Molly's first crush

Molly's teacher, Miss Ling, sent us this email and photo today. It made me laugh, so I thought I would share:

Hi Maggie & Jason, A photo and short description of Molly sitting and playing near another child on Tuesday. She prefers the quiet ones, but I think she might have a crush on another boy that she sometimes likes and sometimes dislikes depending on what they are both doing. As long as the other boy doesn't treat her like a piece of furniture, she likes him (she often looks at him and watches to see what he is doing and he in turn might be attracted to her red hair).

Molly plays near Matt, her one true love

Baby drama

We've had a long week. A looong week. Molly has been sick AND is getting her top 2 teeth. She's had her fair share of colds in the past, but this time was different. I knew she wasn't feeling well Wednesday morning--she had been coughing and just seemed under the weather. We took her to daycare, but they called that afternoon and thought she probably needed to go to the doctor. She was wheezing a little and seemed to be having some trouble catching her breath. I called our pediatrician's office and the first appointment I could get was an after hours appointment at 8:15pm.

Jason was nervous and decided to leave work early and get her home. She slept most of the afternoon and wouldn't finish her bottle. By the time I got home around 6pm, we knew something was really wrong. Molly was crying and wheezing and just seemed so miserable that we weren't sure we could wait until 8:15. She was pretty warm so we took her temp and it was 102! Jason called the doctor and I got some Tylenol in her and we tried to be patient waiting for a call back.

It probably only took about 5 minutes to get that call, but it felt like an eternity. The nurse had me count Molly's breaths per minute and when we discovered her respiratory rate was 90 (normal for a baby is 30-60), she told us we needed to take her to the ER. AAAAAAHHHHHH! Panic. Jason got Molly's coat on and threw her in the carseat and I ran to put on sweats and get the diaper bag packed up. A minute later we were on the road and heading to Children's Hospital in Lincoln Park.

I can't even explain how scary it was. Molly was breathing so fast and was SO serious. We could tell she was scared too. But then while we were waiting in the triage line, she spotted a little boy in the waiting room and started smiling at him. That was the moment we knew everything would be okay.

She had to breathe through a mask for a few minutes (this was torture -- Molly screamed the entire time and turned as red as a tomato) and then they came in with a tube and sucked all the stuff out of her nose (this was probably even worse, but I didn't watch) and then 4 hours later, they sent us on our way home with a diagnosis of bronchiolitis.

Jason and I both stayed home on Thurs and Fri to nurse our poor baby back to health. She was pretty pathetic for a couple of days and wouldn't let us put her down. Unfortunately both Jason and I were slammed with work and still needed to get a few things done to keep our jobs going. I'm not sure I've ever been so stressed. All I wanted to do was take care of my baby, but my supervisor was out of the office and so was my back-up, so there was no one else to do the work. Ugh! Somehow I managed to get the essentials taken care of. And then I will need to play catch-up today while Molly naps. But the worst is behind us.

Molly started playing again today. She's still tired and she still isn't eating as much as she should, but she's on her way back to normal. Here's the proof:

The King of Limbs

Jason downloads the new Radiohead album (The King of Limbs) while Molly hangs out below. Yay, new music!!

Reading, playing, and learning

As a follow-up to my "favorite things" post from August, I wanted to write up a list of some of Molly's favorite toys and books at 7 months. But I'm realizing that it's kind of hard to pick favorites because Molly seems to love anything we put in front of her. In general she is a huge fan of anything that makes a noise -- musical instruments, rattles, electronic toys, her fake phone -- those are all winners.

Molly loves her tambourine

"Come on board the animal train!" Yes, this train plays a song

She also loves "touch and feel" books. That's Not My Dragon always makes her smile. Other favorites include:

• Five Little Monkeys
• The Monster at the End of this Book
• I Love You Through and Through
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• The Going to Bed Book
• Where Is Baby's Belly Button?
• There's a Wocket In My Pocket!

Board books are fun, but I can't wait until she's old enough/patient enough for me to start reading Winnie-The-Pooh, The Little House books, and the Harry Potter series!

The Mom and the Goat

Back in November, my younger sister Susie went online to make a reservation at The Girl and the Goat, the new restaurant from Stephanie Izard (Top Chef Season 4), and ended up booking a table for 5 at 8:30 on Friday, February 11. That's how long it took to get a decent time on a weekend night! By the time February rolled around, Susie and Sean could no longer go, and Betsy had decided to go to India for work, so Jason and I happily took over the reservation and invited our friends Justin and Kristie to join.

I'm not going to say that Jason and I are "foodies," but we do love trying new restaurants and we definitely appreciate interesting cuisine. Our opportunities to venture out to the hot new Chicago restaurants have become somewhat limited now that Molly is around, so this reservation was a big deal. Big. Deal. Hiring a babysitter kind of big deal. But The Girl and the Goat did not disappoint! We ordered way too much food, spent way too much money, probably drank too much craft beer and good wine, and definitely enjoyed every single second of it.

I'm including a link to the full menu, but here's a list of what we ordered. It's a "shared plates" type of restaurant (think Tapas), so while it looks like an obscene amount of food for 4 people, the portions are small, and each person only gets a few bites of each.

The O'Grady/Tauber and the Goat experience:

• Bread with duck fat butter and pomegranate compote
• Wood fired oysters with horseradish aioli
• Fried cheese curds in some kind of tasty goodness
• Chickpea fritters with hazelnut hummus and goat feta
• Squash ravioli with mushroom raisin ragout, brussel sprouts, and creme fraiche (This was a total stand-out. There was something really sweet and wonderful about the sauce)
• Seared scallops with goat sausage, white shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, and winter squash
• Calamari stuffed with lamb sausage and sweetbreads
• Goat masala pizza with farm cheese and yogurt
• Goat, pork, and veal with pappardelle pasta and rosemary
• Roasted pig face with a sunny side egg, cilantro, and potato stix (Yes, I ate a dish called "pig face." I do not know what part of the face it was, but I ate it, loved it, and asked no questions)
• And for dessert...pork fat donuts in a semi-frozen sesame custard with pineapple chunks

Yum yum yum. I'm glad we loved it so much because we have another reservation set for the end of April, when Betsy, Susie, and Sean will be able to join! 

There's a new chef in town

Jason came up with the title of this post after he deemed our dinner last night "totally blog worthy." I did not cook the entire meal, but did manage to pull off Stephanie Izard's recipe for seared scallops with bacon-braised chard. Yum.

  Check out the sear on those scallops!

We haven't quite reached our New Year's resolution of a 50-50 split on the cooking. It's still probably 80-20, with Jason taking care of the majority of the meals, but I am trying to do more. I do, however, handle 100% of the baby food preparation. Pureed green beans and mashed pears are right in my wheelhouse. Bananas have been the only failure as I am pretty sure they made Molly puke and gave her wicked diaper rash. We'll be waiting a little bit before trying those again!

The Big Snow Dump (aka, Snowmageddon, The Snowpocalypse, Snowgate, or The Blizzard of 2011)

I'm always a little dubious of extreme weather forecasts. But this one was right on! Chicago was hit with 20 inches of snow Tuesday night -- the third worst storm in the city's history. Needless to say, pretty much everything was shut down on Wednesday. The roads, the schools, Molly's daycare, Jason's office, and my office were all closed. Unfortunately, I had a project with a tight deadline, so I spent most of the snow day working on notes pages for a slide presentation. Boring! But it was still nice to be able to hang out at home with Jason and Molly.

Our back alley -- the snow was piled up to the top of the garbage cans!

Jason did manage to get our car shoveled out today. Susie's is safe and warm in the garage spot...and will probably stay that way for at least the next week :)

I did not take this photo, but wanted to show the scene on Lake Shore Drive from Tues/Wed. Hundreds of cars were stuck overnight.

We had to walk Molly to daycare today. The sidewalks were pretty clear though. And luckily daycare is only a few blocks away.

Time capsule

I have mixed feelings about Facebook. Most people probably do, so I won't get into a discussion about the pluses and minuses. But every now and then, something shows up that makes me appreciate this crazy social network that I've bought into. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Terrace Park Elementary 6th Grade Class of 1991-1992:

Apparently I was a vain little nerd -- notice I removed my glasses before posing for the class photo

Oh the days of thick bangs and bad clothes! Even without the benefit of Facebook tags, I can name all 20 kids pictured and the 1 who is missing (Kate Scherff, she sat behind me). I went to a pretty small elementary school -- this wasn't just my 6th grade class, it was the entire grade -- and for the most part, we were all friends. I ended up going to private school after junior high and lost touch with most of the kids I grew up with. But within minutes of this photo hitting Steve Early's wall, I had friend requests from half the class and an email from my very best friend growing up, Christina Ehrnschwender (the dark-haired girl sitting next to me). Yes, I still remember how to spell that crazy last name of hers. I can't tell you how happy it made me to see Christina's profile pic with her 3 year-old son and to hear that she's happily married and teaching in Cincinnati.

It doesn't feel so long ago that I was in that 6th grade classroom learning long division and hoping that Mr F would throw a bead at my head (the prize for being good. I did mention I was a nerd, right?). But looking at the date, I realize that it has been almost 20 years. 20 freakin' years! Sheesh. Too bad there isn't a 6th grade class reunion in the works. But hey, we're all on Facebook now, so who knows what could happen!