Spontaneous Day-O-Fun

I was feeling adventurous today, so I decided to do the unthinkable: take the girls into the city. All. By. Myself. Actually, this is only unthinkable because of the bathroom logistics. Bathrooms in the city tend to be small, and sometimes lack changing tables, neither is favorable when you have both a kid too small to hoist herself onto the toilet and another kid too small to do anything other than lie like a slug in your arms. So aside from that unthinkable bit, the city is the perfect random "special big girl day".

We had planned to go see the dolphins at the Shedd aquarium. I talked about it the entire drive downtown, Maggie was totally psyched... until we got to the parking garage and found out the aquarium closed early that day (1:00pm, the exact time of our arrival). My solution to this problem - which could easily have caused a full-blown melt down - really should be something I include in my resume under "good problem solver" and "able to think outside the box". I said, "Oh darn, the dolphins have to take a bath today! We can't see them right now after all. But we can see the dinosaurs LIKE CALLIOU DID." That last bit was the most important part, I could have just said, "blah, blah, blah, CALLIOU, blah," and it would have had the same effect. (for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, Calliou is the bane of my existence, an annoying, bald, whiny, cartoon kid on PBS).

So off to the Field Museum to see the dinosaurs, which was actually pretty great because it just happened to be free admission Tuesday. And I think there were extra dinosaurs there because their primary dino is having an anniversary or something.

On the way back to the parking garage, after a fun day at the museum, I was starting to feel a little nostalgic, thinking about how much fun it used to be to live in Chicago, how different it was from the suburbs. But then I paid my parking. I don't think all the cosmopolitan parents around me appreciated my use of expletives. But I'm sorry, spending more on parking in one afternoon than I spent on groceries last week - yeah, I think I'll stay in the burbs where I belong. Ah, but those dolphins can't stay in the bath forever...better start saving now.