This week in pictures

There were too many pictures to post here, so go to this lovely link for a slideshow.

Craziness

For the past three days Xander and I have been gone by 9am and not gotten back until 4 or 5pm. And as crazy as it's been, I must admit that it feels great! I'm getting back to myself, slowly but surely. In the past week: went to a home birth circle meeting, had lunches with Deann and Maria and even Jonathan, been in classes every day, taught Sunday school and adult Hebrew, worked on a side research project at the American Jewish Archives, did errands, tutored someone, inherited Jonathan's cell phone since mine died (and he uses his work Blackberry most of the time anyway), visited with Elbie, gotten "kidnapped" by Maura at 8pm to go to dessert since the baby was asleep, and had a mini-party when Ari, Erin and Jeffrey came over to schmooze with Jonathan. Not to mention did many, many loads of laundry.

I also have like 40 pictures to sort through and upload, but that will happen later this weekend...

Success!

For FOUR DAYS IN A ROW, it's only taken a half hour to put Xander to bed! We start our ritual around 6:30 and he's out by 7, 7:15 latest! Jonathan and I even watched a movie the other night. It was kinda surreal, we kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and the monitor to broadcast screams. But it never did. He didn't wake up until 3:45am, and then he nursed with his eyes closed and went right back to bed. PLUS he now has a regular nap schedule. I want to send Elizabeth Pantley a huge bouquet of flowers.

Also, if you want to be amazed, watch this: Did You Know? Progress of Information Technology. Sony played it at their executive conference last year. On a completely different note, Savta recommended Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb to me, and having read it, I pass on the recommendation to you. It was fun historical fiction about how the Civil War played out in the Appalachian mountains, like a sprawling Southern epic. It was set in both Civil War times and today with Civil War reenactors, with a ghost story to boot.

Kid creativity

The holiday of Purim is coming up, so in Sunday school we're doing Purim prep: during library we read books on Queen Esther and during music we sang Purim songs. There's a tradition that whenever the name Haman (the bad guy at Purim) is read/sung, you say Boo!! And when the heroes' names are read/sung, you cheer. Well, the music teacher and I decided to get creative and get them involved with every name. Whenever we sang Haman, we asked what they wanted to say and they said boo! They decided that Esther was huzzah! and King Ahasheurus was feast! (because he liked to party). Following on this logic, what do you think my 3rd grade class chose to shout for Mordecai's name? Any ideas? Can you guess it?

Peanut-pickle!!

Yeah, that was my reaction too. But hey, they were into it, so peanut pickle!! it was, and they shouted it with vigor.

All a boy needs is a blanket and his bear

Playing with bear, part one.

Bear-playing the second. What fierce concentration!

Playing peek-a-boo. It's his latest game, he moves the blanket over his face by himself.

Just kidding, here I am!

My favorite part of this video is the clicking sound - my mom is typing in California.

Five instances of marvelous goodness

1) Putting Xander to bed is going better. No crying, just a little whining now. It still takes hours, but last night he slept from 9pm to 6:30am STRAIGHT, not waking once. He likes the new CD (the lullaby one that my congregants in Mattoon gave us), and during his nap today he even cuddled his teddy bear (go Savta). The main good news is that he's stopped needing to nurse to go to sleep and can now be rocked or put in the bouncy chair. This is GREAT because now Jonathan can put him to bed too, not just me. Aside from the suggestions of all you wonderful people, I credit The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night by Elizabeth Pantley. She speaks about the importance of routine, how to get a kid off of nursing-to-sleep dependence, how to encourage naps, etc. I highly recommend it!

2) This cracked me up: someone in my New Testament class invited me to join her study group. Sure, I said, and thanks for asking me. "Of course!" she replied. "You love Jesus more than anyone I know!"

3) I made a new radio station on www.pandora.com, of oldies music, based on the Beatles and Peter, Paul and Mary. It's really relaxing and the baby coos along with it.

4) I fit into pre-pregnancy clothes! At least most of them. Somehow I have a feeling that my hips will never go back, will they?

5) For my Valentine's present I now have a super-duper fast computer! Yay techie husbands. AND he wrote me a program - a new romantic message appears whenever my laptop boots up. Isn't that sweet? (I had wondered what he was doing on my laptop when I heard him say to Simcha, "Sweetheart, don't chew the laptop cord. If you eat it you're going to have serious fluff issues.")

Great video

I really liked this. It made me take a second (and a third, and a fourth) look at how technology has affected my life, and reminded me to be more grateful.

Louis CK on Conan O'Brien: Everything is amazing, why is nobody happy?

Help!

I give up, I'm appealing to the masses.

Once Xander goes down to sleep, he sleeps about 10 hours, usually getting up only once to nurse. I feel very lucky this is so. But the problem is going to sleep - it takes over two hours to put him down! At 7:30 we start with our bedtime routine of changing into PJ's, bedtime story, lullaby, nursing, and rocking. Then he falls asleep for five minutes, then is up again. And so on for two or more hours, til about 10pm. I've read two books on the subject and called the pediatrician, and all say that a baby's natural bedtime is early, between 7 and 8 if not earlier. Xander shouldn't be going down at 10pm every night! We've tried a lullaby CD, a bouncy chair, we've put a blow dryer in his room on the "fan" setting for white noise, and we're trying a pacifier tonight. Nothing works. Jonathan and I don't get any evening together, and we go to bed right after he does, totally frustrated.

Suggestions? We're trying to avoid letting him cry it out.

Because this serves as my online scrapbook, and one can never have enough pictures...

Going for a walk in the stroller.

At HUC.

Hi everybody!




Batya babysat while Jonathan and I went out to a movie last night. Xander and Carlie had a great time!

Introducing Xander to the wonder that is Elmo.

Snuggles!

Reading=eating at this stage in time.

Yummy books!

Xander participating in a Youth Interns meeting with Ben when I'm in class.

He seems very nonchalant for being about to be munched.

Checking out Alice's nose.

We visited Jonathan at work on Friday. The baby passed out when we got home. Notice the shirt - all of Jonathan's coworkers cracked up. :)

Jonathan made me put this one up.

Chocolate, visitors, and new clothing

Sandra and David sent over chocolate truffles for Valentine's Day. They are GOOD! They sent us two tins and one of them is already gone. As for the day itself, Batya volunteered to watch Xander so Jonathan and I get some time together. For the icing on the cake, for my V-Day gift I requested that Jonathan make my computer faster, so more RAM is on its way.

My college friend Alice is moving to Korea in a couple weeks, but she was in Ohio and stopped by to say hello. We schmoozed, ate yummy food, and caught up. I hadn't seen her since my wedding, so there was plenty to say.

And I realized I posted the pictures of Sarah and I shopping on Monday without telling you what we were shopping for: I now have knee-length boots! I've always wanted a pair, and Dillard's had a 70% off sale. One can't resist such numbers. We also went to the GAP outlet in Kentucky, and I picked up three new pairs of jeans for guess how much? $1.99 each. I'm telling you, my new wardrobe cost less than our lunch!

Weekly picture post

He is FASCINATED by watching himself in the mirror. This is the mirror right next to his bed (mattress on the floor, per Montessori method).

Helping Daddy work, part umpteenth.

He spends quite a lot of time lately playing with his feet.





This blue ring makes crinkly sounds when he grabs it.

Shopping with Sarah. Note how he holds his teething pacifier by himself!

Sarah has such a comfy shoulder.

Sleeping on Sarah, close up.

Reading the Dell catalog already, a techie in the making!

Oh so suave.





In the Bumming Room at HUC, where he spends between two and three hours a day when I'm in class. A librarian told me today that he's the "community baby."

Oooh, Sam has glasses!

And on a completely different note, I had a meeting with a professor and we talked about my life goals. I said I wanted to be a writer but didn't know what to write about yet. The next day he handed me this comic strip in class. Isn't that sweet?

In the spirit of Facebook: 25 (well really 10) things about the week

1) Xander now has tooth #2. Our medicine cabinet is well-stocked with Oragel, homeopathic teething tablets, Tylenol, and Ibuprofin. What does he like best? To gnaw on our fingers.

2) Elbie had her baby shower yesterday. So much pink-ness: onesies, blankets, dresses, toys, everything was pink. My gift was not pink. The only vaguely pink part of anything I brought was the inside of the strawberries in the fruit platter. I filled the middle section with vanilla yogurt as a dip, people seemed to like it.

3) Today at Sunday school was the Tu B'shvat seder. I got to help "clean up" the yummy leftovers of kiwis, strawberries, apples, grapes, peaches, and more. Oh no. Poor me.

4) Also from the seder, the temple where I work doesn't recycle! I brought home three empty plastic containers of grape juice to put in our bin at home. They were just going to throw them away.

5) Jeffrey came over to watch a movie with Jonathan when I was teaching this morning. Instead they ended up installing a tax program online and doing computer things. Color me surprised.

6) Shopping at Whole Foods, I took a break to get a smoothie. I noticed that the man at the table next to me was smiling as I talked to Xander. He looked up and made small talk, and I invited him to join me. Turns out he's an evangelical Christian who was fascinated with a female rabbinical student, and we sat there for over half an hour discussing salvation, the Book of Revelations, the historical Jesus and Jesus as Messiah, and orthodox ideology. It was not at all what I was expecting, but was a great conversation nonetheless.

7) Yesterday proved the maxim "like father, like son." When Jonathan and I were both gone for a few hours, Sarah came over to watch Xander. She reported that he was quite happy gurgling to her and playing with his rattle until she took out her Iphone. When he saw it he immediately dropped the rattle and reached for the pretties.

8) I got my haircut a few days ago and had the stylist do it straight, just for kicks. I was told by one person that I looked fabulous, by another that I looked like a model, and by yet another that I was "fancy and glamorous." It was very nice, but made me wonder how I usually look. If only making it straight wasn't so much work...

9) Does anyone watch the show The Big Bang Theory on CBS? Jonathan and I have gotten hooked on it through Netflix. The two main characters are physicists at CalTech, play Klingon Boggle, own major sci-fi memorabilia and have a weekly Halo (video game) night. Jonathan relates all too well to the main geek, and I sympathize with the geek's girlfriend. I'm so glad that our nerd-dom is finally being represented on primetime.

10) And last but certainly not least, shout out to Doron - happy birthday!

Four month checkup

Xander's not even close to a newborn anymore! As of yesterday, he's 15.4 pounds and 25.5 inches long. He got his second set of vaccinations and was very brave, just crying briefly at the needle sting but then recovering quickly. After putting him to bed at 8:30, he proceeded to sleep 12 hours straight... meaning I got very little sleep, since I kept going in to check on him and had nightmares of him dying of SIDS.

In general, he's old enough now that we've been getting him on a more regular bedtime schedule, by 8 or 8:30. It's amazing! He sleeps until around 7am, usually waking up a couple of times to nurse (hence my worry last night when he slept straight through). It's been great getting adult time with Jonathan back, and getting more sleep myself. But I admit, it has curbed our evenings a bit more than I expected; we were invited to a birthday party between 7 and 9pm, and had to turn it down because that's smack dab when we put the baby to bed. I imagined I would feel bitter when I RSVP'd no, but strangely, I didn't actually mind that much. The baby's bedtime took priority over everything! Funny how parenting changes you.

Winter Wonderland (the sequel)

--- by Jonathan


Ok, some of you who read this, especially those of you who have lived all their lives in places were snow is frequent and prevalent, are going to think I’m crazy. I love it when it snows. This is my second winter here in Cincinnati and I really thought that after the first year, I wouldn’t appreciate it anymore, but I found that I love it even more. I think it’s more than novel appreciation at this point. I think there is something quintessential to the experience of snow and ice storms that speak to my values.

Separation of time

There are only two seasons in California, the dry season and the sort of wet season. The sort of wet season last for about a month, so if you blink too long you miss it. It mostly involves some overcast clouds that 2 or 3 times in that month might actually precipitate, only to have the sun banish them a few hours later for being so rude. Here though, there are real seasons…real weather. Nothing, and I mean nothing, says winter like the first snow. It tells you that time has moved on this month, and in an hour or so you are teleported to a world of high contrast beauty. A place of striking black and whites made soft by the fall of fluffy flakes of snow. It’s like the angels of heaven have come to wrap up the dead earth in their white veils until it can be reborn again in the spring.

Changes things up

It’s so easy to get into your ruts, but winter has a way of changing everything up on you. Sometimes you have to carve the ice off of your car, or maybe your drive home will involve you doing a little fishtail when you make that turn. My favorite is when winter makes you just take a break. It’s too much snow, the roads aren’t plowed, so you just have to cancel all your plans and stay home with your family. I got to enjoy being snowed in for three days straight this winter, mostly because there was over an inch of ice fused to my downward-sloping driveway that made it more of ice slalom to my neighbor’s yard than a route to the street. Even my Osher, who is determined to spend several hours outside every day, took three steps and thought better of it and came running back inside. You just can’t do your normal routine and I love it.

Beauty

There is beauty in every season to be sure. The bright flowers and green grasses of spring that cry, life has begun again. The long glorious sunsets of summer. The multicolored world of fall. But the frozen beauty that is winter has a spiritual character unique to itself. It’s when the year has passed on its life and all the world stops to mourn. But it is also what shows us that there is more than just death at the end. In the twinkle of light reflected in low hanging icicles, we see that there is something on the other side trying to show us it’s there.

This winter we had an ice storm. A pretty big one. Because of the unique geographic position of Cincinnati relative to the southern and northern weather fronts, we get these strange clashes of systems. Basically the cold air from the north super-chills the ground and then warm wet clouds come in and rain on it. When the water hits anything, the ground, the power lines, your car, it freezes to it; instantly. If this happens long enough, like all day, then the next morning you see a world that is encased in ice. Your car door won’t open because the whole vehicle is entombed in an inch of ice. I remember going out that morning and thinking that the trees looked as if they were made of glass. When the sun came out later that day, everything sparkled in fractured prisms of light as if diamonds, not ice, had fallen the night before. Below is a link to a slide show of pictures. They can only partially impart the awesome beauty that is winter, but I do hope you enjoy them.

Slideshow to winter wonderland

Superbowl Sunday

For once in my life, I actually watched the Superbowl! Though it wasn't completely intentional. Josh's birthday was on Sunday and he threw a joint Superbowl/bday party, so we showed up to help celebrate his birthday. As we were driving over, I turned to Jonathan and said, "By the way, so I don't seem like an idiot - who's playing?" He didn't know. This is why we're married.

The party was great though! Everyone was very nice and explained football to me. The commercials were funny. The food was good. And Xander developed a fascination with Dena's beer bottle. It was the best part of the evening. :)

Our son the lush.

(Note, by the way, that the beer bottle was empty and completely wiped off before he ever got a hold of it. He just liked it cuz it was a familiar shape, I think.)

For lots of other pictures, go here.

Book recommendation

I just finished Louise Erdrich's The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year, a non-fiction poetic memoir about the first year of motherhood. I loved it! It's very realistic, explaining both the good and the bad, is set in New England is very interwoven with nature, and is written beautifully, stylistically reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness. I could go on, but let me instead quote from a review that I believe captures it perfectly:

Mothers often cling to single moments, small gestures, and specific memories in order to grasp all that happens in the first blurry year of a baby's life. In The Blue Jay's Dance, writer Louise Erdrich has assembled a photo album of snapshots such as these: the days and images that collectively define the passion, ambivalence, yearnings, and satisfactions of carrying, birthing, and nurturing a baby. "Any sublime effort has its dark moments," says Erdrich, referring to a rather bleak snapshot of mother isolation. "Perhaps, if anything, the meaning in this book for others may be this: Here is a job in which it is not unusual to be, at the same instant, wildly joyous and profoundly stressed." The Blue Jay's Dance is a fresh and masterful book that avoids all the sticky clichés while still managing to articulate the depths of mother-baby love.

So if the subject sounds interesting to you, go read it! You won't be sorry.

A fun weekend

The weekend was wonderful! Dinner with Batya and Erin was great: we made kid-friendly fare of spaghetti and meatballs with lots of cheesy bread and salad. Three-year-old Carlie's a spitfire; she exalted in running around the dining room and she loved to play with the cats. In fact, she kept trying to give Xander the cat toys to play with because she thought his were boring! We don't have any pictures of that night, but these were taken before they came over.

Simcha claimed Xander's bathtub while I was getting the water warm.

All fresh and clean for Shabbat.

Concentrating on reaching for the toy during tummy time.

One day I'll learn to actually move, right?!

What an exhausting ten minutes that was! Time to relax.

And from Thursday:

Hangin' with Makaio at Maria's.

Jonathan and I have been experimenting with different ways of putting Xander down for bed, and two nights in a row he's slept nine hours now, only waking once to nurse/diaper change. This is marvelous. At Sunday school today a parent came up to me and said, "Wow, you look rested! Things must be going well." Indeed they are! Also, because I hate the cold, Jonathan got up early with me to warm up my car and maneuver it out of the snowy driveway. It was a great morning. :)

And to end on a note of infectious laughing, here is the baby enjoying life to the utmost: