Autumn Update #2

After re-reading Autumn Update , I saw there were some things I forgot to write - thus why I am doing a part two!

One, is that a couple of months ago Logan decided that his favorite song is Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)." Whenever he hears that song he starts dancing and singing and when it's over he says "more!" He doesn't really do that with other radio music so it's hilarious considering the lyrics. It reminds me of when I was a toddler with the song "Elvira" by the Oakridge Boys.

Second, one day while I was thinking I made a t-t-t noise. So a couple of minutes later when I asked Logan a question, as he thought of the answer he went "t-t-t" which made me laugh.

He's been the energizer bunny since turning two-and-a-half (what I called him from 9 months to 18 months). But I think he still has more of the personality of a Taurus than an Aries (one of my first posts was titled My Son, The Aries or The Taurus? because he was supposed to be a Taurus but was born three weeks early making him an Aries.)

He has all of his teeth now! I don't know when his final two molars came in but they are there so he is done with teething forever -- yeay! Maybe that's why he's been so easy and well behaved this past month! He is acting more like a three year old lately (my favorite age when I've been around children in the past) -- more like a little boy than a toddler the way he moves, the way he looks, the way he acts, the way he talks, etc. Anyway, now he can go to the dentist at any time, but I think we'll just wait until his three-year check up.As for other things. . .he has an amazing memory. One day I took him to Babysitter's house and he pointed to the other car in the driveway and said, "Mia's car." I was like, "Okay," thinking he didn't really know what he was talking about but when I walked in there was the little girl Mia. I have only seen her a couple of times because she doesn't usually go on the same days as Logan. When I told Babysitter what Logan said about her car she said that was creepy because they are not usually dropped off/picked up on the same day. Joe later said that a few months ago Mia had come on the same day and Logan had seen her get out of that car so he must have remembered from that long ago!

Another day we were walking down the street and Logan pointed to a van and said, "Neighbors!" Once again I just shrugged and said, "oh" but honestly had no idea what kind of van our neighbors drove. Then we watched it pull into the driveway and into the garage! I was like, "How in the world did you know that?!" He doesn't usually point to cars and say who they are so it's not like he's just guessing -- he only does it when he is correct (for example, he can pick our vehicles out in the parking lot as well as my parents' SUV).

As soon as we go to any store or any place that we've been before, he starts reminding me of whatever occurred the last time we were there, even if it has been many months ago.

Whenever we go to Vala's Pumpkin Patch, he always points to one of the Halloween decorations of a man who has fallen into a trash can and Logan points and says, "Oh shoot!" He also says it's silly that there is a car parked on the grass. :-) (In my other autumn update I posted some pics of Logan at the pumpkin patch, here are three more as well as the very first pic on today's post and one later on of Joe & Logan together)For the past several months he loves skipping around so that is cute. Also cute was that day when we took the hour walk around the lake back in September -- as I had pushed him in the stroller he looked up at me and I said, "Hi cutie pie" so then after that he kept looking up at me and he said to me, "Hi cutie pie!"

He is still sensitive to light -- something we noticed on his first day of life in the hospital. He often doesn't want me to turn on the light when I change his diaper.

Two women I know are going to have babies in the spring (Sarah has son Elijah born in October 2008, her next is due in April 2011, and Sara is my friend Lisa's sister, this will be her first due in March 2011).

My oldest cousin's daughter is due to have a baby in either December or January which means my paternal grandma is going to be a GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER! Meanwhile, Joe's nephew & wife who are having their third in January found out it is going to be a boy (they currently have a two-and-a-half year old daughter and a thirteen-month-old son).

Since I wrote Autumn Update, Logan came home the next day with two pumpkins that he and Joe had designed at Joe's mom's house. Joe's was black with silver sparkles and Logan's was white with different colors of paint. Logan was so proud :-)We have mainly spent the month getting good use of our Vala's season pass, going nearly every day that he doesn't go to Babysitter's house.

We put up all of our Halloween decorations on Monday, October 4th so now Logan's not as scared of Halloween because he keeps commenting that he likes our Halloween stuff and now when we're at the store he wants to go down the aisle with the costumes, etc. However, my mom said he was deathly afraid of the scarecrow she had sitting on her front steps! I think he's going to be a tiger again for trick-or-treating since the costume still fits from last year, and probably next year he'll start caring what he wants to be every year.

On Thursday, October 7th Logan & I went to Vala's with Lisa and her daughters Lexi and Riley, and then with my mom & stepdad on Friday, October 8th because my mom's 60th birthday was 10/10/10 and she wanted to see what all of the talk has been the past year about Vala's! She was impressed and said it was a great birthday. Joe joined us that evening for his first time this year to the pumpkin patch, and we also went out to eat to a restaurant called Upstream.

On Saturday, October 9th we continued our annual tradition of picking out pumpkins at the store for our front step. Logan was bummed there weren't any little ones so we went on the hayrack ride today at Vala's and he picked out his own little pumpkin :-)

That evening Brooke and I had a mom's night out at the movies -- we saw Life As We Know It which was good and funny. I forgot to mention that our first mom's night out was in September (literally -- Brooke hadn't been to the movie theater since before her daughter was born a year-and-a-half ago!) when we saw Eat, Pray, Love. I liked it, but it was a bit long.

On Sunday, October 10th Logan had his two-and-a-half year pics taken. We weren't planning on doing any (as of two years old we're just going to do them once a year), but Brooke is a member of MOPs and they were doing a fundraiser where a professional photographer was taking outdoor pics that day and giving anyone who wanted a CD with rights to do whatever we want with 30 pics for $30. It was a beautiful fall day so we participated; Logan seemed to do a good job so hopefully we'll like the CD that we can pick up next week (earlier that week I'd done my seasonal clothes-buying but opted out of a family pic since my face isn't completely recovered yet from what I wrote about in my first autumn update -- although my lip is).

On Monday, October 11th we went to look at a preschool for Logan (as well as to the library). As I wrote about in Autumn Update, we are considering starting Logan around February. We liked almost everything about it but Joe wanted to go to another to compare which makes sense, so I began researching all of the others in the area. But I really only came up with one other one that I'd been interested in seeing. They have a new building just down our street. So we went there today. . .this is going to be a tough decision! Basically the only things that we were "iffy" about with preschool #1 were what we liked at preschool #2, but the things that we liked about preschool #1 were not as good at preschool #2! And then of course there were a lot of things that were exactly the same/equal. So Joe and I have no idea which one we'll go with. . .like, one has web cams for me to check in on him at any time (a plus) while the other one doesn't. But the web cam place is an open setting with all classes separated only by a small/short wall (making it noisy and possibly more overwhelming for Logan) while the other has individual closed classrooms (a plus). The good thing is that it sounded like we could get in whenever we wanted with either place so we have the next three-and-a-half months to make a decision. February is also the month that we're making the decision as far as when Joe will start applying for a new job. Although, not only has his job improved, but the position that he wasn't going to have a year-and-a-half from now has now been secured for another five years. Which means two out of the three reasons he was going to apply for a new job in February have now been eliminated. He still will apply if the third reason isn't eliminated, but if it is (and/or I get pregnant) then we will probably wait one more year until 2012 (I don't want to move at the same time that I have a baby). We plan to check out North Carolina this spring to see if Joe should apply there, but our only other interest is a Chicago suburb.

So, we left Omaha for Chicago on Friday, October 15 -- which was the day after we had a fun time at Vala's with friend Brooke and her daughter Kaelyn (you can read Brooke's blog post about it here).

We spent the night at Joe's mom's house in Iowa because she watched Logan until Monday evening and then my mom and stepdad watched him until Wednesday evening when we returned home. Logan cried when we left (he's starting to do that, even at his Babysitter's) but stopped by the time Joe and I got into the car (so there hasn't been any dramatic moments yet).

On our way to Chicago on Saturday, October 16, Joe and I ate at Chick Fil A for lunch. I forgot to mention that Joe and Logan had their first experience at Chick Fil A back when we went to Iowa in September, while I hadn't eaten there since I was in high school -- it was still as yummy as I'd remembered! I can't wait until Omaha gets one (expected 2012)! So it was great because we also saw one on our way home from Chicago so that made 3 times eating there the past month!

We checked into our hotel (Mariott at Medical -- the college area of Chicago) at around 3:30 pm. We didn't run into any bad traffic and the weather was perfect. Our hotel was very nice (a five star hotel) and at 5 pm we walked to a nearby restaurant to eat supper. It was excellent! Called DaVanti Enoteca, it had great atmosphere, great service, and great food! I ordered Riccio di Mare e Granchio (linguine + sea urchin + crab) while Joe had the Paccheri con Salsiccia e Pomodori al forno (giant rigatoni + sausage + oven roasted tomato + parmigiano). We were just in our jeans and tee shirts after all of our hours of traveling, but we still felt comfortable as there were both fancy dressed and casually dressed customers. I would definitely recommend this restaurant for anyone going to Chicago (in fact, this was the only restaurant that I'd recommend from our trip), you can visit their website here.We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in our room and then got up Sunday morning, October 17, for the Bears game! After eating the breakfast buffet at our hotel, we arrived to Soldier Field at around 10 am and the game started at noon. Unfortunately, they lost to the Seattle Seahawks but it was still a terrific, fun experience as we had 4th row seats and nice weather. The morning was a little cool so Joe and I each bought a sweatshirt there (we'd forgotten our coats back in Omaha - duh) as well as I had a hot chocolate and then a hot dog for lunch.I didn't realize that if you have to go to the bathroom in Chicago, good luck finding one! The stores along the streets don't have public restrooms (maybe because of the homeless??) so twice I was almost in pain trying to find one!

We rode the subway around Chicago and visited the Navy Pier that evening. (We'd visited the Willis Tower on our Chicago trip last year, as well as The Hancock Tower and The Blue Man Group, which you can read about in my 2009 post Our Chicago Trip.) I was so glad I had on my walking shoes this year. Last year I wrote about wearing my high heel boots which left my feet blistered. This year I was comfortable! (We also didn't get valet parking at our hotel this time and I carried my own bags, preventing any injuries to the doorman this year :p)The Navy Pier was really neat -- sometime we'll have to take Logan since there is a Children's Museum. We ate Chicago-style pizza at a restaurant there although it wasn't as good as last year's popular Giordano's, of course!

When we returned to our hotel we refreshed our memory on the suburbs to visit the next day. We checked out of our hotel on Monday, October 18 and drove to the west. We don't want to live farther west than Naperville, so to get there we took I-290 to I-294 to Hwy-34 -- meaning we saw a lot of suburbs!

The winner was Naperville. LOVED it. It felt like home sweet home! "The one." Naperville was ranked the #2 best city to live in the US by Money Magazine in 2006. Located 43 minutes west of Chicago, it has a population of around 145,235. With cost of living being 18% cheaper than where we live now, we would be able to afford the house that we'd want. It is four-and-a-half hours away from our parents in Iowa so we'd be able to go there as often as we do now (at three hours away).

Most importantly, it has everything we are looking for. It's hard to describe a "vibe" but basically there was a certain feeling that I was going for (that reminds me of the place I lived the first 8 yrs of my life and where my parents still live). It was all very nice, well-kept, and new-looking with everything that we'd need without seeming too "big city." (Despite it being the fifth largest city in Illinois, it was very cozy.) There would be no adjustment since everything looks the same as Iowa and Nebraska (the only other two states where I've lived).

The people were friendly -- we went to Walgreens to buy some cough syrup because I developed a cough on the trip just like last year (thankfully I am almost over it), and a woman paid for the stranger in front of her's purchase because she didn't have enough money. Cars were very courteous (traffic was no problem), the whole suburb had a calm and peaceful, family-oriented feel to it.

I had been to Naperville once before (back in 2007 for Joe's nephew's wedding) and had noticed all of this back then. In fact, if it hadn't been for that I might never have considered a Chicago suburb as a place to live (although I loved the city of Chicago back when I visited the first time at age seventeen and almost worked there as an intern TV reporter in college, hoping to someday get a fulltime job there, but now that I'm a SAHM I feel the suburb is more my fit). So Naperville held up to the foggy memory that I had of it three-and-a-half years ago.We also liked Lisle, where we stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant (the food was just okay), but housing is not affordable there (it's 101% more expensive than where we currently live). However, there are job openings in Joe's field so if he can't find one in Naperville, he could commute to Lisle (9 minutes away). There are also job openings in Downers Grove (16 minutes from Naperville). So even though we didn't care for that suburb to live, Joe wouldn't mind working there if it meant a good job and living in Naperville. Other suburbs that he could commute to for work (but we wouldn't want to live) are Warrenville (7 minutes) and Woodridge (15 minutes).

From Naperville, we drove 24 min. north to stay in Lombard that night. We saw more suburbs along the way, but didn't care for any. We liked Lombard, but even though the population is 42,975, it seemed more "big city" than Naperville. I think that's because it was more businesses vs housing, whereas Naperville was more housing vs businesses. Also, even though it's only 17% more expensive than where we live now, there does not seem to be affordable housing (when viewing their houses for sale sites). However, there are job openings in Joe's field, but with no nearby suburbs to live it does not seem likely that Joe will apply there (Glendale Heights, only 12 min away, was affordable but not our fit to live. We liked Itasca, 19 minutes away which is borderline for a commute, but I think it might be too "small town" with only 8,302 residents. However, even with it being 25% more expensive than our current place, it does have affordable housing.)

We stayed at The Fairfield in Lombard and ate supper at the Clam Jumper where I had a grilled chicken ceaser salad.

We checked out on Tuesday, October 19 and drove to the north suburbs. During our prior months of research, we didn't think we'd want to live farther north than Elgin (because the suburbs we looked at have the same weather as what we're used to, but go north and it's colder), so we stayed at The Courtyard there but didn't care for Elgin.

We liked Schaumburg (located 43 minutes northwest of Chicago), although even though it's only 16% more expensive than where we live now, there doesn't seem to be affordable housing. It is where the most openings are in Joe's field out of all of the suburbs, so statistically that would be the best place for Joe to apply for a job, but like Lombard we feared it had too much of a "big city" feel, despite it being smaller than Naperville, with a population of 75,936. There are a lot of big corporations there. Sure enough, after talking to someone familiar with Schaumburg, it can get crowded, traffic can get heavy, and apparently the holiday season and tourist times are awful since the second largest mall in America is there. It is also farther from our hometowns at five-and-a-half hours.There is a nearby suburb of Streamwood (pop: 39,497) with the best housing out of all of the suburbs that we saw on our trip, but we didn't care for "the look" of the actual town as much, however it runs right into Schaumburg so if we lived on the skirts we'd feel we were living in Schaumburg.

I kind of wish we would have gone a little farther north on our trip. Even though the housing looks "iffy" in the Palatine to Deerfield area based on their houses for sale sites, those two suburbs have been recommended to us (and Palatine is only 15 minutes east of Schaumburg if Joe got a job there to commute, while Deerfield has job openings in Joe's field). Looks like we're going to have to make another trip! We also didn't get to any southern suburbs but there doesn't seem to be as many opportunities for Joe's job there, so we've kind of decided to cross that area off our list.

We ate lunch at Wendy's that day. Before crashing in our hotel room in Elgin, Joe and I walked around a nice park and went to the movie theater to see The Social Network (it was just okay). We checked out on Wednesday, October 20th and headed home after eating breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (they are all over the place in Illinois so since I've only eaten there once in my life, when I was a kid, we decided to splurge)!

Logan did great at both grandparents' houses (he was still napping when we arrived to my mom and stepdad's place so we just talked and then I woke him up after he'd been sleeping for three hrs) and he was easy on our car rides. He now likes his DVD player too much (for the first time I have to start saying "no more" when it comes to TV -- his favorite show is Blue's Clues, he calls it "The Good Guy" and wants to watch him over and over and over! It's not bad, though, because it's taught Logan the alphabet -- he can say it now and recognize half of the letters when seeing them)

The dogs, however, were awful at my mom and stepdad's place. In my Chicago post last year I wrote about how we weren't going to travel with them anymore since they seem to deficate all over my parents' house for some reason (and bark non stop). For the past year we've had our neighbors let them outside while we go away for weekends, but this trip was five nights so we thought that'd be too long to leave them by themselves (and they did fine at Joe's mom's place). But they seem to be more comfortable being alone here than traveling (since there are never any accidents here and the neighbors say they don't even bark at them when they come inside), so next time we'll see how they do staying by themselves even when we're gone longer because there is not any obvious reason (to change) to why they behave like that at my mom & stepdad's.

It was 9:15 pm by the time we pulled into our driveway so Joe and I were exhausted and glad that he'd taken the rest of the week off from work! My step grandparents are staying with us this weekend so that will be fun.

Aside from seeing the second preschool this morning (Thursday, October 21), Joe, Logan, and I spent the afternoon at Vala's. (Here is a pic of Logan with his little pumpkin that he picked out.)Only one more week before it closes for the year :( It's been nice weather this fall, I wish it would stay like this year round.

Okay I think that is it this time for our autumn update! See you in the winter!