Out and About

Yesterday we took the boys to the Naperville Riverwalk. Our visit started out with a highlight for Ben. We meet two bike patrol police officers and one of them was nice enough to give the boys their very own police badge/stickers. Ben wore his proudly all afternoon and told just about everyone we passed "I'm a policeman, I have a badge."

Brian and I had what I'll call a team strengthening exercise yesterday. Somewhere I got in my head that I'm not going to allow the boys to pick up any of our irrational fears. Let them make up their own. Part of this came into play when I took the boys to the zoo Friday. I overheard so many parents cringing/whining/complaining about a particular animal they were not fond of and didn't want to observe; bats, snakes, whatever. Of course their children mirrored this. Anyway, part of the riverwalk allows you to be right up on the water and the boys were having a pretty good time of it watching the ducks and what not. Neil was expressing that he wants to hug the ducks. So for me this was high anxiety time. I was freaking out that the boys were going to topple into the river. Now, it's not very far into the water and it's not very deep, but in my head this was not going to be okay if we had to calm someone down and take them home wet. It was Brian's turn to be the brave parent and get right up there with the boys. He told me he was fully prepared to go in after either of them.

My turn to be the strong one came later when we took the boys on the guided tour of the Millennium Carillon, a very cool tower with bells. We learned on the tour that carillons are pretty rare and the view was pretty awesome. Here's where it gets freaky for Brian. He is not a fan of heights and I'm guessing he knows this is irrational cause he was the one who suggested we climb the tower. So there I was on the top observation deck taking each of the boys out to the edge and pointing out which direction our house was and the Chicago skyline and whatever else might be of interest to them. Meanwhile, Brian is standing in the center of the deck wondering at what point we can start working our way back down. So there you have it Brian is the ying to my yang.

Here's a couple of nice shots from the day. The first is with the enticing ducks and the second is of the boys playing with the Dick Tracy statue which is on the riverwalk because one of the comics artist is a longtime Naperville resident. (Look Matt & Nate, Uncle Bri doesn't only wear jean shorts.) Also a pic I found of the tower.