March Madness (1st half) - Chicago Counts Style

As I am still behind on blogs and such, I'm going to attempt to consolidate several into two longish blogs.

March 2, 2009: 7 years of wedded bliss
March started with a bang...Art and I celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary! We had an overnight in downtown CHI planned as our anniversary trip (we don't do presents, but opt for a trip), so we were not planning on celebrating on this particular day. However, I could not let the day pass by totally unnoticed so I planned a little surprise for Art. I asked Sarita from upstairs to come down at 8pm and just be in the house while we were gone. When the evening arrived, we got the boys into bed by 7:30 - Art thinking it was just so we could have a bit more time alone. Unfortunately, he started thinking something was up when I came out of our bedroom wearing shoes (we generally only wear house slippers in the house). But the knock on the door still surprised him. So off we went to Union a bar/pizzeria we have wanted to try, and specifically to do research for Jake and Maddy's trip in April. It looks like a very trendy cool place from outside. We went for drinks and dessert. I had a glass of wine and Art had a beer and we shared a wonderful chocolate mousse thingy. We won't go there again - not because it was awful, but b/c it won't fit into our budget for awhile. Still, it was an enjoyable evening. We paid Sarita $10 for the 2 hours we were gone, which worked out great for us.

March 3, 2009: First playdate
Yea! Finally a social get-together with another mom! There is a family at our church that lives about 3 blocks from us. The mom invited us over a few weeks ago but her boys got sick the night before and had to cancel. She has three boys - twins that are 3 and a nearly-2 year old. It was high energy! Zachary likes to think that he's a good wrestler, but most of his experience is with adults who know how to not hurt him. The funniest moment was when Zach rode into their room on a ride-on toy, and one of the twins hit him on the head with a plastic sword. Zach calmly backed out of the room back into the living room where he found it safer to play with the younger boy. We'll definitely invite them over to our house to play - we also have a bit more room thanks to the play room.

March 6, 2009
Snow snow snow! There has been a LOT of snow recently. It is starting to collect in piles and drifts on the frozen lake. You can no longer tell where the lake ends and the beach begins. Here are some pics, though not great that show this.



March 6, 2009: Wyatt or hair-less gorilla
Just thought these pics were pretty funny looking.

Wearing a preppy little outfit from Marieke & Ruurd

Wy just looks like he is too uncomfortable in his large frame.

March 8: Shayna turns 29 AGAIN (or, 34)
I sent an email out to everyone in our bible study group asking for someone to babysit the boys on my birthday so Art and I could go out to celebrate. A couple, Bob and Robin agreed to come over. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if either of them are allergic to cats, and Robin is, big time. She was about 8 months pregnant and had to take some baby Benadryl that we had. We felt so terrible that we did not stay out long - a little over an hour - and hurried back to relieve her. We did get in a little walk, and have some coffee and a little chat. Good enough for me. :)

Another big thing happened on March 8, though I doubt Art wants me to give it much detail. He got bitten perhaps, and the bump (on his "hip") got infected. It was pretty bad by the time that Art showed me on Friday. We put some Neosporin on it Fri and Sat, but by the time church was over on Sunday, it looked pretty horrific still. Art called his Dr. who said "come on in" (he is an older Jewish guy that does not work Saturdays, but works on Sundays). Art thinks that the Dr. was a little doubtful about the seriousness of Art's claim until he dropped his trousers. His response was "Oh MY! Yes, we need to take care of that". So it got cut out w/ a scalpel. Ouch! Art was a bit sore on my birthday walk. I MAY HAVE said something SLIGHTLY insensitive when he complained that it hurt. It's POSSIBLE that I said "you know what else hurts - GIVING BIRTH". Oops! I was forgiven only b/c it was my birthday.

March 12, 2009: Boys playing together
Zachary often likes to play with Wyatt in his "big bed" (crib), but had never expressed interest to play in the "little bed" (travel bed)...until today. Here they are playing together.




March 14, 2009: Trip to the Zoo!
The Lincoln Park Zoo is a FREE zoo in Chicago. Admission is free, but parking can be up to $24. Lucky for us, Art's co-worker is a Zoo member, and let us borrow his pass, which gives you free parking. Today was supposed to warm up a bit, so we decided to go for it. The kids were dressed fine, but I was definitely too cold. It did not warm up as fast as I thought it would. Here are some of the highlights


Zach posing by the polar bear exhibit.


Polar bears - brother and sister


Zachary posing by the polar bear sizer. Glad that plexiglass is thick!

Zachary's attention span was pretty short. He would say "I want to see the monkeys", so we'd go to the monkeys, then 3-5 seconds there he would say "I want to see the kangaroos" and so on. It was like doing the zoo "fast fast" as Zach would say.

Off to the gorilla exhibit.

Here is a mother and daughter gorilla enjoying some cuddle time.


Exhibit was inside and therefore a great place for a snack and some juice. Here we were just sitting around, like all the other families.


Zachary playing in a tunnel that kids could crawl up to get a close look at the glass. He loved this, but did a good job taking turns.

Many more exhibits, both inside and out until it was finally lunch time.

Here we are, having a picnic outside, before I took Wyatt inside to be nursed.

Then we loaded back into the car and headed home. Two exhausted boys and two exhausted parents.