Finally Some Fun in Chicago!

We made another trip (yes, another!) trip to Chicago last week.  Sophie went for a check-up and for us to learn how to fill her expanders.  Dr. Bauer likes for the first fill to be done by his staff to ensure that everything is working properly, and he also uses this as a teaching opportunity for us to learn, observe, and participate in the expansion process since we will be doing this from home until May, when Sophie has her first nevus excision surgery.  It was quite unnerving to stick a needle into my child, but with the help of Emla cream, she hardly noticed it at all.  Thank goodness!!!

While in Chicago this time, we were able to have a little fun.  We visited Kohl Children's Museum and had a blast!  It was very busy there.  Several schools from the area must have been on a field trip there that day. 

They had an art room where the craft of the day was painting a self-portrait.  Sophie was a little too young to do the craft, so we opted to play with the shapes on the light table.  Each of the pieces has magnets on the side, so she had a lot of fun creating different things out of the shapes.

Then there was a room that was all about water.  Here Sophie is watching jelly fish being pushed up to the top of the tank by air bubbles.

And here she was making a ball go up in a tube using pressurized water.

We moved on to the music room.  She LOVES music, so this was her favorite.  She plucked the strings on a guitar to hear the sound,

and then played the cymbals, the bongo, and shook the tamberene.

I think she would have stayed

in this room forever.

This contraption reminded me of the game Mouse Trap.  I know I'm dating myself, but I'm sure there are some of you out there that remember this game!

Finally, we made it to the library where Sophie played on the "puter", as she likes to call it, and we read some books. 

There were many other rooms (grocery store, veterinary clinic, daycare, etc.) there that we didn't get to visit because it was so crowded and it was almost lunch time.  We will definitely be coming back here, so we visit them next time!