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:

Play dates

Our social circle is widening by leaps and bounds. Last weekend we went to Deann and Justin's and played with their three year-old. Today I went to Maria's and hung out with her and her two year old, and then Messa came over with her two little ones. It felt very surreal to be the "mom" of a 4 month old, sit next to a pregnant woman who has a 2 year old, then be with another mom with a 2 and a half year old and a 3 month old baby. Like, when did this happen, and how did I grow up?! That said, they had some great advice on how to put Xander down for naps, I got a preview of what life will be like in a little bit, and Xander was so absolutely fascinated by these big kids that he forgot to nurse, ask for a diaper change, and/or nap. Which means that the moment we came in the front door he cried hard, wanting all three at once.

I should also mention that our road is still a big sheet of ice, and I cancelled my Hebrew class this morning so my students wouldn't have to drive over. I was going to cancel the playdate as well, but Maria's husband is sweet and came to pick me up so I could still go. He's lived in Ohio all his life and is used to driving in this weather... I don't even want to start the car! Thank goodness Ari came over with extra salt last night for our driveway, because otherwise Jonathan wouldn't have been able to leave the house this morning.

Now I must be off to vacuum, since Batya and Erin (rabbinical student friends) will be here soon for Shabbat dinner. And the house is covered in cat fur. And cat toys. And baby toys. And random schmutz. Sigh. I am so NOT a housewife.

Baby picspam

Serious boy.

We call him Buddha baby when he sits down in his wearable blanket sleeper.

Hanging out on the sheepskin.

He can't stand on his own, but he does support himself!

Daddy's job of feeding him on Sunday mornings is getting easier.

Bottle close-up

Comfy with Mommy.

I just realized there are no photos of him smiling in this batch. He does smile and laugh, quite a lot in fact. But lately he's been so fascinated by the camera he stops smiling the moment he sees it in front of him. Jonathan and I need to get better at capturing the facial expressions.

Snow day, part 2

To answer Savta's question, a snow day means that not only is it snowing, but that it's snowing too hard to do anything. Jonathan is working at home because twenty minutes north of us, in the county where he works, there is a "level three snow emergency" and any vehicle not authorized to be driving is being ticketed by police. There's about six inches on the ground right now, and the roads are pretty much big sheets of ice. HUC was closed yesterday and today "due to weather and road conditions."

Tara, per request, here are some pictures:

This is taken from Jonathan's office window upstairs. We knew we needed to shovel the driveway yesterday, so that it wouldn't be absolutely horrible to shovel today when more snow came in. My lovely husband volunteered to do it, but I said I wanted to do it instead (to tell the truth, I was very much tired of childcare and being outdoors seemed stimulating).

This shoveling thing is harder than it looks! The snow was quite heavy because of the freezing rain that had come down on top of it. Halfway through the driveway Dave across the street came out with his own shovel to help. "You have too big a driveway and walk to do all by yourself!" he said. I felt like a pansy for accepting his help, but it really did take a while, even doing it together.

Kids across the street sledding down what used to be their front lawn. The two horizontal lines you see between the car on the left and the two cars on the right? Those are tire tracks on the road. This is after the roads were plowed a few hours before.

The side of our neighbor's house. Pretty icicles!

No wonder people are without power across the Midwest.

Osher looking out the window. At one point he meowed to go out, but then when Jonathan opened the door he took three steps and darted right back in.

Snow day

HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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..... That is all.

Addendum to inauguration post

After speaking with Nicole, I just found out that HUC-Cincinnati isn't as cool as I thought. My philosophy professor cancelled class, yes, but he had to be asked to do so. Apparently at HUC-NY the school rearranged its whole schedule so that everyone could watch the inauguration together. And Sheryl told me that HUC-LA even provided food! Hmph.

Also, in terms of books to read, do NOT pick up The Passion of Artemisia. As anyone who follows this blog knows, I like historical fiction. The premise of this one sounded good, about the 17th century Baroque painter Artemesia Gentileschi. I remember learning about her in art history classes in college, she was a feminist icon, the first woman to be accepted into the Academy of Drawing in Florence. She left her husband and earned her own way at a time when that wasn't done, and she was friends with Galileo and the Medicis. But the book watered her down into a two-dimensional rape victim with Daddy issues. To make matters worse, it wasn't even especially well-written. I read the whole thing and kept expecting it to get better, but it never did. The good news: at least it was only a dollar at Half-Price Books!

Funny anecdotes of the past few days

1) I was sitting in a corner of the couch in the HUC main lounge, nursing Xander very discreetly, when a male rabbinic student comes and sits down next to me. He strikes up a conversation, and while talking, starts to stroke Xander's head and says how cute he is. This is a bit disconcerting, but I go with it. Finally, after a couple minutes, I say something like, "Yeah, it's so easy to nurse in public. If I don't use a blanket and just arrange my layered shirts right, no one even knows!" It took him a second, but he realized that Xander was nursing at that very moment, and his hand shot off of Xander's head like it was on fire! The look on his face was priceless. He kept apologizing over and over. "It's okay!" I told him. "I'm flattered. Apparently I'm better at this than I thought!"

2) Yesterday when I got back from class I wanted to be an industrious housewife. I decided to surprise my husband. What would surprise him most? Me cooking, I thought. So I baked him chocolate chip cookies! I looked up his favorite recipe and put all the ingredients together, dragged out the mixer from the shelf, and... the mixer died. Do you know how hard it is to mix cookie dough by hand? Well, I was determined, so I did it. But then the cookies didn't come out right. They were only okay, not the way they usually taste when he makes them. When I asked Jonathan, we realized what had happened. Whenever he makes cookies he alters the written recipe, changing the amounts of sugar and butter, but he had never written it down!!! The nerve. Here I was actually following the recipe, to my ultimate detriment. But he professed to love the cookies anyway, and I was mollified.

3) Last weekend, before the cookie escapade, Jonathan went to the Detroit Auto Show. A few days ago he downloaded the pictures of all the cars. I have since looked at them all. There were a lot of cars. They were not all fascinating. This proves how much I love him. Though to be fair, I know how much he loves me because even though he was in the car for ten hours that day, he did a load of diapers when he came home, and still put the baby to bed.

4) Months ago, I was asked to officiate at a Bar Mitzvah on Labor Day weekend. A few weeks ago I was asked to officiate at a wedding on guess when, Labor Day weekend. I had to say no. And now? A friend of mine told me to mark my calendar, she's getting married on.. yep, Labor Day weekend. How is it that I'm triple-booked nine months in advance?!

5) I asked my mother when I started teething. She couldn't remember, she said. "But seeing as we [she and my father] took pictures of you every other second, I can look back at the albums and I'll bet I can track it." I would have laughed, but I understand her. Jonathan and I are the exact same way.

With that said, here are some more baby pictures. :)

Playing with his Skwish toy.

Lunchtime fun with Sarah

Inauguration photos!

Cast of characters on Tuesday: me, Xanderbug, Stephanie, Ari P. (guy), Ari B. (girl), and of course, President Obama.

























For more formal photos of the day go to the Boston Globe's day in pictures.