Fantastic Night Out

While scouring a website for fun things to do around the city, I discovered a local art festival with "kids activities". Not knowing exactly what that might mean based on my translation skills, we headed out at 3:30 last Friday afternoon to meet Rick at his office and attempt to find this festival. Thinking this area of the city to be quite small and thus a festival quite obvious, we boldly started walking in the vague vicinity of where we presumed the section of the city to be. To those familiar with Chicago, this would be like hearing about a festival in Lincoln Park and then trying to find it by walking from Navy Pier without knowing very much English. After an hour of walking through neighborhoods, we had just given up and decided to eat a nice dinner and head home when God heard the cry of my heart....and there was the festival on the same street of the restaurant we 'randomly' picked to stop at for dinner. Wahoo! Live music, painting, and yummy hamburgers to top it all off.

Micah could not get enough of this music and danced himself silly. I wished I had brought a video camera to document this blondie dancing amidst the locals.

Lulu was more interested in what Moo was doing than the band.

This is Micah's new "cheese" face. A bit scary, but what can you do. Here he is painting the only part of the wall left without paint....the drain pipe.

Proud dad.

The next station had watercolors on paperplates...perhaps we should try this for Christmas tree decorating this year? Micah's is the yellow and pink masterpiece on the left. ...And a family photo!

5 months

I took Lydia to the doctor today and got the following advice for a 5 month old:

Don't take her to the mall. There is air-conditioning there and people are breathing in the same air. You can take her to the outdoor mall though. No problem there.

Take her to the bazaar or the boardwalk as there are lots of people of different sizes and hair color to see there (which is comical to me, because the only people with different hair color are the foreigners and the women that dye their hair).

Invite older children to your house. Bake a cake. She will like watching them.

who needs new clothes?

This is Micah admiring himself in the mirror and then telling mom that he would like to wear his "blue how shirt" today...translated..."I want to wear sleep dog as a shirt instead of whatever commoner type of shirt you would desire me to wear today."

playgrounds

 I'm not sure why I have stressed for a whole year about walking up and down the hill to distant playgrounds. This dream playground has been right under my nose the whole time (literally right across the street from our apartment)! Maybe when Micah turns 3 I'll let him live out the great adventure of playing on wood piles with miscellaneous pipes and who knows what else. Just another way that city life and suburban life have different definitions of play. :)

Bob the Tomato

A salute to weird produce. I nearly passed this masterpiece by at the market last night, but then thought, "hmm, wouldn't everyone love to see this patriotic fruit/veg." So...a prize-winning smile for the best name for this tomato!

Exciting events...

Lydia's first cereal meal! 

 Lydia is her own little lady...she dove right into that mushy yum stuff! Micah lunged for his first food with his mouth...Lydia lunged with her hands!

 Possibly more interested in gnawing on spoon than the actual food on it.

And what may become a new familiar scene at our house.

peek a boo

The main reason this child cannot be left alone for longer than 5 seconds...