiled the collected sap into maple syrup and sugar.”

We learned that making maple syrup was a very common practice for farmers.  This time of year is too early to get into the fields to do any farming, since the ground is either too hard from being frozen or too mushy from the thaw.  All they needed was a day above freezing so the sap would move from the roots to the trunk and lower branches of the trees.  The docent explained that the best days to tap the trees are those when it’s below freezing at night, but above freezing in the day.  There isn’t a wide window of opportunity because once it gets warm enough for the sap to reach the ends of the branches, the trees use the sugar in the sap to produce leaves.  The sap buckets were emptied into a copper cauldron hanging over a small fire.  Volunteer/docent explained that the sap was mostly water, which had to be boiled out to make the syrup.  Many trees were tapped and had metal buckets hanging from them, but volunteer said it would take 45-50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup! (I think I remembered the numbers right.)  He also explained that although it wasn’t a labor intensive process, it was very time consuming.  Over boiling the syrup at the end of the day’s work would crystallize the sugars and ruin the batch – a very frustrating mistake.  There were also hands-on demos for tapping a “sleeping” log (a log that was chopped down and laying on a stand for easy access to visitors), but it was pretty crowded when we walked by.  We opted to visit some animals while the crowd was occupied there.

We first stopped by the chicken coop and held a “bock-bock” dialogue with some of the hens.  (When we didn’t see a rooster, I wondered if he was sent to freezer camp like some of his cousins from Oma and Opa’s house!)  We walked through a barn and saw draft horses being brushed.  The size of these creatures was incredible - their hide quarters were taller than our heads! 

Then, we walked down a path to the sheep.  Shawn liked them the best.  He felt their wool, pointed out their eyes and noses, called to the babies, and watched some sparrows darting in and out of the rafters. We admired the thick wool on the adults and enjoyed watching the lambs run to their ewes and play with each other.  There were more than a dozen lambs, a few were only 3-4 days old!  A couple still had tails, which looked pretty funny, but that just made us wonder why their tails were cropped to begin with.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a docent nearby to ask.  (I found out later that cropping the tails makes it easier to sheer the wool and it helps keep the sheep a little cleaner.) 

The last animals we saw were a couple of cattle.  They also had thick furry coats, but Raj and I wondered how much they could weather the Chicago winters, especially in blizzards like the one we had a month ago.  When we got back to the center of the farm, the draft horses were ready to be hitched up to a wagon.  Then visitors helped load alfalfa hay (animal food) and straw (animal toilet paper) onto the wagon to be delivered to the sheep and cattle we just saw. 

We didn’t have time to tour the farm house, but on our way back to the parking lot, we chatted with a honey bee “expert” while Raj and I sampled honey.  We passed on the honey for Shawn, but he enjoyed the plain crackers.  (Though I have no doubt it would have been fine, our pediatrician said there’s a risk of botulism for young children.  When we got home, I looked it up online and saw it’s more of a risk before the first birthday… hmmmm… bummer!  I’ll have to find out more about that!)

Afterwards, Raj and Shawn headed off to a birthday party and I came home to a relaxing afternoon by myself.  Ahhhhh….

Mothers & More Resale

Swimming lessons started the morning, but nothing very ground-breaking to report.  Gradually, Shawn’s getting acclimated to the class.  I was getting worried that swimming lessons were going to be more stressful than they were worth to him, but I think we’ll hang in there and see how he does over the next few weeks.

In the afternoon, Shelley joined Shawn and me at the Mothers & More resale at the DuPage County Fairgrounds.  Shawn napped on the way there and I carried him in a hip sling to give him a chance to rest a little longer once we arrived.  There were rows upon rows of tables overflowing with children’s clothes, toys, and other “gear”.  Luckily, I had a couple of large, sturdy bags my mom made from old bird seed sacks because we never would have been able to carry all that we bought otherwise!  I had the extra weight of Shawn in the sling, but it was much easier than carrying him by hand or trying to keep an eye on him in the crowd of people and tables.  (Holding him probably helped limit how much I ended up buying, too!)  In addition to clothes, I found a pair of hardly worn dress shoes (which kids this age really only wear once or maybe twice before they outgrow them, so it was nice to find a pair super cheap!), a potty seat to put on the toilet, and a travel potty to help the potty training process when we’re out and unsure about the nearest bathroom. (Though we’re not ready to start training quite yet, I think Shawn’s ready to at least become familiar with it all.)  Afterwards, we tried to stop by two other groups’ resales that were going on at the same time, but by the time we left Mothers & More, everything was shutting down – it was probably a good thing that we couldn’t shop any more, but still, we were a little disappointed to miss more great deals.  We’ll have to plan to come earlier for the Fall Resale in September.  We grabbed fliers for it so we can put it on our calendars now!

Calling All... Calculators??

Abby was back with us today.  She was much more “herself” today, compared with what I saw on Wednesday.  I can’t say it’s been a great day for sharing between Abby and Shawn, but both have struggled with it, so at least the blame is shared equally! 

After playing for a while in Shawn’s room, both of the kids started bringing me books from the bookshelves.  I took that as a sign that they wanted story time.  So, we all climbed onto the rocking chair (good thing it’s the extra-wide seat model!) and I put my feet up on the ottoman to help keep anyone from sliding off my lap.  We read a rhyming and very rhythmic story about a concert in the park, I Like the Music by Leah Komaiko.  Abby especially liked the line, “I like the beat – Of my feet – When my shoes hit the street – And I rapa-tapa-tapa – On the hot concrete.”  But, she got a little carried away when her feet started going “rapa-tapa-tapa” on my shins!  Ouch!  We also read some nursery rhymes and the kids helped me finish some of the lines. 

Then, Abby looked like she was begin to fade, so Shawn excused us while I put her down for a nap.  When I came back, Shawn made a special request for his, what else??, “dump truh book” (Tonka Big Book of Trucks by Patricia Relf)! We flipped through the pages and I let Shawn do most of the “reading” this time.  Luckily, it’s not a story that needs to be read from beginning to end, each page features different types of trucks working together to do a job, i.e. build a house.  After a few pages in random order, we said “Night-night dump truh!” and turned out the lights. 

Since Abby was still fighting her way back to health and Shawn didn’t actually fall asleep for about half an hour after she did, we were not likely to have everyone up and ready to go in time for Family Gym at Gymboree this afternoon.  I’d rather they get a good nap than wake them before they’re ready. 

When they did wake up, it was time to play.  They found a couple of calculators in our computer room.  Rather than playing with the buttons, which is what Shawn usually likes to do with them, they pretended they were telephones and proceeded to “call” each other over and over again!

If phones have calculators on them these days, shouldn't calculators have phones on them, too?

A Visit from Uncle Dave

My brother-in-law, Dave, came into town on a business trip last night.  It was really nice - We actually got a little more face time with him than we expected!  He took a cab here last night. (Raj was going to pick him up after a meeting, but it turned out that they were practically racing each other home.)  We hung out for just a little while last night before bed. 

This morning, Shawn woke up around 6:30 and didn't go back to sleep.  So, while I was getting him dressed, Dave peaked his head into Shawn's room - I think it put Shawn into shock!  He didn't know what to do, so he went completely mute (even though Dave heard him gabbing away seconds before).  We all had a quick breakfast before Raj took Dave to his meeting on his way to his office.  It turns out that the building where Dave was working in was only a few miles away from our house!

Then, I got a phone call saying that, sure enough, Abby was sick and staying home today. So, I texted Dave offering lunch.  I picked him up around noon.  We went to TGIFridays.  (Lunch took a little longer that it probably should have, but he didn't seem too concerned about getting back right away.)  During lunch, Shawn finally opened up and actually played with Dave over his tomatoes and noodles... and a very special choo-choo train toy.  We drove Dave back to work and offered him a ride to the airport when he was done, but didn't hear from him, so I'm assuming he took a cab instead.  (He mentioned at lunch that he didn't want me to worry about rush hour traffic on the way back from the airport.) 

Glad Dave's company sent him out to "Fly Over Country!"  We're happy to provide non-hotel accommodations any time!