High water mark

Today was such an incredibly good day. And it's Monday, go figure!

I was definitely not expecting such a good day on the heels of an absolutely miserable night in the sleep department with a toddler with night terrors (nothing like being woken up by a screaming non-responsive kid at 2:30 AM. Yeah. It's as fun as it sounds.) But he obliged me by taking a decent nap after all those nighttime shenanigans.

After I picked older brother from preschool, and got everyone fed, we drove over to Clinton/Division and went for a nice looooong walk around in that neighborhood. I used to work over there years ago, and retain a bit of fond nostalgia for all the time I spent over there in my carefree (child-free) days. As it turns out, it's also a great place to haul the kids around for walks, and meets all the criteria for a place where you can kill a whole afternoon with both boys (it's a good place to find bottle caps on the ground, out of state license plates, and has a plethora of fire hydrants to amuse the toddler who is in the full throes of the fire hydrant phase), and has a few strategically placed things if you need to stop and take a break/use a restroom/get food.

So we walked around for a few hours, saw plenty of fire hydrants (apparently my toddler is not the only person on earth who is obsessed with appreciates a good fire hydrant. As far as he's concerned, we could go pretty much anywhere, and he'll happily put up with it, as long as there's a few fire hydrants/fire extinguishers around. His older brother is equally enthralled with license plates and bottle caps. (I often think I should start some sort of virtual shrine to special interests, since between the three of us, we have plenty!) We stopped and had a picnic in front of People's Food Co-op, then worked our way over to the park that's across from Cleveland. (On the way, I found a great free tie-dye shirt in someone's free box...yeah!) Apparently, the good folks over in Room 263 had the same idea, because I ran into my former coworkers at the park (who had taken their class for outside for some sunshine and fresh air on this rare sunny day in January). Quite like old times.

After catching up a bit, we walked back to the car, and hit Trader Joe's on the way home. So I even got a major errand done while completely slacking and frolicking out in the sunshine, triple bonus score! When we got home, we discovered a fabulous surprise: a mysterious package from Estonia.

After such a blatantly fantastic day, I could have ended it right there, but the cards were in my favor and I was even able to get completely caught up with Downton Abbey. Seriously, I should have bought a lottery ticket because today was just competely AMAZING. (Yeah, tomorrow's going to be a complete letdown, I'm sure).