Springtime, for Molly

My Mom hit a huge sale at Old Navy, thinking she was helping us stock up for next Fall/Winter. But since the temp has dropped here in Chicago, we're back in long sleeves, and Molly is enjoying all of her colorful new gear.

Flower girl

Yipes, stripes!

Cozy in fleece

Taking Tigger for a walk

Anyone for tennis?

Why look at the camera?

In other news, we've had a slight setback (already!) with our plans to move. A condo down the street just went on the market for quite a bit less than ours. It's a little smaller, and doesn't have the exposed brick or ductwork, but still, it's going to end up being the closest comp and will definitely hurt our appraisal. Jerks!

Welcome to the land of make believe

Molly is learning how to play and use her imagination, which is pretty fun. We "feed" her duck most mornings and make her animals run and jump. Today we set up a big tea party with Tigger, Cookie Monster, Elmo, and some of the other stuffed favorites who live in Molly's room:

I know this is only the tip of the iceberg. Can't wait till she starts playing dress up and making up her own stories!

I would buy this place

Photos are in! I think the place looks pretty cool, right? Listing goes up on Monday. Hurrah!

Living room

Kitchen

Dining room

Kitchen/dining/living

Master bedroom

Master bath

Second bedroom

Guest bath

A blogworthy moment

I'll spare you all the photo evidence, but just wanted to announce to the world that Molly had moment of success with her potty today. First time ever! We aren't really potty training her. We basically just bought the thing and told Molly that it was hers. Yesterday, I put on an Elmo Potty DVD, and today, she told Jason that she needed to go. He took her to the bathroom, and much to our surprise, she went. Ha! I'm sure the "real" potty training won't be that easy, but we're feeling good about this first little triumph!

Thanks Elmo!

Mommy's pot of gold

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We've been dressing Molly in green all week to celebrate this favorite of Irish holidays. Thought I would share some of the cute pictures:

My girl in green -- notice the shoes on the wrong feet :)

Doesn't someone look sassy?

Jason and I have been working our tails off packing stuff up and moving it out, but our place is really coming together -- we're almost ready for pictures! -- so we took a much-needed break on Saturday to hit up the park and have corned beef, potatoes, and beer with friends. Today, we're back at work, finishing up the cleaning and organizing, and watching a little March Madness basketball while we're at it. I'm pretty exhausted, but UC plays tonight, so I'll have to stay up and cheer them on. Go Bearcats!

Dream Dinners

A couple of weeks ago, our daycare hosted an intro night at a place called Dream Dinners in Bucktown. The basic concept is this: You go in for about an hour, one day a month, and assemble a bunch of meals in ziplock bags. They have all of the ingredients prepped, chopped, and organized; the instruction sheets are dummy-proofed; and the Dream Dinners staff follows you around and cleans up the mess. At home, just throw the meals in the freezer, and then you have 12 ready-to-go dinners whenever you need them.

We tried a bunch of the menu options at the intro party, and the food was actually pretty good. We're hoping Molly thinks so too, because the whole point is that this will help us get dinner ready after work so that we can all eat together as a family. We will have to plan ahead and make sure we have meals defrosted on the days we need them, but I have a feeling those days will be Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. That's when we're always scrambling!

The total bill for the 12 meals came to $190, which divides out to $15.83 a meal. Each meal has 3 servings, and Molly won't actually eat a full serving, so I think we should have some leftovers for lunches too. If that's the case, this should fit within the austerity plan, but I'll have to keep an eye out to make sure we're spending less at the grocery store each week to compensate. Otherwise, Dream Dinners will have to go. 

I went this morning with 2 of the moms from daycare and it was actually pretty fun. The staff nicknamed us "The Tornadoes" because we set up an assembly line and were racing around to get everything put together as fast as we could. Busy moms gotta hurry, right?

Apparently it's a popular place to be, because I ran into a friend from high school this morning. And at the intro night, Jason and I were identified by a nurse from Northwestern hospital who was there when we delivered Molly. Yes, a year and a half later and she recognized us! Probably because my labor and delivery was like an episode of Grey's Anatomy. Ha!

Anyway, this month, we are trying: penne with chicken and peanut sauce, seared sesame crusted tuna, savannah grill chicken with sweet potato fries, creamy chicken risotto, three cheese pasta with meatballs, parmesan crusted chicken, carne asada steak tacos, dill marinated shrimp with pasta, and crispy coconut chicken with jasmine rice. There's an effort to use low-fat ingredients, brown rice, and whole wheat pasta. According to the nutritional information listed on the website, the meals are actually pretty healthy, and the controlled portions should keep up from overeating. In theory.

My freezer now looks like this:

Stuffed to the brim!

I hope this does save some time in the evenings, because Jason and I are going to be busy as bees these next few weeks clearing out our condo and prepping to sell!

It's storage time!

Jason and I love our place. We've been here since 2005. It was our first home together. We've hosted epic parties here (Halloween comes to mind). We became a family here, a year and a half ago, when we brought Molly home from the hospital. We've loved every minute of living here...but we're running out of room.

We've got Molly's stroller in the hallway; artwork and out of season clothes stashed under every piece of furniture in the place; toys, toys, and more toys shoved in every crevice. You get the idea. There's stuff. Everywhere.

We've been contemplating a move to the suburbs for some time now. But where would we go? We're not from Chicago, and have no ties to any particular part of town. My friends have mostly moved South and West. Jason's friends are talking about going North. What to do?

Well, it turns out there's an upside to the bad economy. Housing prices have gone down, along with interest rates, and it looks like we now might be able to afford a place in Evanston, the home of the Northwestern Wildcats, where I spent 4 glorious years in my youth, and where Susie and Sean are currently living while attending Kellogg.

I'm getting ahead of myself here. The first step will be to actually SELL our current place and who knows how long that might take. And before we can even list our condo, we're going to have to find a place to stash all of the junk that we've been accumulating over the years.

So, this weekend will be the big clean up. We've got golf clubs, baby gear, luggage, sleeping bags, clothes, and appliances to pack up and move out to our new 6x5 storage unit at Halsted and Lake. Yes, Greek Town is a bit of a drive for storage, but we decided to sacrifice convenience for price. I got 2 months free and a $20 rebate, so that deal fit well within my austerity plan budget. Speaking of which, the money-saving measures have been going pretty well and we've managed to cut our spending in half. Go us!

Anyway, I digress. After packing up this weekend, the plan is to get cleaners in next week, and then Lindsay will do what she needs to do to get this place listed and sold. The Western Ave address works against us, but (I think) our place is pretty darn cool. Hopefully someone else will think so. And hopefully they will have as happy a time living here as we've had.

Wish us luck!

Darling in denim

I'm feeling too lazy to write, but wanted to post a pic of Molly in her new jean skirt:

She totally knows she's cute!

Thanks for the style Grandma Janet!