Brody Turns Two

My baby is fast becoming a little boy. He is growing and growing, measuring 35 inches tall and weighing 27 pounds at his last doctor's appointment. He is talking more coherently now and often takes it up a few octives when you are trying to understand what he said, and he thinks that you are ignoring him. He turned two today with a tiny "Cars-themed" party for the four o us. My efforts at making a Lightning McQueen cake were not so bad, even though Georgia swore the icing looked more pink than red. So out come the red sprinkles and a really red car appears. We even got fancy and had both vanilla and chocolate cake. His big sister blew out his candles because he was not moving fast enough, but he enjoyed both flavors of cake and continued to sneak more icing after he was finished.

Brody had a great time opening presents and was super-excited by all the building, car and train sets. I don't know why we keep buying things with multiple pieces, but I guess all toys come that way now and we should just give up wanting an orderly house. They seem to all want to co-mingle, so I think I need to let the toys do what they want to do and stop trying to seperate them into cute colored bins. Of course when I step on one, I just want to gather them all up and placed them in that large colored bin in the garage.

Rainy Day Birthday

The kids just looked cute today, so we took pictures on the porch and watched the rain.

Chicago

We checked out Chicago for the first time since moving here (excluding O'Hare). Our hotel was all modern and hip and was right across the street from Lake Michigan. We did a lot of walking through neighborhoods and I can easily say that I could live there--which says a lot. I think Chris and I are really big city people, despite his growing up in the suburbs of Dallas and me in my tiny cow town. The food and the variety was the best we have had since moving to Illinois. We of course tried the deep dish, and I have to say I am still a thin crust kind of girl. I actually had authentic Cajun--the gumbo tasted like I was in the Big Easy. Super Yum!!!

We went to the Science and Industry Museum which was really interesting, and checked out Navy Pier and the zoo. Brody made friends through the glass with a baby gorilla that was exactly his size and was in the mood to play. There was a lot of mutual teasing going on, so I guess babies will be babies. I dont think that he could believe his eyes and we had a hard time getting our little monkey out of that exhibit.

The kids and I had a blast checking out the Magnificent Mile, which would not have been complete without a trip to the American Girl Store. For those of you who don't know about this, it is three stories of dolls, clothes for dolls, clothes for your daughter that match the dolls, and even a doll salon. Georgia's eyes were about to come out of their sockets there was so much to see. The frenzied looks and squeals from all the little girls compared to the bored, uninterested expressions of their brothers sitting at various places around the store was quite comical.

The Fourth of July fireworks were very cool, although we almost missed them taking a short cut that turned out to be not so short and ended up in a locked parking garage. I am sorry to say that I live with a bunch of over-reactors (and that is all that I am going to say about that).