Catching up before going away

Gosh, it's been nearly a month since I last posted. A lot to catch up on.

As expected, the end of the semester was hectic. Luckily, I didn't have to make detailed comments on this set, and I had seen the parts separately, so I only spent about 15-30 minutes per paper. Still a lot of time, however, when you consider I have about 50 students. For one class, I had to meet with each student for 15 minutes each - all 29 of them. In two days. With all the craziness, I finally came down with a cold - my first cold since I moved into this house in April 2002! The timing was odd: not only were all the final papers due, but all the holiday parties were being held. I decided not to go to many of them because I would have spread cold germs instead of good cheer.

By 20 December, I was done - and will be done until the spring semester starts on 6 February. It's like another maternity leave. We're taking full advantage of this by going to Mexico for 9 days (we leave this Tuesday!), but I'm getting ahead of myself. For Christmas, Igor, Nikita, and I went down to NYC. It was really nice becuase Michael flew in from California, so the whole family was there. We had an excellent Christmas dinner centered around a ham from Costco. It was probably the best ham my mom ever made. Nikita of course got lots of toys, but he really enjoyed spending time with his uncles. He would actually cry if I tried to take him away from Michael. Nikita seems to like Vincent in particular. My mom thinks it's because Nikita knows Vincent has a lot of money to spend, and no family yet.

In contrast, he seems to be afraid of older women, like my mom. At first, I thought it was because she has longer hair (like me, Galina keeps her hair short), but Nikita also felt really comfortable with Liz when she came over for dinner on New Year's Day. I've decided Nikita prefers people who aren't in his face, and play with him instead. Peek-a-boo is definitely an ice-breaker.

Igor went back to Boston on Christmas Day, but we met up with him on 29 December, in time for Galina's birthday on the 30th. Thus started my making up for the lack of holiday cooking. Igor and I shopped all day on the 30th so that we wouldn't have to shop the next day for New Year's (which is the big family holiday in the Russian tradition). Then we made a chicken and mushroom deep dish pizza from Cook's Illustrated because Galina loves pizza. Dessert was an ice-cream cake from Lizzy's in Waltham. I didn't like it as much as Herrell's (which had a limited selection of flavors due to the holidays), but Igor loved it. Then on the 31st, I rang in the New Year by putting the finishing touches on the Beef Burgundy from Cook's Illustrated, which like the pizza was tasty but took forever to make (6 hours!). Finally, on the 1st, I made the last dish Galina requested for her birthday, Bethany's Lemon Squares.

Life has been a little more relaxing now that I'm back in Boston, partially because don't have to sleep with Nikita (although now that we're back, Nikita believes he's supposed to sleep with us...sigh). I have to hand it to Galina and all caregivers out there - it is tiring to entertain and feed Nikita, AND keep house all day. I'm the only one who can get him to eat with a limited amount of chastising because I let him play with his food, e.g. let him put his milk in his pasta, and the pasta in the milk, and then drink the milk. Rather hard to maintain good spirits with his antics three times a day. It's worth it when he runs and gives me a hug out of nowhere. But the peace I feel when he is asleep, or suddenly sits down to play with his Rollercoaster Bead Maze!