eloise at 11 months

At 11 months our girl is crawling all over the place and is FAST. She is pulling up a ton on everything - the couch, the wall, her brother. She is starting to cruise a little bit around the furniture and will from time to time take a few seconds to stand all by herself. She is waving and clapping, and gives kisses. A few favorites right now - the way she plops backward from standing to the floor, shaking the entire room; how she follows her brother around everywhere and gets so excited when we go in to get him after his nap; how she snuggles on our shoulder - resting her head for just a moment or two; how she beams at her daddy; how she beams in general. She is such an absolute delight!

the city of elevators

Mid-April we decided a family vacation was in high order and so we bravely decided on heading north to sweet-old-home Chicago with our two babes. And what I loved about our weekend is that it was totally, 100% exactly what you would expect a weekend in a busy city (with rain the whole time) to be with an almost 3 year old and 10 month old. Meltdowns. Trying to figure out how to all sleep together in a teeny tiny hotel room (read: Eloise screaming in the pack and play, Ethan head butting Pete so hard that Pete cried, and me, clinging to the edge of the bed while Ethan sprawled out between us). Wonder and excitement for Ethan especially, getting to ride the trains that went into tunnels.

And, Ethan taught us something that we never knew about Chicago, despite living there for 3 years. It is a huge city filled with elevators. By far the highlight of the trip for Ethan was getting to take the elevator in our hotel, the subway, and almost every other building that we went to. The city is a place of many UPS and DOWNS. It was a delight to see this through Ethan's eyes.

Here are some of the highlights in pictures.

Day One - heading to Michigan Ave to find the water tower place. 

Enjoying some Chicago style pizza at Giordanos.

It rained pretty much the whole weekend but we did do quite a bit of walking anyway.

A major highlight of our trip - THE TRAIN! It felt so normal to hop on the El again and go to breakfast at Ann Sathers, one of our most favorite breakfast joints in the city. Ethan LOVED it!

This may not look like a feat of strength but Eloise (a good 20+ pounds) was doing backdives in my arms amidst a full train, while I was trying to also hold on. The girl is strong and DETERMINED, but we survived.

We thought the best museum to try with two littles was Shedd's Aquarium since they have huge aquariums that we thought would be fun for the kids.

 A big Dora on the way in. 

 Let's just say we were pretty happy that we decided on getting the $8 tickets (instead of the next tier $28 tickets) as the only thing Ethan was really interested in were the elevators that were on either side of the floor. He ran back and forth a bazillion times between them. 

After our 45 minute visit to Shedd's (again thankful for spending $16 and not $60), the kids were pooped.

Later tried to spend sometime in the Signature Room at the top of the Hancock tower. We thought the whole 95 floor elevator thing would be fun for Ethan. It was ideal thinking, and we should have known better. Pete drank his beer in probably 3 minutes flat as our time was spent either chasing Ethan around or forcing him to sit down while he protested very strongly. Hence, our visit to the top was very abbreviated.

Our last night we walked to The Rainforest Cafe for dinner. We thought it would be fun for the kids but after a busy weekend filled with a lot of activity, it was more overstimulating than exciting. The thunderstorms, and birthday song shouts at nearby tables were just a bit much. We made the best of it though and enjoyed some dinner. 

Another reason we picked Chicago for our mini-vacation was to go to IKEA and get some things for our new house and Pete's new office for his business. We spent four, yes FOUR hours in the store. The kids were absolute troopers through hour 3 and then hit their very understandable limit (which we were also hitting). 

And, four hours and 6 carts later, we were off, back to the Lou - trailer and all.

A wonderful, crazy, memorable weekend indeed!