Kiddo report!

We just had parent-teacher conferences, and they went wonderfully!  (Or, to clarify: Jonathan went to the school in person and I participated via speaker phone.)

According to Martha, his teacher, Xander is doing great academically.  He loves math and numbers and art, and she will now help him focus more on reading and writing.  He's very sweet, is a great role model and helper to the younger kids in his class, is a hard worker, has great concentration, and socially has lots of friends.

According to Delya, Ari's teacher, Ari is a very happy kid with a great sense of humor.  He still has a little problem with aggression, but that is abating as his communication gets better.  The big news for him: he's moving into Martha's class!!  Which, at 2 1/2, is pretty young, as technically the older class is for kids 3 to 6.  But he's potty-trained, listens well, and can follow a series of instructions/directions in order to complete a project, so both she and Martha think he's ready to transition up.

We talked a lot with both Martha and Delya if it was the right choice for the two boys to be in the same class, but they were very supportive.  They think that it may be rough in the beginning, but that in the end Xander will thrive in being the role model to Ari, Ari will love being with his big brother, and as they'll be working on such completely different areas, they shouldn't actually overlap too much.  Ari also adores Martha and isn't nearly as fond of the other Primary teacher (not that she's not a lovely woman, she's just not Martha!), so it seems like a really good fit.

And to end this school post, here's a shot of Ari in his current classroom:

Book reviews

Thank you to Nicole L for the rec for Fallen, by David Maine.  I had my temple's library order it for our collection, and then coincidentally (of course!) I was the first one to check it out.  Maine tells the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve in reverse chronological order, starting with Cain on his deathbed and tracing back to Eden.  I liked it, but there was something missing, I'm still trying to figure out what.  It's like he tried so hard to be symbolic and write a "historically" character-driven tale that he missed out on the motivations for his characters to do what they do.  I think it would be a great pick for a temple book club, and it's fun easy reading, but don't expect to delve too deeply.

At that same temple librarian's recommendation, I read Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story by Joy Horowitz.  Savta, I'm sending this one to you in Israel.  It's pure memoir, the result of the author interviewing both her 90-odd year old grandmothers in the early 1990s.  It took me a while to get into, simply because I found it so hard to relate to both grandmothers in the beginning.  Then I realized; the author is my mother's generation, and the grandmothers in question would by my great-grandmothers!  I've never met them, so of course I would have trouble seeing through their eyes at first.  One was born in Brooklyn and the other came over on Ellis Island, and they are both very, very different women.  But their love for their children, their relationship to Judaism and America, and their attitude toward aging was eye-opening for me.  No matter the era one lives in, people really do have the same cares of the heart.   I wasn't always entranced by Horowitz's writing style, but I did get verklempt about her family tree.

But perhaps I'm being overly critical of the above two books, merely because I followed them up with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.  OH. MY. GOD.  The man is sheer genius.  It's one of the best books I've read in years.  Then I looked it up, and duh, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.  The book traces the lives of two cousins, one in pre-WWII Prague and the other in NY, how they come together to form a comic book partnership in NY in 1939, and what they do through the 1950s.  But that previous sentence really says nothing; I know nothing about comic books and it drew me in.  The novel is about what it means to have family, to dream about something bigger, to figure out who you are, about what it means to live and not just survive.  Chabon is an excellent writer who creates an entire world out of details, interweaving real-life history with his fictional characters so well that I forgot what was history and what wasn't.  I've read The Yiddish Policeman's Union and a couple of other books of his, but I liked this one best so far.  The NY Times review called it his "magnum opus," and I heartily agree.  Go, get offline and check it out of the library or buy it on Amazon - just read!

My newest obsession

I've always loved smoothies, and this pregnancy I've been craving Vitamin C, and especially, any citrus smoothie at Jamba Juice.  It's bad.  The people at the local Jamba Juice know me by now, and when I went on bedrest, they got to know Jonathan.  We actually put aside part of our budget so I could get my Jamba fix!

Until... Jonathan went to Costco and bought a Vitamix blender, the type that they have at Jamba.  It is AMAZING.  It blends ice without even changing to a higher setting.  It comes with a recipe book, and I looked up a whole bunch more recipes online, so we stocked up on frozen fruits and veggies.  Turns out that the kids will eat a smoothie with spinach if it's hidden well!  We've discovered that I make a really good strawberry milkshake, Jonathan makes excellent orange or mango sorbet, and any smoothie that comes out that machine is fantastic.

It also has settings for chopping nuts and cheese, making hot soups, and other non-smoothie things.  But at this point... I'm all about the iced fruit and yogurt!

Trip to the walnut farm

These pictures are from two weeks ago now... I didn't go, obviously, and keep meaning to go over the descriptions with Jonathan so I could put up captions.  But as it happens, we haven't done it yet, and I want to post them up.  So here they are, caption-less... behold the walnut farm!  Our hosts were Roger and Laura, and Jonathan and the boys went with Megan, Tim, and their twins. (And yes, Ari is very fashionable... he picks his own clothes, and he copies Xander's preference to wear two shirts instead of a shirt and a jacket.  Don't ask, we just go with it.)

Picking fruit.

Playing fetch.

Fealty to a fault

We have had the oddest phenomena occurring lately at our house.

Xander does something to Ari: hits him with a toy, pushes him, pulls him, whatever.  It makes Ari cry.

Jonathan immediately goes to discipline Xander as punishment.  He puts him on time out for five minutes in his bedroom.

Ari then stops crying and starts screaming at Jonathan, and hits his leg (the highest part he can reach) as hard as he can.  "No yell Xander!  No Xander time-out!"

We get on Xander's back for making Ari cry, and then Ari attacks us for punishing his brother.  I don't get it!

36 weeks

Me, to the midwife, as she gets out the blood pressure cuff:  "I've actually been having a lot of trouble getting up in the mornings, I've been really tired all the time lately."

Midwife, taking my blood pressure: <raises eyebrows>  "90 over 48.  Are you alive?  At least we know why you can't get up now!"

So yay for being ordered to eat salty food. :)


Also, I've been trying to take the pregnancy pictures with the same shirt all throughout, so the look would be consistent.  The first purple shirt I had was a M, then a L, and then I caved and bought an XXL.  This is the XXL.  It's given up the ghost.

I have exactly four outfits now that provide full belly coverage.  It's a good thing I never go anywhere!

It is exactly 5:00pm PST

And I just logged off from work for the last time for the next three months.

I'm on early maternity leave cuz of my physical issues.  But it feels crazy.

What in the world will I do when I get up tomorrow morning?!

At the park

I'm in bed 90% of the day, and Jonathan desperately needed a break at one point during this 3-day weekend (the teachers had an inservice), so Robin took the boys to the park.  They rode their bikes there, and spent most of the time on the "spiderweb" below, and the swings.

Ari didn't like his picture taken, apparently, but Xander's a ham.

Ugh

Bed rest just got a bit more serious.  The pubic symphysis bone is starting to separate. That means more lying down, more resting.  This will be my last week of work... even sitting up to type on the laptop is painful.

The chiropractor put it very bluntly when he said, "You don't want any more babies, do you?  Because having another one will put you in a wheelchair."  And the midwife, later that night: "You're not the kind of woman who wants six kids, right?  Because that won't be happening."

In a way I'm sad, because there was always the possibility of having another and going for a 4th child, maybe a girl.  But even more than that, I'm relieved - now all the ambivalence is gone, and the choice has been taken out of my hands.  I can't carry another child myself, and I don't want a fourth enough to go through the process of adoption... so the decision is made.  It was meant to be.

So at this point, we are SO GOOD with just one more.  One more is perfect.  But oy, I have to say, I really hope he comes early, because I don't know if I can take this for another 5 weeks!

Jumping and leaping and twirling, oh my

Oh yes, and I forgot to say earlier... the cape is Jonathan's from when he was a child. :)

SUPERHEROES!!! aka X's birthday party last weekend

A good view of the overall Superhero obstacle course set-up.  The kids started by going through the play structure down the slide, then through the cones and the ball tunnel, then through other cones and a ring toss, then through the next set of cones to the chalk "lava lake" where they had to jump from circle stone to circle stone without falling in the lake.  Finally, they ran to the Spiderman web "dart board" where they had to get all 3 velcro balls on the target.

Since Xander was Spiderman, Ari had to be Spiderboy too.

Xander cheering on a friend going through the lava lake.

Finishing up lava lake jumping.

The final step!

Yay for friends!

Everybody was literally cheering each other on.

Watching the kids go through the course.

The certificate each kid got when they finished.  We signed each "Captain Fury" from the Avengers. 

Superheroes ranged from Captain America to Supergirl to Batman to Darth Vader to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

At play.  

Superhero posing.  Soon after this all the older kids disappeared to the side of the house to play with rocks and construction vehicles.

Cake!

The moment he blew out the candles.

Waiting for their slice.

Eating outdoors. 

A few kids went to our dining room to decorate capes.  The rest took out every toy we owned to play.  

Fun fun chaos.  In the end we had 7 five year-olds and 3 two year-olds... it was a good party!