New Year's Eve

Mom went home last night and my sister arrived this afternoon, bringing gifts galore (ooh squirt guns!).  The original plan was to do a 9pm East Coast New Year's, but exhausted children fell asleep at 4pm and woke up at 6pm, so now we're seeing if they can stay up til midnight.  So far we've done fireworks outside (where they put out each last spark with their squirt guns) and watched the ball drop in Times Square from my computer (no TV hookup remember). Now we're dishing out steaming apple cider, are getting ready to make s'mores, and are searching for child-friendly fancy(ish) glasses for sparkling cider at midnight.

Wish us luck!



ETA: Ari put himself to bed at 10:30pm, but Xander made it til midnight, and didn't want to go to bed in the end!  He was very grown-up as he sipped his cider in the wine glass in his Spiderman PJ's. :)

Bedtime stories with Bubby

Mom came up for the weekend.  Thank God.  Here she is with all three boys in their newly-gifted pirate pajamas.

Smiles all around.

Silly faces!

Kiddos on vacation

Starting off in the morning playing in the sandbox together.

Going treasure hunting and running down the "super-big hills."

Channeling Julie Andrews: "The hilllls are alive, with the sound of muuuu-sic..."

Ari and Daddy taking out the trash together.  It was dark and scary so they wore their miner's headlights and Ari is holding onto his flashlight.

Camping in with fireplace s'mores.

YUM.

Bringing pillows and blankets into the fort.

In the meantime, the littlest brother was bouncing away...

Sticking his tongue out at us.

A and X fell asleep in the fort, and C fell asleep on Daddy.

Book list meme from Facebook

Rules: In your status line, list 10 books that have stayed with you. Try not to think too hard. They don't have to be "right" or "great works," they just have had to have touched you in some way. 

In no particular order:

1. As a Driven Leaf - Milton Steinberg
2. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
3. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
4. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
5. Nobody's Fault - Patricia Hermes (haunted me as a kid)
6. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
7. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
8. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr
9. Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
10. Sybil - Flora Schreiber

Connor's naming ceremony

Wow, it's been three weeks.  That's a long lag for me!   Here are lots of pics.

Shula and Mom bringing him into the chapel from the small room where we held the private bris, the circumcision ceremony itself.

From L to R: Mom, Connor, Shula, my dad Billu, the cantor, the rabbi, Jonathan, Ari with his big lip, me and Xander.

Shula and Mom were the kvatterins, bringing the baby to and from the bris, symbolizing l'dor v'dor, literally "from generation to generation."  Shula's sitting in Elijah's chair which is covered by my paternal grandfather Philip's tallit from Romania.  My dad served as sandek, who actually held Connor during the bris itself, and also during part of the naming.

Hi all!

Reading a parent blessing.

Words of wisdom from rabbi to infant.  What was funniest was that right as she was proclaiming something about God, was the moment Connor chose to let loose.  The entire congregation cracked up at the huge sound, and Rabbi Alfi turns to Connor and says, "That's a very Jewish response!"

We're the People of the Book... we read a lot.  :)

Xander lost interest and played with a toy.  Ari switched laps every five minutes.

I love her voice.

Grown-ups are boring.

At this point Jonathan shared the following words about our son's name:

This little boy has a name imbued with love.  His first name, Connor, starts with “C,” the same letter as my grandfather Charlie, who passed away six months after I was born.  Charlie was a man who was fearless, a boy who had such a passion for adventure that at the age of 16 hopped on a train from his home state of Kentucky to go join the Texas Rangers.  Known as the “Kentucky Kid,” family lore tells that he once was ambushed by the men he was chasing, was rescued and nursed back to health by a Native American, and died with 3 bullets left in his body.  He lived life to the fullest, and made the most of every moment.

He met my grandmother in a most unusual way: she had an illegitimate child, and he got to know the baby through her daycare.  He fell in love with the baby first and bought her a crib because she needed one, and only then met and fell in my love with my grandmother.  A man not afraid to show his feelings, he cried when his daughter, my mom, cut off her waist-length hair into a short bob.  And when he watched my siblings, his grandchildren, play, he would laugh and laugh, never bothered by their antics but appreciating them for who they were.

Charlie worked hard all his life, without any education, to provide for his family, and always did so with patience, generosity, and love.  He and that side of my family are all Scottish, and the name Connor means “wise” in Gaelic.  Connor’s Hebrew name is Chaim, or “life,” and Michal and I hope that Connor will be blessed with a life filled with wisdom, and that he will take after his great-grandfather’s passionate, adventurous, and loving spirit.

Then I continued:

Connor’s middle name, Merraro, is my maiden name.  My father was born in Romania, and the family had been there for generations – but the name always sounded Spanish.  The mystery was solved about ten years ago, when a Christian man from Spain contacted my father and showed him a book from the time of the Inquisition.  It listed our family name, spelled the exact same way we spell it today, next to the date 1488.   He told my father that as far as he had known, his ancestry was Christian, yet the women in his family had always lit candles on Friday night and had separate utensils for meat and other foods.

We realized that ever since 1488, our common ancestors had been secret Jews, with a few family members converting and a few others fleeing east, to Russia and then eventually to Romania.  Connor, Ari and Xander all have Merraro as their middle name so that they will forever be connected to their history.  We wish that Connor, named after his paternal great-grandfather with a middle name dating back through the centuries, will know that he never stands alone, but is a link in a very long chain of both Jewish and family tradition.

Family blessing.

The boys presenting their poster to their little brother.  Xander had written "Connor" in cursive and then decorated it.  Xander: "I wish for Connor that we can give him toys and talk with him, even though he's a baby."  Ari:  "MY baby!"

Ari identifying the poster, in case anyone missed it.

Kisses!

All of the family present, including Aunt Lois but excluding Jonathan's mom, who didn't come up, for the final congratulatory song.

I had forgotten what it's like...

To wake up six times a night.

To catch a stream of baby urine with my hand.

To get poop on my face.

To get projectile milk vomit in my hair.

To walk around bouncing for "fussy time" for 2-3 hours every night.

More than that though, I'd not realized what it's like to do all that with two other young children.

Today was good for them though:  Netflix and playing in the backyard in the morning.  Going on a treasure hunt to the park in the afternoon and putting sticks and rocks and leaves in their pails. Having them help make Kraft mac n'cheese for dinner, measuring the milk and butter and stirring everything in.   "Camping out" in the living room in the evening by making s'mores in the fireplace and sleeping in their pillow and blanket fort.  

"Best night EVER!" exclaimed Xander.

God I'm exhausted.

Three little but important things

Thing the first.  I love that Jonathan always makes apple cider at this time of year.  The house smells so good, and seeing the crockpot on the counter always makes me smile, it reminds me of my childhood when Gwen would do the same.  Yay for cider!

Thing the second.  Connor saw the chiropractor today and she worked on his jaw and neck.  Between the two specialists he's nursing better already.  Hooray for not beating me up anymore!

Thing the third.  Discovery Channel's How the Universe Works is the coolest series ever.  I love astronomy, and the rest of the family does too.  I write this while Ari and Connor nap and Xander is curled up in the cat bed holding Blackie the snake.  Our five year-old can talk all about black holes and quasars.  Yay for science!  (And as an aside... did you know that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth?  I'd had no idea.)