And we're off!

We are offline for a Thanksgiving vacation!  Catch you in December. :)

These milestones are never mentioned in the parenting books!

There is a whole world of children growing up and having experiences away from us that is foreign to me.  Xander is our first, so of course, it starts with him.  Two examples:

1) Me: "Honey, what are you up to?"
    Him:  "Oh, nothing you need to worry about."

    Me:  "Honey, how was your day?"
    Him:  "I don't want to talk about it."

He's SIX.



2) Xander, singing to himself and Ari in the car to the tune of ABC's.  Jonathan and I realize we've never heard this song before, so ask him to repeat it.  We're stunned when we process the words.

"A B C D E F G,
Gummy bears are chasing me.
One is red and one is blue
One is hanging on my shoe.
Now I'm running for my life
'Cause the red one has a knife."

Apparently he learned it at school, and it's his new favorite song.

It reminded me of the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin, where they listened to the song "Diarrhea" over and over again in the car.  Why?  Because the kids learned it at school from their friends.

We have reached the age of peers.

Mind. BLOWN.

Showing off his tower

Ari building a tower with specific patterns after school, to show me how fun it can be.  Martha was just telling Jonathan that he's one of the most popular kids at school, that kids stop by where he's working just to chat with him.  Teachers have to shoo them away!  It's a whole different world than when I was a girl. :)

Sleeping cuteness

Passed out on the floor, bottom in the air.  Gotta love babies.

VERY belated Xander birthday party

These were on my phone, finally got around to transferring them yesterday...

Spiderman cake

 

Going through the obstacle course

He communicates!

Connor was crying.  I asked, "What's wrong, sweetie?  Are you hungry?"  And he responded with a very specific yelp that I knew was meant to be an affirmative.

And then later on, sitting in the high chair, he signed "all done"!

I was so excited. :)

Sweetness in my morning

I'm getting ready for work and I hear the boys playing in the adjoining room.

(THUD)

Ari, indignantly, "I going tell on you!"

He runs out to find me.  "Mommy, Xander hit me with the ball.  He hurt my heart."  He touches his chest.

I kneel down next to him, concerned.  "Did he hurt your heart because you're sad, or because that's where the ball hit you, in the chest?"

"Because I sad.  He hit me, he not love me anymore," he says with a sniffle.  I pull him into a hug.

Xander has heard this interaction and comes over. "I DO love you, Ari," he says.  "It was an accident.  I didn't mean to hit you with the ball.  I'm sorry."

"Did you hear him, Ari?" I asked.  Ari nods.  "Do you accept his apology?"  Ari nods again.

And just like that, play resumed.

Kids at school

Xander seriously focused on sharpening his pencil.

Ari the gardener.

Jonathan

Me.

click here 

Clever boy

Xander is smart academically.

Ari is street-smart.

All of last week, he'd been coming home with an empty lunchbox.   "Good job!" we complimented him.  "Good work eating all your lunch!"

The teacher yesterday told Jonathan that she caught him throwing away his sandwich and yogurt.

Jonathan was taken aback.  Why??

Because apparently, at the school, the teachers don't let the kids eat their dessert or fruit dessert-like items before they eat the healthy things.

Ari was dumping his boring sandwich so he could get to the mango, or the apple slices, or the brownie.

We gave him a strict talking-to about wasting food and telling the truth... but honestly, I was kinda impressed.  That's good logic for being three!

Science is Real

Xander loves science.  He wants to be a scientist when he grows up.  He also loves music.

My brilliant husband found a CD called "Here Comes Science," by They Might Be Giants, and our son is eating it up with a spoon.

His favorite songs are "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "Photosynthesis."

He asked us to tell his teacher, Patty, about it, which we did.  And she taught "Why Does the Sun Shine?" to his entire class!  He was so jazzed.  Lyrics below:

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas 
A gigantic nuclear furnace 
Where hydrogen is built into helium 
At a temperature of millions of degrees

Yo ho, it's hot 
The sun is not 
A place where we could live 
But here on Earth there'd be no life 
Without the light it gives

We need its light 
We need its heat 
We need its energy 
Without the sun 
Without a doubt 
There'd be no you and me

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas 
A gigantic nuclear furnace 
Where hydrogen is built into helium 
At a temperature of millions of degrees

The sun is hot

It is so hot that everything on it is a gas 
Iron, copper, aluminum, and many others

The sun is large

If the sun were hollow, a million Earths could fit inside 
And yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star

The sun is far away

About ninety-three million miles away! And that's why it looks so small

And even when it's out of sight, the sun shines night and day

The sun gives heat 
The sun gives light 
The sunlight that we see 
The sunlight comes from our own sun's atomic energy

Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas 
A gigantic nuclear furnace 
Where hydrogen is built into helium 
At a temperature of millions of degrees

When it rains it pours

And now we have a puking baby.

Sigh.

He looks so sad...

Superheroes, candy, witches and spells

Halloween last week was fun, we had two families over and went wild.  I went with the moms and the kids to go trick-or-treating, and Jonathan and the other dad stayed at our house to scare the kids who came to the front door (Jonathan was a ghoul and our house is totally decked out, so this was very easily done).  Fun pictures below:

In the hallway before going out.  Xander is Iron Man.

Ari Wolverine.

Pirate Iron Man and little brother; note Ari's claws.  He left them with me one house down because they were getting in the way of the candy bucket.

The funny part of this picture is Ari hiding out behind the skeleton.  Noah was "dancing" with it and Ari totally freaked out.

The flash was on so it looks light in this picture, but it was actually pitch-dark.  We gave every boy a glow stick for their candy buckets and a fluorescent arm band before we left, to see them by.  It was surprisingly quite helpful.

Oh, the seriousness of running from house to house!

Aaaghh CANDY!!

In the spirit of the holiday, last month I read Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking, which I thought would be cheesy, but which I actually quite liked.  It's beach reading, about a witch bounty hunter in an alternate USA where the supernatural and human live side-by-side.  I originally got it because it'S set in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, so it's really funny reading all these landmarks that I know and yet having them be paranormal.  It's a lot like the Harry Dresden series, so I'd highly recommend it if you're into that kind of thing.

This year I read Lilith's Cave: Jewish Stories of the Supernatural, compiled by Howard Schwartz, cover to cover, looking for ghost tales to tell to the 4th-6th graders in religious school.  They loved it, and the book is a great resource.  I was surprised by how many of the tales are decidedly NOT kid-friendly!

And last but not least, I'm almost done with Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter by Maggie Anton.  I love that the main character is a female sorceress in Babylonian times - the novel, like the first in the series, is basically a fictionalization of my rabbinic thesis - but I dunno, I'm having trouble relating to it, because so much of it is rooted in fact and then boom something supernatural happens.  It's told in first person, and obviously the sorceresses of the time believed in demons and spirits and spells... but I can't quite get past the dichotomy between the historical Talmud explanation parts and the witch-plot parts.  I enjoyed the last one significantly more, as the natural/supernatural link felt seamless.  That said, Maggie Anton is coming to CBI to present on her book this month, and I'm really excited to meet her in person!

Our injured household

I don't think I wrote about Osher last week, how he came into the house limping badly, and we had to take him to the vet.  She gave him an anti-inflammatory, and said that if he's still limping next week, we may want to get him X-ray'd.  We tried to confine him to one room, but it was horrible, and he's healing very slowly.

Jonathan had an ER visit today for a possible heart attack.  The symptoms were scary, chest pressure/pain shooting into his left arm.  Turns out it wasn't a heart attack, but "atypical chest pain," and the doctor opined that the lining of his lungs was inflamed, and it thus irritated the chest cavity.  Who would have ever heard of that?

My co-worker and his wife took the two eldest kids to Chipotle and to watch a movie at their house.  Thank goodness for kind friends.

Osher and Jonathan are now snuggling.  Anti-inflammatories, unite!

Ahh, babies

This morning, Connor decided he wanted his brothers' chocolate milk.

We were talking to the other two and not paying close enough attention.

Connor grabbed the milk.

He waved it in the air.

He turned it upside down and poured it over his head.

ALL over his head.

And all over his clothes, and all over the floor.

He and I took a shower together.

He gurgled.

Jonathan cleaned the floor.

I was late to work.

I recounted my tale of woe to my colleagues when I got in.  They were sympathetic.  They tried not to snicker.

And then one woman whipped out her phone, pretended to text, and said, "Excuse me, I have to go thank my son for being 18."

I actually laughed out loud.

Genealogy, kid-style

On Sunday Xander was telling me about his day at religious school.

He learned about Abraham and Sarah, who were in the Torah and who lived a long time ago.

Abraham, he proclaimed, stands for "Abraham Lincoln," his Halloween Hero.

"Actually," I broke it to him gently, "Abraham Lincoln was named after Abraham in the Torah.  The Torah Abraham came first.  Your brother Ari is named after your great-grandfather Abraham, we just called him Avraham, which sounds different.  And he was named after the one in the Torah, too."

His jaw dropped open.

"THREE Abraham's?!" he exclaimed.  "That's just crazy."

The youngest Loving

Walking to Jonathan.

The boy followed him across the whole house, laughing and giggling all the way.

"Don't go Daddy, I'll catch up!"

Okay all these pictures are repetitive, but he's just too cute.

Very proud of himself that he can reach the counter now.

For larger context - he pushed the stool over himself and then climbed up on it.  Connor the problem-solver.

Pumpkin patch party

We went over to a friend's house to carve pumpkins.  Xander thought it was way too "yucky" and messy.  Ari enjoyed it.

Pouring me pretend tea in the friend's play kitchen.

The finished products were awesome - Jonathan did a great face one, and then the kids "helped" on a kitty cat one, but sadly, it was over 80 degrees for three days straight this week, and mold and fruit flies got to them before pictures were taken last night.  Halloween was amazing though... details to come.