A Beautiful Day

Today we got a late start, so we had to rush out the door to get to the farmers' market before it shut down. We hadn't been to the Saturday one before (there is also one on Tuesday and on Sunday), and it was both larger and appeared to have more local produce than the other ones, which is great.
We took home some peaches and nectarines so fragrant, that I kind of want to rub them on my neck as perfume. Also, we have cherry tomatoes in both yellow and purple, as well as some big, beautiful heirlooms. The tomatoes here are some of the best I've ever had; each variety actually tastes different, and they are so sweet, they are almost like candy. Even Wiggle, who normally eschews tomatoes, ate a bowlful tonight with dinner.
We also went to an awesome park today, Burke Lake Park. It is about 15 minutes from the house and is HUGE. There are trails and picnic shelters, a kiddie train, the lake, boat rentals, playgrounds, and a gold course. It is also very pretty. If I ever work up to running outdoors, it is a dream spot.
The park was very crowded today, partially because it was a beautiful day ("Hello, Fall! I've missed you!"), and partially because today was the last day of Ramadan, and there were many families out celebrating and grilling. We took a walk to the lake and on the way back we had to cross a part of the path that was separating two parts of such a group, as we walked by they had a huge bowl of grilled chicken that smelled strongly of lemon and garlic - two of my favorite smells. We made our way past the crowd hovering near the bowl, when a hand reached out the bowl to us, and a young woman asked us if we would like some. I said "yes!", but figured I would taste it and then give the rest of the piece to Wiggle, who was running down due to a delay in both nap and food. Then they offered C a piece and Wiggle, and it was delicious! We walked back to the car savoring our chicken and thinking how lucky we are to have moved to such a wonderfully diverse and welcoming place.

Here are some pics from the park.

Looking at geese and fish from the pier

The boat launch and view of the lake

Wiggle noshing on the awesome chicken

Weekend in the County

So apparently, we live in Fairfax County and not the City of Fairfax as I originally thought. For some small reason, this is a little disappointing to me. I guess my snob streak runs deeper than I thought. Oh well, that's not really a big surprise.

Some of the neighbors had a potluck right outside on our cul-de-sac tonight. I met some other nice families and their kids, and the best news, they have plans to do it every Friday night. Talk about a neighborhood; it's pretty awesome.

Wiggle and I have been avoiding the park as of late because it is unrelentingly bright and sunny here until 7:00 pm, and Wiggle has developed a new habit of rubbing sunscreen in his eyes to the point of needing his eyes flushed. Today it was fairly overcast and wonderfully cool, so we went over to one of the playlots this afternoon.

We spent a lot of time going forward and backward; playing hide-and-seek, and going down the slide, of course.

Chillin' on a park bench

Going "ovvvvaaaaa" the bridge

Riding the bulldozer

A Slow Day

Thursdays C teaches until 10:00 pm, so I'm on my own for the evening, as well as the day. When I discovered at mid-afternoon that C had left the trash he had promised to take out last night sitting in the entryway, complete with a rotting chicken carcass, I took a bit of a "mental health" afternoon. Wiggle and I watched some of a movie and vegged out instead of going to the park as I had originally planned.

On the upside, I read a bunch today and last night.

This new blogging regimen is going to be trying, but worth it in the end, I think.

VAriety

So, we've been in Virginia about a month, and we are starting to settle in. So far the traffic has not been as bad as everyone said, but then again, we don't try to go into the District at rush hour, so we haven't fully experienced it. Everything is crowded though. There is people traffic, as well as car traffic. Stores are crowded, restaurants seem crowded, parks, and trails are crowded. Not so much that things are at a stand still, but you are very aware that there are a lot of people around. Also surprising is the amount of diversity in the area. Coming from a city of neighborhoods, many of which are ethnically segregated neighborhoods, it is a welcome change to hear 4 or 5 different languages spoken while in line at the grocery store. This also means that there is a wealth of ethnic food and ingredients around. One thing we appear to be lacking so far, is cheap produce. Even the farmer's markets seem expensive compared to Chicago, especially considering that the food is generally not organic.

The days seem to fly by, so we haven't established much of a routine yet, but C only started teaching last week, so hopefully, the structure that I crave will firm up in the coming weeks. Wiggle clearly misses his friends, but loves his new, huge room, and our house in general. He has already met a couple of new playmates in the neighborhood, but it will be awhile before they are really chummy with each other.

The boy is growing up fast. I gave him his first haircut the day before yesterday.

He is talking up a storm. Sentences become longer and more frequent each day. He expresses preferences by saying "like it" or "yucky." He has been working on colors, although he tends to favor pink and blue as guesses. He also counts to ten, even if 5 and 8 don't generally make the cut.

One of my favorite things he does, is when he tries to get you to do something by as many means as he can. If he wants to watch TV, he will say "Watch!" When I say no, he tries "See!" or "Look!" Then he may ask for a show by name, or even try pulling me toward the remote. I wonder where he gets this stubborn streak?

On a personal note, I realize that I will not be running a marathon this fall. Am I bummed? Not really, I plan on doing a 10k in October, which will be 5 miles more than I could run at this time last year, so I feel pretty good. Plus, I have found I really love running, and I feel better than I have in a long time.

I also have a few more resolutions to put in print.

I am going to post a blog entry ------- EVERY DAY. In this case, I'm going for quantity over quality in order to get the habit ingrained. Now for all of you Wiggle-freaks out there, this does mean that there will be more pictures and Wiggle-related posts, but they won't all be about him, because, well, I am trying to have a life too.

Also, I am going to read every day. I would like to get through at least two books a month, which I know will be a breeze some of the time, but I have the resolution for those other times. And the newspaper - I have to read the newspaper every day. Now that we are where news happens, I feel woefully uninformed.

More amorphously, I need to find out what I want and can go back to school for and start that process. My goal is to be taking some classes by next fall.

Don't worry there are some pics...

A busy professional with a keen fashion sense

This blurry chicken is always on the move

Routine

Since having a baby, I have really gotten into routines. I always liked having them, but I have never fallen into rhythms easily, so I didn't have many routines unless they were forced upon me. Having a baby sort of forces routines on you, and I have generally loved every predictable minute of my routinized life.

Now that leaving is upon us, I have started realizing how much other people have woven themselves into my routines. Today, while on my walk, Wiggle and I ran into a friend and her daughter at the exact place we had run into them yesterday. It was around the same time, but only within an hour, yet there we were waving to each other around the same corner. I love that about my neighborhood. I run into people on the street, at the grocery store, the post office, the park. Before we had Wiggle, it happened less frequently even though we were out more. Now, we are more conspicuous when we are out, and even more than that we and all the other Hyde Parkers with kids are following a routine, one dictated by naps, meals, and weather, and emphatically punctuated by more weather, health, and, of course, mood.

Our current routine runs something like this-  up between 7 and 8, breakfast, some reading and drawing, coffee while he watches Sesame Street at 10, play, down for nap around 12:30, up at 2:00, lunch, playing on the porch or in the yard, some laundry if we are in the yard, dinner around 5:30, a bath, bedtime stories, and down at 7:30.

Of course, it doesn't always go like that, but even if the times are off, there is still a rhythm to our day and our week. I will miss music class on Wednesdays, playdates on Thursdays, Saturday mornings at the Farmers' Market, the weekly run to Peet's for coffee.

I know we will find new routines in Fairfax; I will sign Wiggle up for another music class in the fall, but I will miss the other mothers and the kids from our class. Even if we did not form friendships with most of these people, they are in our lives. They are the people I wave to, exchange bits of info with at the grocery store, email about teething issues on the parenting listserv; they are my neighbors. I had been thinking about all of the things in Chicago I will miss, and of the specific people I will miss individually, but I will also very much miss my neighborhood, my community.

Hyde Park, I'm gonna miss you.

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)