History Repeating Itself

The past -

The present -

The Sting of Rejection

I'm sitting here in the living room watching endless HGTV house hunting shows. A few minutes ago I heard the pitter-patter of little feet and the creak of a door opening, so I rushed upstairs to meet my little wayward toddler on his nighttime excursion, but when I got to the top of the stairs, I didn't see anything and his door was closed. Perplexed, I checked in our room, but C was fast asleep. I was about to chalk it up to feline exuberance when I saw Wiggle's door open a crack. I turned and opened my arms to receive my little boy, but the door quickly closed again. When I walked up to the door and turned the handle, it was shut abruptly. I tried knocking and entering, but a little body was laying against the door to block my entry. I felt utterly dejected.
I tried again in a few minutes and was able to get in and pick my slumbering boy off the floor and put him in his crib again. I am really glad that he is not coming out of his room every time he wakes up now, but wow, that was fast. He practically doesn't need me anymore. I never thought I would feel this way about being a mother. He's only 20 months old! How will I deal with him being a teenager?

They grow up so fast.

The Emperor Needs Old Clothes

The latest battleground? Clothes. Today, I got him dressed to go to music class, but I still needed to get dressed, plus it was pouring outside and we walk to class, so his cooperation was essential. While I was trying to get dressed, he threw a conniption fit, pulling on his clothes, rolling around on the floor, hyperventilating; the whole nine yards. I took off his shirt, thinking he might prefer another, then the pants came off, and the diaper. Then screaming continued for reasons I couldn't ascertain, so I held him and comforted him. He promptly fell asleep. C managed to help me transfer him to his crib and put on a diaper. He only ended up sleeping for about 30 minutes, but I think he needed to catch up a bit after our nocturnal adventures in toddler bed transitioning last night.

Tonight, we've had one waking already, but he went down without a million trips to the door, so, hopefully, tomorrow will be even better.

As for me, I've been feeling a little stir crazy lately. Dealing with him has been really frustrating because so much of the time I can really reason with him, but then there are the other times... It makes me feel like whimsy rules my day, and I do better with a schedule than whimsy.

Free time tomorrow morning should help.

Speed Demon

We took the side off of Wiggle's crib today. He had been climbing out about a month ago, but then stopped after a couple of days, so we didn't move forward with anything. This week though, he has woken us up both in the morning and in the middle of the night by coming in our room, plus I saw him take a pretty nasty header, so off came the side. He is fine with the change conceptually, but of course, he is tempted to come out instead of just going to bed. I am having a harder time with the change than he is, I think. It seems like such a sign that he is growing up, and I'm not totally ready for it. He's not my little baby anymore.

There is a cure for that though, isn't there? Not quite yet, but soon, I think.

Otherwise, things are good, but I really need to work on my graduate school apps and ask for recc's. I hate this part of going to school. On the plus side, I have decided a PhD program is not for me. I don't really have any interest in doing research, and I want as much time with my family as possible, so the MSW route feels right. I think I could be very happy becoming an LCSW, and I think I would be pretty good at it, after some training, of course.

Next on the horizon? Apple picking, pumpkin carving, Halloween. Any ideas for costumes for me and C?

Fair Weather

Playing under the covers on my bed

This was a busy, but fun weekend. Friday night we had the usual potluck and then I babysat for our friends while they went out salsa dancing. On Saturday, we went to the Fairfax Fall Festival. The day was absolutely beautiful, and the festival was hopping. Wiggle petted some guinea pigs, rabbits, goats, sheep, and even a llama at the petting zoo.

He's suddenly not so sure about the llama

 Then we decided to get some lunch, which I hardly ever do at fairs or festivals because I am not generally a fan of fair food. This sign helped to change my mind -

Seriously? Crab cakes? At the fair? I've never lived close enough to a body of salt water that this could even seem like a remotely good idea. I decided to tempt fate and get the crab cake sandwich.

Wiggle and C waiting in line for our crab cake

The crabby deliciousness

It was good! Quite good actually. It still seemed very strange, especially because we live far enough inland that I do feel any water nearness. Although, shortly after we got here, there was a hurricane that they were afraid would hit Virginia Beach, and I thought "Yipee! Hurricanes!" Not ironically mind you, for a moment, I was genuinely excited to be near another type of weather phenomenon. Then I remembered that I hurricane can actually, you know, kill people and stuff, and I developed the appropriately sober response. But if hurricanes, means the possibility of crab cakes, or vice versa, then I will take hurricanes (I'm just trading in tornadoes anyway).

My little imp plotting mischief

 We walked around some more and scored a balloon from the local Democrats.

Isn't he positively jaunty?

Wiggle pranced around with his balloon, darting in and out of groups of people and booths, until he became an, admittedly very cute, nuisance. We carried him around for the rest of the booth browsing.

The most unexpected booth we happened upon? The Sons of Norway. Several very nice men and women from the local Sons of Norway chapter were promoting all things Norwegian. They even have a kids' club! Vikings for Kids, which includes a quarterly newsletter extolling the virtues of woodcarving and the like. The best part was that they were selling lefse. Lefse! It was good too. C and Wiggle got to try their first Norwegian tortilla, and both enjoyed it very much. The group hosts potluck dinners regularly, and I might even be able to stand being around lutefisk in order to get some more fresh lefse.Northern Virginia keeps surprising me.

Me and my lefse

Last night, C and I got to go out for dinner, a mojito, and a movie. We saw The Social Network which I liked. C didn't think it quite lived up to the hype, and while I wasn't blown away, it wasn't really supposed to be a blow-you-away movie, so I think it stood up well. Good directing, good acting, and good writing, with a great story, make it hard to go wrong. I think the thing that is worse about the movie is that we still don't know how it ends. I mean the movie itself has a perfectly good ending, but we still don't know the effect Facebook is going to have on society. Living a recorded life is actually not so new, as scads of nineteenth century diaries can show. Living a partially public life is also not new, as the same century's towering mountains of correspondence show. But a public life that is only partially recorded by ourselves and is also recorded by those around us, is new, and the implications for trust, privacy, and even our self-identities have only begun to evolve. While I am somewhat careful about what I put on the web, I am not a person who constantly bemoans the privacy settings on Facebook or worries about whether my bank is selling my personal info. I probably should be more worried about those things, but I am more interested to see what happens when those things go awry. Like the bill currently in Congress regarding sites that are "dedicated to infringement activity." YouTube is a big target for this bill, and I know there is a lot of stuff on youtube that violates copyright, but that's not what the creation of the site was about, nor is it what most of youtube has on it. I can say that about 95% of what I look at on youtube is created by the person who posted it. The other 5% consists of listening to a song, watching a music video, or looking at a forwarded clip from a TV show. While I know all of those things in the last 5% violate copyright technically, perhaps we should change how we view copyright. Why? Because of the songs and videos I have watched, I have gone and bought the song or sometime the entire album of the artist completely legally from iTunes. I just used youtube to do the initial listen because it's easier than searching through Google for a site that actually has the song, or worse yet going to the record label's website and being bombarded by pop-up videos and loud music that I don't want to hear. As for the TV clips, almost all of them are of the type where there are one hundred different ways to see the clip. You know, the Dr. Laura saying the N-word, winning touchdown, Tom Cruise jumping on the couch, type thing that is playing on every news station every five minutes, and I don't happen to be in front of a tv. Sometimes the networks need to just get over themselves and realize that youtube may be doing them a favor. I am more likely to tune into that exclusive interview with the idiot who did something crazy, if I got to see that crazy thing they did, so just let me see it. Anyway, we shouldn't start censoring the internet just because things aren't as easy as we thought to regulate or manage or penalize or whatever it is we are trying to do. Privacy is the same way. Things just aren't going to be as private, or I should say, the kinds of info we thought of as private before, may not be the info we regard as private, in the future.

I guess that's what you might call - a tangent. Anyway, I liked the movie, and I liked our weekend. I might even feel ready for the week for once.

 

New Phrases

Favorite new sayings are "Alrighty!" and "Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok."

Today we went to music class and during the song "Around the Mulberry Bush," he held hands with his new best buddy. It was super cute.

Yesterday, he had chocolate for the first time and ran around for three hours afterward. I had vowed "Never again!" but today with no chocolate, it was the same thing. The boy has some extra energy as of late.

He also almost always speaks in full sentences, and expresses his preferences for most things. Today, he told me that two red things were the "same" for the first time. We then talked about a bunch of other things that were the same, in regards to color.

All Hail Caesar!

Here it is Mom - the recipe. I stupidly did not take pictures of the finished product, but I did photograph the process, because there has been some trouble in replicating my fantastic results.

My fabulous Caesar salad

Romaine lettuce, croutons, and freshly grated parmesan reggiano cheese

Two anchovies, if you wanna sub anchovy paste, which we do a lot, it's about 1 Tbs

The juice of one lemon, plus one garlic clove pressed

One egg coddled for one minute, we make sure to get all of the slightly solidified white because it gives the dressing more body

This is the lemon juice, anchovy, garlic, egg mixture so far.

A dash of Worcestershire sauce.

This is the dressing after we've whipped it, but before we've added olive oil; it's volume is around 100 mL.

After the olive oil has been added and it has been whipped again. Now, it's around 200 mL. There is a lot of foam on the top making it look like it's a little more. Mom asked which brand of olive oil we use, but we are not brand loyalists when it comes to olive oil. Do be sure to use extra virgin though. 

 Add the dressing to the salad bowl and toss with the lettuce, croutons, and parmesan. While this dressing is excellent, it is not the most consistent recipe. Partially that's because I don't measure anything, but it's also because there are a lot of variable ingredients in it. The age of the egg seems to make a difference to the body and depth of the dressing; since the egg isn't fully cooked though we really try to only use fresher eggs anyway. Also, we buy our parmesan at Costco in big wedges, and it definitely gets a little smoother and less robust after it's been in the fridge awhile. Even the lemons change things. We sometimes get a really acidic lemon, but other times they are much more mild. Whatever the differences, this recipe is definitely a Caesar salad revelation. C and I eat one a couple of times a week with dinner to break up the classic vinaigrette monotony.

And just to add insult to injury for anyone who didn't have a terrific meal tonight - butternut squash and sage pasta. One of my all-time favorite fall recipes.

The world's slowest way to eat peas, but I don't think speed was the goal here. Also, at the very end of the video, you can hear him say "Cook it!" He was telling me to cook the box of pasta that was on the table, so he could eat it. The boy knows what he wants.