Big city day part 1

I absolutely LOVE living in Chicago on the weekends!  I must admit it can get a bit lonely during the week.  Cole works crazy long hours and I am mostly on my own with the kids during the day.  It's probably my own fault but I really haven't made many friends here, and actually have made zero that stay home during the day.  So I really start missing all my Missouri stay at home mamma friends and their babies (ok, enough with the pitty party).  But on the weekends when our whole family is together it seriously feels like we are on vacation.  There are SO many exciting things to do in this city!  I really want Sylvie and Magnus to experience as much as they can while we are here, and the list of fun stuff to do with your kids never seems to end.  

This past Saturday we decided to head downtown for the day and see what we could find.  So after eating a breakfast of blueberry pancakes (made by Cole and Sylvie while Mag and I slept in), we packed up the diaper bag filled with snacks and everything we would need for a day out (so I thought) and hit the road.  The L is right behind our apartment.  Like if you took away our bedroom wall our bed would be on the tracks, not exaggerating.  It goes by all the time day and night.  It took me quite awhile to get used to the noise and vibrations and not wake up in a panic that I was about to get run over by a train.  I also must mention here that every time it goes by, about every 10 minutes, our TV cuts in and out so bad that it's not even worth turning on.  DVDs are the only way to go :) But I recently have gotten really good at riding the L (only took a year right) and was pretty pumped to be able to tell Cole which stop to get off at to start our downtown adventure (Roosevlet...bam!).  Sylvie loves the L and even made a little friend during our trip down.  Magnus slept in the Baby Bjorn like usual.

Once we got downtown we headed over to the feet statues.  I'm sure this has an actual name, but we just call them the feet.  Sylvie thought they were so funny and loved running through the maze of feet.  She also was obsessed with trying to climb them.  Next we decided to walk down to Buckingham fountain.  Sylvie has never been there but every time we drive by it she starts freaking out so we figured she'd really love checking it out.  On the way there we came across a cool man on a horse statue and another fountain.  Sylvie tried her luck rolling down her first hill and definitely had an interesting approach.  We finally made it to Buckingham fountain and let me tell you it is huge!  I know they say KC is the city of fountains, but we don't have anything as big as this guy!  There were a bunch of wedding parties and quinceanera parties taking photos in front of the fountain and Sylvie ended up being more into watching "the princesses" than the actual fountain.  She kept saying "she's in a long dress.  Oh no!  Her dress might get dirty".  Magnus however must've loved the fountain, because he kept sleeping.

We kept heading North and came across a street art spot where there was tons of sidewalk chalk and a roped off spot on the sidewalk for people to create their own art.  I'm not sure who was more excited me or Sylvie.  Everyone loves some good sidewalk chalking right?? It was so fun to watch people stop to write their name then go on their way.  We however wrote our names, drew pictures, dumped out the chalk, reorganized it, put it back, drew some more, etc.  It was next to impossible to get that little lady to leave. 

Next up more fountains, the bean, etc... to be continued... I wasn't lying, we had a REALLY big day!

Such a city girl, riding the L

The feet!

Sylvie climbing away and daddy aka Alan sporting Magnus in the baby bjorn

strike a pose

some really touristy pics

hill rolling

Buckingham Fountain (love the sky in this shot)

street art

Literally slept through our whole adventure

Retro Day

This has been the mildest summer I've ever experienced!  Not sure if this is how Chicago always is in July, but I swear it's felt more like spring.  Today's high is 73 and it was only 66 when we were getting ready to venture out for a big trip to the mailbox....wahoo!

I pretty much only have summer 0-3 month clothes for Magnus.  I mean, he was born in June for petes sake!  So as I was searching for something warm for him to wear I came across the sweatsuit that my sister and I had worn when we were itty bitty (you wouldn't think a sweatsuit worn by 2 girls would be appropriate for a boy, but it definitely is, hmmmmm). My nephew Jay also got to sport this bad boy when he was  few months old and now lucky Mag gets his turn!  I decided to go with the theme and also put Sylvie in an old Mickey and Minnie T-shirt of mine (Dana and I had matching ones of course).    She's currently obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and loves this shirt.  She also wore it when we went to Disney World and thought it was pretty cool that it used to be mine.

My mom (and Sister) are way too good at getting rid of things.  I however am bordering hoarder status. Luckily my mom saved some of her favorite clothes from when we were little and remembered to get them out when we started having kids.  These retro goodies have been some of my favorite outfits for Sylvie, plus it is just so neat to see her in something that I know used to be mine. I love how the 80s fashion is back in style!  I'm so thankful my mom (probably with some help from my dad) dressed us like boys at least once so Magnus could get in on retro day, and even more thankful that she bought and kept such cute clothes from our baby days.  Hopefully these items can be passed down to my grandkids someday :)

And now here's a look back at some of the other retro outfits we've brought back to life throughout the past 2.5 years.

Jay in the sweatsuit 

tiny little sleeper

apparently sweatsuits were all the rage

Dana's first Easter dress

love this sundress

this one is a double whammy, the shorts I'm wearing
were my mom's and Sylvie's outfit was mine

crop top??

 

Dana and I both had our 1 year pics taken in this number 

Sylvie's 1 year pics were also in it

my red swimsuit 

the Mickey shirt strikes again

Sylvie broke this pink dress out for 2013 Easter

this one was actually my mom's dress

let's do this

I'm not really that into blogs.  After spending so much time on my computer editing photos and corresponding with clients about sessions I'm usually ready to put the thing away when I'm finished instead of surfing the net.  But I am REALLY (like over the top too much, some may say it's bordering obnoxious) into photos!  Besides the fact that I'm a photographer and take thousands of pictures every month, I'm one of the only people I know that actually prints off pictures and puts them into real life photo albums (in chronological order of course).

So this brings me to my reason for starting a blog.

When my best friend Blair started her blog less than a year ago I kinda thought she was nuts.  I mean what mother of two has time to put together a blog post?  But as the year has gone on I've found myself reading her blog and really wishing I had a place of my own to keep track of memories.  We are just completing one of the craziest years of our lives (moving to Chicago for Cole's job, keeping my photography studio in KC, commuting back and forth about every 2 weeks for a full year with 2 year old Sylvie, adding baby Magnus to the mix, living in not one but two tiny Chi-Town apartments, learning to ride the bus and the L with babies, attempting to adjust to big city life...get the picture??) and are getting ready to embark on what will probably rival this past year on the crazy meter, and I don't want to forget one moment of it!  Of course I have all the thousands of photos to help me remember this time in our lives, but I want the stories (written out so I won't forget) to go with them!

WARNING...sometimes I ramble, I will DEFINITELY post way too many photos, I might be the world's worst speller, I can't remember grammar or punctuation rules, and let's face it a lot of what I write/post might not be in the slightest bit interesting to most people.  BUT I'm going to blog anyway :)  I'm not really expecting many people to read this, I'm doing this for me and my family so we can look back and remember all the crazy times we had and most importantly see how we found JOY IN THE JOURNEY!

Meet the Erdmanns Cole, Monica, Sylvie {2 years 10 months}, Magnus {6 weeks}