Chicago

Lucian had to attend a work function Friday night in Chicago. Since we both had the day off, we decided last minute to take the kids to the city and stay overnight. Spencer is spending a week in Florida with his mom, so it was just the 4 of us.

We decided to hit up the Lincoln Park Zoo for the afternoon. It was a little chilly, but tolerable in the sun. Kyle stayed bundled up in the stroller most of the time. He is such an easy going baby, sometimes I forgot he was down there!
The polar bear at the zoo put on an amazing display swimming right up to us at the window over and over again. Claire was super excited and asked to see the the polar bear the next day.

We checked out this cool honeycomb structure just south of the zoo. It made for some great photographs.

I think I would have been more reluctant to travel with Claire at this age. I felt she was an unpredictable cryer. Kyle fusses a little when he's hungry or gassy, but that's about it. I don't think we kept anyone up at night.

Claire enjoyed watching the people and cars from 7 floors up.

Sunday morning we walked the 3 miles from our hotel to the Shedd Aquarium. Our kids are up early, so we were out the door close to 8am. I didn't realize it at the time, but seeing things like the kidney bean and gardens with hardly anyone around was quite spectacular.

Claire was super crabby and didn't have any interest in seeing her reflection.

We found a great breakfast place close to our destination and headed to the Shedd. Having driven by the day before, we knew the lines were hours long to get in. We bought tickets online the night before and hoped that would shorten our wait. Since we had a stroller, we had to use the accessible entrance, and at 10:30 there was no line to get in that way. Note to self: never go to the Shedd without advance purchase tickets.
We weren't able to get tickets to the dolphin/whale show, but we had a fun time exploring the aquarium. We saw a diver in one tank that Claire explained to us was "getting Nemo." It's one of her favorite movies.

Kyle & Lucian exiting the aquarium

We walked back to the hotel in the very warm weather, stopping to feed Kyle and play along the way.

Me with our gear. (I'm checking how much time we have left and trying to decide if we need a cab to make our 2pm check-out). We just made it, by the way.

Since Claire was in a better mood, we stopped briefly at the bean again. This time she waved:)

We stayed at The James hotel and the staff was amazing. I've always viewed things like luggage service as optional and nice-to-have until traveling with 2 small kids. We really couldn't have done it without their help. It was well worth the few dollars in tips.

We stopped for lunch and made it to Evanston before Kyle needed to eat again. Lucian and Claire played at a park while I fed Kyle in the car. We made it home by dinner time and had a nice little get away.