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!

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.