What with tornados, flash floods, West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes and now dive-bombing blackbirds, Chicago is a dangerous place to live! So far we've seen nothing of these other than the occasional mozzie (which, btw are apparently of the no-less-annoying but not disease-carrying variety. A relief after D's brush with malaria a few years back). Tonight I am a baseball widow and I fear this may be the first of many nights when my husband abandons me for Wrigley field - he is crediting the Cubs' recent and unprecedented 14-week winning stint to his presence in Chicagoland! I think this addiction to baseball may run in the family as when I asked E what he missed about England the only thing he cited was the baseball bat D brought him as a present from his recent business trip ... and it was a Cubs one, as opposed to the slightly freaky glow-in-the-dark one we have here!

I tried my first Chicago pizza last night (tho it wasn't the classic deep dish) and it was very pleasant. Extremely virtuous actually as I'd ordered the diet pizza hoping for less lard and it actually came without cheese! It turns out our local, end of the road pizza place has been written up as the best in town so we may need to experiment with further samplings...........

I took the kids to the Kohl's Children's museum this afternoon and they had an absolute blast. I had to drag them away after 4 hours so I was pleased to have found a good wet-weather option for the summer. They had so many great child-friendly activities, including a mini supermarket where they could shop with trolleys and take it in turns to scan bar codes at the till and a mock cafe where they could make sandwiches and serve 'customers'.

I've been missing home and friends a lot the past couple of days - now that we've been here a month we are definitely past the holiday mark. There are plenty of nice things to do but sometimes it would be nice to curl up in a familiar chair, sleep in my own bed, etc (oh, and send the kids to school and playgroup!!). The potty-training is rather hit-and-miss - never my favourite part or parenting - but at least it's not my furniture and floors being piddled on (hope the landlady's not reading - oops!)

I'd better go and watch the tornado warnings now............................