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)

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?