Chicago

When Annie woke up this morning, the first thing she said was, "When can we go back to Chicago?" So, yeah, we had a great time. We walked about 5 miles, rode a bunch of escalators, spent a ton of money, peed in several, several interesting bathrooms (the Ritz Carlton by far the most posh) and made her first visit to that lovely city as magical as possible. We spent the morning along the lake, riding the carousel at Lincoln Park Zoo and frolicking in the gorgeous gardens there before taking the El downtown for lunch. We ate at Rainforest Cafe even though it is SUCH a cheesy tourist trap because Annie absolutely loved it. She got a Shirley Temple and could maybe have just stayed in that restaurant, watching all the tropical fish and the fake alligator, for the rest of the day. Instead, we went to the 96th floor of the Hancock building for dessert and drinks. The best view from that location? The women's restroom, which had one entire wall of windows looking out at the city. I took a picture of Annie in there with the skyline in the background. As we were walking to Navy Pier, Annie spotted a park that looked fun, so we stopped and let her play for a while. We rode the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier and ended up getting a montage of Korean food, sushi, and edamame and settling down for a picnic dinner back in the Lincoln Park gardens at night before heading home. There were two separate weddings going on while we were eating, so Annie got to watch the brides while popping her edamame out of the shell. She was very happy. She fell asleep on the way home.

I took pictures with my old-school, non-digital Nikon, so I can't post them here. But if I could, the images would show Annie's big, happy eyes taking in every new detail of such an interesting place, and Jason and I with big, happy smiles because we got to do all fun things with just her all day long. I can't wait to take her again and again and am looking forward to being able to do more (museums, plays, real restaurants) each time. It was a tiny bit torturous being in that great city and having to stick to "kid" things - no Cubs game? No Anthropologie? No dinner at Bin 36? I am already plotting a way for Jason and I to go again.

As for Jemma, she played happily at my parents' all day long and went to bed there well before we got back. When we rolled in around 10:00 p.m., we of course had to wake her out of a dead sleep and put her in her carseat for the drive home. Oh, how I wished I could just cuddle her on my lap! She is notoriously a terrible car sleeper, so we were fearful that she'd scream furiously the rest of the way home and keep a sleepy Annie awake. Instead, she didn't go back to sleep, but just schmooed around in her carseat, drowsy, and smiled big, slow smiles at me whenever I turned around to peek at her. "Hi!" she'd say, brightly. Then she'd look over at Annie, sleeping next to her. "Ah-dee." Yep, we were all back together again.

Today we all slept in and then rushed around to get Annie to her first day of Sunday School. The rest of the day, we did little projects: vacuuming, unpacking, cleaning closets and putting away too-small clothes from summer, tearing down a fence between our house and Dean and Bona's (!), cooking dinner (this butternut squash risotto, which did not disappoint), and taking the girls to the track to run. It was nice to be at home with no place to go and no big events to gear up for this week. I tore last week's page off the calendar, threw it in the trash. Next week = very few plans. And I'm so glad.