Chicago

The Aquarium was free on Sunday and the Art Museum on Monday.  Ella had the day off for Martin Luther King Day. I just had to find a hotel in between them both, one with a pool.  The Essex is right on Michigan Ave, and we could stay there for $80.00 so I booked it.  I find mid-January is the perfect time to take a mini-vacation to cheer everyone up.  I also find that standing in line for the aquarium on free day in mid-January with two Texans is very difficult.  They end up both trying to crawl into your coat with you and while that is very warm for everyone, it's also very unstable once they get past being cold and start tickling each other and blowing raspberries at each other while in your coat.  I had to kick them out periodically to remind them how cold it was.

The hotel pool was FREEZING.  Other kids were in there, everyone splashing and swimming and dunking like little porpoises all happy and squealing.  It's possible that it's just not the temperature we spoiled swimmers are used to, but our lips really did turn blue, so I don't think I'm just being wimpy.  When I finally talked my little blue lipped babies from the pool and back to the room, we ordered a delicious deep dish Chicago style pizza. I was glad to remember binoculars because the view was pretty awesome and while I got us all ready for the art museum on the second day Ella spent a good amount of time reporting on the gargoyles around town.

The aquarium was a hit save for the wait to get in and the art museum a bust save for the miniature hall.  Those children looked in every little room in a box in astonishment.  Ella inspired to go home and build her own doll house and Jack proudly naming everything in the little room.  But the rest of the time they were bored and nobody wanted to walk.  Next time, we'll go when it's warm.  Warm enough to walk to both attractions, warm enough to swim in the pool, and warm enough to stand on the lake front and stare out at the blue for a good long time while the kids run around the sculptures.

Traveling Light

I'm doing the big trip to the Midwest to visit friends and family in a few weeks and will be traveling light again. Sort of. I'll combine the diaper bag and purse and I'll probably be carrying a one year old in a sling, though we will also bring the stroller and car seat for the airline to check at the gate and of course my one carry on bag with all mine and the baby's clothes and don't forget in there my skate gear so I can make all practices while away and of course a seven year old in tow and all her clothes in her carry on behind her and a travel bag full of crayons and snacks and sparkly things. So traveling light is really sorta funny because I'll be a veritable sweaty camel humping it all through the airport, trying not to check anything and dragging it all behind me and some of it hanging off my arms and no doubt tied around my waist and jammed into my pockets. Anything else I may need will get borrowed or bought upon arrival

On Parenting - Part II

More events for the Parentolypics, in the newborn category:

• The pee dodge
• Marathon infant holding - extra points for eating with one hand
• Speed showering
• 20 Sit-up burping at 2am & 5am
• Sleep deprivation vocabulary use - extra points for knowing what that thingamajig is

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I am taking the kids to Illinois on Wednesday for two weeks. I am planning to fly up, bringing only one suitcase, a diaper bag, a car seat and a stroller. Yes, one suitcase for the three of us, for two weeks. It will contain;

For me:

• One dress
• One pair of jeans
• Two skirts
• Four shirts
• One long sleeve sweater (it gets down in the low 70s up there!)
• Sandals
• Tennis shoes & socks

For Ella:

• Two dresses
• Two shorts
• One skirt
• Four shirts
• One pair of pants
• One sweatshirt
• Flip Flops
• Tennis shoes & socks
• Swimming suit
• Crayons and a coloring book

For Jack:

• Three blankets
• Four t-shirts
• Four pants
• Two sleepers
• Sun hat
• Booties

General junk:

• Bathroom stuff
• Baby monitor
• Mosquito net
• Two slings
• Chargers for phone, camera etc.

I plan to do laundry often and buy what I don't bring. I'll let you know if it's a total debacle or if I finally didn't over-pack.

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My son is outgrowing everything. He's wearing an outfit marked 3 months today. He's 26 days old. I think the next pack of diapers I buy will have to be size 2, to prevent leaking right out the side where his chubby little thigh sticks out. I guess they do make everything bigger in Texas.

Why I Have No Jeans that Fit

Tracy and I filmed a commercial over the weekend for Confessions of a Shopaholic at the mall. All we had to do was confess a shopping related embarrassment in front of a giant shopping bag and sign a little form that said our 15 second clip could be used in a commercial and we were paid in free 100% cotton bags. I stood in front of the camera holding a bag from the Land of Nod and a bag from Galt Toys and confessed that despite my best efforts, I spend too much money on kiddo. I know this because I own two pair of blue jeans for myself and she has three dressers full. As we walked away I filled the new bag with Ella's stuff.

I balanced this out by taking my family to an Nepalese restaurant called the Curry Hut for dinner where Ella didn't care for anything on the menu. Ella entertained herself by coloring on the paper table cloth and munching flat bread, with a few hesitant bites of jasmine rice and a glass of milk while Dan and I delighted in a dinner of "Minced Chicken mixed with Nepali spices and steamed inside the wheat bread served with Nepali achaar - Chicken marinated in mint and yogurt, cooked in a tandoor - and pieces of lamb cooked in a rich cashew nut-based gravy with cream, butter and dry fruit."

Short Holiday

Today I am planning a long weekend in The City. We go every year for a game convention and while Dan is up to his elbows in Napoleonics and dice I take Ella downtown for some skyscraping culture. Last year we looked at dolphins, this year we'll look at dinosaur bones. We'll also manage to hit the mall that I can't afford to play on the giant indoor fiberglass tree and marvel at three thousand dollar turtle necks, while hoarding free samples and signing up for catalogues.

The fiberglass tree play area is always an odd experience as most of the children are there with young hot trophy moms who are worried their children will get germs from touching the other kids, dads in suits who are worried they will loose the kid in the fenced in area guarded by 30 other hovering people, or a nanny that only looks up when she hears crying and yells to her charge half in Hungarian/Russian/Spanish and half English that he/she better be nice! Ella is always bewildered here; she approaches other children with the usual "Hi I'm Ella, I'm five, wanna play?" and is either completely ignored or put on hold while the other child, caught off guard, looks towards their mom/dad/nanny to see what they are supposed to do next. My conclusion - rich people are weird.

Every year we also go have sushi at this little place up the road, but this year we can get great sushi close to home so I'm determined to find something better. Steaks are also out as we have the best butchers close to home and I'd rather spend a chunk of money on a good cut of meat and take it home to cook it the way I love it, slathered in garlic and beer. So I'm leaning towards the Bank Lane Bistro but I think we'd better go for the lunch instead of the dinner as it's all alacarte and wonderful and I will want to order it all (lavender infused creme brule!) I'm telling you, the menus read like poetry.

Ella is looking forward to room service. We always have points left on a credit card that we can spend at this hotel but not on the actual room so we'll order room service every morning. She doesn't remember doing this last year and the idea that hot bacon and pancakes can be brought to you in bed is making her crazy with anticipation. Plus that's the only thing we've told her about the trip so far, the rest will be a surprise. I am looking forward to pretending I'm at the beach. I'll be barefoot and poolside with David Sedaris, while Ella doggy paddles herself silly in a chlorined life jacket. Oh who am I kidding, I'm looking forward to the whole thing!

"If you find enough sand dollars you can buy a sand castle" - Ella

We spent a whirlwind three days at Disney Word and two and a half days winding down from Disney at the Sunburst Inn located on the softest, whitest, shell filled beach on the Gulf Coast. It was a week filled with princesses and pirates and fireworks and family and fresh grouper sandwiches and wild dolphins and sting rays and piña coladas and believe it or not on the last day we were home sick.

Micky Mouse and Soft White Sand

I'm back from a week in Florida today, checking my 400 e-mails and catching up on the world. I'll post soon.

A First Class Screwing

Hello bloggies, I know I've been on a political tangent for some time and I can't help it. The conventions are over and now we just have the long slog up to the debates (I can hardly wait!) Today I'm going to try super hard to not check CNN 40 times and besides my family is scheduled to be make landfall in FL soon and so I should really start packing. Its cool enough here that we aren't wearing our shorts anymore so I it makes sense.

OH! My dear husband spent hours on the phone with Travelocity again yesterday. We ordered plane tickets through them in May and after the flight was changed around no less than three times the flights were cancelled all together as the airline stopped serving Orlando and get this... they haven't refunded our money yet. After much customer service arguing, Dan finally climbed the frustration ladder to the call center manager who informed Dan for the first time ever we didn't get a refund because we hadn't returned the paper ticket (that we never requested in the first place, who still uses paper tickets?! That's soo 1996.)

No one ever asked for the totally useless, there is no flight, paper tickets to be returned and the manager apologized for that and gave us $150.00 to use at Travelocity to make up for it. Which is real nice accept we can't use it for renting a car or getting a cheap flight or upgrading our current flight or anything that would be useful to us in the least. He might have well given us a three night’s stay on the moon but no way to get there so as far as I'm concerned Travelocity can go call itself.

In the mean time we overnighted the tickets back and our $700.00 is lost in red tape hell and is now money we will not be spending in FL. I called the credit card company and refuted the charge telling them the story they said they'd open an investigation and put a freeze on the amount and while they agreed it was some bull pucky I was being put through, it would still take 6-8 weeks to resolve the ticket dispute for items I bought in MAY! And the travel industry wonders why people aren't participating in their little S&M game anymore.

Gen Con 2008 Part V - Odds and Ends

There were several things that are worth mentioning about last weeks trip that I haven't really written about yet, like the actual games and stuff, so here goes.

We couldn't leave the costume contest this year to go pee without loosing our seat to one of the hundreds of people who were still waiting in line to see the contest even after it started. Shame on you Gen Con organizers for not having enough seating even after so many years - you should know better.

The Sultan's Gaming Table is bringing gaming out of the basement and into the library and I would gladly order one for Dan except if I had that kind of disposable income I'd probably get a car instead ($9,650 delivered and assembled.) It's made from hard rock sugar maple and walnut, their tag line is "you only get two more wishes." I'm putting this in my "If I win the lottery" file, and yes I have one.

I tried to find a wonderwoman shirt for Ella and couldn't, the giant t-shirt company at the con had plenty of children's superhero shirts in green, red and blue but no Wonderwoman, plenty of pink shirts with princesses and carebears on them, and lastly plenty of teeny babydoll shirts with Wonderwoman and the Justice League but none quite small enough for an actual kid. I'm sooo dissapointed and I fully blame the patriarchy.

There was a SPAM carving contest sponsored by Gut Bustin Games. After seeing the contest entries in the hallway we found their booth in the dealer area strewn with Pabst Blue Ribbon, more SPAM and Moon Pies, as well as their new games Trailer Park Wars and Redneck life. We purchased Trailer Park Wars mostly because Ella like the 100 tiny pink flamingo game peices. The cards include photographs of real trailers around the nation including "Barbie's Dream Trailer", "Cowabungalo" & "Tornado Bait".

We also picked up Monsterpocolyps, Twisted Fish, Gangs of Megacity One, Penguin Rescue, Monster Menace America and a few others that didn't come in a clearly marked box. I can't tell if it's a booster pack for somethng we already own of if it's a whole new game and I also can't tell what was given away free or bought. What I do know is there is a giant pile of games and toys on our dinnig room table. I also wanted to play test Tech Support the card game just to see exactly how frustrating it is, but forgot.

We'll be going back next year.

Gen Con Part IV the Costumes

Gen Con 2008 Part III (the not so live or remote portion, I'm home now)

On Friday Ella and I took a break from the craziness of the convention to seek out our own craziness and ventured out to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. I really didn't know what to expect, and was delighted when we drove up to see a dinosaur breaking out of the building. (see pic in last post) We parked in the garage across the street and took the skywalk over (super convenient.) As we walked our excitement mounted and the museum did not disappoint. Once inside we discovered four floors of activity goodness and running space mixed with a healthy dose of primary colors, crazy sounds and we even got to smell a dinosaur (not bad actually, sort of like magnolias.) Turns out to be the largest children's museum in the world, we could've spent all day there.

The dinosaur part of the museum is the bit that the lady at the desk recommended as a must see and it was incredible. We walked into a giant jungle where the sky changed from dawn to dusk in about a half and hour and was filled with skeletons and smells and sounds and interactive screens and surprises around every corner. You could participate in your own dig as well as peep into the palaeontologist's lab, like a hamster cage, it had a glass wall and you could see what there were doing in there making little resin skulls and labeling bone fragments and spreading around cedar chips, there wasn't even a sign that said don't feed or poke the paleontologists so we stopped and talked to him through his little window. Well, actually Ella went running off to do a skeleton puzzle while I talked to him, but he told me about the Dracorex Hogwartsia (literally meaning "Dragon King of Hogwarts".) This dino found in South Dakota looks remarkably like a dragon and even made the cover of National Geographic.

Here Ella tries to hatch some dinosaurs with her butt.

We played on through salt water aquariums, model trains and a full scale engine car, and the underside of a colored glass sculpture before I realised we'd been there an hour and hadn't left the first floor yet.

Over the next three hours we moved through more floors with ease running up and down the spiraling ramp that surrounds the massive glass Chihuly sculpture (the largest permanent installation in the world).

At one point in our exploration when we ventured into "The Power of Children: Making a difference" exhibit. I knew it was for kids a little older when we walked in, but I figured I'd be ok if I perused a bit with Ella in tow. It was good for her to be exposed to a little activism early, but then the next thing I know there was a lady beckoning as the last seating for the play at the secret annex was "right now!" and if we wanted to see the show we should go there immediately and Ella was pulling me by the hand into a room and then she was asking questions about the door in the wall and all the things in the room and next a dozen of us all sat down on little squares of wood facing a small stage with a single wooden desk.

It all happend very fast and then the lights dimmed and a very distinguished, thin man with far away eyes stepped onto the stage and introduced himself as Otto Frank. For the next seven minutes he told us about his daughter Anne and her diary, what had become of them in the annex and after the soldiers took them away and I with my young daughter fidgeting quietly in my lap completely lost any shred of composure I thought I might keep. After the actor stepped out of character and asked for any questions, we ducked out and I found a box of tissue just outside the door and grabbed a handful while I dabbed the mascara from under my eyes and tried to stare at the floor walking fast past the Ruby Bridges and Ryan White exhibits. I couldn't bare to even glance at them and stepping back into the jubilee of children running all over was such a shocking contrast I still had trouble grabbing hold of myself. I was thinking next year I'll visit the Ruby Bridges exhibit that I could hear when we walked past; recorded children's voices yelling insults from the front of the construct school house "We don't want you here! Go back where you came from!", and the year after the Ryan White exhibit. Finally, I was jolted from my own thoughts when until Ella yelled "Wonderwoman!" and took off running.

Oh yes, there was a whole superhero section including the Batmobile from the latest movies and super hero dress up and then there were race cars and doll houses and polar bears and water clocks. I practically had to carry Ella to the food court to make her eat before we ventured onto the (insert dramatic music here) FOURTH FLOOR! The food court was an awesome kid/family friendly cafeteria where Ella ordered macaroni and cheese, smiley shaped french fries and chocolate milk and I had a very fancy chicken salad (with apples and celery in it) and a pasta salad totaling like $12.00. This was the exact moment I fell in love with Indy.

THE FOURTH FLOOR (insert dramatic music here) Oh what joys ye beheld. We found a tree house, a fancy play house, a giant mirror fun house, the biggest game of connect four I've ever seen, a kaleidoscope you can stand in, an arcade, tea with the three bears and a full sized carousel. We nearly overdosed on fun.

By two o'clock I was exhausted and Dan was calling for us to drive back downtown and pick him up. I bribed Ella out of the fourth floor and to the car with promises of swimming at the hotel after picking Dan up which we did until we were wrung out and napped in the room. You'd think the fun would end here and we'd commence with something boring but oh-no this family is serious about fun. After our rest we dressed for dinner and made our way back downtown to a great Japanese place where we gorged on sushi, exotic veggies and assorted meats. Dan found if you want a good rare lamb chops you must find a chef that has the courage to serve raw meat (or fish).

We walked off dinner with a stroll through the convention center to contribute to the card houses which will be destroyed by convention goers flinging change at them on Saturday night (all proceeds to Christel House International.) We built a little three story facility out of donated Magic cards next to the edge.

Not done having fun yet we decided on a leisurely stroll to the giant fountain we glimpsed earlier in the day. We found the "giant fountain" to be the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Monument Circle. The impressive scuplture/fountain is surrounded with trees and blossoming flowers at the bottom and stairs climb up to a higher deck where we found a door to a little office that was closed where you could pay a dollar to ride the elevator to the observation deck during the day or climb the stairs to the top for free.

As the piece de resistance we took a dusk carriage ride with a driver that looked alot like Jude Law through the vibrant streets and past the canals before heading back to the monument where the city was lit up and women in sparkly cocktail attire met men in smart summer suits for drinks at the sidewalk cafes. We strolled back past restaurants and pubs with bustling lines outside and steam pouring up through the manholes and hotels with door men hailing cabs for more sparkly people and too soon we found our car and drove our sleeping kid back to the hotel in preparation for Saturday... the biggest geekfest day of them all. Stay tuned for Gen Con 2008 the Day of the Costume Contest!

Live From Remote Part III Teaser

I don't have time for a report so I offer this instead to placate the masses until I get myself to a real computer.