Little People and Not-So-Little Outings

So Jack is building houses, and Baylor is lining up his Little People collection in a neat and orderly fashion.

He quietly and methodically lines them up, one by one, chattering to himself the whole time. After lining them up and trading positions between figures for a few minutes, he finally gets impatient with it all and goes Godzilla on their, ahem, bottoms. "Going Godzilla" includes heavy swipes with hands, stomping with feet, and lots of ferocious growling accompanied by bared teeth. And considering how fierce we all know Baylor looks with bared teeth, it's truly a terrifying sight.

Sigh. My babies are growing up... into monsters.

No, no, not monsters, just into typical boys. And it's breaking my heart, just as it breaks every mother's heart. For now I can still squint my eyes and pretend they're babies since they're using very few actual, you know, words right now. We still have a lot of jabbering and twinspeak (George Orwell is my inspiration) going on here, so until clear words and sentences are coming out of their toothy little mouths, I'm fiercely clinging to the baby aspect of it all.

And my grip is loosening. I can feel it.

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Thanks for all the kind words and well-wishes concerning my recent bout with the seasonal nastiness. I'm feeling, if not 100%, then maybe about 75% better. So it was definitely not the flu, praise God from whom all blessings flow, and I'm sure in a couple days I'll be back to my normal self. The warmish (at least for Chicagoland) weather has definitely helped, and even though I had to grocery shop in the rain this morning, I was able to cling to the fact that the air smelled distinctly of spring.

In Illinois it's very easy to forget that winter does eventually end. Little springish spurts like we're experiencing right now only make our gorgeous springs and summers all the more enjoyable.

(Remind me that I said that next January, okay?)

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Finally, a fun thing to which I am looking forward: The Art Institute of Chicago is offering free admission for the month of February, and our little family, plus my parents, brother-in-law, and cousin Zach, who is visiting for the weekend, are going to take advantage of this offer by going this Friday. Hurrah! Two visits to the art museum in less than a month! I'm such a lucky girl. Of course, we are dragging our three kids with us and depriving them of their normal routine and normal nap schedule, plus expecting them to act relatively well-behaved in a decidedly adult environment, so perhaps this will all end in disaster, but I am ever the optimist and I like to think that we'll all survive unscathed. Or at least still speaking to one another. I'm glad we're not superstitious people, because in that case we might consider the date (that will be Friday the 13th) and decide to instead sit at home and play a boardgame, far away from the looming disasters the city has to offer.

I'll let you know how it all turns out.