The good life

I have a great job where I feel fulfilled, with a great senior rabbi.  It's not with every boss that you can go out to lunch and split your entrees so you both can have half of each dish.

I have a great husband who is smart, witty, and compassionate.  He does all the laundry and loads the dishwasher, makes me better tea than I make myself, and picks out the very best movies on Redbox.

I have a great eldest son who gives me hugs and says "I love you to the moon and back" every night at bedtime.  He's creative and imaginative, loves rocket ships and pirates, and never draws horses, only zebras.

I have a great youngest son who smiles and giggles whenever he sees me after I leave the room.  He loves to read, hides his shoes in the lowest shelf of the fridge (no joke) and is communicating more every day.  (So far he has words/motions for "yes," "no," "Mama," "Dada," "An-der," "mine," "itty-at" for kitty cat, and "En-na" for Kenna, his best bud at school.)

I have great kitty cats who purr and purr and purr.  All three of them go outside now, but each one still plops on my lap whenever it looks remotely available.

I have a wonderful extended family through my husband who includes me in everything, always are interested in what's going on in our lives, and chooses to have a birthday celebration at Olive Garden.

And guess what?  In case that wasn't enough??

Graeter's ice cream has come to Sacramento!!!!

Mom's visit

Xander love at work.

Hugs in the middle of a wrestling match.

Wrestling interrupted by laughter.

Proud of himself for washing all the fruit.

 Xander taking pictures of his own feet.

 Ari on his new music car.

 So excited.

For some reason the video won't embed, so click here to see Mom give Ari the car.

 Drinking with Odelia.

About to head outside on the new roller skates.

Ari coloring in his "A" at school.

Checking email with company.

And now:  WATER!  (a careful selection of photos)

 Filling up the water table.

 Playing in the sprinklers.

 Xander laughing, Ari extremely focused.

 Xander was watering the bushes.  Ari tried too - but for some reason, by the time he got to the greenery the cup was always empty!

 The highlight of the boys' day: waterfight with my sister.

Other than that? Dr. Who mini-marathons have commenced.  And I have officially decided that David Tennant is much hotter than either Christopher Eggleston or Matt Smith.   Let the arguments commence!

Alive

Just insanely busy.

Methinks I need to be reconsidering this blog...

The misplacement conundrum

I lost my purse on Friday.  I very clearly put it down on the chair next to the dining room table, and left it there while I went to apply lipstick.  When I came back, 30 to 45 seconds later, the purse was gone.  I spent the next fifteen minutes looking for it, and finally gave up and left the house without it, very grumpily.

I found it yesterday.  It was in my closet, underneath one of Ari's toys.  

Three guesses as to how it got there.  And the first two don't count.  

That child is FAST!

Visits, welcoming, and kidlet milestones

- Last night was my "service of welcoming" at temple.  It was lovely!  All Jonathan's aunts and uncles in the area came for the ceremony, as well as two people from Long Beach.  The senior rabbi ended by blessing me under the chuppah, held up by the members of the search committee, as a covenant with the congregation.

- Jan is visiting and I have SO many pictures, that will be a whole different post.  But in short: roller skates, water play, hide and seek, new musical toys, and more.  She also helped me a ton with planning the Teacher Orientation for religious school.

- Teacher Orientation!  Went really well.  It's gonna be a great year.

- Jonathan and I sat on the other end of the table at the kids' school for New Parent Orientation. It seems like they'll have a fun year as well.  Oy, we're old enough to have kids in a Back to School night!

- Ari only woke up once in the middle of the night last night!  And toilet-training with Xander is going famously.  There is now hope on both counts.

- We're now three episodes away from end of the last season of The Big Bang Theory.  After that,  Dr. Who.

Our adaptive morality

I just had to share this video.  TED talks are weekly talks that present new ideas for the public.  You are given a mere 20 minutes to explain your idea.  Every talk has value but some are truly exceptional.  This is one of those talks.  He is a professor of behavioral economics talking about morality, and what he finds in his research really makes you think.  With these understandings, we could change our politics, our economy, and even our world.



Dan Ariely is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight.   Ariely's talks on TED have been watched 2.8 million times.

Science ahoy!

Yesterday we went with some new friends to the The Discovery Museum Space and Science Center.  It was pretty small, but still fun and worth the price of admission.  The big exhibit was on dinosaurs, and what do you know, they had a Dinosaur Train section!

 Me dressing up as... Tiny, Shiny or Don.  One of our friends' kids was Buddy the T-Rex, the small orange dinosaur in front of me.

 Jonathan posing with Buddy and the Conductor.

  The image of the train was on the wall behind us, but real train seats came out from the wall to make an actual train section... Ari didn't get it.

 The ever-popular penny centrifuge.

 Jonathan and Xander in the bug section, looking at X-rays of creepy crawly things.  Jonathan actually knows the various body parts of snakes.  I said, "huh," and quickly left to go look at the fuzzy bunny.

 Being a butterfly while staring at the frog.

Playing with a beaded necklace while waiting patiently for his brother to be done with bugs.

On Sunday we held a small gathering of temple staff for a housewarming party.  It was quite nice.  I think the best part by far, though, was the watermelon that someone brought.  She and her 4 year-old spent a lot of time on it, cutting up the melon rind itself and then making fish, star, and heart cutouts of the sliced fruit.  Behold, the watermelon shark!

I will eat you! 

Can sharks say "rowr!"?  This one definitely did.  She even gave it blueberry eyes.  Amazing.

And just cuz I thought this was cute:

That's all folks!  

Week in pictures

A week off is a good thing for Xander.  First stop, zoo!

Ms. Lionness chowing down

 Leopard licking its lips.

 Zebra behinds.

 Emu.

 Very tall creatures, these giraffes.

 Pelican not eating it's caretaker's arm.

 Riding the train.

The next morning, the kids and I played rocketship before I went to work.

 Cardboard is the best toy.  If you look closely you can see that Xander and I are making launching sounds.  Ari waved his cardboard around valiantly.

 More rocketship-ing.

 Coming in for a landing!

What a great game!

(Alternatives to these games are: hiding from the monsters, building a pillow fort, hide and go seek under the train table, playing "catch the _____," "run as fast as you can," etc.  Xander's very creative!)

Yogurt for breakfast a few days later.  This scenario prompted Xander to say, "Ari's having Messy Art Day!" [his favorite day at school]

But lest you think it's all great... I spent the hours of 2:30am-6:30am rocking a crying Ari last night.  Ah, night weaning.  It's so hard to go to sleep in a new way.  Wish me luck for tonight!

Train Museum

The past few days Ari's class at school has been open, but Xander's preschool has been closed for teacher trainings, cleanings, etc.  So Jonathan and Xander have been having some father-son bonding time.  I'm just posting these pictures, since I was at work when they went to the museum.  But thank you to Elisa from the Archives for the membership, they are DEFINITELY taking advantage!

One of the first 1950's model sets.

Running back and forth in the refrigerator train - in the hole cut in the back you can see where the ice was kept.

"Building" the railroad.

 Xander the engineer.

Working the buttons to make things light up and trains move.

Jonathan took the photo right as Thomas emerged from the mountain - top right.

 Watching the trains go from inside the table... very innovative.

In the sleeper train.

You can just barely see his head in the bottom left.  Gives you a size perspective, huh? 

About to put on a show. 

Showing off his red snowcone lips.

A carriage, Daddy, a carriage!!!

Craning his neck to see the horse.

Later that evening.

And then the next day?  Dinner with Clarissa's family at a local Mexican restaurant.  The boys had a  grand reunion with 4 year old John, and the food was excellent!  I love living in the same state as family.