Preschool of a different sort

We seriously considered enrolling Lincoln in a preschool program for this fall, getting all the way to the paperwork process at one point, before we finally decided to go another route.

So he's enrolled in a gymnastics class at The Little Gym - the same one Levynn attended - and an art class at Old Town School of Folk Music, where Levynn took ballet earlier this year.

Those alone are a big deal for him because he has not done any socializing without Mom or Dad. But he did great today in his first gymnastics class, following the teacher through the door and jumping right into the activity.





We think this will work out fine.

Back at Millenium Park

We went to Millenium Park today and watched a short performance from the Cirgue Shanghai Cloud 9 cast at the Chicago Sister Cities International Festival, made mobiles at the Family Fun Festival, ate lunch at Park Grill, and shared ice cream from its next-door cafe.

Day 10

We're counting down to the first day of Levynn's school year with our Advent house calendar, filling it with things to do each of the 24 days.

Today is the 10th day - two weeks left! - and we went to the beach, made our own pizzas, and made cookies-and-cream ice cream.

Kaleidoscope... of stuff to do

The other museums in Chicago could learn a thing or two about family programming from The Art Institute, of all places.

Once family unfriendly (or so we've heard), The Art Institute now doesn't settle for just opening its arms. Its family center, which opened with the Modern Wing last year, is free every day, and that's only the starting point. Kids always are admitted free to the museum proper as well. And there are days like this one, Kaleidoscope - A Family Day, when the museum even risks turning off the old art crowds to draw in kids and engage them.

Today, there were five projects for all ages and one for teens, each in separate classrooms in the family center; three storytime sessions in another classroom; and, get this, three more projects for all ages in the (gasp!) art galleries.

No stodgy art museum is this!

Levynn through the lookingglass

Levynn's racking up the big-time staged versions of fairy tales!

To a list that also includes Broadway in Chicago shows of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Beauty and the Beast" and Joffrey Ballet's "Cinderella" now can be added Lookingglass Theatre's "Lookingglass Alice" - an original interpretation of Lewis Carroll's stories.

She and Dad attended the afternoon show today, and it was extraordinary. Levynn was yawning in her seat before it started, but she was wide-eyed or laughing throughout the performance - which is as much circus acrobatics and physical humor as it is traditional drama. So physical, in fact, that the extensive interaction with the audience included the White Knight perching on top of a man's shoulders just a few seats down our row.

A few official photos are here. The set is minimalist - to say the least - and there is little effort made to disguise the actors, with the exception of the Red Queen. The burden is on the actors' very physical performances, and they were great. It couldn't have hurt that we saw the five primary actors (one plays Alice only, the other four play all the other characters), no understudies.

The theater, which none of us had seen until today, is nestled within a signigicant Chicago landmark that we frequent regularly, the Water Tower Water Works building on Michigan Ave. (We go there because it also has a miniature library branch that we've made our pick-up point for books on hold.)

Here's the water works part.

Anyway, the theater seems really small, seating barely 200 people, for such a significant Chicago company (founded by ex-"Friends" star David Schwimmer and others at Northwestern University in 1988). But that also means there is not a bad seat in the house. There are just five rows of stadium-style seating on each side of the "stage," which is at floor-level. And we were right in the middle of the third row.

Oh, did we mention where we got the tickets, valued at $60 apiece? Facebook has its uses, folks! We won the tickets there.

She's doing this, too!

Six must be a magical age. That's her thought on the matter, at least.

And how about Linc's jumps?

It's as easy as this now

And it's so neat to watch!

Fun at - and to and from - Grandy's

On the train...




In Grandy's yard...












With Mammy and Pap...


More fun indoors...




Pumpkins in August!




And back on the train...


Thank you, everyone!

Levynn...

She finished her baseball "season" tonight with a career-high three at-bats (all ground balls up the middle as usual) and a successfully-executed play in the field (her throw hitting the leg of a wayward teammate excepted, of course!).

But all that matters is she enjoys it, unlike the soccer experience last fall. So we'll take it!

Oh, and we'll soon have a swimmer on our hands, too!

Levynn has started her last two pool outings "swimming" like this:



Then she finished both actually swimming like this:



Uncle Colin and Aunt Katey can vouch for it!

Now, what's with the quote marks here, used in so-called scare quotes?

The other night Dad and Levynn were reading "Knuffle Bunny Too" - one of our old picture books - and Levynn asked about the quote marks in this sentence, accompanying a photo of the character looking disgustedly at her food: Trixie "ate" her dinner. Dad replied that in an instance like that they can mean something isn't really true.

That may be a poor off-the-cuff explanation, but Levynn seemed to get the idea. Moments later, she brought a doll to the couch and said it was going to "listen" to the story. How does Dad know she meant "listen" and not just listen?

This is how.

Planet Earth, live and interrupted

Dad thought this sounded like the coolest thing: Hearing the Grant Park Orchestra perform the score from "Planet Earth Live" while watching the film on a big screen behind it on Millenium Park's Pritzker Pavilion stage.



Unfortunately, Dad didn't understand exactly how this would be done. He knew the movie is an edited version of the BBC TV series, but he didn't know it's broken into 5- to 10-minute segments and that between each and every one of those segments guest conductor George Fenton - a famous film composer who wrote the score - talks about the filmmaking process and the animals we're seeing on the screen. That kinda ruins the effect, doesn't it?! The kids certainly thought so.

The other problem: according to Millenium Park's web site, it's one hour long. But after an hour it was time for the intermission, not the end. So we left at that point.

Without even realizing it, though, we left at just the right time to see Navy Pier's fireworks as we walked up Michigan Ave.:



Kids dig the fireworks.