go fish

Sub-freezing temperatures, single-digit wind chills, snow-storm forecasts, and impending nfc championship games. i don't know about you, but in this situation, all i can think of is tropical fish.

thus it was that saturday morning we found ourselves at the shedd aquarium, the biggest aquarium outside of...the freaking lake, which is right next door. shut up. after bundling up the kids and hustling downtown, we arrived at the shedd just as it opened. unfortunately, we neglected to bring the necessary $6 in quarters to park in the plentiful metered spots along the lakefront between the shedd and the alder planetarium, so we had to leave the car under soldier field and hoof it. neigh.

we finally made it in, and we immediately had words with the shedd employee covering the centerpiece caribbean reef exhibit. he was kind enough to turn off his mic before ordering us away from the glass, so liam spared him a humiliating beat-down this one time.



after he had his fill of stingrays, jacks, bonitos, immature sharks, and other assorted pretties, liam expressed his interest in the pacific northwest wing of the aquarium. while the coral and anemones of this area were beautiful, some of the fish were not.

lovely:



not lovely:



we then entered the amazon rainforest exhibit, which i rather enjoyed. while it may be hard to tell from the pictures (due to the low-light environment of the aquarium, we had to fiddle with the exposure settings of the camera to make anything visible), many of the fish featured in the amazon exhibits have been residents in my fish tanks at home. liam didn't appreciate this fact, however, as he found it much more entertaining to yell at the turtles and scare the fish by hitting the glass.



oh, did i mention that we brought max along too?



at one point, liam started getting out of control, so he had to take a break by sitting in (strapped into) the stroller. what did max think of this development?



speaking of max, his favorite animals (aside from the pacific octopus, whose tank was too dark to take a picture of) were the king and spider crabs. mmm, is red lobster open on sunday?



and yes, i know some of the pics are fuzzy. i could tell you that it is the result of the increased exposure times necessary due to dark ambient lighting conditions, but instead i'll say it is because of artistic expression. snobs.

by this point, the boys were getting hungry, and we were ready to sit down for a while. so we headed for the food court, and by some stroke of luck, genius, or shedd attendant inattendence, we found ourselves in the oceanarium watching the dolphin show.

we went downstairs and picked a seat next to the underwater dolphin viewing area. liam had a hard time choosing between concentrating on his food and watching the dolphins, but he finally chose one. his food. duh.



by the way, yours truly took several videos of the dolphins swimming, and if you are interested, you can watch them here.

after eating, watching the dolphins from below, and checking out the beluga whales (sorry, no pics), it was time to go. however, it was such a beautiful day, we couldn't resist accosting an innocent passerby and getting our picture taken in front of the magnificent chicago skyline (not that the kids cooperated, but you get the idea):



then we went home.

TOTALLY UNRELATED UPDATE:

max isn't walking yet, but he's so so so close. when he isn't thinking about it (like when we get him to clap), he stands with no problem at all: