Chicago: Day 3, Part 3 Millennium Park and Dinner!

From Grant Park we kept walking just a few more blocks towards Millennium Park, the home of the famous "Bean". This part of the park was built after our last trip to Chicago, so this was a new one for us!It's this odd, reflective bean that becomes a major photo opp for all tourists. People pose in all kind of crazy positions and have their picture made! Here's the 3 of us!
And here's our reflection again:
Me and Lilli making faces in it. The thing is COVERED in fingerprints. Kind of gross, really!
It's funny how many people are standing under it and looking up.
Lilli really did not want to pause and have her picture made in the Bean. Why? Pigeons. Pigeons abounded to be chased.
And she will chase them anywhere. This one went under the bench, guess who followed right behind?
Yup.....
Yay for pigeons!!! I have no idea what she'd do if she caught one.
Chasing....
Look at those arms and legs! She is running after those birds as fast as she can....
She was NOT happy when we took her away from the pigeons to this little water area. But we held her in the little "creek" and let her splash around, which made things a little better!The water felt great on our tired feet!
Splashing around...

By this point we weren't too far from our hotel so we ended up just walking back to it instead of figuring out which bus would get us closest. We rested in the room for an hour or so before we had to catch another bus and meet some friends for dinner. We grabbed the bus around 5:30, RIGHT in the middle of rush hour, UGH! It was insanely packed - not even standing room, really. Brent was wedged in the door and Lilli and I stood. After a couple of stops a lady gave us her seat, which was nice.
Our friends Josh and Sarah live near the Lincoln Park Zoo and this is the view from their apartment. Brent was in love!
We ordered some takeout and walked across the street to the gardens at the zoo for a picnic. We ordered Indian food for us and a grilled cheese for Lilli. Generally she eats what we eat,but I wasn't sure if she'd like the spiciness of Indian, and I knew she'd eat a grilled cheese!
And once Lilli was done she could run around the park, so that was nice. She'd spent so much time cooped up in strollers, trains and buses, and lost so much nap and sleep time this ended up being a great option versus trying a restaurant where she might have been angry about being tied up in a highchair while we chatted. She was more than happy to tag along with Josh when he was getting rid of our trash.
We went back to their place for just a minute or two since it was nearly 8 and Lilli can tend to turn into a pumpkin at that time! She was really warming up to them and wanted to give LOTS of hugs bye-bye!
Over and over and over she'd go back and forth between the two of them!
A group shot of the five of us. We had such a great time with them, and it was probably my favorite meal of the trip - just really good food and nothing touristy about it! I'm so glad we were able to visit them while we were in Chicago.
We caught the bus back to Michigan avenue and then had about a half mile walk back to our hotel. On the walk back Lilli fell asleep, and stayed asleep in the room once we got back. This worked out great so we were able to repack our luggage and get everything organized for the following day's trip back.
Brent snuck out and took a few night shots from our hotel, so pretty!!
I think this was our "latest" night in Chicago but I'm pretty sure we were all in bed by 10 pm! I think the ventilation in our room was awful - the fan was ALWAYS running and by this point in the trip I was sleeping horribly because I just couldn't breathe and Lilli had picked up a horrible cough at night. Thankfully it cleared up in about two days after we got home.

Probably just one or two more vacation posts and then lots to catch up from everything going on now that we're home!

Chicago: Day 3, Part 2 Grant Park

From the Field museum we started walking through Grant Park, and towards Buckingham Fountain. It was a great afternoon for a walk and Lilli was still asleep so we just enjoyed it!Strolling down some street in Chicago. I got this stroller for free from the Y using my Y Rewards points and I just love it!!! It definitely contains her better than our Peg Perego (hated that thing!) and it's nice and compact. We saw SO many nice, fancy strollers in Chicago and Brent was always saying under his breath "Can I tell you about my stroller? It was free...."
Right before we arrived at Buckingham Fountain a squirrel passed in front of our stroller and Brent and I both pointed at it like Lilli would've done when we saw a little arm point at it, too! I guess at some point on the walk she had woken up.
Buckingham Fountain.
With the skyline in the background.
Another pretty shot.
We parked the stroller and let Lilli out. This was probably the highlight of her trip - chasing seagulls.
She was running, and running and just chasing every bird there.
No bird was safe....
When she'd chase one out of an area she'd point towards other groups and then go after them.
And then, they'd all be cleared out.
So she tried to head through the gates around the fountain to where they'd all taken sanctuary. These gates are NOT toddler proof!
Lilli and I in front of the fountain.

Chicago: Day 3, Part 1 Field Museum

Monday morning dawned BRIGHT and early. Lilli woke up at 5 am (UGH!) so we put her in bed with us and slept with various elbows and feet in our face until around 7 when we got dressed and headed out to our neighborhood Starbucks. Here's the view from our floor by the elevators, a really nice view of Navy Pier and the Lake.After Starbucks we hopped on the bus to the Field Museum. Riding the bus isn't my favorite (versus trains) but they were closer to our hotel and got us there more directly. We actually took this bus to the steps of the Field Museum.
We REALLY had great timing on this trip! The Field museum had one of it's Free Days on the Monday we were there, so we were able to visit most of the museum for free. And it's so large that we didn't care about paying extra to see a few more exhibits.
This trip really made us appreciate handicapped people! There were a lot of times we ended up just taking Lilli out of the stroller and toting it up stairs because we couldn't figure out where the handicap access was.
We've visited the Field Museum on a previous trip to Chicago and we knew Lilli would love the big prehistoric models. As soon as she saw the big elephant thing she started "being" an elephant.
And here's Sue, the big T-Rex. Everything is real except the head, which is in a case on the second floor. The actual head weighs 600 pounds, so they built a replica for the display.
Sue is celebrating her 10th anniversary at the museum so they have all kinds of special dinosaur stuff going on.
The museum is full of stuffed, dead animals. Lilli loved it. I thought it got kind of creepy. I mean there are a TON of then. Pretty much every species and every country is represented here.
And there's a few bronze ones in there, too!

She loved the zebras, they're one of her favorite animals right now.We roared at the tigers and showed them our teeth.
After we walked around some exhibits on the first floor we went down to the special Kids area. It was really cool, with all kinds of things just for kids. Her favorite was (of course!!) the table with all the animals to play with. She could have played there all day!
They had a little music room with all kinds of instruments for the kids to play.
And they had these little pueblos with corn you could pick and carry around in baskets and then cook it in the little indian kitchen. They also had a little arts area where you could make crafts, a science area with microscopes, and a little dinosaur area with eggs and all kinds of little dinosaur stuff.
It was around lunch by this time and we were headed to the McDs in the building when this old guy who was part of a large tour group saw Lilli and was trying to talk to her and asked her if he could hold her. I think that's REALLY odd in today's day and age - you just can't do stuff like that. So I told her to ask him "how do you do" so she'd stick her hand out and shake his. This guy seemed really nice, and there's no doubt we could've taken him down, but it's still just not something you can do today. He was pretty tickled that she would shake his hand, and I'm sure it made his day and it got his little group all cracked up. If he was single I'm sure it got him points with the older ladies in the group.
She was thrilled with her McDonalds Happy Meal!
And made herself quite at home in what has to be the world's oldest highchair.
Very shortly after lunch she fell asleep just as we got to more of the dinosaur replicas!! She would've loved them!!
Lilli and I with a big dino!
And asleep before we left the museum....
Asleep outside the Field Museum....
A great little family photo.
Brent and I were taking some photos of ourselves and didn't notice we accidentally had Lilli in the picture, a little! HA!

It looks like we've totally lost the ability to take good family pictures anymore!