ChiKat

With all my complaining about Chicago public schools, I thought I should mention some of the greatest things about being a parent in this city.

First, our park district has 26 indoor pools in the city, and tons of swimming classes. I'm signing my son up for an intro to swimming classes for toddlers. It's eight weeks and it costs only $15. My girl friend who lives in the suburbs paid $85 for a six-week swimming class, so the $15 is a total bargain.

The Chicago public library lets you sign out a family membership to any of the Chicago museums. We used to choose one museum each year and buy a membership, but that's really expensive. Then I found the library program, and we've been museum-hopping ever since. You can sign out the membership for a week. Last week we checked out the butterfly garden at the Nature Museum (my son tried to eat the butterflies). This week is the Children's Museum.

I have six amazing playgrounds within walking distance to our condo. I'm not sure if that is specific to our neighborhood, or if that is city-wide, but I am so happy with the number of playgrounds to which we have access. Now if only the weather would cooperate.