Adios!

One of the things I will miss most about Chicago is the Mexican food. I'm sure DC has it's fair share of run-of-the-mill Mexican, and it probably even has a few standouts, but there is no better city in the country for Mexican food than Chicago. We have been lucky enough to have a couple of truly outstanding meals the last two weekends, both Mexican, and both completely different.

Two weekends ago, we went to Amelia's. This is a place we have driven by for years (it's at 45th and Halsted), and I always said I wanted to eat there, but I couldn't find out any info on the restaurant on the net, so I would forget about it until the next time we were driving by. C ended up going there this spring for a faculty dinner at IIT, and he raved about it. He suggested we go there the night after his dinner there. This should have clued me in to how good it was, but instead I took it as a sign that we needed to get out more, which was also probably true. The Saturday after C's defense, we managed to score some free babysitting from an awesome friend, and he suggested Amelia's again. This time I did not resist.

The minute we walked in, I loved it. I'm so upset I never took the leap and went there all those years ago, because it is a place I would go back to again and again. It has a nice atmosphere, but it is also very comfortable. I felt at home there. I immediately liked the waiters, the look of the menu, the chairs, etc. It's BYOB, and we had picked up some beer to bring. They brought us glasses, poured our beer, and put the other bottles in an ice bucket on the table, a nice touch.

Then, of course, there is the food. Everything was so good. We started with the -
CROQUETAS FRITAS
Artichoke corn Fritters, Squash Blossoms, Epazote and Salsa Cruda...

and the -

QUESADILLA DE HUITLACOCHE

Corn Truffle, Chihuahua Cheese, Epazote, Roasted Corn and Black Bean Salad, Tomato Salsa…. 

The huitlacoche quesadilla was excellent, with the best mix of tangy vinegar and cheese and the requisite corn smut. You gotta love good corn smut.

For entrees, we ordered a special with scallops on top of a squash blossom risotto. The scallops were buttery and sweet and cooked perfectly. The risotto was full of squash blossomy goodness, and I love squash blossoms, so you really couldn't go wrong there.

We also ordered the - 

LOMO DE PUERCO 
 Grilled Pork Tenderloin, Fava Beans, Anduille Sausage Baby Spinach and Spicy Ciruela Sauce..

The fava beans made this dish, and again it was perfectly seasoned. I can't remember a time when all of my dishes were so perfectly seasoned. All of the flavors were so well balanced that I think even if you did not like a dish, it would be hard to criticize it. 

It was such a good meal and so close to the house that I think we will try to go again before we leave in, gulp,  18 days.

The second Mexican meal was one for which we had been waiting for a long time. We had always meant to go to Topolobampo, Rick Bayless's more upscale restaurant, but we never seemed to get around to it. C's defense seemed like the best sort of excuse, and I managed to get reservations for this past weekend. Wiggle had been spiking a fever for the previous three days, so on Saturday before dinner, we took him to the ped to make sure he was ok, and see if there was any chance we could still go to dinner. The ped figured it was roseola, but we were all slightly concerned it was a UTI because he had been saying "penis, penis, penis" all morning and didn't want a diaper on. The poor guy had to go through TWO catheter attempts to get urine, both came up empty, and we were told to go home and hope a rash (the roseola sign) would show up the next morning, so we wouldn't have to try another catheter the next day.

 As soon as the catheter ordeal was over, he started perking up, and his fever seemed to have broken. Our babysitters for the evening were an extremely generous couple, who have sat for Wiggle before, and their gracious friend from out-of-town who had agreed to come along. (I know, I know - how lucky are we!) Since there were three extremely capable caregivers at hand, and since Wiggle seemed much happier and somewhat healthier, and since the next available reservations were in late August, well after our move, we decided to risk going to dinner. Boy, did we make the right decision!

We each did a tasting menu with the wine pairings. I got the White House State Dinner, and C chose the Veracruz Tasting. We shared everything. 

Phenomenal. The best meal I have ever had.

The mole negro I had with my main course was just amazing. It made me want to cry. I don't mean that it was so good, I wanted to cry, I mean it made me feel sad. It didn't make me think about sad things, instead -and don't laugh at me now- it felt sorrowful. I told C what was happening to me, and I think he thought I'd had a little too much wine. Then we switched plates, and he took a bite of the mole, and his face fell. He felt sad, too! It was, perhaps, the freakiest food experience I have ever had, but still so awesome. 

When we got home, sated and happy, the boy was sleeping soundly. The next morning the telltale roseola rash appeared, so no further doctor visit was required. The "penis" thing turned out to be, just a boy being a boy.

Doctor Who?

Yesterday, C successfully defended his dissertation. That means, today he is a doctor. Crazy!

Wiggle ended up attending the defense too, due to a babysitter snafu. He ate raisins, pointed aggressively at the ceiling fans, played with the buckle on his stroller, and was generally well-behaved, yet still a noticeable distraction. Afterwards, we all went to Jimmy's, the campus dive bar, for a beer. As C said yesterday, "now we can say that (Wiggle) has been laid out on the floor at Jimmy's!" Between munching on french fries dripping with ketchup and trying to run behind the bar, Wiggle alternately sat and laid down beneath our table happily playing with both of our phones, a true indulgence.

Two philosophers and a toddler

Yesterday evening, we sat on the back porch with the neighbors, sipping sparkling wine and watching the kiddos play with and sometimes eat chalk. I would say it was a very good day, indeed.

It has already prompted some thinking on my part though - I know I don't want my Ph.D., but I'm thinking a plan for the future/my future may be on the horizon... 

But first, I will focus on the impending Move. Today I acquired some boxes; this weekend I will start packing books and some other things that can go into the storage unit until the move. I will also try to encourage my husband to read more of his novel and play a few hours of Madden before he starts stressing about his classes in the fall. A wife's work is never done. (big dramatic sigh)

Little Boxes

We went to Virginia last week and rented a townhouse to move into in August. We drove around the DC metro area for three days, and in the end went with the thing we had seen first. We are moving into faculty housing at GMU. The development is brand spankin' new and looks a little like Disney designed it. Even the name is a little Stepford-like - Masonvale.

Since we're moving to a totally new area to us, we decided to go with as much certainty as possible. The university is the landlord (well, a management company hired by the university); the development was built to help recruit/house new faculty, so the environment will hopefully be a little like Hyde Park; you can only live there for 1-2 years, so everyone there will also be looking for a new place to live, so who better to trade research with on potential neighborhoods and schools.

We also went with convenience. Since Masonvale is on campus, C can walk to work, which means I can have the car all of the time. Our 3 BR townhouse has a two-car garage, dishwasher, disposal, washer/dryer, and 2.5 BA! I am so looking forward to doing laundry in my own house, I am almost giddy. And I am perhaps weirdly excited by the disposal. It means less trash to take out, and the trash will get stinky less quickly. There is an old elementary school right behind the house which has a huge playground and a big soccer field to play in. Fairfax itself is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I have a year to explore it, and I am a big fan of exploring, so it should be fun.

Now I have to focus on the move itself. I have been getting quotes from moving companies and will have to start some preliminary culling and packing in the next two weeks. Ugh! I really hate moving, but I am super excited about our destination, so I will power-through.

Maybe I will look into wearing dresses with an apron, so I can really fit into my new surroundings...

We Are Family

My sister and her family were in town this weekend. We got to spend time at both the MSI and the Field museums, eat Chicago pizza, and hang out at the apartment together for some much needed bonding. The last time my sister was in Chicago, she was five or six months pregnant with my nephew. The time before that, we spent an evening dancing on a radiator at a frat party to "We Are Family," taking special care to belt out the "I've got all my sisters with me" part. It doesn't seem like that much is different each time I see her when I go home to Dallas, but when I think of how much has changed between each of her visits here, I can see how far we've both come. We both have wonderful families. She owns a house and has a great job. I'm about to move across the country to a place far away from our family and almost all of our friends. It's crazy to think I'm the same person who used to yell "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" countless times a day to her, and that she is the person who would have wanted to keep trying to come in.
Last week I only she was coming in on an extended business trip, but she managed to score some great last-minute fares (she's extra talented at finding things like that), so the hubby and my nephew, X-man, could come out too. I was totally psyched, especially because that would mean that X-man and Wiggle would get to spend some quality time together. Wiggle was pretty much in awe of everything that the X-man did. Playing with Legos - supercool. Making the robot lizard face - completely hysterical. Reading a bedtime story - captivating.

X-man can moo, can you?

Wiggle is making a "hoo, hoo" sound, like an owl.

The visit was way too short; I wish we lived close enough to see them all the time. Luckily, we are moving to a fabulous destination city, so we might be able to finagle even more visits out of them in the future. Or maybe they can just send us the X-man for a while. He owes me a rematch in Monopoly and those games can get lonnnnng.  Whaddya say, sis?

It's All About Timing

Lately, I've been cleaning a lot. Part of this sudden urge to clean stems from the fact that we're moving in less than two months, and part of it from the fact that Wiggle is a grade A mess-maker.

In all of this cleaning though, I realized something very important. I don't really know how to clean. I mean I know the basics of cleaning, but I never learned all of the things that make a cleaning thorough.

For this gaping hole in my education, I will openly blame my mother (sorry, mom). Make no mistake, my mom is a great housekeeper. No, her crime against me did not come in the form of a messy house, but in how it became clean. You see my mom has a couple of problems; she is a personal perfectionist, and she is an insomniac. My mom was like one of the shoemaker's elves who worked through the night, and when we woke up all we saw were shoes. I cannot count the number of times, my sister and I stumbled out of our rooms at three in the morning because we heard the vacuum running downstairs. Sure we had our own responsibilities - we unloaded the dishwasher, or at least we did some of the time, we handled our own laundry, and made plenty of our own food, for breakfast and lunch at least, but we never saw much of the nitty-gritty of cleaning. While I watched my mom cook for hours and hours, sitting and talking with her in the kitchen as she made dinner, I hardly ever saw the bulk of her cleaning routine. I saw and inherited the desire for the detail work, like taking a toothbrush to the kitchen faucet, but sweeping and mopping occurred mainly by moonshine.

I know my mom would have told me how to really get in the corners, or pre-treat a stain on my shirt, but I never thought to ask. It all looked so easy for her (not in man hours, but in know-how), so I just assumed I could figure out how to do it, or that it would suddenly come to me. But I didn't and the "flash" never came, and I now realize the last time I really questioned my cleaning techniques, I was probably fifteen.

And then I had a baby.

Now I vacuum my living room rug every other day because if I don't the detritus that can be found there is large enough for Wiggle to eat, and so he does. I dust more frequently because I notice more that the surfaces are dusty. Those dusty places are where I put my coffee cup and the old battery that I'm trying to keep away from Wiggle. I've been systematically going around the house with a 4/1 bleach solution, cleaning all of the baseboards and woodwork because I have actually seen him lick our walls.But since I don't have any elf in me, I had to figure out another way to get time for cleaning into my day.

I am definitely a stuff person, I like physical things around me, so my biggest obstacle to cleaning is clutter. Now even though, I am not blessed/cursed with a nocturnal urge to clean, the clutter would certainly keep me up at night. It's just that my cleaning thoughts at night are a little crazy. You know, the weird slightly OCD ones that make you think that you can't throw out old magazines until you buy new towels for the bathroom. If you read the last sentence and thought, "what the hell is she talking about?" then you are probably normal or you are a guy. If you thought that the sentence made sense, then I can guarantee that you have at least one closet door in your house that you don't even let your husband open. The "logic," in case you are wondering, is my husband likes to take magazines into the bathroom, so I would like to give him old ones to have in there, but they should really have a place to go in there, so I need some kind of container, but what kind? Hmmm. I need a new soap dispenser to replace the one that broke, and the soap dispenser and magazine container, should "go" together, but if either of those things have any color in them, they need to complement the colors of the towels, and I need new towels because my current ones have bleach stains on some of them, so I can't go through old magazines yet, because I don't have a place to put them. It's crazy, I know. But that's what happens to me when I stay up all night and try to clean, I just get one of those thoughts after the other, until I've made more of a mess than I started with. So since I'm not naturally an elf cleaner, I needed to find another kind of magic.

My magic is a timer and a hokey website. Actually, with a toddler, I don't even need to set a timer most of the time. I just try to do a small enough task that if Wiggle leaves the room, I can finish in enough time that he hasn't injured himself in the interim. One tiny thing at a time, I clean the house. In order to stop myself from the crazy thought train, I turned to the FlyLady. Do not judge me. Even though, the constant "bless"-ing terminology turns my stomach a little. It has good advice. Also, more importantly for me, it tells me what to do - every day. I never walk into a room, and think "How do I decide what to do first?" because she tells me. I love not being responsible for planning my cleaning routine or deciding what to do at every turn. I love just doing what comes next on the list, and I generally do. It turns out, it doesn't take a lot of time to keep the house in relatively good condition, as long you do a little bit all of the time. I love being a grown-up and realizing that I don't care if a website that helps me is homespun hokey; the important thing is that it helps me.

Sporting a new 'do.

Home Sick

On Tuesday I had my gall bladder removed. Everything went well, my incisions seem miniscule, and I've had almost no pain whatsoever. I have, however, felt like I had surgery this week. I'm generally tired and weaker than usual, two facts that keep sneaking up and surprising me. I credit my overall speedy recovery to the tremendous support I have gotten in the last week by my MIL, C's brother Zio, and C.


Zio and Nonna stayed for the week and watched Wiggle, so that I could get some R&R. I will admit, I was a little apprehensive to have them come and stay with us, even though I was the one who invited them. I knew I would need the help, but I also knew I wouldn't be feeling very well, and house guests can be the last thing you want when you're not 100%. I'm glad to say I was completely wrong. They weren't house guests; they were family. It was absolutely wonderful for me, and Wiggle had the best time. He spent the entire week showing off and learning tons of new things, like saying "thank you." I've been working on that one for awhile to no avail, but for Nonna it was effortless. I can't wait until their next visit!

C and I even got to go out to dinner on Thursday night for our third wedding anniversary. We had a very nice meal at Fonda del Mar, one of the many Mexican restaurants we will miss when we leave Chicago at the end of the summer.

As summer gets started, I am realizing that our "last time" for many things is fast approaching, and for a ton of others has already occurred. We've already had our last winter in Chicago, which is fine because I'm really enjoying the warm weather, but I'm still getting nostalgic already.

Today we sat in the backyard, talking to friends, while Wiggle played in a kiddie pool for hours with his friend, and I kept thinking about how much we will miss those people, this yard, and Chicago summers in general. For so many people we know, Chicago is just a stop along the way, but for us, it is home. I'm sure we will love Virginia and the East Coast and everything else about our new life, but when I wake up in the morning and the sky is a certain shade of blue, no matter where I am I will think I'm waking up in Chicago.

On Tuesday I had my gall bladder removed. Everything went well, my incisions seem miniscule, and I've had almost no pain whatsoever. I have, however, felt like I had surgery this week. I'm generally tired and weaker than usual; two facts which keep sneaking up and surprising me. I credit my overall speedy recovery to the tremendous support I have gotten in the last week by my MIL, C's brother Zio, and C.Zio and Nonna stayed for the week and watched Wiggle, so that I could get some R&R. I will admit, I was a little apprehensive to have them come and stay with us, even though I was the one who invited them. I knew I would need the help, but I also knew I wouldn't be feeling very well, and house guests might be the last thing you want when you're not 100%. I'm glad to say I was completely wrong. They weren't house guests; they were family. It was absolutely wonderful for me, and Wiggle had the best time. He spent the entire week showing off and learning tons of new things, like saying "thank you." I've been working on that one for awhile to no avail, but for Nonna it was effortless. I can't wait until their next visit!

C and I even got to go out to dinner on Thursday night for our third wedding anniversary. We had a very nice meal at Fonda del Mar, one of the many Mexican restaurants we will miss when we leave Chicago at the end of the summer.

As summer gets started, I am realizing that our "last time" for many things is fast approaching, and for a ton of others has already occurred. We've already had our last winter in Chicago, which is fine because I'm really enjoying the warm weather, but I'm still getting nostalgic already.

Today we sat in the backyard, talking to friends, while Wiggle played in a kiddie pool for hours with his friend, and I kept thinking about how much we will miss those people, this yard, and Chicago summers in general. For so many people we know, Chicago is just a stop along the way, but for us, it is home.

I'm sure we will love Virginia and the East Coast and everything else about our new life, but when I wake up in the morning and the sky is a certain shade of blue, no matter where I am I will think I'm waking up in Chicago.

Impatiently waiting for the pool to be filled

Who needs a slide when you have measuring cups?

Playing in the Pool

My Long Lost Blog

I haven't really felt like blogging much lately. So much for the resolution, right? I will try to get back on track even if I don't feel like it. Part of the thing is to develop the habit, so I really need to soldier on especially when I don't feel like it.

C's fam comes in next week to see the boy and help out while I have my gall bladder removed and during my recovery. I'm really looking forward to their visit, and even to the surgery a little. I'll feel better, physically and psychologically, when the little bugger is out.

I've finally begun to feel like a mom again, instead of a warden. Each time Wiggle makes a jump in mobility, it was running and climbing this time, it seems like it takes me about six weeks to adjust enough so that I can still get something done in a day and have fun with the boy. This week, I finally planned a menu, did the shopping for it, and tonight we even cooked recipes from the menu. Also, the sink is empty, there's not a full bag of laundry in the house, the floors were all mopped this weekend, and the bed is made. It's amazing how wonderful getting into a made bed can make me feel after a long day. Last night, I made a comment to C about it, and he asked me why. I explained that if the bed is made when I come in to go to sleep, I think about all of the things I got done today. However, if the bed is unmade when I go to bed, I think about all of the things I meant to do, but didn't get to today. It's much easier to get myself to make the bed, than to try and overhaul how I naturally think about my day.

In Wiggle news -
He has been talking up a storm as of late. Today, he said "sssss" for the first time. Cool, huh? It gets better. He actually pointed at the letter "s" while making the sound, totally unprompted by me. Later, he mastered "f" with his dad. When he's on a roll, he's really on a roll.
Physically, he's been running. Running up and down the halls, trying to run down the stairs, the sidewalk, into any door, out of any door. Everything he does is fast. I have started letting him choose his clothes. When I hold up two shirts for him to choose between, there is no deliberation; the decision is split-second. The boy knows what he wants. Who would have thought that C and I would have an opinionated child? Even knowing that I would, I didn't expect him to have so many opinions and that they would be so well defined this early.

My Mother's Day breakfast - biscuits and gravy. Wiggle cut out the biscuits himself.

Counting at the Zoo