Taste of Chicago

We came, we saw, we tasted. And tasted. And tasted again. We got pretty full. On all kinds of food: Italian, Chinese, Mexican, and more.

Neither Dan nor I had ever tried a funnel cake before, so we figured that it was high time.



Wow that oil just oozes out when you bite down. But it is pretty darn good. Dan thought so too.



My favorites were the chocolate-dipped frozen banana and the Maduras (fried plantains--Colombian style).



Yum. You should all definitely go.



Chicago is awesome.

(I'm putting the rest of the pictures on facebook so my blog doesn't get too overloaded.)

Ever heard of freecycle?

This week I scored a free portable DVD player. That's right. Cost me nothing. Sure, it is a couple years old. But it still works. Came with a case. A car charger adapter. Now those flights/long drives with Violet will be ever so much easier.

How did I do it? Freecycle.com. Go sign up and see if they have a group in your area. It costs nothing to join, and you just might score some cool stuff for free. Like I did.

A Cold Day in July

Yes, it is 59 degrees here in Chicago. And raining. Crazy! Probably a good thing since we don't have A/C.

I also forgot to announce that Dan got accepted to go to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization--a division of the WTO) Summer School. It is in Mexico City, and he is super stoked. He'll be gone from August 1st - 16th, and I will be super lonely. I would have gone with him, but he'll be in school all day there, and I wouldn't be comfortable sightseeing in a huge city with no husband, with a toddler, and with no Spanish skills. We were originally planning on going as a family and we even got Violet a passport back in March. But Dan can't go early to vacation around because of job interviews for next summer, and he can't stay later because of job interviews for next summer. The WIPO Summer School just barely fit between his two sessions of interviews. But hurrah for possible employment, no?

P.S. Does anyone know why my Favicon turned itself from a pink R into a yellow J? Weirdness. I don't know how to fix it.

Sorry, Knee!

Kids are so funny. Violet knows she's supposed to say "sorry" when someone has an owie and it is her fault. And, of course, she doesn't quite know what saying "sorry" is supposed to do or why she has to say it. So she says it in a few extra situations.

If she scrapes her knee, she'll say "Sorry, knee!"

Bumps her head: "Sorry, head!" (And this is even if she is bawling her eyes out!)

She makes me laugh every day and I sure love her a lot.

(Even though so far today she's dumped the whole bag of Craisins all over the floor, spilled milk on the living room rug, and peed on the floor. And it is only 1.)

Missed Opportunity

We totally went out on the town for a date tonight. A real date (i.e. without Violet). We went dancing downtown in Grant Park where they had a live band--all for free.

The problem is, we missed out on a free Counting Crows concert. Just four blocks away. We found out about it just a few minutes too late. (15 minutes, actually.)

(I guess the bright side is that we burned more calories dancing than we would have just listening.)

Maybe we can catch the free BNL concert on Tuesday. I love all the free stuff here. It rocks.

Did You Hear the News?

Yesterday when Dan was coming home from school, he was stopped by an older black lady on the street. "Is it true?" she asked. "Is Michael Jackson really dead?" Her voice was breaking. "My daughter just called me and told me he died, and I just can't believe it!" Dan hadn't heard. "I've actually been out of the loop for a while, so I haven't heard anything about it," he said. (Poor Dan had just finished a writing competition for Law Review. He'd had like 4 hours of sleep in the past two days.)

Later when I was at the grocery store, the cashier asked me, "Did you hear the news? It's so sad I don't want to be the one to tell you. It's Michael Jackson. He died." I hadn't heard either. "His funeral is going to be bigger than Obama's inauguration!" She said.

Dan and I were both a bit surprised how both these people were so sad about it. Since then we've heard many people on the street bemoaning the death of Wacko Jacko. We thought Jackson had fallen out of favor in the past few years. I figure that most of his good music was done before he was fifteen years old, so the music industry didn't suffer a huge loss . But yeah, apparently death makes everyone forget your flaws. I guess that's a good thing. RIP, M.J.

Mondays Can Be Fun Too

Dan's bro Jake was working around Chicago making corn mazes and decided to stay with us for a short visit. He got here Sunday night and left early this morning. Here's what we did on Monday.

We walked out to Promontory Point (Lake Michigan) in the morning. Dan actually had to go into work for a few hours, so it was just me, Jake, and Vi. We should have driven, because I got blisters on my feet. (My poor feet are so abused because I never buy nice shoes. I would just so rather have four $10 pairs than one $40 pair. Someday I'll be rich though, and then I can afford to pay for quantity, style, and comfort.) It was a bit smoggy, so the view wasn't the best. It was still fun. We played some games on Jake's iPod while Violet played in the dirt. Wow I'm a good mom.

Dan joined us for our trip downtown. Violet loved playing in the face fountains. We'll definitely be going back pretty often, because it was a hoot.

"The Face Fountain in Millennium Park. The faces that appear on this wall change every few minutes. They are faces of actual Chicagoans. Just before the face changes, the face "spits" a fountain on anyone who wants to get wet."

(No, I did not take that picture. I still have no camera. I'll try to get the photos off Dan's phone, but phone pictures are never that awesome anyway, so I don't know if I'll try that hard.)

You can't tell from the picture, but water also spurts off the top of each fountain around all sides.

We walked all through Millennium Park, saw all the sculptures and the Bean and such. The very middle of the bean impresses me every time. You stand under it, and you can't even count how many images of yourself are reflected everywhere. You can't even tell where the top of the Bean actually is.

Then we walked down to the river and got some fliers about all the different boat tours. I don't think the fliers were quite as good as doing an actual tour, but that's just a guess ;). One of these days we'll splurge and actually do it.

We did some more walking, and I dreamt of riding around on one of those Segway things like Gob.

After we were pretty walked out, we hopped on the bus back to our apartment (Violet was sleeping in her stroller by this time. Did I mention that she falls asleep every time we go downtown? It's actually kind of nice...)

At home we played some Seafarers of Catan. Dan won. Darn that boy. Then we ate some delicious chicken enchiladas, put Violet to bed, and played more games. We finally went to bed at 1. The poor boys had to get up and leave at 5 so Jake could catch his 6:30 am flight. (Dan is presently trying to catch up on that sleep, but I don't know how well it is going since Violet has Curious George on right now.)

Thanks for visiting, Jake! Come back again soon!

Music Lessons

This morning I taught my first violin lesson in Chicago. Brand spankin' new beginner, seven years old. While I am immensely grateful to have another music student, teaching violin to a beginner is seriously draining. Why? Let me tell you.

There are so many things that can go wrong when playing the violin.

A tiny 1/4 size violin (what my student is starting on) is never going to sound that great. These muted sounds from this little instrument are made even worse when the instrument is preyed upon by a beginner. Scratchy squeaky disaster.

Perhaps the violin slips a bit out of tune. That is not going to sound pretty. Even if you do tune it to perfection and those tiny strings manage to stay in place, a beginning student will have horrible intonation. Pretty much every note will either be sharp or flat for the first few weeks. That is not going to sound pretty either.



The poor student has to focus on so many things at once--bow hand position, the weight of the arm going into the bow, the left hand position, the position of the violin under the chin, making the bow pull straight across the strings, placing the left hand fingers in the exact positions on the finger board, angling the bow precisely on the string so as not to bump the neighboring strings, using the correct arm muscles, relaxing the bow hand, and it goes on and on.

Plus there are the different schools of technique. Should I teach this student the French-Belgium method or the Russian method? While I greatly prefer the Russian method, it is much less well known in the US, and therefore once I move, the poor student will probably have to change her technique to the French-Belgium method anyway since most teachers just know that one method. Kind of a difficult decision.

Teaching piano, on the other hand, is a piece of cake. No matter how much of a beginner you are, you're not going to sound that bad. As long as the piano is in tune and has no broken strings, it's going to sound ok. No intonation to worry about, both hands are doing the same type of thing, and playing hard or soft just creates different dynamics--not squeaky or scratchy sounds. Just play the right notes and curve your fingers. Feels so much more natural. Not awkward at all like the violin does in the beginning.

Anyway, for those of you who want to start your kids on violin, just be prepared for some horrendous sounds for a while. And be ever so grateful to those music teachers :).

I Forgot to Mention...

A couple of weeks ago Dan got an RA position for the summer (finally)! He will be doing research for Professor Adam Samaha, one of the brilliant law professors at the University of Chicago.

Dan finished up finals this past Wednesday, the morning after Violet and I got back from Utah. He will start his summer research tomorrow.

I have been a babysitting machine ever since I got back, taking on a 9-month-old boy for 8 hours on Thursday, two other little boys for 6 hours on Friday (ages 9 months and 2 years), and a 2-year-old boy for 4 hours on Saturday. Crazy. I will be babysitting the 9-month-old two days a week for eight hours a day. Finally I'll be contributing some income again!

Friday afternoon (after the babysitting of course) we went downtown to the Adler Planetarium with our friends Josh & Barbie. We learned all about black holes and such, which was especially interesting and relevant since I saw the new Star Trek a couple weeks ago. I also found a pretty good candidate for Krypton. (I've been watching Smallville lately.)

So, all in all, hooray for summer!

Home from the Hospital

We were discharged from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Violet has been doing much better. Her fever was still like 101 yesterday, but today I think it finally left for good. Her rash is really calming down on her face. Her legs still look pretty crazy red and purple and welty, but I think they will calm down tomorrow or so.

Dan's mom was sweet to bring Violet some fun toys for the hospital--I think Violet watched her new My Little Pony movie about 17 times! It was great to have stuff to keep her occupied.

We have a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician (Dr. Joseph Johnson--he's great!) on Friday, so we'll see if they found anything new for us from the tests. They want me to leave Violet in the car and go get the doctor from his office when we arrive. I'm not sure if they're still worried about spreading something weird around or if they just don't want to freak out their patients. Hmm.

I hope this has been a good warning to everyone of the risks of the MMR vaccine. Not that I'm against all vaccines, but there are definitely risks that are usually dismissed by doctors. I think the risks of this particular vaccine are just a bit too high for my future babies.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, comments, prayers, and calls. I was so grateful for the love and concern I felt from everyone during the past few difficult days.

Now I just need to catch up on some dearly missed sleep.

Update on our Sick Violet

Last night Violet's fever climbed to 104.6 and we decided it was definitely time to go to the ER. This was just before midnight. Thankfully, we had to wait less than 5 minutes before they ushered us back.

We were seen by two doctors and then a pediatrician. All the doctors were extremely concerned at the severity of the rash in combination with the fever. I guess a reaction to MMR is almost never ever ever this severe, so they wanted to run a bunch of tests to see if it could be something else.

They admitted us to the hospital and brought us upstairs to our room at about 3:30 am.

We were quarantined for "air-borne" illness for a bit, and so all the nurses, doctors, and other staff would put on hats and gowns and masks before coming in, and then throw them away when they went out. They had to make our room have a negative pressure level so air wouldn't come out when the door was opened. (They were worried at this time that she did in fact have the actual measles. After telling us that there was no way she could have them...hmm. Then they said they are going to put Measles on the back burner and test for more likely problems. They still wear masks when they come in the room, but they don't seem as concerned about the Measles anymore.)

They still don't know what exactly is wrong, but we've received a few tests back. We know she doesn't have Kawasaki's Disease now (phew), but all the other tests we've received back so far are inconclusive. We're still waiting on some.

The most likely possibility is still that it is just a very pronounced adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine. It also could be an allergic reaction to Amoxycillan, which she was on a couple weeks ago for an ear infection. The possibility that it is an actual strain of the Measles I guess is almost nonexistant, because she would have to have almost no immune system for the vaccine to have brought on a case.

Anyway, thank you all for your prayers and concern. It is probably toughest on Dan since he can't be here and has to be taking finals right now. (I imagine he can't really focus on them.) Violet has been sleeping a lot today thankfully. It was pretty much the most awful thing of my life watching them run all those tests--they not only had to get blood, but they had to shove a little catheter up her nose and down her throat to get mucus and saliva samples. And of course the catheter for the urine sample. Poor Violet was just screaming and screaming. She is now officially terrified of nurses and cries whenever two of them come in (she's figured out it always takes at least two of them to do something painful to her).

I will give another update when we know more.

The Saddest Start to a Vacation

If you want this to happen to your children...



Go ahead and give them the MMR vaccine.

Ok, so I know that's not a typical reaction, but never again am I going to give my children the MMR vaccine before the age of like 7 or something. And I am always going to make the doctor separate it. Measles. Mumps. Rubella. NOT together.

I have always been a little nervous about vaccinations given to children under 2. It just scares me. I've obviously read too many horror stories from the small percentage who get adverse reactions to vaccines. Therefore, I waited until Violet was 18 months old before giving her ANY vaccines. I was going to wait until 2, but my pediatrician talked me into giving Violet some of them.

Violet got her MMR shot one week before we arrived in Utah. My pediatrician told me that 5% of kids get a rash from it 7 - 10 days after getting the shot. (I was not expecting anything like what Violet got.) The shot was on the 20th. We flew in on the 27th, Wednesday. Thursday she threw up and started getting a rash on her stomach and thighs, Friday she threw up and got a fever. The rash and fever got really bad on Saturday and even worse today.

Her fever has been fluctuating between 101 and nearly 104 for the past two and a half days. Her entire body is COVERED in horrible measles-like rash. Her face is pretty much one solid red mass of rash. The clinic we called said there is no possible way she could have the actual measles, but her symptoms are the same as a child with the measles, so why did we even get the vaccine? What is the point when the reaction is just as bad as the actual disease?

Researching this on the internet makes me even more upset. The MMR is a LIVE vaccine, and it has tasty stuff in it like chick embryo injected with the three viruses, and mixed with aborted fetal tissue or something. I know vaccines are generally beneficial, but it still makes me sick to think of what is going on when that needle deposits its contents into my child.

I am giving her Tylenol and Motrin, alternatively, to bring down the fever. The only problem is that before it is time for the next dose her fever is back up to 103.7. It makes me so sad when she finds a baby wipe and tries to wipe the spots off her legs. Or when she can't stop rubbing her itchy face against my shoulder. Or when she can't sleep at night for more than thirty or forty minutes at a time.

Anyway, this is a rant from an emotional mother who is feeling both angry at all doctors and guilty for letting them do this.

A Little Tongue Twister

Violet has inherited the gene that allows you to roll your tongue into a tube. She didn't get it from me. She also can flip her tongue all the way over without using her fingers (also something I can't do). Unfortunately, I don't yet have pictures of those tricks. Lately she walks around with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth at least 50% of the time. Isn't she cute?

(Thanks again to Lisa for these pictures! How handy to have a great photographer for a friend!)

P.S. Vi and I leave to Utah tomorrow! We're excited to see lots of family and friends. I just hope she sleeps on the plane...

Playground Photo Shoot

My friend Lisa took these cute pictures. Thanks, Lisa!

A Few Happenings

Here are a few of the recent happenings in our lives:

1. One day we were at a friend's house. Violet wanted a drink of milk, and the only milk available was skim milk. After giving her the cup of milk, she took a sip, shook her head, handed it back and said, "It's water!" That's my girl. All about the whole milk.

2. Last week I woke myself up talking in my sleep. That hasn't happened to me for years, so I thought it was worth recording. You know what I was talking about? Linguistics! I was having a job interview in my dream.

3. Friday night we had some good old frozen pizza. It was the kind where you just put the pizza straight on the oven rack--no pan or cardboard or anything. Unfortunately, when Dan was trying to get it out, he flipped the entire pizza face down onto the bottom of the oven. The pizza wasn't too damaged, but the oven sure needs a good scrubbing now.

4. I finished knitting my first baby bootie! My friend LuAnn has been teaching me how to knit, and I finally finished the bootie I started on about three months ago :). I'd post a picture, but remember the problems with my camera? Yep--still unresolved.

5. I bought a little $3 white board the other day, and one of Violet's favorite things to do is have me draw something and then she'll guess what it is. (She really is pretty talented, because my drawings are not that great!) I usually draw things like an apple, star, cat, dog, horse (her favorite!), flower, shapes, etc. So the sad thing was when I drew a house. She has no clue what a real house looks like! You can tell she's a city girl, because she thinks houses are big tall apartment buildings. Someday Violet, we'll live in a real house.

6. I went with some girls Saturday night and saw "Star Trek." It was a fun movie and we had a great time. It was awesome to get out of the apartment for a girls' night.

7. Last night we had some friends over for games and dessert. I made some Scotcheroos, but first the chocolate wasn't set, so I stuck them in the freezer. Then they froze solid and took like 5 minutes to pry out each piece from the pan. Oh well. At least we were social finally...yay for us! (We're usually too lazy to have people over--but it is really good for us because it makes us clean our house. Pathetic, huh. We're going to do it more often--hopefully like every other Sunday.)