More Xanderbug

Doing the Macarena with Maura.

He was a big hit at the Mini Convertible launch party.

Safari boy!

Xander's new obsession is paper. We've been saving old magazines and giving them to him to play with, aka tear apart. He loves playing on his auntie's lap.

Because he loves magazines, I, of course, assume he will be a writer. (Well, not really, but I encourage his love of writing utensils anyway.)

Only in Ohio.

I came to a screeching halt while driving to Sunday school this morning.

The reason?

To let a duck cross the road.

Yes, people, it had to get to the other side.

Why we've been too busy to blog. (Heresy, I know.)

What a whirlwind of a week! Odelia has been on job interviews, Jonathan got a new project at work, I've officially fallen behind two whole books in my philosophy class, and Xander has earned a new nickname: he makes such strange deep "ra-ra" noises while falling asleep lately that we're affectionally calling him "Xander-saurus."

Friday night we had a friend's family over for Shabbat dinner, and would you believe, I went on a whole shopping trip to get fixings and I forgot the challah? We had to run out last minute, thank goodness there were a few left. At least company was a good excuse to clean the whole house, and it sorely needed it. I felt guilty, it was so dusty that Odelia got a sneezing attack from vacuuming! She's all better now though, and everything is nice and shiny.

Cleaning leads me to decorating, and for the past few weekends Jonathan and I have been working on Xander's room. We got animal cutouts and wooden letters to spell out his name, and as of today we've primed and painted them; next up is actually attaching everything to the wall. Hopefully we'll finish by tomorrow. But don't hold your breath; I may only put up pictures after next week.

Last but not least, two wonderful mazel tov's! My cousin Ari is engaged, hooray! And a very hearty welcome to Vera: Elbie and Dave's little girl came into the world on Wednesday and is already making her parents happily crazy.

Baby giggles are the bestest

The funniest things crack him up!






HUC playtime






Doda Odelia (Doda is Aunt in Hebrew) brought the coolest toys with her from Israel!

Odelia's here!

My sister has arrived! She came in late Friday night, and is all set up in the guest room. She and Xander are fast friends already. For a slideshow of pictures with her and the baby, click here.

As you can see, Jonathan loves our new camera. He's been taking lots of artsy shots. Below are a few cool ones of Osher - he loves to model!















YouTube is down, so look for videos of Xander tomorrow.

Religion. Sorta.

Two interesting things happened today. One, I realized I never posted pictures from the temple Purim carnival. There are only two below because most shots were taken with my third-grade students or other little kids who are not mine, and I don't want to post them online. Sorry.

Me as a clown and Xander as a Xanderbug. You can't see it, but I was wearing rainbow striped stockings and had had on yellow gloves.

The temple had a Wild West theme for Purim (I'd never heard of themes before, but it was fun). Here I am shooting out the candles with my trusty squirt gun.

Second - I took a long walk around my neighborhood. Like, I walked more than two miles with Xander in the wrap. (Jessica and anyone else, please don't hurt yourself when you fall off your chair.) And I was shocked by something. There are THIRTEEN CHURCHES within walking distance of my house. I counted. Thirteen. There's a Methodist church, a Church of Christ, a Church of God, an Orthodox church, a Reform Pentacostal church, two neighborhood Christian churchs, a Church of the Nazarene, a Presbyterian church, an Immaculate Conception church, and three Baptist churches.

This is mind-boggling. Does everyone where I live go to church? Talk about a multitude of Christianity literally in my backyard. The whole way home I was giggling to myself, it reminded me so much of that old Jewish joke:

"Two Jews were stranded on a desert island. So of course, they built three synagogues. One was for Person A, one was for Person B, and the third was the one that neither of them would be caught dead in!"

Why we love Nicole and Joe

1) Jonathan and Joe got into a half-hour debate of if you can kill a zombie or not, since it's already dead. It was a truly riveting academic discussion. They ultimately decided that the correct term is not to "kill," but to "deanimate" a zombie.

2) Nicole and I are in a class together - the NY campus is virtually connected, and we see each other on a big screen. We both nearly fell asleep at the same bad lecture.

3) They were absolutely appalled that the one time we're going to make it to NY this summer, they will be in Omaha, NE instead.

4) Their parents are among our greatest blog fans.

Kvetching. And some pictures.

Children are lovely. They are also a sacrifice. To whit: on Friday I had a bunch of errands to do in Kentucky. I lined them all up so that they were within a few miles of each other – go to the outlet store to get new jeans, see a woman from Craigslist to pick up a whole bunch of like-new clothes for Xander, and get measured for my bridesmaids dress for Tara’s wedding. I only got as far as the Craigslist clothes. Xander was SO SUPER EXCITED that he wouldn’t go to sleep at all. So at 3pm we left the woman's house and he immediately fell asleep in the car. I got to the outlet mall parking lot and know it would literally take me 10 minutes to run in there, get the jeans, and run out, but that the baby would wake up and be cranky. If I stayed in the car, or even better, went home, he would stay asleep for his usual nap. I was so frustrated, but I just stayed in that parking lot for half an hour (thank goodness Holly was available by phone to commiserate with), and then I drove home. He slept the whole way home and then only woke up again a little bit after we got back. It was the right thing to do – had I gone to the two other stores he wouldn’t have slept at all – but still. Grrr.

That said… he is adorable, and we love him. Here are some shots explaining why.

After a bath.

His first balloon - it's fascinating!

Sleeping.

Going for a walk. Of course we took pictures - we haven't forgotten our other babies!

Osher kept sniffing the camera, so Jonathan took a picture of him.

This link here is to a slideshow of Xander playing with Deann's cat, Hazel. That cat is such a love! She let Xander do everything to her.

And lastly, two videos:

Singing in order to cheer him up.






Playing with Daddy.

My birthday!

Everyone, you are wonderful. I got birthday messages on Facebook, tons of emails, some cards in the mail, and phone calls. I feel so loved. :)

The day started off beautifully - after his morning nurse, Xander went down again until 9am! Quite a present indeed for a boy who can be up for the day at 6:30. After my morning class I decided to treat myself to lunch at Whole Foods. When I was perusing the deli section, I mentioned casually that it was my birthday, and the woman behind the counter gave me a free container of sweet potatoes! I love that store.

Jonathan came home from work early and he, Xander and I opened up the gifts from my family that I'd been stockpiling as they came in the mail. (Hooray Amazon wishlist!!!) Jonathan got me the ultimate addition to my Harry Potter collection - Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and... best of all.... an actual replica of Hermione's wand! I'm still geeking out.

Then it was off to Buca di Beppo for a party! About 20 adults and four kids were there, from all aspects of my life, so it was a nice mix. The Italian food was yummy, and there was schmoozing and blowing out birthday candles. Then Jonathan, Xander, and I headed to Aglamesis, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor that I highly recommend to anyone in Cincinnati. In my book, an evening can't get any better than Italian food, friends, and ice cream. The only downside: Xander stayed up past his bedtime and got waaay off his routine. Oh well. It was worth it!

Pictures of the party can be found here. Enjoy!

Rolling!

The baby is now rolling over from his back to his tummy! He hasn't quite figured out the tummy to back yet. I'll try to get a video of it soon.

In other news, one of my professors nearly got a gobbledy-gook email when he rolled onto the laptop and started pressing random keys, which "replied" to an email I'd gotten from school. Thankfully I got it in time before it got sent!

Purim

Was so much fun. Jonathan stayed home with the baby and put him to bed, and I went to the HUC service/Megillah reading/Purim schpiel. It's traditional that the 3rd year students write the Purim play, and we performed valiantly, if I may say so myself. The theme was "HUC Survivor," and my classmates and I dressed up and imitated professors in skits that culminated in voting people out of the sanctuary. The reading of the Purim story was great too; on Purim you have to read the whole Book of Esther out loud, but the holiday is joyous and funny, so you don't have to read it "correctly." Some people sang their parts in Hebrew, others read it in English, but one person read her part in Spanish, another was in French, the "5th Year Flinestones" read it in the voices of Bam Bam, Pebbles, and so on, Cantor Shore chanted in a chicken voice from underneath the chicken costume, and hence the evening went. At the end everyone headed to the local bar, but I came home to my loyal hubby, crying baby, and cranky cats. It was great!

Turning 5 and getting smiles

Many wonderful things have happened this week. Of these, three are worth noting in this post. First, Xander turned 5 months today. It’s amazing to think that 5 months ago I was being clenched by a very focused wife waiting for Xander to come into the world. I will never forget how I felt when Michal pulled him out of the water; it still brings a tear to my eye.

The other thing that happened is we got our tax return, which is to say, the government paid me back the money I was lending out to them throughout last year. This in turn brings us to good thing number three; we were able to buy a nice D-SLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. A Nikon D-90 to be exact. For those of you who don’t know what a D-SLR is, it’s a really nice camera that takes fantastic digital pictures. I could go on and on about what makes D-SLR’s so great, but what will be important to most of the readers of this blog is that it can take pictures faster than any other kind of camera. Why is this important to you? Because Xander stops smiling the moment he realizes there is a camera pointed at him, so if you want to catch him smiling you have to take the picture really really fast.

It’s not that he doesn’t like cameras. Just the opposite, he finds them fascinating and stares at it with this very intense look that doesn’t have anything resembling a smile in it. Our point and shoot was just too distracting for a tech-enthralled child. But this D-SLR is able to capture all those cute smiles before he has time to know it’s even there, and for his 5 month birthday we got some great ones! (as a reminder, you can click on the picture to see a bigger version of it)

This is how I'm greeted when I get Xander every morning.



Dancing with Mommy



All smiles



Xander eating the strap to my Nikon D-90 while I take his picture (Nikons are yummy!)



The Nikon also allows really close up pictures, like this one of Xander's hand around my index finger.



Or take just in time photos like this one of Osher inspecting the world to make sure it's safe for Xander.



Because of the really nice lenses the Nikon uses, you can pick up subtle lighting effects that make things artistic like the way the light is illuminating Osher here.



Or do artsy photos like this one.


For the full set of smiles and such from our first set of pictures taken with our new Nikon D-90, click HERE.

Why it is such a glorious day

It's 65 degrees out today!!! AND my midterm is over. AND Xander slept for 11 hours last night, only waking up once. AND the house is relatively clean. AND Elbie offered to babysit tonight so Jonathan and I are going to see the Watchmen movie. AND Xander went down for an easy nap. AND we got in our tax refund. AND adult Hebrew went really well. [The funniest part is what one of the women said in the middle of a tricky Hebrew translation: "I think you should know that I didn't hear anything you just said, I was too busy looking at the baby."] AND.... to top it all off... it's a good hair day. :)

School notes

1) Philosophy midterms suck. In case you ever wondered.

2) I am a true geek because although I don't like actually taking the test, I really do enjoy the reading. The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik tackles the dichotomy between personal loneliness and solitude in one's relationship with God, and communal support and understanding (among many other things). It's quite good, even though I DO disagree with many of his conclusions. But - and this is for Chana P. - he is an Orthodox rabbi, so what did I expect? :)

3) I had no idea that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were so similar and yet so different. They all have the same outline, but the details are incongruous and give a hugely contrasting picture to Jesus' life. We've been using the Gospel Parallels in class, which literally has the sections side by side, and it's fascinating. We haven't gotten to the Gospel of John yet, I'm interested to see how it differs. The average Jew does a little bit with of comparison with the Hebrew Bible, for example comparing Kings and Samuel. Is it the same for Christians? Tell me readers, how much does the average Sunday school teach about the way the Gospels are written?

4) Purim is coming up next Monday. I have a walk-on part in the shpiel (play), but I don't know what it is yet. The planners have been lovely about involving me as little as possible, but still making me feel included.

5) Doing my side research project at the American Jewish Archives is turning out to be harder than I thought. I'm using a new carrier, a ring sling, to put him on my hip and sway while I look through documents, but no matter what I do, unless he's sleeping, Xander does not like to be silent as a mouse. It's proving difficult to go in and out of the deathly-quiet Reading Room to nurse, play with him, etc. I'm thinking of finding additional babysitting for when I need to do research. Maybe I should talk to the archivists first to see if they have any ideas.

And - the best news of all, though not school-related - Jeffrey babysat last night, and Jonathan and I went out to dinner!! Xander went down at 7:35 on the dot, Jonathan and I were in the car by 7:40, and the food at the local Mexican restaurant was fabulous.

Videos

Dancing bear







Josh and Sarah in the HUC bumming room







Yes, he does smile and laugh, as long as he doesn't see the camera!