We made it back from the all day expedition to Chicago. The Amtrack train was only 3½ hours late, so we got in to Chicago at 12:30 instead of 9:00. In retrospect, that may not have been such a bad thing, although the waiting was a bit tedious. Corwin and Charles were so well behaved, though, that a kindly old lady actually gave them $1 each as a reward.
Charles greatly enjoyed riding on the train. He spent the 3 hour trip up raptly gazing out the window and exploring the various cars with Mom. Alice was actually the biggest problem. She got bored with being held and insisted on crawling about, the middle of the aisle being (of course!) her favorite spot.
Neither Charles nor Alice had any containment failures the entire day, which was of great relief to us. At one point, as we were leaving a store, I forced the boys to the bathroom. On the way Charles cried, saying “I no want go potty!”. I said “fine, Corwin and I will go”. But once we got in the bathroom, Charles got that pleading look in his eyes and said “My pee is coming!”. I frantically tried to get Charles sufficiently undressed to use the potty before it arrived. Mom, the master of subtle revenge, had put Charles in his engineers outfit and a sweater so that undoing the straps was difficult.
On the other hand, we got quite a number of comments during the day about his rabbit hat, which he wore almost continuously. I got a stern command to “put on my hat!” when I forgot to do so after lunch. Out in public without his cuteness maximizing accessory? Unacceptable!
We met Aunt Debbie, Uncle TJ, and Cousin Dana for lunch at the Rainforest Café for lunch. We had originally planned to meet them there but we ran in to them at Marshall Fields looking at the Christmas tree.
The arrival at the restaurant was also an amusing coincidence because last week, for show&tell at school, Corwin had to talk about his favorite amphibian. He picked the red eyed tree frog. Mom and I spent a frantic morning trying to locate the one book we have with a picture and then Corwin “forgot” he had it while at school.
Anyway, when we got to the restaurant there, larger than life, was a huge red eyed tree frog.
It seems that Corwin is in tune with the zeitgeist.
After that, we went out shopping around the downtown.We hit some Mom stores and also a big Lego™ store. We had been to that store before, years ago, which Corwin liked except for the huge roaring Lego™ dinosaur terrorizing the Lego™ town.
This time it didn’t bother him. Charles would look up and around when it roared, but was otherwise unconcerned. I think the boys would have spent the rest of our time in that store, but eventually Mom decided to move on.
Overall, it was an uneventful trip. The boys were very good, even if I had to carry Charles 10 blocks on my shoulders at one point. But near the end, when we were trudging back to the train station, even though he whined to be carried he marched on anyway despite it having been a very long day with no nap. As we were boarding the train, Charles became very frightened by the noise of the locomotives which gave him such a burst of energy that Mom and I had to restrain him from running all the way to the door in the coach car.
Both boys were out as soon as the train started moving. When we woke them up after the trip, Charles didn’t want to leave the train. But, as cruel parents, we hauled him off and back home anyway.
Sounds as if you all had a big day. I bet you’re tired today.
