Kohl Children's Museum

The Kohl Children's Museum in Glenview is about 25 min away and TONS of fun! AJ absolutely loves this place and thinks each room is as fun as the next.  Every time we pull him away from one activity, he starts to get upset until he sees the next activity! I'm sure that the KCM will be a go-to place for us this winter as soon as the weather gets cold and the parks are no longer an option. Since my parents gave AJ a membership there for his birthday, we can go whenever we want all winter long! (thanks, Mom and Dad!)

This visit we took AJ to the Grocery Store area. It's so cute (if not inundated with corporate sponsorship) with mini carts and all the food in plastic or empty-container versions.  I think he selected fruit, veggies, a lot of milk, a bagel, a pizza and some meat. Then we had him put it all on a conveyor belt that I was at the other end of, so I collected and restocked the shelves with his "purchases".
This shopping experience helped out when we went to the pumpkin farm and bought apple cider doughnuts (that Andy and I were hoarding and didn't want to share with him this year!) since he pointed to them and said, "bagel!".

The main attraction was Let's Play Railway.  AJ is really into trains right now, so this was perfect for him and he was really excited.
There was a huge train engine that he got to get into and play engineer (click on the picture and see if you can see his little head up in the window).  He also got to play with a huge train set. He's starting to figure out how the train cars link together with magnets...

Also in the train exhibit was an area showing how corn is transported by trains. AJ loved "picking" the corn and tossing it into the barrel, and my mom and I had to race to stick more corn up on the stalks since he was grabbing them so fast! Then he decided to climb into the barrel himself. So funny!

In another area of the museum, there's a whole bunch of instruments where kids can explore sound.  AJ digs this area too. I took a couple videos of him playing a bolt-xylophone and a drum that shows sound vibrations with little confetti inside the drum.

I also have to mention that this was where AJ got his black eye that Andy blogged about recently. He stumbled and fell in a little boat and his face took the impact.  Our poor little guy was hurting and didn't want anything to do with the ice pack or the band-aids.  Luckily he healed up well and I'm sure will still love the museum since he talks about it a lot and always asks me to show him the train pictures!