Because Saturday was supposed to be (and was!) below 90 degrees and 90% humidity, we went to check out a new park. Where we tried not to be insanely jealous of all the nice, well-maintained public stuff that you can find across the border in Arlington County, and then made ourselves feel better about it because we don't have to pay the taxes, or live in a suburban neighborhood where you have to drive everywhere, and hey, we can just come here any old time we want and enjoy your stupid really nice parks, Virginia. Without paying taxes. So there.
Taken just a few minutes before the Olive's first ever run-in with a very thorny bush. So much for nature loving.
Then we went home to the city and played with stuff that was more familiar to our neighborhood.
Rocks, bricks, caution tape. That's how we toddle roll in the W D of C.
I always try to cook something awesome on the weekends, because we have more time, both of us are home to baby-wrangle, and the Olive will sit still in a restaurant for approximately 1.7 seconds, so we don't go to those so much anymore. There were corn tortillas and avocados lying around my kitchen, and some roasted peppers and tomatoes destined for salsa, so fish tacos it was.
Fish taco fixins. Plus random mozzarella that just needed to be eaten.
Deep frying makes everything better. Especially battered tilapia.
A dearth of lemons in my house on Friday led to French 75 fail, so we had to drink them on Saturday. There are no photos, because once I got one in my hand I couldn't set it down long enough to take a picture. And damn, those things are stronger than I remember. Damn, I'm getting old.
After I passed out slept soundly due to my French 75 sleep aid, I woke up early with the Olive on Sunday. (Girl is an outstanding and energetic alarm clock that works great as long as you want to be up by six. And "by six" also includes "before six" which, eh, is just the way it is. COFFEE.) It was supposed to rain on and off all day, so it was going to be a stick around the house/neighborhood sort of day.
Our first order of business was to take the doll stroller for a walk and drag it up and down every flight of stairs on Capitol Hill. Like these:
And these:
And these:
And these:
Yeah, I wasn't kidding about those stairs. It's all I can do to keep her from going up EVERY SINGLE STOOP on the Hill. I think she sees all those stairs as mountains to be conquered...because they are there. Which makes it hard to, you know, just take a walk down the sidewalk.
It started to rain, so we went back home, got our raincoats, and went back out until lunch.
Leaky drainpipe - practically as good as a spray park.
Then came lunch, nap, and Papa Playtime, where a few of the dads in our neighborhood took the kids over to a local playground. I was at home ALONE for like, two whole HOURS, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I got all the chores done, made dinner, felt both free and very lonely, and sat around downloading all these photos until the Olive and Seth came home.
Dinner (baked pasta), some "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" (Olive's current favorite song), storytime, and bedtime for the Olive. Wine, ice cream & True Blood for Mama & Papa. The end. I got my money's worth out of this one.
No, I'm not quite there yet, but I will be SOON. I really need to start living up to the "cocktail" part of this blog a little more.
So. This was inspired by a Tweet from the lovely and amazing Chookooloonks, who discovered the French 75 last weekend. I suddenly got very, very thirsty and thought about the bottle of sparkling wine languishing away in my wine fridge at home. The French 75 is a simple, refreshing combination: lemon juice, sugar, gin (or vodka), sparkling wine.
I first heard about this cocktail on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Raise your hand if you miss that show too, at least the way it was in the first season, with the most pitiful and awkward (but mostly nice) guys EVER who get overhauled by the badass gay five (except Jay, who apparently did nothing worthwhile). Anyone? Anyone?
[crickets]
ANYHOW. MOVING ON. Ted mixed up the French 75, and I fell in love. It's not only delicious, it was created in Paris, at Harry's New York Bar, and is named after the bigass French Howitzer, for its alcoholic punch. Lovely in winter or summer.
My recollection is that Ted didn't do the traditional French 75, which uses gin, but substituted vodka instead. I've tried both versions, and I have a slight preference for the vodka. It's a little smoother, and the lemon isn't competing with the juniper taste of the gin. But I would certainly never turn away a French 75 made with gin, because, well, that would just be wrong.
I drank a lot of French 75s after this, mixing them up at home, and pestering bartenders for them. (If you're in DC, get one at the Round Robin bar in the Willard. They know what they're doing with classic cocktails there, oh my.)
And then I got pregnant, and I was without adequate booze for too long, and I was very cranky. Since the Olive was born, I have been but a shadow of my former tippling self due to all this nursing and early bedtimes and early wake up times, and total responsibility for another precious human life and crap, but I try. However, I realized this afternoon that I may not have had a French 75 since the Olive was born. And if I have, it has been erased in a haze of sleep deprivation, and therefore didn't count, so I will be going home and making one of these babies TONIGHT. Slurp.
Mixings for One French 75 (which gives you a great excuse to get out all that fancy bartending shit that you got as a wedding gift that is gathering dust)
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
2 oz. gin (or vodka)
5 oz. dry champagne (or prosecco or other dry sparkling wine)
Put the lemon juice, sugar and gin (or vodka) into a cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Shake well. Strain into a glass. (Some like a highball glass; I prefer a great big oversized martini glass.) Top off with champagne.
Somewhere in our whirlwind month of travel/visiting/mayhem, we made the trip up to my in-law's house in New Jersey. They recently moved back to Seth's hometown, after a 10-year stint in London. The reason? Our preshus baby, Grandchild No. 2. Which has turned out to be quite fine with me, because they've come to visit us a lot, we've visited them a lot, and DUDE! FREE BABYSITTING! I sometimes actually get to sit on my ass and READ A BOOK or WATCH A WHOLE MOVIE when the grandparents are around. This a truly amazing phenomenon that I absolutely did not understand when I was fey and free and childless. Now I get it. I GET IT. I get why some of my friends have moved close to their parents, why their parents have moved closer to them.
We had an action-packed weekend of visiting lots of Seth's family members, and them visiting us, but we did get a few rare hours all to ourselves. We went out to dinner with one of Seth's highschool friends in trendy young Hoboken, where we were allowed to stay out as late as we wanted, because someone else was going to put the Olive to bed. We sat outdoors at a Cuban-Latin restaurant, drank gallons of sangria, and had a most leisurely three-course meal. I sat in a chair for two whole hours! I ate and tasted my entire dinner without any of it getting cold! I didn't have to cut anyone else's food or jump up 87 times to get a new fork, a cup of milk, a cup of water, more blueberries, a spoon, a paper towel (was I supposed to eat here? Eh, forget it). I watched the parade of Hoboken's young families with their fleet of laden Bugaboos and Uppa Babies and phil & ted's, and was quite frankly feeling relieved at not having one of those charming but high-maintenance little people with me for just a little while.
Wow. I look really, overly happy at the sight of that sangria.
It was good. I was so full that I was in danger of injuring myself. The upside of that was that all the food did a fabulous job of buffering the many glasses of sangria, so I wasn't particularly tipsy. We took the scenic route home, along the Hudson, with unbelieveable sunset-glow views of New York. We're just never outside at sunset anymore. With the long summer days, the Olive goes to bed before it's dark. Child Protective Services tends to frown upon leaving your sleeping baby in the house alone while you go for sunset strolls with your husband. So yeah, sunsets. One of the things you suddenly realize you don't see much when you have a small child.
We got back to Seth's parents' house, and the Olive was sound asleep. It had taken a little while (perhaps 20 minutes) for my mother in law to get her to sleep, but she did go to sleep. And stayed asleep until her usual brief 3 or 4 am waking. Practically miraculous. I can taste the grandparent babysitting dinners of my future, and I am going to enjoy the living hell out of them.
The other weekend highlight was a visit to Seth's Aunt Beth and Uncle Skip. They have this ginormous, unbelieveable house out in a more rural part of New Jersey. Their basement alone is about three times the size of our DC rowhouse. The best part about the basement is that it contains practically every toy that Skip and Beth's kids and grandkids have ever had. Beth has saved them all. Some are in mint condition. Every kid who has ever been in that basement never wants to leave. Adults never want to leave, as they unearth all the Fisher Price toys they remember from childhood: the school bus, the barn that moos as you open the doors, a stuffed Ernie doll (before Ernie was seriously marginalized on modern day Sesame Street). It didn't matter at all that it poured rain the entire time - there were acres of basement and toys to explore.
Including this house:
We went to the basement, she spied it immediately, and exclaimed, "HOUSE!" And played in it almost nonstop for what seemed like hours. It's the playhouse we all wanted as a kid. I still kind of want it, and wish we had room in our narrow basement or postage-stamp yard for it. I want to go back and visit Skip and Beth some more before she's too old to talk on the plastic phone, pretend to cook on the stove, open and shut the doors and shutters eighty seven thousand times. And maybe she'll let me play too.
The last month has been a crazy whirl of travel, reunions, visiting and visitors, and the ride has about stopped so that I can get off and try to write about it. It's been such a fun month, and I'd really like to (a) go back on vacation, please, where I'm not worried about my laundry or the groceries or work the next day; or (b) just be at home *not* working so I can catch up on the laundry, groceries, work, etc. Or I will take winning Powerball, thanks.
Seth and I both went to small, uppity, elite northeastern liberal arts colleges, and graduated the same year. So our fifteen-year college reunions were two weeks apart, separated by Memorial Day weekend. We were OF COURSE going to both, because anything that makes you feel like you're in college again is a good thing when you reach our advanced age.
Seth's reunion was a raging success. We hooked up with his friend Rose, her husband Will, and her daughter Athena, who is only six weeks older than Helene. With the chillun in tow, we all knew we'd be hanging with people with similar needs (e.g., animal crackers, naps, wine - what, you thought I meant the little ones?). College campuses, as it turns out, are fantastic places to turn toddlers loose. Huge expanses of lawn, no cars, lots of steps. The Olive was in paradise. We let her be a bad influence over the more mild-mannered Athena, as Helene ran up and down wheelchair access ramps, tried to uproot memorial plaques, jumped off of retaining walls, climbed every set of stairs she could find at least six times each, ran amuck in coffee shops, and attempted to steal a catering trolley, Athena's stroller and a college golf cart.
We skipped the formal class dinner on Saturday night in favor of a picnic in the grassy quad outside the building where the dinner was held, so Rose and Seth could pop in if they wanted to, while Will and I chased children and held down the picnic blanket. We had booze in red plastic cups, bare feet, plenty of cheese for even the Olive (who will eat her body weight in the stuff), and some really tasty cannoli and cheesecake. There were photos, visits by large dogs being walked, and a reading of "Brown Bear." The height of the evening was the spontaneous cooler-top dancing, which makes me think the Olive's college years are going to be pretty interesting:
I also learned things about the Olive (other than her mad picnic dance moves). I learned that she withstands nap schedule changes and staying up way past her bedtime just fine. I learned that she can now gnaw on a whole apple (and that she doesn't want any help, thankyouvery much). I learned that she recognized the real moon instantly, seeing it in the twilight sky for the first time. I learned that she might be just a tad high energy, after meeting Athena, who actually will sit still for astonishingly long periods of time, like you know, longer than ten continuous minutes.
We left Seth's reunion not nearly as hungover as at the 10-year (whew!), and replete with sun-filled good times with old friends. We got on our plane back to DC, ready to do it all over again in two weeks.
But first, we had some Vermont visiting to do. I went to college in the fair Green Mountain State, which is one of those places that people end up staying. One of my best friends from college, Janine, is one of them. She and her husband Foster have withstood more employment roller coasters than anyone I know in order to stay in Vermont, which isn't really known for its excess of well paying professional jobs. I never get to see Janine, so we flew to Vermont on Memorial Day weekend, planning to stay at Janine's house in Bennington for a few days before heading north to my college reunion the following weekend.
The lovely and amazing Janine.
See again, e.g., success, raging. Janine has three boisterous and sweet boys, who were amazing big brothers to the Olive for the week. My little peanut girl (not even twenty pounds) held her own in the sandbox and the playroom, loving the TRUCKS! and TRAINS! and train tracks and Matchbox cars and bikes and skateboards and the rest of the plethora of boy toys that oozes out of Janine and Foster's house and into the garage and onto the lawn. The only thing that was not the most raging of successes was the running-through-the-sprinkler portion of our summer play. The Olive isn't quite convinced that pools and sprays of cold water in the hot outdoors actually feel good. She was having a tentatively good time with biggest brother James in the sprinkler, and riiiiight as she was starting to enjoy herself, littlest brother "I'm Going To Steal The Show" Gavin snatched up the sprinkler and got the Olive right square in the kisser. And that was the end of that. We got some dry clothes and retired to the sandbox.
About a second before the fun ended.
Our time in Vermont is a wonderful blur of green, green farmland, lots of amazing local food, sprawling, verdant lawns, and mountain views that make me homesick for my one-time college home. As someone once told me, there's a reason they call college your alma mater - it means "nourishing mother," such an earthy translation of this high-minded sounding Latin phrase. It seems particularly apt in Vermont, with the earth and the fruits of the earth literally at every turn in the winding road.
The Olive stayed up well past her bedtime every night, frolicking in the lasting lightness of northern summer. We let her streak campus in her diaper, seeing how far she would wander, while we sat in Adirondack chairs and had more liquor in red plastic cups, because we are a high-class outfit. She napped in the car, giving us an excuse to just drive, wandering the rural roads and discussing how we were going to spend our lottery winnings (Powerball was up to $260 million, so we had to play). We would definitely stay in Vermont for the season.
I reunited with old friends, put old differences behind me for good. I had so much less emotional baggage at this college reunion than at the ten year. I embraced (literally) and had wonderful conversations with people that I didn't much like in college. Amazingly, they have grown up. We all have, in the right ways.
Then, there are these ladies, or womyn or strumpets or whatever, who are to me perpetually 21, perpetually my best friends and co-conspirators. We've weathered fair weather and foul, wondrous births, terrible deaths, falling outs, and making ups. We live too far away from each other. We don't talk enough. We are trouble, and we like it that way.
The weekend was of course too short, my conversations were too truncated by me chasing a baby, I misplaced an obscene number of drinks, and there was never enough time to do all that we wanted. But it was one of the few trips where neither Seth nor I wanted to go home. We felt so inexplicably relaxed. For possibly the first time ever after a trip, I actually felt recharged the next week at work, more focused, happier. Nourishing mother, nourishing friends. I can't get enough.
