Day 2

Even from his stroller, Jack was really watching the fish in the aquariums.

This is a huge Great Lakes catfish. It was about 6 feet long.

Jack loved watching all the fish swimming around in the aquariums. And he especially liked this orange fish. It would swim so close and stop right in front of his face before turning around. It would only swim a short ways away and then come back. Jack would start kicking every time he saw it coming his way.

A crab that was bigger than Jack.

Jack and I slept in until 10:00 this morning. Jack slept 10 hours straight last night. He woke up at 8:00 to eat and then fell right back to sleep until 10:00. It felt good to finally catch up on sleep. Bruce just got back as we were waking up. He took a walk and found a good bagle place. He brought back some yummy bagles with strawberry cream cheese. We took our time getting ready and then headed out for breakfast. We went to a little restaurant that the train conductor had told us about. It was very good. After eating, we met the other guys and went to the expo center. After Bruce got registered and we walked around a bit. They had some pretty neat water fountains, shooting water up 50 feet into the air. They wouldn't let us in the expo with Jack for safety reasons, so we left and walked over to the Shedd Aquarium. Jack sure loved watching all the fish. He kicked his legs in excitement as they swam by so close. I found a couple souvenirs for the kids in the gift shop. We got some Chicago style hotdogs for lunch. They were huge. Then we went to the coral reef exhibit. It was beautiful. We took a bus back to the hotel. I called and talked to the kids. They sure sound like they are having fun. They hardly want to talk because they are so busy playing. Kimmy said Max is doing great on the potty and hasn't had any accidents. This evening, an engineering firm took our group out for dinner to the Weber Grill. Everything is cooked on Weber grills. We all ordered steaks. Jack started getting really fussy. There were about twenty people at our table so it was pretty loud. I took him to the bathroom trying to get him to go to sleep where it was quieter. The wife of the guy who was paying for everything came in the bathroom and told me to go ahead and bring him back out. She said that they've all had kids and understand. I felt like it was going to bother everyone because we were at a fancy dinner and they were all trying to talk, but she told me that nobody cared. She offered to hold him while I ate my salad. He stopped crying and was happy with her for awhile. He started crying just as I finished eating my salad. I could tell he was overtired and it was just too loud for him. (Even at home he likes it quiet and the lights dimmed around bedtime.) He would close his eyes and then open them at start crying again on and off. He finally fell asleep just before our steaks came and slept the rest of the time. It seemed like he was crying for hours but it really was only about 15 to 20 minutes total. And that was the first time he had cried since we woke him up to leave for the train station yesterday. So other than that little bit, he's been quite a happy baby. We all got deserts too. Bruce and I were so full we just had a chocolate malt. It was very good.