Wonderful Christmastime

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas. We did -- this was the first year that Zosia really got the idea of Christmas, and the last few weeks were full of anticipation and "is it Christmas yet" and "it's so hard to wait! I'm so impatient." When it finally was Christmas, I think she was so relieved it was finally here that she forgot to be moody and as a result spent the entire day (except for the briefest of meltdowns at teeth-brushing time) in a remarkably good mood.

As befits the first granddaughter of eight grandparents, she got a ton of stuff, as did her sister. Whatever your feelings about rampant consumerism (I admit to being both fascinated and a little squicked-out by it) there is no denying how great it is to see one's kid in a state of frantic excitement, running from room to room and toy to toy, eagerly monopolizing her sister's presents as well as her own (big hits: Viewmaster, tiny pony with comb-able hair, bongo drums), all the while with a huge smile on her face. It did a papa proud.

We manged to get the girls to sit together in their matching Christmas dresses just long enough to snap a couple of pictures. Here's one of them:

In their Christmas dresses
Originally uploaded by Ruzich/Johnson

We finished our day with dinner out at a Chinese restaurant -- we thought about a movie but didn't want to press our luck -- and evening fell with Daryl wearing her moisturizing gloves & booties and paging through the Complete Sandman collection while I rocked my way through Guitar Hero III for the Wii. We collapsed into bed exhausted but fully suffused with the Christmas spirit, ready to move on to New Year's, 2008, and everything it has in store for our little family.

Getting Ready For Passover

It's been very interesting to see what Zo brings home from the JCC. The other day, in preparation for my birthday, she sang "Happy Birthday" to me in Hebrew.

Passover is coming, and it's really entertaining to hear the Passover story filtered through a 2 1/2 year old. For example, last night we found out that the fourth Plague of Egypt was a plague of butterflies ("and I love butterflies!" she editorialized), and we've had this conversation more than, oh, a hundred times:

Us: "What did Moses say?"
Her: "Let my people GO!"
Us: "And what did Pharaoh say?"
Her: "NO!"

After which King Pharaoh, who was a mean guy, had to go into time out.

She's also been singing this line of a Passover song over and over. Apparently it's the big favorite at school, and I have to admit it's pretty catchy:



Next year I think we'll need to pick up some ten plagues finger puppets.

Last Night's Dinner: Braciole

Traditional meals on New Year's Day seem to be, well, traditional. For many years we held with the tradition of eating black-eyed peas to give us good fortune in the coming year, even though I don't like them. Enough Crystal hot sauce made them palatable, but only barely.

We've run through some pretty lean years recently, what with the job-losing and forced moves and fire and whatnot, but all along we kept eating the black-eyed peas, thinking "geez, what would have happened if we weren't eating them?" Last year, though, we decided to forego them -- I doubt it was a conscious decision as much as a decision born of laziness and my desire to not get off the couch and drive to the store to get them -- and try something else.

We had had braciole for the first time a few weeks before, when we had Thanksgiving with D-Jo's Aunt Dee and Uncle Ernie and family. Ernie does the full-on Italian thing in the kitchen, and we arrived to a giant pot bubbling on the stove containing various meats cooking in homemade sauce (or, as he calls it, gravy). It was like that scene in the Godfather when Clemenza is cooking after they've gone to the mattresses:

"Here, learn something... you may have to feed fifty guys some day. You start with olive oil...fry some garlic,see. And then fry some sausage...or meatballs if you like...then you throw in the tomatoes, the tomato paste...some basil; and a little red wine...that's my trick."

It was like that, with enough food for fifty to feed the 15 of us. The centerpiece of the meal was a braciole, a flank steak wrapped up with a filling of bread crumbs, garlic, and herbs. It was fantastic.

(The amazing thing about this Thanksgiving was that, a few hours after the giant Italian feast, we had a full-on Thanksgiving dinner with a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, the whole nine yards. It was insane. But so, so good.)

So D-Jo decided to try a braciole on her own last New Year's Day, and it was a success. We hadn't purposely set out to make it our new traditional meal, but when she asked me last week what I wanted for New Year's dinner, I said "a roulade," and she said, "how about braciole," and bingo, a new tradition was started. 2006 (AKA Year One of the Braciole Era) turned out pretty well for us, so we're thinking this tradition is a keeper.

She started with a nice flank steak from Hummer's at the market, and basically used Alton Brown's braciole recipe, and even though it ended up garlic-free (an oversight that we can blame on the sinus infection) it was great. Look for it to end up as the centerpiece of a dinner party soon.

Christmas With The Family

We're back from our long weekend in the Chicago suburbs, a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas visit to the old homestead. Unfortunately all three of us got sick to differing degrees, and we're still dealing with that days later.

Zosia spiked a 102-degree fever the night before our flight. Joy. Luckily that fever came down before we left, so we were still able to go. The drive down to Washington National was uneventful, though the GPS in the car routed us through the surface streets of DC. Luckily we had left an extra hour early (fear of lack of parking), so we got to the airport in plenty of time. It may be far away, but National turns out to be a nice airport -- small, easy to navigate, and very little traffic even on the Friday before Christmas.

The flight was uneventful -- it took off about a half-hour late, but thankfully we had no connections so that wasn't a big deal. Zosia was kept occupied thanks to the Rip Roar portable video recorder I picked up last week. I haven't even begun to explore what it can do -- apparently it can be set up to automatically record shows off the TV, but I have Tivos for that. I just dumped a couple of episodes of Blue's Clues and Backyardigans onto it and that's all she needed.

We stayed at my mom's house, and my brother and his girlfriend came as well. We basically sat around playing the bowling game on Graham's Wii, talking about his new record label, and trying to think up ways to keep Zo occupied that didn't involve going out into the Midwestern winter too much. We walked to the playground one day, and drove around in search of an apparently non-existent Gymboree another day, but she spent too much time cooped up and by the end of the trip she started losing it pretty regularly. I can't say I blame her, being stuck in an unfamiliar house without much to do, and still not feeling 100%. If it hadn't been for the heroics of Grandpa Jim, who can apparently read the same book 15 times without growing bored, I don't know what we would have done.

All in all it was a good trip, if fraught. For a lot of the time I felt like Zo was one move away from a tantrum, and since her tantrums had recently begun to include the occasional hit, kick, or headbutt, I spent a lot of time on edge and I know D-Jo did too. Of course, it didn't help that she hadn't shaken the cold/bronchitis she picked up just before we left, either. We both got it, but because she's pregnant her immune system can't fight it off as well, plus she can't take the good drugs that would allow her a full night's sleep. So she spent a lot of time sleeping and trying to get well, to little avail.

By the time we flew home, Zo was pretty much a wreck. Now I recognize that we've been extremely lucky, and my definition of "a wreck" is very similar to other parents' definition of "a normal day," but still it's no fun to have to shepherd a squirming, unhappy, about-to-lose-her-shit kid through an airport and on to a plane. Incredibly, she stayed tantrum-free during the flight, even when she had to pee before the Fasten Seat Belts sign turned off (and thanks to the flight attendant who let us take her to the bathroom a few minutes early). More judicious application of the portable TV assuaged her, though she was not happy when, upon descent, we had to turn it off. She stewed over that until we landed and celebrated hitting the jetway with a full-fledged tantrum.

But, she was asleep within five minutes of us hitting the road, slept the rest of the two-hour drive, and slept through the night. After a couple of days back at the YMCA she was her normal wonderful self again.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like D-Jo is -- her cold seems to have morphed into a sinus infection, with all of the head-throbbing, tooth-aching joy that comes with that. Her face hurts, and believe me it's killing me, too.

So here it is, New Year's Day. Zo is down for a nap (After a minor freakout that included her screaming at the top of her lungs for me to Rub! Her! Back!), Daryl's upstairs eating a sandwich and watching Law & Order, and I'm posting before I head downstairs to do some more cleaning up and maybe watch the end of the Penn State game.

And I couldn't be happier, or more looking forward to a fantastic 2007. Here's to another great year!