Chicago Fire

Well, we're pretty out-of-the-loop when it comes to current television series, so when flyers with the heading "Chicago Fire" started showing up all around the block, we just kind of assumed it was an announcement from the Chicago Fire Department.  The announcement said something about cars needing to be cleared from the south side of our street for several days while the area was prepped for filming.  We didn't know what they were going to be filming, but just assumed it probably wasn't anything that exciting.  It didn't seem like much was going on, but we did notice several security men at various locations on our block and we noticed some work being done on the building next to ours (branches were being torn down from the trees and there were guys in a big cherry picker truck doing some work on the windows in the upper floors of the building).

Then last night we took a walk to get ice cream and noticed that the signs had changed.  They were now warning everyone that the street would be closed and that all cars needed to be removed for filming to take place.  The flyers also warned that the filming would involve fire and smoke simulations from the windows of this building. When James left for campus this morning he texted me to tell me that I really needed to take Jesse to go check out what was going on next door. Of course, by this time we had also figured out that "Chicago Fire" is an NBC television drama that will be beginning its second season this fall.

Anyway, it was fun to see the filming crew and the actors/actresses as they were filming.  The crowd of onlookers kept having to be moved so that we wouldn't appear in the show.  At one point Jesse got hungry and wanted to go back in for a snack, but he requested that we take the snacks back outside to keep watching the fire.

Jesse 2.5 Years

Sporting his big boy underwear.
He told me he was headed to "school
and work".

Two and a half is such a fun age.  I don't even remember the last time I did an official update, but I figured 2.5 is a good time. This is all off the top of my head, so I'm probably leaving out lots of other things I want to remember, but this will have to do for now.

• 34.2 pounds and 37.3 inches at his check-up yesterday (both 80th percentile).
• His sleeping is not nearly as predictable as it once was.  I try to have him down for his nap between 12:30 and 1:00 and have him awake by 3:00 (otherwise he takes forever to fall asleep at night).  However, he fights his nap a lot these days, so sometimes he will refuse a nap for several days in a row (though he is expected to stay in his room until 3:00) and then he will nap like a champ for a week.  If he naps, he usually doesn't fall asleep until 8:00 or so, although he is usually in bed by 7:30.  If he doesn't nap, he will fall asleep almost instantaneously at 6:00, although it's tough to get him fed, bathed and in bed that early, so it's usually a bit later. He still typically wakes between 6 and 6:30, although we do have occasional spurts of 5:30 and if we're really lucky he'll sleep until closer to 7:00 (but then he likely won't take a nap, so I'm not sure if it's worth it!).
• Has quite the imagination these days. He always has specific descriptions of everything he builds with his duplos.  He is usually building things like fire houses or building sites, and if you ask him about a specific block on his building he will quickly tell you exactly what its purpose is. He's also pretty obsessed with food and is always pretending like he's cooking, even when he isn't playing with actual food toys.
• LOVES sand and water. He could live at the beach. Most of the parks here have water fountains and sand for the kids to play in, so he is usually a dirty, sandy mess by the time we come home from the park, but that's what summer is for, right?
• His favorite shows are Curious George and Bob the Builder.
• Sings all the time and loves to change up the lyrics to his favorite songs or just make up his own songs as he's playing.
• As of last week he is (mostly) potty trained. I expected it to be a maddening process, but he definitely seemed to be ready and interested which made it pretty quick and painless. I also expected that we would pretty much be cooped up in the apartment (or at least have our outings confined to the downstairs playground) at least for several days, but we were able to be out and about right away and he has quickly grown accustomed to using public potties.
• He is so much fun, but we have also come to understand the phrase "terrible twos" much better.  He definitely has his moments, but he does thrive on a routine and has fewer "moments" when we keep to the normal routine. Right now our biggest struggle seems to be this habit he has picked up of changing his mind over and over and over. He will clearly want to go play at the park, but when he finds out he has to put on his socks and shoes, he decides he doesn't want to.  If I say "ok, then let's stay home", then he wants to go again.  This could potentially go on and on, back and forth for eternity if we allowed it to.

I've also been recording some of my favorite Jesse quotes to share.  He is always saying something funny.

At lunch one day...
Jesse: Mommy, I want some monster (commonly known as muenster) cheese!
Me: We don't have anymore.  We're all out.
Jesse: We have buy some soon. When we go to store. Then we eat it ALL up!
Jesse, a few seconds later, cracking himself up: This a funny story!

Walking home from the park one day:
Me: Look at all those pretty flowers!
Jesse: Mommy no talk to me! I talking! Jesse talking! (He had been talking my ear off and I guess he wanted to continue).
Jesse (a few seconds later): Mommy, I have 2 questions (this often means something more like "requests" in Jesse language).
Me: What are your two questions?
Jesse: Mommy no talk to me about the flowers.

One morning when Jesse woke up a bit early:
Jesse (yelling quite loudly from his room): Ding! Ding! Ding! It's a fire! Ding! Ding! Ding! There's a fire in my room, Daddy!!!
He went on to repeat this multiple times until James finally responded, thinking maybe he should go check it out just in case.  I mean, we would feel pretty bad if there had been a fire and we ignored him.  But now we know...

One morning after Jesse woke up and had been laughing hysterically in his sleep the night before:
Me: Jesse...last night you woke us up because you were laughing really loud in your sleep. Did you have a funny dream?
Jesse (after thinking about it for a minute): Yeah. No, I have a happy dream.
Me: What was your dream about?
Jesse: My pants fall off! Then I put them back on! (Giggling)

One night after Jesse was in bed I was cleaning the bathroom (right next to Jesse's room) and was probably making a lot of noise. Jesse kept yelling quite loudly: "Mommy!!! Shhhh!!! Be quiet! My baby is sleeping! (He refers to Curious George as his baby these days).  Mommy! Have be extra quiet! Shhh!!!  My baby trying to sleep!" I told him that he better talk a little softer because his yelling might disturb his baby, so he proceeded to quietly tell me all these things over and over again, but he eventually just began screaming them again.  I think this went on for at least 15 minutes, when he told me that the baby woke up and was upset because it was hungry.

James: Jesse, did you have any dreams last night? (I'm not sure if he really remembers his dreams or not, but he always has a response and it's usually humorous and quite random).
Jesse (immediately): Yeah. I dream about a kiwi.
James: Really? What kind of kiwi?
Jesse: A red and blue kiwi.

Yesterday at breakfast:
Jesse: Mommy, I have a baby in my tummy. It's a different Max. He's six months old. His name is seventy.

One night when I was watching a friend's three girls, they were back in Jesse's room with him. I went back to check on them at one point and Jesse ran up to the door and before slamming it shut, exclaimed: "No Mommy come in here! This room for big boys only!"

Summer Fun

We have been getting out as much as possible this summer and thankfully it has been much, much cooler than last summer.  We had our air-conditioning unit installed at the beginning of June, but didn't even need to turn it on for a week or two after that, and we still aren't in dire need of it.  So far, the highest temperature I've seen in the 10-day forecast is 84 degrees, and it has mainly been highs in the upper 70s and lower 80s.  So nice!

Here are lots of random pictures of our summer happenings.

We've been taking advantage of member mornings at the Children's Museum on Fridays.  From 9:00 to 10:00 the museum is only open to members and it's basically like having the entire place to yourself.  Jesse's favorite exhibit is WaterWays, and this particular time he actually ended up taking a plunge into the water.  He was leaning over the edge to grab a bucket and his head fell in the water.  He couldn't get his feet back on the ground, so his face kept bobbing in and out of the water.  The staff member standing nearby and I rescued him right away and he was upset for a few seconds, but then when I (being the nice Mom I am) asked if my friend could take his picture, he thought it was pretty great.

We've still been going to our Music Together class.  This (below) was our spring class.  It was an especially large group.  Our summer class began a few weeks ago and is much smaller, which has encouraged Jesse to do a lot more participating.  You can see in the picture below that he is being held in the picture by myself and Miss Irene (his teacher).  He was not feeling cooperative at the moment.

We've been enjoying all our neighborhood parks.

These pictures have nothing to do with summer, but I thought Jesse's nutella mustache was pretty cute.

Jesse and James made homemade biscuits one Saturday morning. Jesse likes to help in the kitchen when possible and is getting better at following instructions and not grabbing everything in sight ;)

For a while, Jesse was requesting that James make a tent every Saturday.  This was great fun for all the rainy days we had this spring and early summer. They would read books in it and play "store".

James and Jesse have gone on a number of bike rides along the lake. I wish I could tag along, but I don't think pregnancy and biking the lakefront trail (which has quite a lot of bike traffic on it) are the best combination.

We finally made it to a beach here after visiting lots of beaches on our vacation. Last weekend we had a picnic on the beach and then let Jesse enjoy playing with the sand. It was actually quite chilly that evening so we didn't get near the water.

Check out Jesse's shirt in this picture.  We had just spent the morning at Bixler Park playing with some friends.  There is a big fountain there and Jesse had been splashing and sitting in the pool of water underneath it.  As if that wasn't enough, we treated ourselves to $1 milkshakes on campus and let the kids play in one of the campus water fountains.  Jesse's shirt is not usually this long and he looked pretty ridiculous, probably more so in person.

Goodbyes are Tough

Over the past month and particularly over the past week, we have had to say goodbye to a lot of really great friends.  All of these friends moved here two years ago just like we did, but their husbands' programs are over and they are moving on (two years is a really common amount of time for graduate students to be here...we're kind of the odd ones in that we will quite possibly be here an entire decade!).

This has been one of the neatest and most fun communities to live in.  Many of us would have never crossed paths had we not been placed together in University of Chicago graduate student housing....we're all from different parts of the country (some of us even from different countries) and many of us come from different religious backgrounds.  The things that brought us together were our ties to the University of Chicago and our roles as wives and mothers.

Living together in this building has felt almost like living in the dorm again, except everybody is married and has kids. There were lots of spontaneous play dates, random knocks on the door from friends delivering yummy treats or just saying hey, lots of fun times in the Tot Lot during the cold winters, many afternoon "Happy Hours" at the park (the time between 4:00 and 5:00 every afternoon when all the kids were up from their naps and we needed to pass that last hour before dinner without losing our sanity...no alcohol involved, just some much-needed adult conversation), girls nights without the kids, date night swaps (free babysitting!), etc., etc.

In all of these goodbyes, a lot of tears have been shed. We have watched each others' kids go from babies to full-fledged toddlers and we have shared many wonderful memories together. Jesse talks about his friends all the time, and it makes me so sad to think that it is only a matter of time before he doesn't even remember this part of our lives. He knew where all his friends lived in the building and lived for getting to go visit them.

I just wanted to record this phase of our lives with some pictures of Jesse and his buddies and a few rare pictures of the Moms.

This is Jesse with Sid and Holman sometime back in May.  Jesse and Sid decided to become "best buddies" just months before they moved away. The Subway lunch was Jesse's "suggestion" one day on the playground, so we jumped on it!

Many, but not all of the ladies in our building at our holiday party this past December.

Maggie, Andrea and myself at a "Sip and See" we threw for Andrea right after Charlotte was born (our first spring here, more than a year ago).

Jesse and Lilah hanging out in thier pjs and rain boots.

Lilah attacking Jesse with leaves at Promontory Point this past fall. Jesse didn't seem to mind too much ;)

In our final days together, Maggie, Andrea and I had an indoor picnic (it was rainy outside) with our kids.

Celebrating Donut Day with Sid and Holman before we took off for the Children's Museum together.

Jesse and Kayla hanging out and coloring together the week before they moved.

Jesse and Alyse saying a final goodbye to each other.

Jesse saying his final goodbyes to Lilah and Charlotte.