It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas

Anyone who knows me, knows I don't like anything Christmas BEFORE Thanksgiving. Well, I can't control when the City of Chicago lights the Christmas Tree in Daley Plaza, and our family was all here to go together, so I had to break my rule. It was really cold, and raining, and almost anything that could go wrong went wrong, but we had a ton of fun in the in betweens!

On the train ride downtown, Giuliana started to fuss so we decided to make a bottle, only to find that we had the bottle, the formula, and the water to make the bottle, but no bottle liner! We use the Playtex dropins system, so there is a disposable dropin liner. As backup, I said to Joe, "Ok, well give her some of the banana puffs." He said, "CRAP! I forgot those too. This is the last time I'm in charge of packing the diaper bag." Luckily we had a pacifier that held her over until we arrived downtown and were able to stop at Walgreens and buy a downtown priced pack of dropins!

We headed over to Daley Plaza to see the lighting of the tree. Whew, it was cold and cold raining. As I mentioned, it was pretty cool to see. We took a short video, so if you'd like to see, it's below. Then we walked over to Giordanos for some stuffed pizza. Halfway there, the wind started gusting so strongly, it was practically pushing us and doing the walking for us. However, pushing a double stroller with two crying little ones, against the wind was not an easy task.

We finally made it to Giordanos and were seated quickly and I went to change the girls diapers. With our order placed, we had 35 minutes to entertain Giovanna and Giuliana. I was doing the, "High five. To the side. Down low. Too slow" game with Giovanna. Gunnar was sitting across the table, and was playing the same game with her and whoop, over went a full glass of water on Gunnar's lap. Then after we finished eating, Giuliana became really fussy. I went to pick her up to soothe her and realized she had a poopy diaper that went through on to her clothes (been happening alot lately unfortunately). I asked Joe if he would do the honors, and to my surprise, he agreed! He was gone for quite awhile, but not as long as I had expected him to be. He came back to the table all frazzled and handed Giuliana over to me, nice and dry and in a new set of clothes and hurridly said, "I have to go back in there to clean up." I couldn't help but laugh. He came back and said it was the poo of her life! Up her entire back, down her legs, all over her clothes, she was crying and kicking. Again, I laughed and tried to hold it in but couldn't. I only laughed because I've been there and it's funny when it's not happening to you. Needless to say, it got on his shirt, and luckily, he had on an undershirt, so we were able to add it to the dirty clothes bag, paid our check and headed home.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to stop and see Santa as planned. So we'll have to do that in a few weeks when we go again for our Christmas shopping.

The girls on the Blue Line on the way downtown

all bundled up looking like puffy marshmallows

The family (minus me, I was taking the picture)

in front of the tree

The Lighting of the Tree

Does this count as her first steps?