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Mmmmm....Tasty!

Another milestone was reached in Audrey's little world today - she ate rice cereal for the first time.  Yum!  I have to admit, I was expecting it to be quite the show - a face of disgust, food flying, a mouth clenched shut - but it was anything but.  She actually seemed to enjoy it and was eating like a pro by the end.  I'm thinking this is good news for us.  Hopefully it will continue and she'll be like us and will eat anything.  That said, I'm also hoping that the funny faces come when we start introducing vegetables.  It can't all be this easy, right?  I just want the experience of watching her face scrunch up all cute as she spits out her peas.  And by the way, for someone who is new at this whole "feeding a baby pseudo real food" thing, rice cereal kind of freaks me out.  It's not really rice, not whole grains at least, and I wouldn't call it cereal.  It kind of looks like shredded coconut which is not at all what I was expecting.  I really don't know what my expectations were.  My mom asked if I tasted it and I'll admit, the thought NEVER crossed my mind.  I'm slightly intrigued now though so we'll see.  As long as my next entry isn't titled "101 Rice Cereal Recipes", I think it should be okay. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!  Audrey and I are celebrating alone today because Bill is on his first 24-hour trauma call.  He goes 6am-6am and after that he has to round on his surgical patients so it's really like 36-hour call.  Let's hope that he has a very slow day and that those he does have to treat heal very quickly.  Luckily, we were able to celebrate together yesterday over an Easter brunch with our good friends.  It gave Miss Audrey a chance to change out of her usual garb of a onesie and dress up and wear a festive bib (thanks to her Aunt Dawn!). 

We hope the Easter bunny was good to you this year and brought you your favorite chocolate candy!

Roll Tape!

If you can believe it, Audrey was 4 months old on 3/24.  Crazy.  She laughed out loud for the first time on St. Patrick's Day but I have yet to get that on video because she's not consistent, or Bill and I are just not that funny.  I did catch her rolling over for the first time today!  Yay!  This is actually her second attempt as I hit "record" on her first attempt as she was rolling.  It didn't start taping until she was already on her back so it didn't make for an exciting video but the audio of me going nuts is kind of funny.  Anyway, here's Miss Audrey rolling over for the SECOND first time.  ;-)

Alinea

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  Did you hear my scream from where you live??  After trying for 15 minutes, I finally got through to Alinea in Chicago to make a reservation for our 5-year anniversary dinner!!!!!!!!  On the first day of every month, they open reservations up for 3 months out which means they began excepting reservations today for June.  After my disappointing call to Volt, I wasn't getting my hopes up especially as the minutes ticked by this morning and I kept hitting redial.  Volt was going to be awesome but Alinea is (I hope) going to be even better. 

Alinea was named the 10th best restaurant in the WORLD by S.Pellegrino in 2009.  I will admit, I have no idea what qualifications S.Pellegrino has to make such a bold statement but I'll take it.  They were also named to the top 40 US restaurants by Gayot magazine for 2010.  (I always find it interesting when "best ofs" come out at the beginning of the year.....how do they know already?)

For dinner we're doing the Tour which is currently 23 courses of yummy goodness (last time I looked at the menu it was 27!).  Many of the courses are only amuse-bouches (single, bite-sized) which I think is a good thing.  I read that if you drew a vertical line between the farthest circle on the left and the farthest circle on the right, circles that fell to the left of the line indicated a more savory dish and those to the right are sweeter.  Also, the bigger the circle, the bigger the portion.  I also read on Chowhound (an excellent site/resource if you haven't checked it out already) that this cartoon is actually a very realistic description of the dinner.  I'm so excited I can't stand it!