Birthday girl

Today is my lovely wife's birthday (no, I won't say which one). She's really into her birthday--some people (like me) can have a birthday that no one other than family and close friends knows about, whereas she wouldn't hesitate to drop it into conversation, let people in the office know (back when she worked in an office), etc. So I always want to do something nice for her like plan a dinner with friends, but this year we're trying to watch our spending and we've already got other stuff going on this weekend, so we decided to go low-key.

All was not lost, however, because I decided to take the afternoon off (and get her flowers) to watch Mädchen and let Gretchen go pamper herself. So, while she ran off to get a pedicure and go shopping, Mädchen and I decided to make some birthday cupcakes.


We were putting them in the oven when Gretchen got home, and Mädchen literally just wanted to sit in front of the oven and watch them cook. For 20 minutes. Good times ensued.


Mädchen naturally insisted on having one as soon as they were cool enough to frost, and being indulgent parents, we let her have one. She barely ate the actual cupcake itself, but meticulously picked every sprinkle off the frosting and ate them one by one.


When we were finally able to pull her away from the cupcake, we walked around the block to a happy hour at a neighbor's house. We've probably talked before about how much we like living where we do because there are so many great families on our block and the neighboring street. A bunch of the Moms have a monthly happy hour with their kids, and over time they've let the husbands join them as well. So even though it wasn't a birthday party, it kind of felt like one.

When we finally got home, we lit a candle and sang "Happy Birthday" to Gretchen (or at least I sang). As much as she loves birthdays, she may love cakes and cupcakes even more, so this was an ideal combination.


It may not have been the most exciting birthday of all time, but in the end I don't think it turned out half-bad. Happy birthday, Sweet!

Jealous much?

Just for the record, after acting a little exasperated last night when I told her I'd joined Facebook, she got onto my account this morning and started linking around to various friends and said "THIS IS SO COOL!!!" We'll see how long she lasts before setting up an account of her own (or asking me to set one up for her)...

Oh, and it really is pretty cool to be reconnecting with people from my past.

Tell me why I live here again?

Despite this being a pretty cold winter so far, we haven't really had anything in the way of snow. (Actually, we haven't had much snow as long as we've lived here). They predict snow with some frequency, but they're usually wrong. This is the typical progression:

DAY ONE - "We think there's a chance we might see some flurries in a few days."

DAY TWO - "We can't rule out several inches in the metro area." [Which results in everyone in town rushing to the store to buy milk, bread, and toilet paper.]

DAY THREE - "It's looking like a wintry mix, but it depends which way the storm goes."

DAY FOUR - "It looks like all of the snow is staying off to our north and west, so we'll just see rain in the metro area."

I bring this up because we finally got our first halfway decent snowstorm today. Only a couple of inches, not enough to close work or anything, but we'll take it. (That's probably for the best, because anything more than a half-inch causes mass hysteria on the roads here. Half of the people in the area see snow and say "good thing I have this SUV so I can drive as aggressively as I always do," while the other half grew up in sunny climates and refuse to drive faster than 10mph. Then there are people like Gretchen who grew up driving in snow and just shake their heads at the rest of us.)

The problem is that our beautiful snowstorm has now turned to ice that threatens to make the morning commute nightmarish. DC seems to perpetually be on the boundary between rain and snow, which results in more than our share of freezing rain. It's beautiful to look out your window and see everything glazed over and sparkling, at least until you try to go out to get the morning paper and fall on your ass because every paved surface is an ice rink. And the real fun comes when iced-over tree limbs fall and knock out power lines. Good times...

Well, I finally did it...

...I went ahead and joined Facebook. Gretchen's reaction: "This doesn't mean you're going to spend even more time on the computer, does it?"

Nutsnutsnutsnuts...

Well, it's official.

The allergist called back with the results of Mädchen's testing for nut allergies after her bad reaction, and it turns out that not only is she allergic to cashews and other tree nuts (which wouldn't have surprised us), but that she's allergic to peanuts as well (which threw us for a loop). When we visited the allergist, he actually thought that because of the relatively slow nature of her reaction, it was more than likely viral and that it was pure coincidence that she happened to eat a cashew before it happened. And since Mädchen has had a lot of exposure to peanuts (e.g., frequently eating at Thai restaurants), we all figured that even if she did have a cashew allergy, that would be all. As it turns out, the test was even more certain for peanut allergies than anything else (which doesn't mean the allergy itself is any worse).

When she first had her reaction, someone I worked with asked "so are you guys now going to be those crazy parents who obsess over what she eats?" At the time I thought we weren't, but now it turns out we're going to have to be because she's not supposed to have any exposure to nuts--period. Gretchen has combed through all of her snacks, a huge number of which have warnings about being prepared in facilities that may have nuts, etc. Eating at Thai restaurants (and many others, especially Asian) is out, and when we do go out we'll have to make sure nuts aren't used in preparing anything because of the risk of cross-contamination. We've already got EpiPens and learned how to use them.

The biggest thing about this isn't the inconvenience--it's the fear. We were very lucky that her initial reaction was only on her skin and that she didn't have trouble breathing. And she could continue to have mild or no reactions if she had further exposure. But it evidently can't be predicted--she could go years with no reaction, then have a severe reaction. In that sense, it's a good thing that it happened the way it did (i.e., a relatively mild reaction when she was with Gretchen and close to medical care). But we're going to have to be vigilant, and even with vigilance I'm sure there will be a little bit of worry in the backs of our minds about what could happen. It's certainly reinforced for us just how dearly we love Mädchen.

At least there are a lot of resources out there to deal with something like this, and lots of people (e.g., schools) are now used to it (when a friend told her kindergarten-aged daughter about it, she just replied "that's OK, she'll just have soy butter and jelly sandwiches.") And of Gretchen's closest group of Moms, three out of five kids have food allergies. And the allergist is fantastic. In any event, it's definitely a whole new world for all of us...

In the news today

1) While I still think Australia has the funniest town names (e.g., Woodenbong, Mullumbimby, Pallamallawa, Wee Waa, Blackbutt, Tittybong, Wagga Wagga, Woolloomooloo, Woy Woy, Humpty Doo, etc.), and even Switzerland had its fair share, I was pleasantly surprised to see that England has its own fun names. I really can't imagine having to tell people you live on Butt Hole Road.

2) Seeing this awful story about a local woman killed by a stray tire reminded me of when something similar happened to me. It was the early '90s, and I was riding down with a friend from L.A. to San Diego. Somewhere around San Clemente, a tire flew off of a car going in the opposite direction, bounced over the median, and smashed into her hood and windshield (we were probably going about 60 mph). The windshield was smashed in but somehow held together so we were able to finish the drive down, but in retrospect it's a miracle we weren't hurt or killed. Instead of smashing completely through the windshield, the tire caught just enough of the frame around the windshield on the driver's side that it bounced off. Had it hit just a few inches toward the driver's side, it probably would have been disastrous. Yikes.

Just another day in DC

One of the curses of living in the DC area is the dreaded motorcade. You never know when traffic is suddenly going to be stopped to allow some bigwig with a police escort to get across town unimpeded. The most dreaded motorcade of all is the presidential (and probably vice-presidential too) motorcade, which generally involves street closures well in advance of his passing through, large numbers of police in cars and motorcycles, big limos, multiple SUVs with heavily armed men hanging out the side and/or top, support vehicles, an ambulance (that's usually the giveaway that it's the president), etc. We actually got caught in one of those a couple of weeks ago when we were trying to get Mädchen to a doctor's appointment (the end result of which, by the way, was finding out tonight that her nut allergy is more serious than expected, so we're now going to be crazy allergy parents, but that's a story for another time) and the street in front of us was all of a sudden closed for almost 10 minutes.

So this afternoon I was looking out my window when I saw the Big Kahuna's motorcade go past for a meeting across the street. No big deal, happens all the time, right? Well, evidently now it IS a big deal, because later I looked out my window and there were at least 50 people hanging out on the adjacent street corners waiting to catch a glimpse of the motorcade. And by the time the motorcade actually emerged, there were probably 100-200 people hanging out and cheering. Needless to say, that is NOT typical DC behavior (most typical would be to ignore the whole thing because you're so jaded, or perhaps to grumble about the inconvenience). I'm sure the star power will fade at some point, but in the meantime it's definitely a new day in our nation's capital...

This is the quick shot I got with my cellphone camera, into the sun through a dusty window...the limo in front is most likely either the Kahuna or the Vice-Kahuna:

Snippets from Inauguration Day

Souvenir from my brother, who left New York City on a bus at 5:00am, made it to the Washington Monument to see the ceremony on one of the big-screen TVs, spent hours trying to get himself out of the city (along with 1-2 million other people...we had other friends who had an equally difficult time getting back), and finally made it out to stay with us last night:


Mädchen, who somehow fell asleep in Gretchen's lap (which NEVER happens)--and stayed sleeping--right as the oath of office was being administered, which allowed us to watch Obama's speech uninterrupted:


And, just for the heck of it, Jon Stewart reporting on the festivities:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inauguration

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

What to do?

Well, tomorrow is the Big Day around here. We've wanted to really experience this inauguration, but between the crowds, the cold weather, and having a two-year old who doesn't always like crowds, we've pretty much resigned ourselves to experience it on TV (fortunately tomorrow is a day off of work for me).

But it's been hard watching the coverage leading up to the inauguration to think about missing the whole thing when we live so close. I mean, we still kick ourselves for missing the Winter Olympics in Torino in 2006 and the World Cup in Germany later that year, and this is much closer than that. That feeling was only heightened by watching the We Are One concert yesterday, which took place basically 5-10 minutes by foot from my office. Sigh.

So we've started to VERY tentatively toy with the idea of taking Mädchen into the city on a bus that will be running from near our house to the city, even if only to wander around the perimeter for an hour or so and soak in the excitement and historical importance of the moment, and just feel a part of something much larger than ourselves. (An African-American woman who helped us at a store tonight told us she was taking tomorrow off work and planning to leave her house at 3:30am to walk down to get a spot along the parade route. This is NOT your typical inauguration by any means.) By the same token, when you read urgent warnings in the paper to label your children in case you get separated, well, that's definitely a strike against attending.

So we'll watch the news in the morning and get a sense of what the crowds, transportation, and weather are looking like and decide then. I'd say odds are still good that we'll stay home and watch the festivities from here...but I wouldn't put it past us to be impulsive seize the moment if the stars are aligned correctly. Whatever we end up doing, we're really excited for the moment to arrive.

THE VERDICT (TUESDAY MORNING):

Mädchen (and, by extension, Gretchen) had a lousy night's sleep last night, she is still fighting off a cold and Gretchen woke up with a sore throat, it's currently 20 degrees outside with a wind chill of 9, and as of 8:00am it looked like the crowds were already enormous, so...no go. It's pretty amazing to see how many people are braving the cold for this. But it looks like, for us at least, the best way to celebrate history will be here in our cozy family room.

Tea party, take two

Maybe in 2013...

This weekend, of course, is the lead-up to Tuesday's presidential inauguration. There will be balls, parties, a big free concert, etc...and I doubt we'll get anywhere close to any of it. (Although I'm really curious to see what crowds will actually be like--will it be the throngs of millions that were originally anticipated, or will so many people have been scared off by reports of the large crowds that it won't be as big as expected? Yogi Berra once supposedly said of a popular restaurant that "no one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded." I wonder if that will be true of DC this weekend?)

Anyway, the free concert on Sunday will be just a 5-10 minute walk from my office, so even though I have no desire to brave the crowds then, I thought I might amble over there at lunchtime just to see everything getting set up, soak in the atmosphere, etc. But then I just checked the weather...despite looking out my window at a brilliant blue sky, the current temperature is 13, with 30mph wind gusts making it feel like -6 (that would be -21 centigrade for our European friends).

So...experience a small slice of history and get frostbite in the process, or miss out on it but stay nice and toasty in my office? I think I'll take nice and toasty, thank you very much.

(For what it's worth, the current temperature in Gretchen's hometown of Madison, Wisconsin is -12, which makes what we're having feel like suntanning weather in comparison. I just need to make sure we have reminders of this every time Gretchen does silly things like suggesting we move to Wisconsin.)

When tea parties go terribly wrong...

One lucky dude

Tuesday morning I went into work late because I had to take down all of our blinds since guys were coming to install new windows. (As far as we know, our old ones were the original ones from the 1940s...several of them couldn't be opened because they were painted shut, cold air leaked in, raising and lowering screens and storm windows was perilous, etc.) As I finished up and was getting dressed for work, I looked out the window and saw this:


If it's not apparent, it's Gretchen scraping frost off my windows and turning on the heat in the car so I wouldn't have to. Evidently making my breakfast and lunch wasn't enough. And yes, I absolutely realize just how lucky I am--although, for the record, I certainly never asked if she would do this for me. It's just typical of the kind of nice things that she does all the time, not just for me, but for friends and neighbors too.

Oh, and the new windows are great, other than not having blinds installed so our neighbors may be getting quite a show every time we change clothes.

Nuts

Not that I don't love my husband dearly, but I don't think I can stand to look at that mustached-picture of him for another day, so it's time I come up with something to post!

We had expected it to be a fairly quiet week around here. Holidays are over, everyone is getting back to a routine, it's the calm before the storm of inauguration... but everything changed on Monday morning about 10:30 when I decided, for some strange reason, to let Madchen try a cashew.

A couple hours later we were in the emergency room of the local hospital. Apparently she is allergic to cashews.

Thankfully, her reaction was only a skin reaction, and she never had trouble breathing. Nonetheless, it's an indescribable feeling to be driving your daughter to the hospital, seeing her skin covered from head to toe in hives (actually they were more like purple welts), not knowing if she would suddenly have trouble breathing. I have never experienced such fear. Even though her mood was fine while we waited in the ER hospital room ("Yay! Daddy's here too!"), and we came home safely a few hours later (after much benadryl and a massive shot of steroids), and she's seemingly not traumatized by the event, I am shaken to the core by what happened.

Tomorrow we'll see her allergist and presumably start a new course of allergy testing. I'm thankful that we already have a great allergist who treats her skin troubles. Hopefully he'll help us answer all of our questions. I'm shocked this happened because she's clearly been exposed to nuts in the past, and has never had a reaction. Perhaps she's never actually been exposed to cashews, only peanuts. I know they belong to different "families". And I thought she had been tested for all nuts in her original allergy testing that we did a while back, but perhaps I'm wrong on that as well.

Whatever the case, our girl got it right when she told me Monday night: "I'm all done with cashews."

Lookin' good

There are plenty of things in my past that I'm not especially proud of. One of them: the cheesy mustache I sported for a couple of years in college. Granted, I look especially dorky in this photo because my face is contorted from drinking some sort of evil tequila-based concoction (this was from spring break one year in San Felipe, Mexico), but I think that it's fair to see that even when I looked as normal as possible, the 'stache did not exactly make me a chick magnet. Come to think of it, the sweater is pretty bad too...

Yes we can

The big excitement this weekend (other than riding on the Metro) was that I learned how to use our scanner to scan old, pre-digital photos--I was pleasantly surprised that it was quite easy to do. I only scanned a few, but in the spirit of the season (9 days until inauguration!), one was from when we attended the second Clinton inauguration in January 1997. That was a pretty sedate affair compared to what they're predicting this year.

Riding on the Metro

In the spirit of seeing local sights as inexpensively as possible, I was watching Mädchen this morning while Gretchen went out with a friend and had to think of something fun to do with her.

I decided to take her someplace she had never been before...the local public transit system! We got on, rode the Metro four stops, then rode back to our original stop. You may think that sounds utterly boring, but how very wrong you would be. We rode on a mostly above-ground section that included a stop at the airport, so not only did she get to watch the world go by out her window, but she also got to see airplanes. And she managed not to lick anything inside the car, which was a big plus.



That is one of the nice things about this age--a trip on the Metro is as exciting as a vacation, a trip to the pet store is as exciting as the zoo (speaking of which, for some reason she can spend hours looking at dog toys), etc...

Locals

One of the things we're guilty of is not taking advantage of all the things there are to do in the DC area. (Although, doesn't everyone do that to a certain extent?) Which is a pity, really, because (a) there actually is a lot to do and (b) much of it is not only 15 minutes from our house, but is also free (e.g., all of the Smithsonian museums).

So, lately we're trying to get out more frequently and actually see some of the local sights that we take for granted. Gretchen, for example, has recently taken Mädchen to both the Museum of Natural History and the National Aquarium, both of which were HUGE hits. We've also taken her a couple of times to the U.S. Botanic Garden, once in the fall to see a special exhibition of painted globes, and once after Christmas to see a great miniature train exhibit that they evidently do every year and is hugely popular but I somehow had never heard of it until we got there.



We're not really big on New Year's resolutions, but I suppose if we had one it would be to not let concerns about parking, weather, crowds, etc., keep us from making the most of living so close to the nation's capital city...

This could be you

Given how clumsy I can be, when I saw this story (and, in particular, the accompanying pictures), I had one of those there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I moments. I've fallen plenty of times getting off the lift, and I came really close to falling off of a lift when we were in Zermatt and I forgot to take my backpack off before getting on the lift, so I found myself basically hanging one cheek on and one cheek off. And of course there was the time we both fell off a T-bar together when our skis crossed. But thankfully, I've never actually ended up upside down and pantsless on a ski slope (at least that anyone knows about)...

Just let it go

I don't know if we've mentioned it, but Mädchen absolutely LOVES to read books. She wants to read multiple books when she wakes up in the morning and after her nap, at the dining room table, before bed, when she needs a little quiet time, etc. We probably go through at least 15 books a day with her. (Lest you think we're bragging about her being a bookworm, rest assured that she also loves her favorite TV shows--currently Little Einsteins and Dora the Explorer, and to a lesser extent Blue's Clues, Backyardigans, Max & Ruby, and Clifford the Big Red Dog--and whines loudly and insistently throughout the day about wanting to watch shows.)

Because she reads so many books, she's gotten to know some of them fairly well--to the extent that she corrects you if she thinks you've read something incorrectly. She's usually right, but lately I've found myself getting in little arguments with her about what I've read. For example, last night when I got to the part of the story where Peedie misplaces his baseball cap, Mädchen insisted that the two pictures of him without his cap on facing pages were actually his friends Gossie and Gertie. When I tried to gently correct her and point out that it was indeed Peedie, she insisted vehemently that it was Gossie and Gertie. I started to correct her again when it finally dawned on me that maybe it was kind of pathetic to be arguing with my two-year-old about what was in her book.

Add this to the list of things they don't tell you before you become a parent...

Extremely compelling

It's not often that I finish a book and immediately want to re-read it, but that happened yesterday afternoon when I finished Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. That's not to say I actually will re-read it right away, but I wouldn't be surprised if I do so in the next year.

I bought it back when we lived in Basel, but hadn't brought myself to read it because I do most of my reading right before bedtime, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read a novel centered around 9/11 before falling asleep. (While we were not directly impacted by the events of 9/11, the memories of that morning--smoke rising across the river from the Pentagon, inability to reach each other because of jammed phone lines, gridlock as people tried to get out of the city, sirens and helicopters, unfounded rumors of other explosions nearby, not knowing how friends working in downtown Manhattan were doing (I used to work just a few blocks from the World Trade Center), nightmares that lasted for days afterward--were not something I really wanted to relive nightly.) After another friend recently read it and raved about it, however, I decided to give it a shot. And am I ever glad I did.

It's basically about love, family, and coping with loss in the context of both 9/11 and the WWII firebombing of Dresden, told from several perspectives. It's not always an easy read because of the different perspectives and other narrative quirks (which is a big reason I'll probably read it again--I think things will be much more clear the second time through). As much as it's genuinely heartbreaking, it's also quite funny as well. The nine-year-old boy at the center of the story who loses his father on 9/11 is one of the most memorable characters of any book I've read (if nothing else, I love the recurring description of being sad as "wearing heavy boots").

All of which is a long way of saying that if you have the patience for the quirky narrative, I highly recommend this book.

We also finally finished season four of The Wire last night, and it was as outstanding as always. Four seasons down, one to go...