Nick's First Wedding and the Hegemony of the Zucchini

We had a very busy weekend, so I think I'm going to talk about it in two posts. Basically we were gone the whole weekend. We had a great time, but boy, were we busy.

On Saturday, Greg and I took Nick to his first wedding. It was for my co-worker Patty (and her husband Byron, of course). The wedding was really beautiful, and it was in this pretty neighborhood in Clarendon Hills.

During the ceremony, Nick was pretty quiet, although he kept pulling on my hair and attempting to rip my earrings out of my ears. He liked the music, and he was remarkably well-behaved. It was a lovely wedding, and I think Nick liked all of the colors and lights and sounds.

During the reception, Nick loved getting to taste test all of the different foods. Since his two teeth came in last week, he's been eating a lot more solid food. Pretty much he'll eat whatever I stick in his mouth. I think his favorite was the turkey, which was very tender. Nick is actually trying to chew now, which is great. He even ate my pea soup, and liked it. (It was pretty good.)

There were these cool bells on the table, and Nick went crazy for them. We tried really hard to keep them out of his mouth, with only moderate success. He took one in each hand and made lots of noise.

During the introductions of the bridal party, I was trying to teach Nick to clap. He is learning, but he doesn't do it by himself. At least I can get him to open his hands when he claps. He used to keep them in fists, but now when we show him he gets it, and he opens his hands and gets excited.

Onward to the hegemony. . . Hegemony is one of the vocabulary words I was working on with my SAT prep student. It comes from Greek, and it refers to the dominance of one city-state over another. If you will look at my zucchini leaves, I think you'll see why I chose that word to describe the plant relationships. The zucchini have taken over and are dominating the strawberries and the peppers. No actual zucchini, though, just some promising looking flowers that I'm hoping will turn to nice vegetables. We'll see.

I'm rather proud of myself, though. Despite an extremely full schedule this weekend, I still managed to work out at the Y on Saturday morning and do another Pilates DVD on Sunday. This morning I could barely stand, but I still went to the Y anyway and did my elliptical trainer routine. I end up doing 35 minutes with my heart rate above 130. Yes, the irony does strike me as I'm running very quickly to nowhere. But I do it anyway. Running on concrete gives me shin splints.