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.