Showtime... again!

Here's Levynn earlier tonight, moments before she and Mom left for the opening night performance of Broadway in Chicago's "Beauty and the Beast." Isn't she lovely?!

We won four tickets to the show, and they went with one of Levynn's classmates and her mom. They said it was great!

And those two kids are best buddies now; another playdate is scheduled for Friday.

Mom's big weekend

You probably noticed a lot of college basketball games were played throughout the last four days. More on that in a minute.

But you probably did not notice that Chicago annually is the site of the largest 8-kilometer (5-mile) road race in the world. It's called the Shamrock Shuffle 8K, sponsored by Chicago Marathon backer Bank of America, and Mom and more than 29,000 other people ran in it this morning.

Her last race also was an 8K, but she wanted to experience the kind of crowd she'll encounter in the marathon. Well, crowd is a good word for it. It was crowded. It also was cold, wet and windy, a day after we welcomed spring with hours and hours of snowfall. And she stopped midway through the race to take off her sweatshirt and wrap it around her.

In other words, she was a little slower today. She finished in 51:50, one second off her previous time. She placed 15,915th overall; 7,086th among women; and 1,491st in her age division.

Back to basketball. Mom entered a bracket challenge at the office, and she ranks a close third after two rounds. She's the only person in the top 16 who picked Kentucky to win it all, too, so the Wildcats can take her with them to the top. (Dad can't believe he just wrote that.)

Great work, Mom!

63 degrees and other things

Yes, it ws 63 degrees in Chicago today. We wouldn't have believed it unless we went out there in t-shirts - and we did!

So this was a great day for Levynn's first playdate of the school year. Mom brought her and a friend home from school, and the two of them played wonderfully together all afternoon.

Lincoln, meanwhile, took to sounding out letters in words today. He just points to a word, starts naming letters and saying each's corresponding sound. Like the temperature, it's hard to believe!

Yesterday, out of the post-Olympics blue, he started mimicking Apolo Ohno - you know, the short track speedskater with all the medals.




And look at the little apple eaters!

Inspiration

Levynn attended a classmate's fun birthday party - at American Girl! - Saturday, and here is a rendering she made on the easel this afternoon (complete with American Girl dolls).

Back at the rink

Try, try again!

Mom found Levynn a pair of ice skates at a consignment store for less than the cost of a rental the other day. So we went back to the Millenium Park rink yesterday - it closes March 14 - and a combination of Lev's recent experience, double rather than single blades on the new skates, and Dad's own comfort level on the ice resulted in Lev falling just twice!

Showtime!

Mom and Levynn, our own little ballerina, attended the final show of The Joffrey Ballet's "Cinderella" this afternoon. And that funny girl came home dancing not as Cinderella - but as a jester! But at least she came home dancing, right?

Lincoln's field trip

Mom joined Levynn on a school field trip to Shedd Aquarium recently, and Dad decided to get Lincoln there, too, when it was free today. He wasn't 2 yet the last time he was there. So it was much more interesting to him today.

Ice queens

Levynn has been enjoying a five-day winter break from school. You've seen the sledding, and we also went to the Museum of Science and Industry. But she finished it in style today with her first ice skating adventure.

She and Mom - a novice herself - strapped on rented skates and braved the crowd on Millenium Park's little oval, and they had a lot of fun. See for yourself with this video compilation.



Dad's got next.

A sledding hill!

As a lot of snow fell over the last two days, we told the kids we'd go sledding after school today - without knowing where we would do that!

After our last large snowfall, Dad just pulled the kids around the flat park across the street. But we were looking for more, without having to travel far on a bus to get to one of the noted sledding hills in the city. One familiar location, behind the outdoor farmer's market where we've shopped, finally occurred to us this afternoon. Just in time!


Poor Lincoln was traumatized on the initial establish-a-path plunge, when he sat in front of Levynn and Mom and took the brunt of the snow that piled into the sled. So you can understand his reaction here.

He preferred to walk through the snow after that.



But Levynn loved it!

Making Valentines