monday's mulling: chicago

Last Thursday I drove to the Dayton airport and boarded a Chicago-bound plane. My future daughter-in-law's bachelorette party was in Chicago and I was the one to ask my daughter, "Do you want me to come to babysit AJ?" Nothing like taking the bull by the horns!

The flight from Dayton to Chicago takes all of 45 minutes and I had planned my window seat to get photos of the skyline. Wouldn't you know on a gorgeous, clear day my seat halfway lined up with the window and in the seat ahead of me, the woman's bright yellow sweater reflection took away all possibilities of taking a photo of that beautiful skyline along the shore of Lake Michigan. C'est la vie.

My daughter very kindly offered to pick me up from O'Hare but I told her I have always wanted to take the train from the airport to the station close to her house and that's what I did. Walk down two levels to the train platform, tap my credit card, hop on the Blue Line, and 30 minutes later I'm in my daughter's car for the last three miles of my trip. So easy.

And here's my little guy. He has grown so, so much since I last saw him three months ago. He is 19 months old and it's incredible how much growth has happened in this short time. He is now walking (and he's fast!), saying so many words (we had a lot of jibber-jabber conversations), he loves books (I loved reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? at least 10 times a day!), playing at the playground, and going for walks with "Beep-Beep." He's a little snuggler and best of all, HE SAYS "DIDI!" (That's me 🙂) One more thing my little guy does, he gives kisses, and he gave me a lot of them before my daughter took me to the airport. I told her I'd take the train but she insisted on driving and those one-on-one car conversations with an adult child and without distractions are extra special.

The flight home was just as quick and easy as the flight to Chicago. We did have to wait an extra 10 minutes for take off because of some connecting baggage needing to be loaded but that was no big deal. A rather large man was in the seat next to me (this was a small plane with small seats) and I asked him if he wanted the middle arm rest up, but he declined.

Chicago O'Hare is a big bustling airport and the James M. Cox Dayton International Airport is not. My flight landed at 7:15 p.m. (19:15) and there weren't took many people around. It was so quiet. I hopped right on the shuttle bus to take me to my car and instead of driving the construction-laden I-75, I took the back way - the road less traveled - and that made all the difference for the ending of a perfect trip.