Fountain Fun

So, for those of you not familiar, Millennium Park also has this giant fountainland called Crown Fountain that features 50-foot tall glass block towers that splash water out at each end of a shallow pool. Dave said it was like the Ganges of Chicago. Our friends have a 2 1/2-year-old and suggested we being swimwear - which I did bring to Chicago but not to this outing, because I thought we wouldn't actually do it. Wet squirmy baby who just started walking with hard soles that week + wet concrete + big crowd + gosh knows what kinds of germs are in that water + big kids running and splashing unchecked = I wasn't so sure we'd actually participate. Here's a quick overview of the scene from the sidelines:

And here's Madeline checking out the situation from her stroller. M: Hmm... looks fun.

M: Do you honestly think you could show me this and I'd sit here quietly? Seriously, let me out now!!

Me: Ok. We'll give it a try for a few minutes. How bad can it be?

Here we go... getting our feet wet with little Hazel and our friends keeping a good perimiter.

However, this 13 month old wanted to run freely about. Our Miss M. is very independent and was happy to explore far and wide. "Bye, Mommay!" She cannot be contained on dry land, so on wet concrete with a city of feet at our feet, and after a few slips, and knowing there wasn't a tub of Purell nearby to dump her in like Achilles, let's just say I aged a little more that day than on your average day.

And here we have us several minutes later when it's time to call it a day. "Bye-bye fountain!" We were also up against naptime, and Madeline never has a hard time letting us know when we've gotten too close to that limit. Time to head back. Though, she dried off and shook it off quickly - we caught that Transformers thing on our walk back to the hotel.