Yes - we saw squirrels again!
The first week we used public transport - we'll not mention the middle-of-the-night phone call from Daddy letting Mummy know that he thought his wallet had been stolen, and that he'd had all our credit cards (three countries worth) in it and that meant that we had to cancel them all - and hmm, how were we going to a) pay the rent, b) hire a car... This put paid to Daddy's plan to hire a car in Atlanta and drive to C-U - he had no credit cards, no licence and zero access to funds - he barely managed to get a Greyhound bus organized. Thank goodness for friends and colleagues. Mummy was mightily peeved - her vision of having wheels to visit friends off the beaten track were going up in smoke. We were lucky that Daddy's jacket had been handed in to the reception of his hotel and everything returned to him - and we were able to hire a car the next week. We had time to get over jetlag - Mummy had decided to quarantine us for most of the first week just in case we were bringing germs from our travel from China. Most important when you are seeing people for the first time in ages - you don't want to get them sick!! So the first week was spent catching buses, checking out our old stomping ground of the public libraries and shopping...and did I mention that we have our very own bath in our apartment? Just like old times, only Sebastien wasn't even 11 months old when we left for China so he has no recollection. He just knows that he likes to "wim" - and Mummy just knows that she needs to remove all the towels from the bathroom if she wants to have anything still dry at the end of "bath, er sorry, 'wim time".
Daddy arrived towards the end of the first week and that meant bedtime stories again! 
Daddy was going to work every day so we'd only see him at bedtime.Soon enough we linked up with our friends. Though we knew that they were still on school/work time and we were on holidays which restricted our playdates. There were carousel rides with Tina, Evie and Evan.
Chuck-E-Cheese for the very first time to meet Jennie and her baby Doug who had arrived in our absence. We were so excited to see them and were glad to meet her about halfway to Galesburg.
Plus a visit to Bloomington-Normal's Chilren's Museum - which is SUPERB!
Among other things, a supermarket.
A pizza place.
And there were enough trains and track for Sebastien to share with Alex - this table was great as it had "pop-up" holes in the middle where kids could crawl under the table and "pop-up" to get access to the centre of the table. Give the boy a train and he's happy, actually, it could be a truck, a car, a train...he's all boy.
Sebastien was checking out the tractor - probably looking for Grandad.
There is a climbing structure that runs from the bottom floor to the top floor for kids - excellent!
Though Alex wasn't quite sure how to get back down from the top!
And a glass wall to paint on - heaven!!
Sebastien thought that if one brush was good, then three was even better.
Alex's favourite was the giant pin impressions toy - she spent quite a while getting the pins organised only to back into it or plunge her face into it. Entertainment for all! 
Whew! We'll continue this in the next post.
1 comment:
Doug and I had fun that day too. I can't wait to bring him back to the museum now that he's older.
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