A Taste

Mom worked a weird shift today - from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. - and we thought it made for a good opportunity to hit Taste of Chicago, which started its 10-day run in Grant Park on Friday. So Dad and the kids met Mom at Tribune Tower and walked to the park.


Mom was ready with a master plan, but the crowds and the intermittent downpours (check out the sky) limited us to the northern half of the event.


Mom still feasted on some treats (like this rice pudding with mango, cheesecake with strawberries, fruit sorbet, marscapone gelato, french toast sticks and cookies and cream frozen yogurt in a waffle cone), which obviously were her primary target. She also tasted deep dish pizza and prime rib quesadilla.


Dad was more interested in the hearty foods, like that deep dish pizza. Levynn was interested in it all!


Lincoln, poor boy, ate a packed lunch.

We intended to sit and listen to the Plain White T's (they of the "Hey There Delilah" hit), but we just stood under tree cover in the distance for a few songs before we headed for home.

Gone West

Not far, though, and not for long! We drove to White Pines State Park in northwest Illinois on Tuesday morning and returned on Thursday afternoon.

Our accomodations at the park were cozy. This is the inside of our humble one-room cabin (where Dad is horsing around with the kids on the bed).


We didn't get there with much in the way of plans. We had looked into quite a few touristy spots but decided just to wing it. Dad did want to see at least one of the many Lincoln (as in Abe) sites, though, and we made it to three of them (including Dixon's exhibit of the Lincoln Highway, the country's first trancontinental road).

Across the river from that exhibit, we found the only known statue of Lincoln in a military uniform, and we took some neat pictures of our Lincoln with that Lincoln. Click on the slideshow while it's playing to see the shots enlarged.




Here's another statue of Lincoln. But this one's a wood carving, one of many in the Amboy city park. Our stop here was little more than a drive-by. It was hot and it was the end of our day, and Dad and Levynn just hopped out of the car to snap a few shots.


After checking out of the cabin, we drove down the road to the local swimming hole - "Lake" LaDonna, which, as a body of water, Dad thinks is somewhere between a puddle and a pond.


Levynn liked it.


Lincoln didn't.

What a city boy! But he takes after Dad, who doesn't like sand between his toes, either. Levynn just goes with it, as she goes with most everything.

Flip if you're 4!

Oh, and Levynn spoke like she's 4, too - or maybe 5, or 6, or 7, or who knows.

Mom asked her if she'd like a drink with her snack this afternoon, and Levynn said, "I don't need a drink. Thanks for offering, though."

'Nature in the city,' Mom says

Mom spied a bird building a nest in the ivy atop the fence in our backyard yesterday.

When she looked there today, there were two eggs in the nest.


And when she looked again today, the bird was sitting on them.

Levynn is 4!

UPDATED

You can see that we had a deservedly big day, which we intended to be even deservedly bigger - with dinner and a concert in Millenium Park - but it looked like rain was coming (again) and the kids were pooped. So we called it a night with a delivery from Leona's.

Happy birthday, Levy!

Happy Father's Day 2008

A lot has happened since last Father's Day, when, as Mom's friend Laura reminded us today, we posted a video salute to all the dads.

At the time, this blog was less than a week old, and Lincoln was still in the womb, we still lived in Louisville, we still owned a house, and Levynn had not stepped foot in a classroom without Mom or Dad by her side.

What a year it's been!

So here's to another. Cheers!

Overheard

Dad, Levynn and Lincoln went to one of our local playgrounds this afternoon. Levynn has overcome her trepidation around strange kids (strange as in unknown, not weird), but she ran into a group of big boys there that intimidated her. They might have been 10 years old, and they were running on the equipment and shooting each other with squirt guns. So we left.

Levynn wanted to stop at the other playground, which actually is closer to our house, so we started walking in that direction. Dad told her that there might be a lot of kids there too on such a nice Saturday afternoon in June, "but we'll see how it looks."

To which Levynn replied, "We won't know how it looks until we look at it."

Back to the zoo

We returned to Lincoln Park Zoo yesterday, but this time we met a group there. It was (unofficial) Lakeview YMCA Kiddie Kollege Day, marking the last hurrah for most of them in the program.

The best part was watching Levynn interact with the other kids. She obviously has some buddies.


Kiddie Kollege is offered during the summer, but we decided to give Levynn a break before Pre-K starts in September. However, she will start a T-Ball "class" at the YMCA next week!

Will he yet?

All of a sudden, Lincoln showed an apparent desire to try to crawl this afternoon - emphasis on "try."

Levynn's next school

Or will it be her first "real" school? Either way, it will be a new school.

Levynn officially will attend Coonley Elementary School in September. We registered her for a five-afternoons-a-week Pre-K class there yesterday.

We chose Coonley over Agassiz, which is the one we mentioned here previously. We were offered the Coonley spot late in the process, and several facts about the school won us over. It is undergoing a multi-million dollar makeover this summer and is becoming a Regional Gifted Center - a magnet school for smart kids, in other words (Pre-K is not part of that program). It also is on our street, albeit 14 blocks north.

Attending Pre-K at Coonley probably will not increase the likelihood that Levynn will be able to attend kindergarten there because it's not our neighborhood school. But we all know she's gifted, right?

Why not?

Dad was adding the previous post about the book fair tonight when he heard what sounded like Bluegrass music coming through the front windows. So he peeked outside and, believe it or not, saw three guys and a gal strumming away on a porch across the street!

Overwhelmed with curiosity, Dad walked over there and said, "We moved here from Kentucky recently, and I thought I heard Bluegrass over here."

"Yes, you did," one guy said.

A few moments later, Dad asked, "So why ARE you playing Bluegrass over here?"

And one guy just said, "Why not?"

Indeed, why not!

It turns out that at least one of the guys - Dad didn't stick around for all the details - lives in the apartment on the top floor of that building, and he's a Chicagoan. One of the other guys also is a Chicago native, and the third guy is from Colorado. The gal is from North Carolina.

Stranger, though, is this: The other two people standing on the porch and listening to this quartet are from LOUISVILLE.

What a coincidental day!

Book fair

After two brutal days without air conditioning, forgive us if we're patting ourselves on the back now that we didn't let more heat ruin our plan this morning.

After Levynn's ballet class at the YMCA, we drove downtown, parked in the Tribune lot and rode the bus to the newspaper-run Printers Row Book Fair. It's billed as the largest event of its kind in the Midwest. Held outside, right in the middle of several streets, it included 150 exhibitors (mostly small publishing companies and bookstores), author talks and signings, and a Kids Corner with musical performances and activities.

Guess where we started? In Kids Corner, of course, and we heard a little of Justin Roberts and The Not Ready for Naptime Players (pictured below).


We stopped at a few booths, primarily to satisfy Dad's curiousity, and then stopped along the route to eat lunch curbside at the fancy-schmancy Custom House.

The main library was barely a block from the restaurant, and we walked over there after lunch to cool down and rest. S.E. Hinton (pictured below, roughly), who wrote such famous young-adult novels as The Outsiders and Tex, was signing books in the lobby after receiving the Young Adult Book Prize.


In the children's department, we ran into one of Dad's old college friends, her husband (who was her boyfriend way back then) and their two kids - a 20-month-old boy and a three-year-old girl. They live on the South Side and were in the library for the same reason we were there, which was a wild coincidence.

We decided to head home after that, which meant that we'd leave without any new books - but maybe not without any new friends.

We reiterate

Forget spring.

According to weather.com, and confirmed by our sweat, the temperature and heat index reached 88 degrees and 97 degrees, respectively, in Chicago on Thursday. That began a potentially indefinite stretch of 80-some-odd-degree misery here.

The one saving grace: the wind, the same wind that we cursed in the winter. It might be all that keeps us sane during the much-anticipated Printers Row Book Fair on Saturday.

Hot town, summer in the city

OK, how 'bout we just forget spring altogether! Chicago already has kicked into summer gear, with neighborhood festivals dotting the city and downtown events seemingly happening by the day.

We bused to Millenium Park this afternoon to see the free preview of Cirque Shanghai: Gold, which opens at Navy Pier on Wednesday. It was short but sweet. We're making plans for many more events in the weeks ahead.






City baby here wanted to know what was this green stuff poking him in the legs.

Here's Cloud Gate, which we showed in an earlier post, but you can see it all this time.


We also stopped at the nearby playground, which Dad and Levynn visited once during our month living the high life downtown. In case you can't see, she's wearing a National Baseball Hall of Fame hat and a Kentucky State Fair shirt here. She's feeling much better, by the way.


Lincoln recenly started swinging at playgrounds and gets a kick out of it.


It's hard to see what's behind Levynn in the distance, so there's a better shot of it below.


It's Buckingham Fountain, the centerpiece of Grant Park. It's quite a sight.

It's spring!

Yes, today, June 1 - just 19 days before the summer solstice - we finally are ready to declare that spring has arrived in Chicago. We're expecting the temperature to pass the 75-degree mark for the third day in a row, and the forecast calls for 70s and 80s in the days ahead.

Believe it or not, we needed the heat on overnight a week ago. Then the mercury soared to 84 degrees on Memorial Day, so we took in (part of) a Class A Kane County Cougars game - that's in Geneva, a far west suburb of Chicago. Levynn and Lincoln wore their new Cat in the Hat shirts.


Levynn performed "Y.M.C.A." with the crowd, just as Dad only recently taught her to do. This looks like the C.


This morning, Mom participated in the Run for the Zoo's 5K Fun Walk at Lincoln Park Zoo. Levynn was registered to run in the event's Gorilla Gallop, but she's sick and awoke at 6 a.m. in much need of rest. So Dad stayed home with her and Lincoln while Mom walked.