Majoring in Genius: August 2014

No, I'm not dead. I know you all were starting to think I was. I also know it's been almost a month since I posted. I'm sorry, Mom. This month has been crazy.

So Mike's back in school. Yeah . . .

Parenting done right.

Just kidding. We do things, sometimes. For example, we celebrated July 31. Which if you are really my friend would know was Harry Potter's 34th birthday. Obviously.

And yeah, I know, if you're a die-hard you know that in the book it was just chocolate with green lettering. But the one in the movie was just so much more memorable. I mean, really. (Enter comments like, "Seriously, Brittany? You are such a nerd!")

Or, in a less nerdy vein, the Saturday before Mike started school again, we went downtown to the Shedd Aquarium since it was such a hit last year. (Note: unless you pay the $40 per person to see extra stuff, general admission is NOT that exciting after the first time.) The problem was that we accidentally went the same weekend as Lollapalooza. Which, if you don't know (I didn't), is a huge concert festival with hundreds of bands and artists and occasionally super famous ones, and it lasts for like 4 days and takes over all of Millenium Park (and let's face it, all of Chicago). We're talking thousands of people trying to park downtown the same time we were innocently trying to take our little family to the aquarium. Gack.

It's cool, though. We parked under Soldier Field and walked over to the aquarium on the non-Lollapalooza side of the park. And it was cool, I guess. Like I said, we saw everything cool about general admission last time, and we're not going to shell out three hundred bucks to see a polar bear when we can see those at the zoo (which . . . we go to all the flippin' time. Let's face it). Oh! Except for the Australian Lungfish that was brought to the aquarium in 1933. Yeah. And he was still just swimming around like nothing. Holy cow there was a fish there older than pretty much all the people. (I mean, there could have been some elderly people there, but I didn't see any. The oldest people that I saw were grandmas who were still mobile enough to wrestle children.)

After that less-than-thrilling experience, we decided to walk around. There's a walkway around the aquarium that goes right along the lake (like as in, the path ends and then you fall the ten feet down into the lake) and we thought it was awesome. There were seagulls, propeller planes pulling ads, sail boats in fancy colors, and lots of wind. It was awesome. We kind of all decided that it was our favorite part of the trip. The only thing that would have made the whole day perfect was if I had broken my diet to get food from the street vendors. Oh, Chicago, why did I not know about your wondrous hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches until now? I feel like my young-person metabolism years were completely wasted!

That's right. Giant macaroni noodle.

Oh, and also we now have proof that we actually live in Chicago, because that's not photoshopped.

And then Mike started school. So, you know, we slowed down. We went to the park a lot, went back to the zoo on one of the Saturdays, and were getting back into sort of a routine. And also I threw a birthday party for Katie's little friend Lilly because they have been super busy with lots of things recently. And I made this cake. (Don't judge, I'm not super experienced with fondant yet.) It was really fun. We did a "jungle safari" theme, and I had Mike go crazy with green streamers and little rubber lizards and snakes and all the stuffed monkeys we had in the house. It was a good time.

And then, we had some fun Emergency Room times. Yay. See, last Wednesday morning, when Katie woke up, she was covered in hives. She hadn't eaten anything different or anything, so as far as I could figure out, she had walked through lawn fertilizer on our walk the night before or been bitten by some kind of bug or spider. That afternoon, when it wasn't getting better, I took her to the pediatrician, who gave her some Atarax. And things at first started to be clearing up.

Such a trooper.

Then, the next day, she got worse. Like, way worse. The hives spread all the way up and down her legs and her face and hands and feet got all swollen, so much that she said it hurt to walk. That plus a fever made us worried, and when we called the nurse at her doctor's office, she said we should go to the ER. So we hurriedly called our friend Cindy (who is amazing! We love you, Cindy!) to watch the boys and went to the ER for 6 hours or so. They gave her some Motrin and Benadryl and did a bunch of tests, and then said it was probably a "serum sickness-like reaction" to a virus or something. And that we should just keep giving her Benadryl and it would go away. And it's true, Benadryl worked and her swelling went down and was gone by Monday. I'm kind of wondering if she had a reaction to the Atarax.

So we got home from the ER around 12:30 in the morning, and learned very quickly that Katie does not react to Benadryl like normal people. Rather than get all sleepy like I do, she got super loopy and started singing songs about checkered elephants. And she didn't want to go to bed because she wanted a snack and to talk all about her experience at the hospital, which was actually really cool. Seriously, if you need to take your kid to the ER in Naperville, go to Edwards. Their Pediatric ER is amazing. Katie was watching Frozen and Despicable Me 2 and the bathroom had whales painted all over the walls. But we didn't get her to bed until almost 1:30. Guess how functional her parents were the next day. Yeah.

Nerdy moment #2--I'm making a Bag End cake.

But since then everything has been a lot better. We've been to the park almost every day this week (except today, because apparently we have 6 days of thunderstorms in a row now). And, apparently my cakes have garnered attention. Because my friend's mom asked me to make her a cake for her birthday. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) So, naturally, I had to get all creative and then today I made a practice cake. But, you know, using leftover frosting and fondant, so the colors are super boring and not correct. The real cake will look better.

So life is pretty good. I'm making a new board for our preschool, which we're starting in a couple of weeks. We're doing it with 4 other kids--only 1 that we were with last year. But I'm really excited. There are a couple of moms with older kids who are old hats at this, and we've had a lot of really good ideas. Field trips, science experiments, birthday parties--it's going to be amazing! I'm actually less stressed this year because we made a calendar of topics, so I don't have to think of a lesson out of thin air every time. Also, Katie is besties with at least two of the kids. And I'm pretty sure after the first ten minutes, she'll be besties with the other two. It's going to be great.

So now we're just moving forward. My project list (some necessary, some not) is huge, but Mike's studying all the time now, so I'll have time. I just need motivation to actually get them all done. Gack. But here are a whole bunch of adorable pictures to catch you up since I didn't blog for an entire month. Or, you know, you can just be done if you don't like adorable pictures of my adorable children. I won't say anything.