Our Thanksgivukkah baby!

Connor Merraro Loving was born at home in the tub at 7:33am on Thursday, November 28th after a four-hour labor.  He was 8 lbs 10 oz and 21" long, and 9 on the APGAR scale.

All is well here - between the two boys, the new baby, my mom and my dad and stepmom, it's a full, wonderfully noisy house.  I'm getting about an hour's sleep at a time, so am not thinking quite straight.

As soon as my head recovers a bit, I'll update with the tons of pictures on the camera.

Happy belated Thanksgiving, happy Hanukkah, and Shabbat shalom!

Update for everyone

My Facebook post today:

For all of you wonderful people who have sent texts and emails: Yes, I had been at risk for pre-term labor. Yes, I'm still pregnant, 3 days overdue. No, I'm not planning on inducing. Yes, it IS ironic... but not really funny!

And in other family news...

Being Spiderman...

While watching Spiderman!

Guest post from Bubby

Xander and Ari are sitting at their table eating and when Ari coughed into his elbow, I heard Xander say on his own, "Good job, Ari."  Love those supportive big brother moments!

My due date was yesterday!

And I'm still pregnant, no big shocker.  But here are pictures of me on November 22nd, for posterity.  

 I think I actually look smaller than I did last week, because I've dropped quite a bit.  Plus, the pattern is slimming. 

We stopped by temple spontaneously yesterday, to pick up dreidels and gelt for the Hanukkah presentation my mom is doing at the kids' school on Monday, and the cantor told me that my beachball belly looked fake, it was way too firm and round.  I laughed.  Go Squishy!  I think it's ironic that I gained 70 lbs with Xander, 50 lbs with Ari, and as of today, exactly 60 lbs with this one.

(Also on an interesting side note, the massage therapist told me that she could now fit her thumb in between the two separated sections of the symphysis pubis bone.  Ick.)


BUT... I'm really happy because I finished my big novel before the baby came, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.  It'd been sitting on my shelf for a while but I never read it because it looked too intimidating at over a thousand pages.  But OH MY GOD IT WAS AMAZING.  I gush over it in the same way I gush over Chabon, but the two books are so different, it's like comparing apples and oranges.

Follett's novel is a sprawling historical novel of building a cathedral in 12th century England.  That's never really been my time period of choice, but he made it fascinating.  The characters came to life, and the relationships between the serfs and the nobles, the church and the royals, the laity and the monasteries, England and France, all of it, was so carefully researched that I felt I was spying on other people's lives.  It follows the same group of characters over about 40 years during a time of political tumult before King Henry II, and also reflects the change in architectural style from Romanesque to Gothic.  He actually goes into quite a bit of detail about the exact building of cathedrals... and contrary to what I was expecting, I loved it!  I learned so much about architecture, it was quite fun to go on Wikipedia after and look up all the new vocab words and see the structures which have survived until today.  It was also just a rollicking fun read: love, lust, betrayal, murder, conspiracies, etc.  I couldn't put it down.

So in sum: I've nested galore, decorated the house for Thanksgivukkah, and finished my book.  Baby, whenever you're ready, come on out!

Thankgivukkah preview

 At the kids' school "Thanksgiving feast."  Today's my due date... at least I've definitely dropped.

Xander clinging onto Jonathan's leg as he walks.

Our dining room table.

 Close-up of the left side.  Turkeys and menorahs and pumpkins, oh my!

Right side.  Same thing. :)

And because we're on Thanksgivukkah.... check out this great music video, a parody of "Royals," called "Oils," by Big Teeth Productions.

Laundry proof

Loading up the machine.

There are a lot of dirty clothes.

Grabbing the soap.

Starting the wash.

Playing Chanukah... and 2 other random pictures

Ari seemingly shocked that we would interrupt his playing to take a picture.

Putting the candles in.

Lighting the candles.  (What you don't see is that soon he and Xander started playing "flame blasters," complete with shooting noises.)

At bedtime.

Xander made a list on our white board of everyone who's coming from far away to see the new baby.  He insisted on spelling everything himself.  Note: for him "u" is an "ah/uh" sound.

- Bubby (my mom)

- Sabba (my dad)

- Shula (my stepmother)

- Odelia (my sister)

- and they're coming to see Mommy, in cursive

And just because we never seem to post pictures of Yentl... here she is in the  air mattress bag, escaping the chaos of my children.

Subtraction strip board

 Friends stick together: the boy doing geography in the foreground came to Xander's birthday as Captain America, and the one doing math with him was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Learning to subtract using teamwork.

Babies, babies everywhere (but not ours yet)

Mazel tov to Yael and Jonathan on the birth of their as-yet-name-unannounced baby girl today at 7:18am!   She's the younger sister of Yasha and Eden - you might remember Yasha as Xander's best bud in Cincinnati.

As far as me... I'm still waiting.  A couple people asked on the phone what I've been doing to prep for this new baby.  It hadn't even occurred to me to write it down!  Mainly because I feel like it's so little in comparison for what we did with the first two.

Here is our very paltry preparation list, that we completed almost two weeks ago:
- Moved the changing table from the boys' room to our room.  Stocked it with wipes and diapers.
- Took out all the 0-3 clothes, wraps, and receiving blankets from the bin in the garage, put them in dresser drawers.
- Got the baby carseat from the garage, moved the straps from the biggest size to the lowest.
- Bought a new pump (the old one's 6 years old and the motor's dying).
- Bought a bottle warmer, since Jonathan thought it would be nice to have one for this baby.
- Been watching videos of birth with Xander, since he wants to be present, and reading books about new babies with him and Ari.
- Hired someone to clean the house.
- Moved the birthing tub into its final position, and compiled everything we need for the birth kit.

That's really about it, folks.  We're not having a nursery and the baby will sleep with us.  Other than that, I feel that we kinda know what to do.

If anything, it's just a bit crazy because my mom comes in tomorrow, my dad and stepmother next Monday, my sister for the bris... and then oh yeah, there's Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.  I plan to have everyone else do holiday prep while I stay in bed and nurse.

One of the best parts about baby prep has been being a catalyst for Xander's increasingly smart questions.  Take last night's bedtime query, "How was the first person born?" (Answer: "Let's talk about that in the morning," followed by an amazing conversation about apes and evolution and God creating it all.)  The kid surprises me.  Ari surprises me too, but he's easier, as his main morning concern was that his red underwear matched his red socks!

Your basic Sunday

Morning: Religious school for Xander, learning about Hanukkah.  Playing at temple for Ari and Daddy. Sleeping for Mommy.

Early afternoon:  Nap for Ari, quiet reading for Mommy.  A special trip to the dollar store for Xander and Daddy.  Xander picks out his own Hanukkah gift for Ari, a big red bouncy ball with sparkles and a fish inside.  Ari's trip to the store is later this week, when he'll pick out something for Xander.

Late afternoon: Jonathan goes to an emergency computer consulting job.  Kids play while I finish my book, to be reviewed later.

Evening:  Kids want to watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Xander discovered it by accident yesterday).  Instead we go for The Magic Schoolbus.  Robin picks up cheese pizza for dinner.

Unstated happening the whole day:  waiting and waiting.  No baby yet!

And yet more book reviews

Thanks to our temple librarian, I have been well-supplied with books!  Here are the latest I've read.  The first two were okay, but the third was the best by far.

Flamboyant by Elizabeth Swados
This novel has a very interesting premise: an Orthodox Jewish woman takes a teaching job at a Brooklyn high school populated by mostly gay kids, and befriends a 15 year-old transgender prostitute.  I found it intriguing but not arresting, maybe because I didn't like the Orthodox Jewish character for so long!  What she finds in the school is so opposite to her own beliefs, and even though she tries hard to expand her mind, I really had issues with the way she made the trans girl question her identity and try to be something she's not.   The ending is good, but I found myself annoyed too many times along the way.  That said, the book was published in 1998 and queer theory has come such a long way since then, so I have to give the author kudos for writing what would have been fresh and risky at the time.  I bet I would have admired it much more had I read it 15 years ago.


Growing Up Jewish: An Anthology edited by Jay David
Again, this was okay, not great, but perhaps it was my expectations?  There are 25 short stories, some fiction, some memoir, and a few essays.  The first 10 stories or so are of Jewish turn-of-the-century first generation immigration tales, the next 10 are stories of growing up post-WWII, and only three (3!) address post-1970s growing up.  Which I don't understand, as it was published in 1996.   The tales themselves are nicely varied; to quote the Amazon review, they explore issues of "Jewish identity, language, generational differences, heritage, and rites of passage," and they do do that well, although the writing was uneven from one author to another.  I think in some ways I'm Jewish history over-educated (shocker I know), because the stories all seemed somewhat familiar to me, and many were excerpts of books that I'd already read.  I was looking for something newer, I think, that addressed growing up in more contemporary times, or at least tropes that I hadn't heard before.  For someone who doesn't know much about the topic, however, this would be a wonderful intro, and I would recommend it easily to anyone who wants a primer on the subject.


Unorthodox: A Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman
This book is fascinating.  Read it.  It's well-written, as Feldman is a journalist by trade, and her tale of love, family, and self-exploration as she comes of age is heart-breaking.  It parallels a book I read last year, I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits, for both explore life under the Satmar Hasidic sect, but Markovits' story is fiction, and Feldman's is real.  Also, while Markovits focuses on the life of one family alone, Feldman gives us a glimpse into the entire community, stripped bare with all its foibles laid out for the world to see.  Despite her obvious issues with Satmar Judaism - and we all know how her story ends before it starts! - she still has a deep love and affection for many parts of it, and I really admire how she can speak of the hardest parts of her life and rail against the culture, while at the same time maintaining respect for those who remain.  Nothing is black and white in life, and we're left with the impression that Hasidism is good for some, but not for all, and that there as many problems to be fixed in that world as are in our own.


And now no offense to the librarian, but I'm starting to be jaded, so next up is a bunch of non-Jewish fiction!

Jonathan's big falconry excursion

Jonathan has been interested in the art of falconry for a very long time, so as a birthday gift last July I got him what is called a "Hawk Walk" at West Coast Falconry.  As falconry is traditionally done in fall and winter, he had to wait until now to take the course; it was a two-hour educational experience talking all about the types of birds and the history of the sport, culminating in a walk where he actually did faux hunting.  The original plan was that we would go together - instead, due to that pesky bed rest, he traveled there on his own last week, and another classmate was good enough to take some pictures of him.

Falcons at rest.

 The two instructors.

 Demonstrating proper calling and take-off/landing techniques.

Walking along the path.  See the hawk flying in the middle?

 One of the ways to train a hawk to land on your fist is to be holding some food.  Here the bird is extremely interested in Jonathan's treat.

The instructors said he was a natural. :)

Arts and crafts while Ari naps

Painting the play-doh challah he made in religious school that morning.

Moving onto painting our fall decorative pumpkins.

Our finished dining room table.  From L to R: Xander's big and little pumpkin, then mine, then his challah, then his paper pumpkin from school.

We had more items to potentially decorate, but Ari woke up and that was that.  It was fun bonding time while it lasted!

Laundry ahoy

Some of our friends are very impressed that our kids (well, namely Xander) do their own laundry.  I want to correct any misconceptions about how this happens, because purely, it's all due to technology. We have front-loading machines with easy buttons and use single detergent pods/packs.

Step #1: Xander and Ari carry their laundry basket from their room to the laundry area.
Step #2: They open the washing machine door and take turns throwing the dirty clothes into the washer.
Step #3: Jonathan hands one of them a soap packet.  They put it on top of the clothes in the drum.
Step #4: They close the washer door.
Step #5: Xander turns the knob to the word "Normal."  He or Ari press "Start."
Step #6: They watch Washing Machine TV for a few moments and Ari says things like "My pajamas wet now!"

45 minutes later, they reconvene.

Step #1: They open the washer door.
Step #2: They open the dryer door.
Step #3: They take turns throwing the wet clothes from the washer into the dryer.
Step #4: They pick up all the clothes that have fallen onto the floor in front of the washer, and put them in the dryer.
Step #5: Jonathan hands them a fabric softener sheet and they put it on top of the clothes.
Step #6: Xander turns the dial to "Normal." He or Ari press "Start."
Step #7: They watch Dryer TV for a few moments and Ari says things like, "My pajamas spin!!"

45 minutes later, they reconvene.

Step #1: They open the dryer door.
Step #2: Jonathan hands them the laundry basket, which they put on the floor directly in front of the door.
Step #3: They take turns pulling the clothes from the dryer down into the basket.
Step #4: They pick up all the clothes that have fallen onto the floor and put them in the basket.
Step #5: Xander empties the lint filter.
Step #6: Jonathan and Xander are "super strong" and bring the basket to the dining room table, where Jonathan dumps it out.

Later....

Step #1: I fold the laundry and sort it into piles for each of them.

Later again...

Step #1: Xander takes his pile of clothes and puts it away in his drawers.
Step #2: Ari attempts this but does a bad job so Jonathan does it for him.

And voila, we have clean laundry!  Xander can actually do most of these steps himself; the other day he put all his clothes in the washer at our request and was just waiting for Jonathan's permission to press "Start."  It's all about teaching them responsibility, and training them early!  <insert evil cackle here>

Our little fashionistas

Xander has strong faith in layering.  He always wears one short-sleeved shirt with a long-sleeved shirt on top of it, so when he gets hot halfway through the day, he can take off his long-sleeved shirt and go play.

Ari, on the other hand, is developing his sense of color.  "Orange sock, orange sock," he said today.  "You want orange socks?" said Jonathan, green socks in hand.  "Yes!"  said Ari.  "Match shirt."  And then Jonathan realized his shirt was orange too.

One son wants comfort, and the other color-coordination.  Hooray for independent decisions and fashionable boys!

My family name immortalized in comic books

From an email from my grandmother:

"Michal, after what you wrote on the blog about Michael Chabon's book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I googled it because NOBODY but NOBODY can write like Chabon! After reading about the plot of the book it reminded me of something that was tucked away in my mind for oh-so-many years.
  

You know that my mother and father were married in New York (in 1917) so we have family there whose name is BOLTAX, like my father's. The thing is, anybody named Boltax is part of our family. I used to visit New York when I was young (mostly in the 30's and 40's) and met a lot of Boltax cousins. A couple of those cousins were "involved" -- I don't  remember exactly how -- in comic books, particularly Superboy. And I remember that there was a character in their comic books named Kandro Boltax!"

So I just looked it up, and the character of Kandro Boltax was President of the Earth during most of his fifteen appearances in DC Comics' Superboy.  Here's his image:

Not bad for a family name that came about because we were tax collectors in Russia!

Star Wars child

Said to Jonathan at school Friday by another parent:

"You're Xander's dad, right?  I think he taught my son the Imperial March."

I am apparently meant to be a man in the 1950s

My husband came home the other day very excited about his Dollar Store purchases.

He had bought two large cupcake carriers and a cake stand and cover.  "They were only a buck each!!" he said proudly.

Like so, except our cupcake holders have only one level.

I was perplexed.

"Why do we need special Tupperware for cupcakes?" I asked.  "Doesn't our normal Tupperware work?  Plus, how much will be making?"

It's not like I had any objection to his spending $3 on baking containers... I was just honestly confused.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow, then said very gently, "Honey, we have almost three children.  Think of every birthday, every special occasion where we'll bring things to school or temple."

"Oh my god," I exclaimed in horror.  "You're going to bake cupcakes EVERY BIRTHDAY???"  

He started to laugh.  (I've noticed this happens often regarding things in the kitchen.)

Once he recovered, we worked out an agreement.

I will be required to do nothing to help unless I want to... but I will forever be the family taste tester.

When you can see the learning come home

Xander and his teacher, Martha, hard at work on spelling sounds at school.

At her suggestion, we've been reading BOB books with him, they're great.  Basically they're mini-books with three to four letter words per sentence that rhyme.  Think of it as a lower Dr. Seuss.  But every night since we got them he asks to read one or two and exclaims, "I read the whole book by MYSELF!" 

And here he appropriates the fridge magnets for some spelling and labeling of his own. :)

Street smarts versus book smarts

While watching Nikita, during an action scene, a character mentions how handy it would be to have some "RPG's" at this time.

I turn to Robin for an explanation:  RPG's?

Rocket-propelled grenades, he tells me.

Ah, ha!  I say.  The only "RPG" I know of is "role-playing game," and somehow that does not fit the context of the show.

Somewhere in life I seem to have missed out on obtaining information like this that everyone else seems to know.  How do you or they know it?!

(P.S.  If, on the other hand, you ever want a lecture on Renaissance art history or the symbolism of nature in 17th century Romantic poetry, I'm totally your girl!)

Locksmiths, time-outs, and impromptu naps

Ah, Xander, Xander, Xander.  Smart, sweet, and exceedingly curious... in both the best and worst of ways.

At one point over the weekend, Ari was napping in the kids' room, and Jonathan and I were talking in the bedroom.  Xander felt left out, so came to hang out with us.  We paid him some attention, then went back to talking.

Our child apparently was bored.

Now, both the door to our bathroom and the door to the toilet area (we have a European-style bathroom), have push-button locks.  Meaning, when you push the button and pull the door behind you, it locks.  Usually this happens when one is inside the room, so you can unlock the door and get out.  But if you're Xander, it's much more interesting to experiment and lock the door behind you as you leave.

When Jonathan and I realized that we were locked out of two rooms of our house, we weren't happy.  To say the least.  We've told the kids not to play with the doors before, and had given Xander multiple warnings as we were talking that afternoon.

Suffice it to say, Xander was put on time-out.  And as Ari was still sleeping in their room, which is their usual quiet time/ time-out spot, he had to sit on the living room couch.

Thank goodness my husband used to be a locksmith, because he went to the garage, got some tools, and in five minutes flat had picked both locks.

Then he went back to see Xander.

The kid was so deeply asleep he was snoring.

Halloweeeeeen 2013!

2 Spidermans, a belly dancer, and the Dread Pirate Roberts from Princess Bride

Belly kisses.

So excited to head out and go trick-or-treating!  Megan and Tim came over with their boys, and they all went together.

I was going nowhere, so stayed on the porch to hand out candy.  Behold our skeleton pumpkins and creepy skull candle.

The best part of the house, by far, were the zombies we set up to face the street.  Jonathan put up muslin on the inside of Robin's window, and then used the projector to broadcast images of people banging and waving and trying to get out.  Then we used speakers to give the proper moaning and groaning and screaming noises.

It was way popular, and looked amazing since it was so dark outside.  A bunch of kids were scared to come up to me to get candy.  They wanted to know if the zombies were real.  :)

In the meantime... here are the four boys getting candy galore.  Note Jonathan helping Ari in the background.

Discussing their loot.

Our neighborhood had some cool houses!  Xander lights the way with his red flashlight.

Ooh, spooky.

Back at home with a pooped-out Ari.

Post-trick-or-treating candy craze pig-out, for the win.

Surprise visit!

My college friend Becca, now in the Navy and based in Washington, is taking a class in Nevada and spontaneously came over to spend the night!  We talked pop culture, military, and watched lots of fun YouTube videos.  I'm so glad she was able to make it.

Half a world away

Savta got our package!  Filled with books (which she's already read, I'm very late in posting), plus lots of boy artwork.  She was kind enough to send us a photo:

I do believe another batch needs to be on its way soon. :)

Dr. Daniel Rettberg, z"l

I was so sad to hear that one of my mentors at HUC, Dr. Daniel Rettberg, lost his battle to cancer yesterday at the relatively young age of 61.  Dan was the Rare Book Librarian, and was that rare person who not only loved books, but was passionate about sharing that love with everyone he met.  An extremely well-educated Orthodox Jew, it seemed as though every time I came into the library, he had something new to show me about which I knew nothing: an article, a book he'd found, or a reference that he thought I might be interested in.

He co-taught a class on Masoretic Text with Dr. David Weisberg, a Bible professor, held in the Rare Book Room itself, and for my final paper I did a comparative study of the scriptural style of 17th century Hebrew manuscripts from Persia, Yemen, and Kei-feng, China, looking for the liturgical origins of the Kei-feng works.  It was extremely detailed, painstaking work, comparing the millimeters of border areas in the text, analyzing the angle of a letter's side slant, and trying to determine if the ink had been penned with a quill or a reed based on the thickness of the lines.  Everyone thought I was crazy but Dan - he helped me figure out the actual methods to conduct my research, supplied all the physical tools, and literally guided me through the back stacks of the RBR so that we could get the exact texts I needed.  I never would have completed that paper - or really, even become interested in the topic - without his influence.  

At one point with Dan's encouragement I even applied for a scholarship to go to a Rare Book School conference, and Dan was all set to go with me - I can't remember now why I didn't go (maybe I was too pregnant with Ari?), but he was so wonderful all the way, and he shared all this great information from the sessions with me when he got back.

All in all, he was a fantastic teacher, a kind and genuine friend, and a warm, caring man.  He understood the part of me that is fascinated by old books and bookbinding and fonts, to an extent that no one else ever has.  The library won't be the same without him, and he will be greatly missed.  May his memory be a blessing.