Okay, I lied.

Don't believe me anymore when I say I won't post.  Apparently I'm addicted.  It's kind of relaxing.

So two interesting things: 

First, I'm distracting myself from job hunt nervousness with movies and TV episodes with my sister.  We're almost through the first season of Weeds, and I'm really liking Lie to Me.  Even better than that from an academic and sociocultural perspective was the documentary Trembling Before God, about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews.  And Arranged, about a devout Orthodox Jewish woman facing an arranged marriage who becomes friends with a strictly religious Muslim woman in the same predicament.  And because I liked the actors in the last one, I watched Breaking Upwards, which was a thoughtful romantic drama about love gone bad.

Second, it is easily apparent that Xander has the theatre bug in him.  While "playing pretend" the other night, scooping up pretend dirt and snow, Jonathan tossed a pretend snowball at him. Xander looked in horror at his chest, which had nothing on it but pretend snow... and burst into tears.  Jonathan had to brush the pretend snow off his face and shoulders to quell his sobs, and all the while my sister nearly choked on her laughter.  My eldest son cracks me up.

Here he is with his friend Andrew at a playdate the day before yesterday:

"Hiding" behind the table so that I couldn't find Xander to go home

And the non-blurry version.  Is he not the king of facial expressions?

Yay for sisterly visits!

Odelia spent 18 hours on a train to be here with us for the week.  And she crawls in the play structures with Xander with no complaint.  I'm feelin' the love.

Between her visit, preparing for our upcoming placement travel, and dealing with the pesky colds that won't go away, it's going to be a very busy household the next two weeks.

Brace yourself: There will most likely be no pictures for a while.  Be prepared for short, infrequent updates.

I promise you though, the kids won't grow that much.

"I am Jewish" by Andrew Lustig

This video has been making the rounds online; I love it.

I also love that it was made at BCI in Simi Valley.  Yay home!

Even if the winter's mild, viruses still run rampant.

In the past three days, Xander has come down with the stomach flu and Ari was diagnosed with ear and sinus infections.  Tell me oh blog readers, why do kids get sick everywhere?  We have a perfectly functioning bathroom that they never reach.  Thank goodness we have lots of laundry detergent.

Before our house was hit with the plague, though, we took some pictures:

Ari can't reach any of the windows while standing up, but loves to look out the front door.

He's such a peaceful kid.

For size comparison.  Xander wanted the record to show that Potter is almost as tall as Ari.

Winter bunnies.  We just came back from a walk (blanket around Ari's legs not pictured).  Brrr!

In response to a very messy dinner

We had nachos for dinner tonight: roasted garlic and black bean chips, refried beans, and cheese.  The ultimate in napkin-needing.

After dinner, wiping up Xander's fingers that were surprisingly nacho-free, I told him, "I love how you always like to stay clean, Xander.  You did a really great job, thank you."

Jonathan added, with pride, "That's my boy!"

Xander's response?  A hearty nod toward Jonathan and a completely sincere, "That's my grown-up!"

Winter has arrived.

19°F  Feels Like: 4°

If you give a mom a muffin

Attributed to someone named Kathy Fictorie, as found in my Facebook feed:

"If you give a mom a muffin, she'll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She'll pour herself some. Her three-year-old will spill the coffee. She'll wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks. She'll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry in the washer, she'll trip over boots and bump into the freezer. Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She'll look for her cookbook (101 Things To Make With A Pound Of Hamburger.) The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two-year-old. She'll smell something funny. She'll change the two-year-old. While she is changing the two-year-old the phone will ring. Her five-year-old will answer and hang up. She'll remember that she wants to phone a friend to come for coffee. Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup. She will pour herself some. And chances are, if she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it."

Placement monsters... oh wait, placement AND monsters!

Placement was fantastic.  I did my best to share who I was with everyone I met, and everyone I met was absolutely wonderful - seeing all these rabbis, lay leaders and soon-to-be-rabbis left me feeling excited and revitalized about the state of Reform Judaism in the United States.  It may sound corny, but truly, that was how I felt.  I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have any interviews on Tuesday, but I came to campus anyway with Ari to offer moral support and baby therapy to friends who did.

The other major thing in my life right now aside from placement is monsters.  Xander sees them all the time in his room.  Tonight was a first though - when I told the monsters, on Xander's instructions, that they needed to go away so he could be safe, this time they didn't disappear: "They're still here!!  They didn't go downstairs!!  They're not being good listeners, Mommy."  So I counted down from five to one.  But according to Xander, those pesky monsters still didn't go away!

I was forced, then, to put the monsters on time-out.  Picture me bending down into empty air, "wrestling" with the invisible monsters who were trying to run away, then carrying them to the corner and having major discussions with them about how it's not nice to scare people, and that they were going to stay in the corner for three minutes to think about what they did.

Xander took it all very seriously, and commented after a minute that the monsters were thinking about what they did and that it was time to take them off of time-out.  After confirming this with the monsters and telling them that their time was up, I asked if they wanted a hug.  Xander said yes, they did, so I crouched into the corner and gave myself a deep hug, telling the monsters how proud I was of them for listening and deciding to make a good choice in not scaring Xander anymore.  At this point Xander decided he wanted to hug the monsters too, so he joined me in the corner and wrapped his own arms around himself.

After the hugs were over, we went back into his bedroom.  And lo and behold, Xander proclaimed that the monsters were now nice monsters!  He told me that they had gone downstairs, but that since they were nice, they could stay if they wanted to.

Crisis averted!

Upcoming blog hiatus

Rebecca R. from the HUC-LA campus is here staying with us before placement, so it must be real!  Tomorrow and Saturday are crazy, then Sunday and Monday are interviews, and Tuesday is schmoozing with people still in the area.  I'll probably be offline until late next week.

I truly do have faith that I'll end up where I'm supposed to be.  But just in case... it can't hurt for you to cross your fingers for me anyway. :)

The emotional wringer

You know that old adage that the decision to have children is the decision to have your heart forever walk about outside your body?

Jonathan and I spent the better part of tonight at Cincinnati Children's Hospital with Ari.  He had eaten a small foil star, part of a Hanukkah decoration, that had fallen on the floor when we weren't looking.  His reaction was textbook: bouts of vomiting, choking, gagging, crying, etc.  God bless Maura and Liad, who raced over immediately to take care of Xander so Jonathan and I could go to the ER together.  After a few hours the doctors were able to fish the "offending foreign body" out of his throat and the X-rays showed that all was clear.  But it was scary.  I am so grateful that he's okay, and for the kind and caring nurses, doctors, and technicians who helped bring my baby back to health.


And to think that I'd been worried about rabbinic placement.  Nothing like a night in the hospital to put one's priorities in perspective.

New Year's stats

Xander, 3 years 3 months: 30.4 lbs
Ari, 9 months: 20.2 lbs
Simcha, 8 year old tabby: 19.6 lbs

What is wrong with this picture?

Ari the virtuoso

Happy new year, everyone!  In an effort to get a clean start to the year, I cleaned off the video camera of all the old files.  Apparently I hadn't emptied it since before the High Holidays.  Oops!

So for fun, here are the oldest and newest Ari videos.  The first is really long, so I'm not expecting anyone but my mother and grandmother to watch the whole thing.  In it he squawks like a pterodactyl and I make funny animal noises:






The second is from last week.  Ari was actively hitting the keys and "singing" right before Jonathan took the video, and then of course stopped when we hit play.  And poor kiddo, his little noggin has gotten quite a lot of bruises from standing up holding onto the piano, and then falling over.  Note I try to help him avoid that at the end.  No matter how hard he tries, he just can't seem to do a successful split...