Posts filed under 'Baby Madness'
Since we are going to be spending buckets of money on our house in the next few months (see category: Remodel Hell), we decide to pack Brian’s birthday (7/18), our 5th wedding anniversary (7/26) and my birthday (9/10-I’m going to be out of the country, so why not live it up now?) into one day of celebrating. No gifts, which makes life so much easier, just dinner and a movie.
I started this celebration off with a 5 mile run in the morning, which felt less like celebrating and more like drilling a hole in my head with a dull pencil. A truly miserable run, I’m hoping it was just the muggy weather.
After that, I assumed we would just hang out with Ashok until Brian’s mom arrived to babysit, but no, there was one more home improvement task to be tackled. We are planning to put a few large trees in pots out in the backyard, since we have nowhere to plant (swimming pool=concrete) but have been struggling to find the perrrrfect large pots to put them.
Immediately after we took him out he said, “again!” even though he appeared to be completely confused as to why he was in there to begin with. Anyway, that pot isn’t the one we bought but without providing too many boring details, we did finally settle on something.
Our real celebration began at 3:00 when we high-tailed it to a showing of The Dark Knight. I liked the movie, it was definitely entertaining and intense but I have to say, the amount of violence was a little over the top. It was particularly disturbing considering that the lady one row in front of us brought her young kids with her, they looked like they were about 10 and 7. Nice.
Then, the part I was really excited about: dinner at Osteria Mozza. We came here for my sister’s 40th and had an incredible meal, so I was thrilled to go back. This time around was no disappointment, we had an incredible meal and a fantastic server who recommended great wines. (If food talk bores you, you may want to stop reading here as I am about to give a grueling play by play of our whole meal, mostly so I can relive it and drool.)
Beverages: one thing I really enjoyed about their wine list was being able to order 250ml. servings of some of the wines, so we were able to try 3 different ones. My favorite was the Sangiovese we had last-of course I was drunk by then, so who really knows. Because I was a drunken idiot, I didn’t take note of any the names of the wines, so I can’t recount them here.
From the antipasti menu we had the Little Gem Lettuces with green beans, noci & pecorino. The noci were actually just walnuts, but they were probably the most perfect walnuts I have ever seen. And salty, which maked them even more perfect. Then we ordered a few small plates from the Mozzarella Bar. They were:
Bufala mozzarella with pesto, salsa romesco, tapenade & caperberry relish - a nice, big dollop of cheese with four spreads to choose from with crostini. I don’t know what a caperberry is but that relish was incredible.
Sheep’s milk ricotta, radicchio, spiced walnuts, honey & fried rosemary - probably my favorite part of the whole evening, the honey was unbelievably fresh and the combination of that with the spicy walnuts (more perfect walnuts!) was incredible.
Burrata with leeks vinaigrette & mustard breadcrumbs - Burrata is a super-soft mozzarella made with cream. The cheese was amazing, but the leeks were only ok. Probably our least favorite thing of the night.
We are both great lovers of cheese, as you can tell. But really, what’s not to like?
After that, I had the Maltagliati (a pappardelle type pasta) with wild boar ragu and Brian had the fresh gnocchi with tomato and basil. They were both fantastic, the gnocchi were of the melt-in-your-mouth variety. For dessert, we shared the Torta del Nonna with honey and pine nuts-more fresh honey and this time on cheescake!!- and a strawberry extravaganza that involved a berry sauce, crepes, gelato and sorbet, but honestly who knows? I was pretty much delirious by this point.
Today, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck (probably a truck carrying cheese). It was worth it, but I think I may just look at pictures of food for lunch today. Oh, who am I kidding? I need a sandwich.
July 28th, 2008
No, not a baby, or another dog….
Brian’s car was on its last legs (wheels?) so we traded it in for something that sucks down a little less gas. Brian is totally in love, I think I’ve dropped to #3 on his list.
Speaking of gas, we’ve been trying to offset the cost of gas by walking as much as we can these days. It’s a tough thing to do in a city like L.A. where things are so spread out and public transportation isn’t terribly efficient. We took a nice 30 minute walk with Ashok in the stroller and Lucy pulling away on the leash to our favorite breakfast spot the other morning-I don’t feel nearly as guilty about inhaling sausage, eggs and cheese when I know I’m going to be walking a mile and a half home right afterwards. Tonight, we walked a slightly shorter distance with the same gang to a little Italian place, but the food pretty much sucked. Oh well, we tried.
I’m trying to get back into a regular running schedule this week. I’ve been in a pretty serious slump over the last few months and I need to shake myself out of it somehow. I also decided to do the One Hundred Push Ups program. I started last week, but don’t think I was doing my push-ups quite as well as I could, so I’m going to repeat week 1 this week and Brian’s going to start it as well. It will be much easier to stay on the schedule if we’re both doing it. We just have to stop laughing at each other while we’re doing them.
July 14th, 2008
This whole 4th of July on a Friday thing is a really fine idea, I recommend we do this every year. Having a couple of days to recover from the 4th is great-we still get a whole weekend of lazing about after yesterday’s festivities.
I have been on a bit of a cooking spree lately. This may have been spurred on by the fact that our remodel plans were finally approved by the city last week (it took 4 months!) which means we could finally start construction soon. This of course means we won’t have a kitchen for several months which may be why I’m cooking like a madwoman this week. Having time off definitely contributes to this habit as well, and I did just have a blissful week off from work after our week up at Sequoia. So, for the 4th I actually planned a menu. Pretty fancy, eh? For starters we had…
Caprese-on-a-stick: mozzarella ball, cherry tomato and basil on a toothpick, drizzled with olive oil and topped with a little fleur de sel.
Garlicky White Bean Dip and Pita Chips: I wasn’t so sure about this dip right after I made it, but after it sat in the fridge for a couple of hours and soaked up some of that garlic flavor and I added the fresh oregano, it was really, really tasty. At this point I started drinking and completely forgot to take any more pictures of food, but here was the rest of the menu:
Indian Grilled Chicken, my own recipe
These potatoes-so good!
Herb-tossed Corn
Greek salad, courtesy of my mother-in-law, the Salad Queen
White chocolate chip Heath bar brownies, courtesy of my sister the Queen of all Baking
It was goooood. If only I had the time to cook like this the rest of the year.
Ashok’s cousin was over for dinner so they had all sorts of fun. Swimming…
…wagon rides…
…and bubbles.
Or, maybe just bubble.
Today, there was some more excitement around here, but I haven’t uploaded the appropriate pictures yet, so all three of you reading will have to wait for my next post. I promise it won’t be two weeks from now.
July 5th, 2008
June 15th, 2008
March 23rd, 2008
Congratulations, Brian! My husband had a great race this weekend coming in at 4:16:23. Ashok, my mom and I went out so see him at mile 19, which was right in front of Staples Center where a Laker game was about to start, and he looked great. Unfortunately, my hands were a bit too full to take any pictures of him running by, but I did get some shots of the spectators:
On the (not so) mean streets of L.A….
My Dad is My Hero
It was a beautiful day, highs in the low 70’s, although, according to Brian, a bit too warm and sunny for running 26+ miles. After mile 19, we walked down Flower Street in downtown and I was once again confounded by street closures and barricades and unable to get to the finish line. We managed to find him afterwards, but I wish we could have seen him cross. Maybe if the LA Marathon website wasn’t such a useless piece of crap, they could actually have some helpful information for spectators? Regardless, it was a great day and inspiring as usual too see all the runners and the thousands of people who came out to cheer them on. The marathon always makes me excited to live in L.A.
After coming home, where some people showered and other smaller people napped, we went out for dinner at The York. The York used to be The Wild Hare, which was one of our favorite bars when we lived in Highland Park. We celebrated many different occasions over there, including Brian’s first marathon in 2006. The Wild Hare was a bit of a dive, which I loved, don’t get me wrong, and we were sad to see it go but The York is pretty nice. Excellent beers, a full wine list, great food, and so far none of the hipsters have sneered at the baby in the high chair. I had a fantastic pan-seared tilapia with lentils, swiss chard and bacon and a Crafstman Hefeweizen-I’m drooling just thinking about it. After all that eating, we gave Ashok a bath and both boys were in bed by 8:00. It was a good day.
Now that Brian’s big race is over, I’m realizing that my half marathon is only a month away. I am on track with my training schedule but I looked at the elevation chart for the race today and….crap! What was I thinking?? Am I going to be able to make it through those first 8 miles? Oh well, too late now. If anyone has any recommendations for hill training, I’ll take all the help I can get.
March 3rd, 2008
…a week off from running somehow turned into a couple off from blogging. I just haven’t had much material lately and quite frankly, if I have to write another post about being sick, I’m going to slap myself in the face.
Because yes, I have been sick. Again. What was it last time, stomach flu? Oh yes, and then of course Ashok and I got matching ear infections. He’s doing much better but I’m still waiting for my doctor to call. Add to that equation a ton of work over the last couple of weeks, an unexpected bout of insomnia that had me sleeping an average of 3 hours a night while my baby boy slept blissfully through the night, lots of rain, and well….you get the picture. Not much to write about, just a lot of whining.
Sickness aside, Ashok has been really fun lately. He is learning new words every day, it seems. His repertoire now includes bye, box, duck, milk, and eye among others and he will also point to various facial features on request. We have recently discovered him to be bilingual-he says “agua”. I’m just waiting for him to bust out with “Donde esta la biblioteca?” one of these days and then we can make it official. Perhaps that would explain his fascination with Mariachis?
He was absolutely mesmerized by these guys. When he wasn’t staring with his mouth open, he was “dancing” in his high chair-this consists of a lot of thrashing, mostly. When I was his age (and older), mariachis made me cry, I was terrified of them for some reason. I’ve managed to get over my fear of singing men in tight pants but I’m glad to see Ashok hasn’t inherited that dislike from me.
I have managed to keep running despite all the many ailments. Today I did 9:
1 - 10:36
2 - 10:08
3 - 10:04
4 - 11:30 (stopped to walk and have water and gel)
5 - 10:20
6 - 9:47
7 - 10:29
8 - 10: 06
9 - 9:25
I did the three-ish mile loop at the Rose Bowl three times and my splits pretty much reflect the ups and downs of that route-1st mile up, 2nd mile half and half, 3rd mile down. I’ve come to accept the fact that I will probably be running about this 10:20 pace for my half in April. I would have liked to have done it at a pace under 10:00 but I don’t think that’s realistic and I don’t want to hurt myself either.
This week will be a little easier work wise although we are playing Bruckner Symphony No. 7 down in Orange County. For those of you unfamiliar with Bruckner, let’s just say that this piece is a very long song-about an hour long, I believe, and even though the music is nice, I think I would rather be playing an hour of Mahler than an hour of Bruckner. Anyway, this means late nights this week since I will be commuting but since the insomnia seems to have subsided, it shouldn’t be too bad.
I almost forgot! Brian is running the L.A. Marathon is weekend so I hope to have pictures and a report sometime next week. Keep your fingers crossed for cool weather for him and all the other runners…..
February 25th, 2008
I have decided to take on a task for this week. Inspired by Runner Susan, I am going to attempt to photograph everything I eat starting this morning and ending Sunday night. Although for me this doesn’t involve any sort of diet, I think it will help me get an idea of how well, or not well, I am eating. This week will be a tough one too, since I have several late night opera rehearsals that will get me home around midnight at which point I usually have a secret pig out party in my office with the cat as my only witness. Perhaps the possibility of photographic evidence of my late night binges will slow me down a bit? I sort of doubt it.
So far my goals are going pretty well. I got 5 workouts in last week (4 runs, 1 ab/yoga). For my long run this week I did 6.5 miles and although they were pretty slow at least I got them done. I am trying not to focus too much on speed in the long runs-since April will be my first half marathon ever, I just want to finish more than anything else.
Shopping….well, I did buy a couple of things on clearance at Target for Ashok (a $3 shirt and a $6 raincoat, come on!) but I didn’t buy any more shoes for myself-I will survive with just the adorable red sneakers and not invite any of their relatives to come and live with me. Curbing the shopping is hard, it is a bad habit that has developed over years and will probably take just as long to get under control.
In a very busy weekend we managed to get in some time at the park on an absolutely beautiful day.
We had a picnic lunch that included quiche for Ashok which he ate with his little finger sticking out after asking around for Grey Poupon. He is fancy like that.
And just to clarify something I mentioned in my last post, Ashok: The Sequel is not yet in production and due to the WGA strike is likely to be delayed for some time. In other words, I am NOT pregnant. Thank you.
January 14th, 2008
I was looking through my archives a few nights ago trying to figure out if I made any resolutions last year. Aside from a few lousy jokes about more whining and complaining and more adorable baby pictures (both counts: accomplished), it doesn’t look like I made any real attempt at change last year. This year I only have a couple, and I won’t call them resolutions. Let’s call them Realistic Goals for 2008.
- Work out more days a week. I have been pretty consistent with running three days a week, sometimes four, but I haven’t been doing any other kinds of exercise and I’m starting to feel it. I’m going to shoot for 4 runs a week and one or two days of either yoga, ab work or walking. Goal #1 should be made easier by Goal #2 which is….
- …to run a half marathon this year. I have been toying with this idea for a few months and now that Brian and I are talking (just talking!) about the possibility of Ashok: The Sequel some time in the not so distant future, I think it’s time to bite the bullet and get a half under my belt before I can’t wear a belt any longer.
After doing some research and absolutely falling in love with the idea of this race, (a weekend in Santa Barbara! Wine!) only to discover moments before giving them my money that I have a late rehearsal the night before and would never be able to make it up there in time to get a decent night’s sleep, I finally settled on The Great Race of Agoura Hills. Not as fancy a location and unfortunately, a more challenging course but the timing is right. Also, the course goes through the hills right near where Brian and I got married, so there’s some nostalgia factor there. I went through some back issues of Runner’s World and found a training plan that should work for me (I’ll be doing the short program). I’ll need to start that plan in about three weeks which gives me a little time to get my mileage up to where it should be. It feels good to have made this decision and have a big race to work towards.
Right, the shoes. I bought these over the holidays:
I loooves them. Obviously, they are not for any sort of exercise other than bouncing around town, but they are so ridiculously comfortable. They basically feel like wearing slippers AND they make my giant size 9 feet look practically petite. I may have to get another pair in black even though they’re not on sale any longer. Which brings us to Realistic Goal #3:
Less shopping.
Yeah, not going so well so far. Although, for the month of December I controlled myself quite well. This ban, or let’s say “reduction” (we are talking about Realistic Goals, after all) applies to clothes and shoes for myself as well as for Ashok. It is often hard to control myself when I find cute little things in the baby section at Target, but the truth is he has plenty of clothes and wouldn’t know the difference if I dressed him in paper towels tomorrow morning. (Not that I would do that. Paper towels are very 1986.) For myself, there are just certain stores I need to stay the F away from so that I’m not even tempted. I’m allowing myself a couple of necessities like a raincoat (yes I live in Los Angeles, but hey, it rained this week!) and new concert black pants (most of mine don’t fit right anymore and the ones that do are looking sorry). Hopefully, finding those will keep me occupied and kill that jones I get for smell, sound and taste (don’t judge) of new clothing. We’ll see. Addiction is powerful.
January 9th, 2008
I have been meaning to sit down and write our holiday recap for days now-Ashok is finally down for his nap, so I’ll give you the high points in a scattered incoherent manner before he wakes up.
After an incredibly snotty Christmas, we did finally fly out to Atlanta to spend New Year’s with these folks:
Even though every last one of us was sick at some point in the weekend (some showed up sick, like us, others got sick in the middle or left sick) we still had a great time. I feel lucky to have such a great group of people to hang out with every New Year’s. Ashok also got to meet his great-grandparents for the first time and we celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary. 72 years!
After a grueling five hour flight home with a toddler who just can’t sit still for even five freaking minutes, I was glad to be home. I went out the next morning for a run at the Rose Bowl forgetting that the big game had just been the day before. (I think I did this last year, too.) My normally pristine, beautiful running course was basically a big pile of trash. I had to maneuver Lucy around several half eaten pizzas before she had a chance to dig her snout into them. Basically, it was lovely. I thought about taking pictures but that just seemed sort of gross. My run sucked since I hadn’t really run in two weeks of being sick but I made myself go out again the next day and it was much better. I even tried to go out again the next day; three days in a row is not something I usually do, but there was a big storm coming so I figured I would try before I was forced to miss more days. About one mile in, my hip started to hurt and I realized I was probably pushing it after two weeks off, so I called it quits and came home.
The rain hit yesterday at about noon, just as I was helping my mom unload stuff into her new apartment. It poured buckets for the rest of the day through the middle of the night and we had the pleasure of discovering water leaking into our fireplace. Ah, homeownership! We’re supposed to get even more today and tomorrow which is great-we need the rain desperately here in drought land-but that bucket will probably have to live in our fireplace for a few more days.
I still haven’t figured out how to post video of Ashok walking, but here’s what it looks like:
Here he is wandering through LAX like so much unattended baggage:
More soon, I think he’s waking up….
January 5th, 2008
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