On Thursday night I took the girls to Chicago for my little sister's bridal shower. I love my baby sister and her fiance, so it was really fun to be able to take the trip to celebrate them. It was also great to see a bunch of friends and relatives I hadn't seen in a long time. Over the course of the weekend, I also learned several things.
1. When you have kids in tow, it's best to take advantage of those free entry days at the Chicago museums.
Ever since she watched the Blue's Room episode, Masterpiece Museum, a few weeks ago, Annie has had a thing for pointilism. She has been drawing pointilism pictures with her markers and crayons, and even covered a white board with her name written out in pointilism. So it seemed like a great idea to take her to the Art Institute of Chicago, where George Seurat's La Grande Jatte painting (aka Sunday in the Park) is located. We enlisted my sister to come with us and left my mom in the kitchen, furiously decorating the seven (yes, seven) cakes she had baked for the bridal shower. We don't do anything on a small-scale at my parents' house.
Each of the big museums in Chicago has one day of the week designated as a free entry day. We arrived on Friday to discover that the art museum (with a regular entry fee of $12) was free from February 1-21 (not sure why, but I'll take it). Jilly and I commented on our good luck as we ascended the staircase toward the 19th century European rooms at 10:52. We found the painting by 10:53 and by 10:54 Annie was ready to leave. We did convince her to stay for about 20 more minutes, but I was really glad I didn't have to fork over a lot of money for such a quick jaunt.
2. You're never too young to become a materialistic snob
I was a little bit too old to really get into the American Girl craze, which started sweeping my town when I was about 12 or 13. But I did get a Samantha doll one year for Christmas, and for the next four or five years, got clothes and accessories and books to go along with her, even though I probably would have preferred cds and ski lift passes and clothes for myself. I kept them all in her trunk in pristine condition and regifted them to Annie for her fifth birthday last week.
She had some birthday money burning a hole in her pocket, so after the art museum we headed up to the American Girl store, where Annie spent the next hour oohing and aahing over the dolls and trying to decide how she'd spend every penny of the fifty dollars her grandparents sent her. My little girl is not shy (by a long shot) and after a few minutes, she started approaching all of the other girls in the store and asking them how many dolls they had. "I have two, Samantha and Bitty Baby" was her stock answer, and since she met several girls who have three or four or even eight, I think that we've entered the doll collecting phase of life around here. Even though I really like the American Girl dolls, I sort of wish she had fallen in love with Barbie instead. Barbies are a lot cheaper.
3. I'm still allergic to cats.
For the last few years I've done a pretty good job of staying away from cats. But the woman who hosted Jilly's shower has two, and even though I took benadryl and my inhaler before I arrived, I spent much of the next three hours wheezing on the couch. When I got home, I showered, washed my clothes, and spent the rest of the night taking as many hits off of my inhaler as I thought my body could handle. I'm still feeling a bit wheezy and drugged out from my weekend escapades.
4. Maren knows a good thing when she sees it.
Most of the people at the shower this weekend hadn't seen Maren yet. Pretty much everyone was eager for their chance to hold her, so she spent much of the weekend being passed around and held. And this came on the heels of spending much of last weekend being passed around and held. And now that we're home, she still wants to be held. All the time. She's lying on my lap as I type, trying to will be to stand up and bounce with her. I'm hoping that she gets the message that her days of being held 24/7 have come to an end.
5. Boys will be boys
I called Eddie on Saturday morning and he said that he and the boys planned to spend the whole weekend watching sports, playing video games, and sitting around in their underwear. Apparently that is what they did. On Saturday night Bryce was getting into bed and sounded horrified as he said, "My bed never got made today! There are going to be bedbugs in it!" I don't know where he got the idea that he'd have bedbugs, but there were a lot of things around the house that didn't get done when the boys were in charge. I think Eddie has a newfound appreciation for what I do while he's off saving lives.
--originally published 2/19/07
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