Shedd Aquarium

 This past weekend we took a trip to the Shedd Aquarium.  After Luke enjoyed the aquarium exhibits so much at Disney World I had been wanting to take him the our renowned local aquarium and this was the first chance we had.  He loved it, although he still was a madman whirling dervish around the whole place stopping for only a millisecond at each exhibit.  The penguin play area definitely piqued his interest for a whole five minutes though:)

Watching the scuba diver feed the fish

Luke said his favorite part were the seahorses and I think Claire would have agreed if she could talk

We also took down Christmas decorations, which is always a sad day for me.  All the excitement of the season gone and just a lot to clean up.  Boo.

As you can imagine, my "helper" made it all a lot easier and quicker to clean up, ha!   Her favorite activity these days is unloading things out of containers or drawers, never putting them back in though.

Poor lonely naked tree, you served us well

Nice hairdo

Stopped by to see Grandpa Emil on Sunday to cheer him up from his skin graft surgery that week.  Hopefully now he will be back to his active self soon!

A is for Alpaca shirt, love it!

With full South American sweater ensemble

"I'm going to get your tags Spumoni"

"Got them!"…notice Spumoni doesn't even mind that she is grabbing his tags and a fistful of fur to steady herself.

Trying to take a picture of Luke doing such a good job coloring and Bert photobombed!

Fine, last one…they make me laugh though!

Claire bear…you got a little something on your face there

Matt and I went to his FH Paschen post-holiday party on Friday night.  It was supposed to be a dinner cruise off of Navy Pier, but because of the freezing temps the lake was pretty frozen and so we couldn't actually cruise.  It was still a fun dinner though and a great date night.

A few kid updates:

- Claire continues to work on her walking skills.  Here is a little video of her doing a couple steps.  She loves to "walk" to you, but usually that means taking two steps and then throwing her body at you forward facing trust-tree style while giggling.  

- In addition to unloading stuff from drawers and baskets, she also likes to drop things behind her back nonchalantly.  Like she'll pick up a toy, look at it, and then casually drop it behind her back like "done with that…next item…"

- She is getting two teeth on top now to go with her two teeth on bottom

- She can climb up stairs super fast.  She even is getting pretty good at lowering herself down them, too.

- Luke is such a hoot, too.  He is getting more and more mischievous.  I hear that threes are harder than twos, and I believe it.  He really can try your patience a lot.  It would be so nice to have an obedient child.  Sadly Luke is not one of them.  The 1-2-3 Magic is getting a workout these days, and he is getting plenty of time outs (which usually he is unphased by)

- Luke is starting to get in touch with his emotions a lot more.  He tells me "I love you, Mommy" and he'll tell us "That made me feel sad" or "That made me feel angry".  He's pretty sensitive.  He was sad during the movie "The Croods" when the family left without the Daddy.  Even later on he was thinking about it and his big blue eyes filled with tears at the thought of the Daddy being left behind.  So sweet.

- I asked Luke one morning when I went in to get him up if he had any dreams the night before and he said "Yes!" so I asked him what he dreamt about and he told me "I was dreaming about stickers and dump trucks".  Sounds like a nice dream:)  

- One night Luke was in time out and he shouted to us "I have to go POOOOOP! and when you have to go potty or poop you have to go right away!" So we asked him, "Do you really have to go poop or are you just saying that to get out of time out?" and he immediately answered "I'm just saying that to get out of time out."  Hmmmm.  Well, you have to appreciate his honesty!