Children, chocolate, and books. A good life.

So many wonderful things in the past week, where to start?

Perhaps, it should be at the very beginning.  Last week, even:

Xander at the dentist.  He cleaned the alligator's teeth using all the dentistry gadgets, and so wasn't scared at all when the dentist used them on him.

Second, Ari has been a huge cuddle-bug lately.  Who knows why.  Teething, growth spurt, change of weather?  All I know is, we're enjoying it.  Jonathan took this series of pictures while I was at work.

Pre-nap, pooped out.

Deeply asleep next to Simcha, with both of them between and over Jonathan's legs.  Jonathan called me, saying "I can't move!  What do I do?!"  He had no choice but to relax and enjoy.  

Waking up from nap an hour later.

Third, more birthday festivities!  On Thursday eight women friends and I went to "Ladies' Night Out" at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant.  It began with cheese fondue and dippers, then salad, then chocolate fondue.  But it wasn't just "cheese" and "chocolate"; everything had multiple ingredients and tasted fantastic. E.g. the picture below is of the server making the smore's fondue.  I forget what's in it, but oh it was delicious!

Also, I read an actual book on my day off on Friday!  Woohoo!  I still like to read books before I see the movies, and Jonathan knew that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was nominated for Best Picture.  So he got the book for me as a birthday gift last week.  I liked it.  Some parts of it were trite, and the narrator did not act like a 9 year old boy (oftentimes it was easy to remember that the author was 28), but it was still good overall.  I will admit though, I've been haunted more by the TV show I'm now addicted to, United States of Tara, rather than the former book.  Toni Collette is utterly amazing playing a woman with dissasociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personalities).  The character has seven distinct personalities and Ms. Collette plays them to a tee; you honestly forget that it's one actress.

Saturday day was St. Patrick's Day, so of course we celebrated.  Xander refused my offer of green eggs, but both kids liked all the body art (stickers and fake tattoos) that Jonathan brought home.  To whit:

Saturday night Nancy came over to babysit and Jonathan and I went on DATE NIGHT!  Hallelujah.  It was so needed.  We went to dinner and a movie and everything.  I had forgotten what that was like.

I shall close with a video of a favorite family pasttime: singing.  I started by singing the ABC's to Ari, and then Xander took off with the tune.  The first song is made up with his own "lyrics"; this one was about exvacators, but the one before I started videotaping was about Purim and "Haman the mean guy."

And THAT was our week.