The other visitors included one of my oldest friends: Courtney, my best friend in high school, who I haven't seen for more than 10 years. We met her and three of her kids at the Brookfield Zoo, and I remembered how much she has always loved animals. It was the perfect place for us all to re-connect, even though there was so much to see, we hardly got to talk. The boys had a great time with her 10 year old, Luke. We had hoped to see each other the next day as well, but Eli, her 2 year old, cut his head on the hotel's coffee table, and they spent that day in the ER. The day after that, they were in urgent care with Luke, who had a very bad ear infection. It had been a particularly cold and windy week for their visit, and they were all without coats or hats or anything to keep them warm. So I don't think they were very happy with their Chicago experience.
The following week, my new (but already dear) friend Anne met us at the Lincoln Park Zoo, because, truly, the zoo was just THE thing this month. Despite a belated start (and some frustrations with the city's public transportation—come on, Chicago! we're trying to make a good impression, here!), we had a lovely day. We had a picnic in the grass, and we "accidentally" fed the gulls large amounts of bunny crackers (Anne has a truly powerful—and wonderful—energy, and we have concluded that she summoned the gulls by just mentioning them). The boys had a fantastic time playing catch with her, running around in the abundant sunshine of that day, and we all had an amazing encounter with a polar bear.
Our month also included visits to the Shedd Aquarium, the Botanic Garden, Chinatown, and Harold Washington Park to try to find (and feed) the wild parrots who live there. This is officially the month we have become extremely interested in birds, and Max is fascinated by parrots in particular. We have sought them out in the zoos, and we have gotten small plastic figures of them, cute stuffed versions of them, and even large beautiful puppets of them. When at the park, the boys are prone to running around, arms outstretched, pretending to be parrots, and Max was especially delighted to notice that the red and blue pattern of his coat was similar to a Macaw's wings. We watched a great documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. And we also got a Fandex bird guide with photos of and information about many varieties of birds (although sadly, no parrots), and we've been slowly working our way through it, reading every detail and letting those details really soak in.
The longing for a dog also continues, and on warm spring days, we have spotted so many puppies and people out walking their dogs. We've petted them, we've even lurked about at the dog park searching for opportunities to interact with them, but we're still not quite ready to have one in our very own house. Soon, maybe. We just some got ants and are still enjoying Bade, our Betta, so the boys are happy to have some kind of pets to take care of (okay, so that's stretching it a bit, I know).
Also this month: we started construction on our attic build out, so in between all the visits to local parks, we made trips to the permit office and met with our architect and contractor to revise, rethink, refine our plans. And last Monday, the workers arrived at 7:30 a.m. to make a lot of noise and very quick progress. I actually started yet another blog to track our attic construction (crazy, I know, since obviously I can barely keep up with the two I already had).
Last Saturday morning, we woke up to realize it was the last of our Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert series, so we scrambled to eat and dress and head to the symphony center in time for a performance. The boys seemed to mostly enjoy it, and Max drew through much of it, producing a picture of a violin (which he has again mentioned he would like to play). Afterward, we headed across the street to the Art Institute for yet more culture. It just seemed like the thing to do on our oh so very downtown day.
And of course, this being April in Chicago, this month also included a dizzying array of fluctuating weather: rain, sleet, hail, snow, sun, wind. Oh, and puddles.
Whew. It was a busy month (and it's actually not even over yet!).
We have spent the last two rainy days at home, vegging out. We've played Uno and Go Bat and video games. We built with blocks, played Legos, made cookies. They've dressed up as astronauts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had a sword fight. We've watched a lot of Spongebob and Penguins of Madagascar. I spent lots of time on the computer, and then I felt unhappy about how much tim I spent on the computer. It felt very lazy, but now, looking back over the last month, I see it was absolutely necessary to have this sort of complete down time.
So this might explain the lack of blog entries in the last month, but hopefully I can make it up with this video, which, upon reading this "brief" summary of our month, barely captures it. But it's the best I've got. (And if I do say so myself, it's pretty darn good.)
