On Sunday morning, we woke up early (surprise!) and walked a few blocks to a restaurant called Eggsperience for breakfast. It was "eggcellent." Tom had off the bone ham and eggs, Sarah had an entire banana all sliced up on a plate just for her, and I had strawberry pancakes with cream cheese topping. It was heaven!
After eating until our pants barely fit, we walked to Navy Pier. Our aim was the Children's Museum but (as usual) we were early. Luckily, a lovely park ran alongside Navy Pier, so we just walked until the museum opened! Sarah also enjoyed testing the limits of safety by trying to squeeze through the railing between her and the lake...
Having managed to not fall into Lake Michigan, we made our way to the Children's Museum. We were still a few minutes early (does anyone else feel that a CHILDREN'S museum should open before 10:00??), so we played with the fountains in the garden area just outside the museum entrance.
Once the museum finally opened, we were not disappointed! The first exhibit was a fire truck for the kids to play on. They could wear kid-sized hats and boots and coats, too! Sarah really loved driving the truck...
She even wore one of the coats for a few minutes!
As soon as Sarah saw the giant staircase leading up to the second level, we were done with the fire truck and on to the next exhibit - Kids Town! Here, Sarah had the opportunity to shop in a grocery store, change a tire, wash a car, and drive a CTA bus. She liked driving the car, briefly visited the bus, and spent most of her time sampling the plastic food and trying to make off with all of it in a shopping cart. I'm just glad we got there early in the day before all the other kids had sampled it, too...
We finally tore her away from the play food and, once the tears had stopped, went to the Dinosaur Exhibition. It was one of the coolest things I've seen for kids EVER. It started with the skull of a T-Rex and ended with a re-creation of an actual dig through rubber chips for a life-size skeleton of suchomimus. It. Was. Awesome.
She drove the expedition jeep for a few minutes...
...and then we were off again! Our next stop was the BIG Backyard exhibit. Sarah liked playing with the BIG flowers, but the joystick for flying her bumblebee over the Chicago skyline was used as a teether rather than as part of the exhibit.
We hit the Treehouse Trails exhibit next, and Sarah "fished" in a shallow river. She enjoyed this almost as much as the shopping cart in the Kids Town exhibit, and was NOT happy to leave!
Luckily, the last exhibit, Circus Zirkus, was pretty small. After a quick stop at the top of some stairs, lifting of a giant barbell, and investigating some clown clothes, she was ready to go take a nap!
After lunch and a nap, we came back to Navy Pier. This time, though, it was to ride some rides! The first thing we did was let Sarah ride the carousel. She LOVED it. I mean, cried-when-it-stopped loved it. It was great!
Next, we tried the Ferris Wheel. This turned out to be less fun than the carousel. In fact, it was negative fun. First, we had to wait in a long line (which Sarah doesn't like). Then, we got in a car and they made us get back out and get into another one to accommodate someone with a wheelchair (this isn't easy with a 15-month-old). Once we finally started moving, Sarah got really mad because I wouldn't let her stand at the door with toddler-size holes in it while we were 150 feet off the ground. During her mid-air tantrum, Tom was no help because (despite numerous assurances that riding a Ferris wheel would be fun) his fear of heights kept him from doing much of anything at all! Can you see all of that in these pictures?
So it was back to the carousel for another ride - this time on a zebra!
Then we met up with Uncle Adam, who happened to be in Chicago visiting Megan! We walked with them to the end of the pier and sat to watch the seagulls and boats. Well, some of us sat and some of us ran all over!
We let Sarah ride the carousel two more times (once on a horse and once on a frog!), and then it was back to the hotel for some swim time before bed!
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