Birthday celebrations

As promised, I'm clearing out the photo backlog and sharing some pictures from Eliana's birthday a few weeks ago. By the way, when we ask Eliana how old she is now, she says proudly, "Two months!" This is a great example of how she has most of the information and words, but doesn't always understand the meaning of the words she's using.

First, the festivities started with a pre-birthday haircut, since it had been a few months. Julean came to our house this time, she is now doing house calls rather than working in a salon.





Here's the final cut, it came out well:



Nene and Bampi had just arrived that night. Nene was impressed enough with Eliana's haircut to get a haircut also.

The next night, we celebrated the first Passover seder with Aunt Ann, Uncle David, Lauren, Josh, and many other family members. Eliana came to her first seder and did pretty well--she lasted until about 8pm, then got tired and we put her to sleep in Lauren's room. I don't have many pictures, since we were busy seder-ing, but here is one of Eliana & Bampi:



In honor of Eliana's upcoming birthday, our family members sang her "Happy birthday." However, she wasn't expecting this and didn't know what to make of everyone singing and looking at her, so she started to cry! We resolved to prepare her better next time; even the happy birthday song is something you have to get used to.

The next day, April 9, was Eliana's actual birthday. Nene & Bampi got a special Passover cake to celebrate. Eliana could barely wait to take a bite:







On the weekend we had an actual party for Eliana, with some family members and friends, and a flourless chocolate cake for Passover.





Eliana got more into the birthday ritual with a little practice! I helped her blow out her candles, but she was blowing too. No sure whether she made a wish, that might be something to take on next year.

Another highlight was opening presents, her buddy Nico helped with the ripping and unwrapping:



I helped read the cards:



And Nene helped get Eliana in the party mood:



The weekend would not have been complete without a visit to the local sandbox:



Now that she's two, Eliana has been asserting her independence. She often says, "let me do it!" and "I want to do it myself!" She loves to sing, and sometimes when we sing with her, she'll say, "Let me sing it!" We try to give her choices that allow her to be independent. For example, between standing on her stool to wash her hands in the sink or having her hands washed with the washcloth, she'll stand by the sink every time.

She even insisted on walking the dog the other day for the first time:



Since Eliana weighs 22 pounds and Shiloh weighs about 30 pounds, I was concerned that Shiloh might knock Eliana over. But Shiloh was a great dog and followed Eliana's lead. It may have helped that we followed the path we take every morning, across the street and five houses down to Lucy's house; Shiloh probably knows the way like the back of her paw. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

And, lots of change coming up. Interestingly enough, the other day Eliana said, "I'm going to Boston." I wondered why she said that, since we haven't been talking to her about it directly. Turns out our babysitter had not said anything either. Apparently she overheard that we are going to Boston, since we have been talking about it with friends.

Today she asked me, "Where's your belly, mommy?" I showed her my belly and asked if she knew what was inside. She said, "Yes, a baby." And then she said, "there's a baby in my belly too" and pointed to her belly, which does, in fact, have a little toddler roundness. Guess our family is really growing!

Along the same lines, we recently got a book called, "New baby in the house." We'll ask her whether we're going to have a new baby in the house, and she says yes, and points to her baby doll.

So..we continue to enjoy Eliana's perspective and expressions, as we move through this time of transition, she reminds us to be in each moment, not get too far ahead, and keep smiling.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden

I have a few photos to share from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden today. I realize that I also need to share the photos from Eliana's birthday...I may have to save those for another time.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in Brooklyn--started off the morning in the 60s but soon warmed to the 70s, then the 80s in the early afternoon and close to 90 in the late afternoon! Marty is in LA for about 10 days putting his mom into an assisted living facility and cleaning out her house...meanwhile we are keeping busy.

We went to TOT Shabbat as usual, then headed over to the Botanical Garden to meet my friend Tchira, who I hadn't seen in many years but who also lives in New York now. The Cherry Blossom festival is currently on, and there were literally thousands of people streaming toward the cherry blossoms. As the pictures indicate, Eliana was interested in everything..every flower, blade of grass, bench, water fountain, even/especially the bubbles we brought!

This is my favorite, capturing the enjoyment of the day..and we snapped it before she turned to the next thing:



Here we are under the cherry blossoms. No hiding the fact that I'm pregnant at this point!



Along the way, there were many other beautiful flowers that Eliana studied just as intently. In fact, she tried to pick a few and I had to explain that we can't pick the flowers, because if everyone picked them, there would be none left. I don't know if she completely got the concept, but she did stop picking them.



Here is Eliana playing hide and seek with Tchira..Tchira definitely knew how to charm a toddler:



Here are a few more that capture the spirit of the day. Very crowded, but quite beautiful.





Eliana absolutely did not want to leave. I had brought lunch for the 2 of us so we weren't hungry, but at a certain point I knew that I was going to need to get off my feet soon, and also wanted to get her home in time for her nap so that she did not nap in her stroller (since I needed my nap too!) So it was around 1pm and time to get home (we had arrived at 10:30) but we had a rocky departure. Eliana had been walking a lot and wanted to keep walking..I wasn't sure that I would make it home if she did walk all the way home. Eventually, she agreed that she would walk and hold my hand...and then she ended up getting in the stroller a few minutes later. And she fell asleep a few minutes from home, but managed to wake up and take a late, restful nap.

Things are generally good here if a little busy. Eliana had her 2 year well appointment with the pediatrician on Friday. She has gained more than 2 pounds in the last 6 months and the doctor said she looks well--she is definitely growing nicely, if still on the petite side. She also said that Eliana "talks like a 3 year old" because she speaks in long sentences. It's true, she is very verbal, curious, and interested in her surroundings. She has learned a few more letters--she now knows about 15-20 of them. My goal is to make sure that she does not feel pressured to do more and more, but rather that she continues to delight in the world around her.

Two weeks ago, I got the official letter offering me a fellowship to be a postdoctoral researcher at the Mandel Center for Research in Jewish Education at Brandeis, starting in the fall. So we are headed to the Boston area in June, to settle in before garbanza's arrival. Big transitions coming up! We are preparing, and meanwhile, following Eliana's example not to forget to stop and smell the flowers.

Red Hook day trip

Hi, it's me, long-lost blogger! It has been hard to post to this blog lately...I'm now about 5 mos pregnant with little garbanza and don't have too much energy by the evening, my usual blogging time. But I did want to share some pictures from a recent trip to Red Hook. Red Hook is nearby Brooklyn neighborhood; it used to be gritty but then Ikea and Fairway came in, and people noticed the beautiful views of Manhattan from the Pier, and it got more hip. You can't get there by subway so it has a somewhat isolated feeling. We took the bus there and it was closer than we expected.

First, we stopped in at Baked. I was underwhelmed. I have been having their brownies for a while and was expecting some sort of temple to desserts. Instead, it was a smallish cafe with a vintage-y orange-brown decor. There was one cake that looked amazing and I kept trying to hint to Marty that maybe we should share a piece (for the purpose of research) but he didn't bite, so to speak. Ah well, I was saved from a lot of calories.

We had some lunch:





And Eliana tried a little bit of tea, or was it coffee?





Then we went for a walk outside on the main drag, Van Brunt street. We encountered an antique store and Eliana was interested in trying the chairs:





The scene was interesting; this guy Kristopher Marx, who does a lot of photography, was out with a friend and started taking her picture also. He sent me a few of the pictures:





Also the antique store owner had some toys for Eliana, she got to try on the glasses and even keep the necklaces:



We continued walking... Eliana saw "this little man" and wanted to touch him:



I was fascinated by this...she didn't realize that this was an altar for Jesus that someone had created, but based on what she knows from her world just thought of him as a big doll. Also it was strange that her necklaces were similar to his...maybe it made her more interested in him.

Eliana is turning 2 on Thursday! It is unbelievable. Tonight I watched a few minutes of videos from her first weeks of life; it is amazing, and hard to remember, how much she has grown up and continues to grow up.

Her language skills continue to expand. She now speaks in longer sentences, with adjectives and connecting words. For example, "I want to use it." "No, not that one."

We have been reading her a book called "Peter's Chair," about a boy with a new younger sister. One of the lines that she likes is, "Peter, you have to be quiet...there's a new baby in the house." When we get to that line, she'll say, "we have a new baby in the house!" but then we ask her what that means, and she thinks for a minute and then responds, "It's working!" Marty said that was a pretty good answer.

Our babysitter Carol has been talking to her and Lucy about the fact that both of them will be big sisters soon; Lucy understands a little more than Eliana. So now if we say to Eliana, "You're a big girl," she'll sometimes respond, "I'm going to be a sister." However, if we ask her what that means, she isn't sure.

Although she generally has a calm demeanor, we have been getting some minor tantrums, or resistance, lately...we're wondering if this means the entry into the "Terrible Twos." For example, we'll show her a few children's music videos from youtube, and then we're done, and she'll say, "Another one! Another one!" and lie on the floor and cry for a minute, and want to hold her lamby. We try to be supportive and acknowledge that she's disappointed, but also be firm.

Eliana loves to sing and has a pretty big repetoire and a good ear. Some early favorites were Twinkle Twinkle and Frere Jacques, now she likes The Farmer and The Dell, The Days of the Week song, Old McDonald and many more. One night last week I heard her singing herself to sleep, "I love you, I love you in the morning..." I don't know if this is an actual song, I also don't know whether someone taught it to her.

Many of her favorite foods these days are in the carbohydrate family: macaroni and cheeses, toast, cheerios. I have been making waffles with our waffle maker around once a week...they're delicious and she enjoys them. She likes the frozen blueberries (that we heat up with the syrup), too, and the syrup. In fact, she requests syrup from time to time. Today she requested it with her macaroni and cheese, so I had to tell her that we weren't having it now. She likes spicy food also; some additional favorites are "Abba's nice egg" and "Abba's nice tofu" which are topped with onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, pepper and chili powder..way too much flavor for me but she and Abba gulp it down. I'm not sure what she'll think of matzah..it's going to be hard for mom to sell something she isn't too excited about herself. But looks like we'll make a little kosher-for-passover cake with two candles for Thursday night...

Weekend Fun with Nene and Bampi

I wanted to share some pictures from Nene and Bampi's recent visit.

We celebrated Shabbat together; since Eliana now goes to bed at 7:30, she now is awake for her blessing. Here we are blessing her:



On Saturday night, we decided to live it up, and take Eliana and my parents to Al Di La Trattoria, considered by some to be one of the best restaurants in Brooklyn. Since they don't take reservations, we walked over there and lined up 20 minutes before opening to be among the first seating..it was well worth it, we had a delicious and relaxing meal.



Eliana did great, we were able to eat dessert without her melting down. It helped that the four of us could alternate taking her for a stroll around the restaurant between courses, when she needed to stretch her legs. Our waiter was amazed that she loved the food; in addition to the bread, she had pasta and soup. Anyway here we are, about as dressed up as we get these days:





On Sunday, the Wassermans had us over for the traditional bagel brunch--yum. They buy the best lox, bagels, fruit and desserts from around Manhattan, so going there is always a treat. Below are some shots. Eliana has an incredible resemblance to Nene, which comes across in this picture:



Eliana enjoyed trying on Ann's slippers; I wasn't able to get this in one picture so the two pictures together tell the story:





And Ann brought out the baby dolls. Eliana could have been entertained for hours:



Here is cousin Lauren reading Eliana the Caps for Sale book, which was apparently her favorite when she was young.It was a little advanced for Eliana, but she did enjoy it anyway:



My parents were lucky enough to be here for the most huge snowstorm of the season. It was a snow day, and New York City was covered in around 12 inches of snow. Anyway, they're troopers (who brought good shoes and outerwear from California), and got to enjoy New York in the snow:



They also went to spend some time with Eliana when she was with our babysitter at Lucy's house; here is Bampi with Lucy and Eliana.



Good time, huh? Eliana was pretty sad to say goodbye to Nene and Bampi...she still gets a little sad sometimes thinking about them. Anyway the good news is that they're coming back in less than a month for Eliana's second birthday and Passover (can you believe it?) so all of us don't have long to wait.

It's hard to know where to start in terms of describing what Eliana does these days. She continues to be VERY busy with her baby dolls--putting them in the stroller, holding them, taking their clothes and hats on and off..and so on, she can do this for a long time. We have some play food and dishes, and she likes to "cook" the same things we cook for her--so she takes the wooden egg and mixes it with the spoon, and cooks it in the little plastic frying pan. Then she serves us some of "Eliana's nice egg."

She also loves to put things away. One of the highlights of the week is getting our Fresh Direct delivery, which we order online and have delivered to our apartment. As we open the boxes, it is better than her birthday or Hanukkah. Each item, from broccoli to coffee to yogurt, is a thrill. She will lift each out of the box and hand them to us. Some are "heavy" and we have to help her, and we have to watch carefully because she handles the carton of eggs as roughly as the coffee beans. But it's inspiring to see her sense of wonder from our grocery order...we want to continue to cultivate this in her and in ourselves.

Eliana likes to say "cheers!" and clink glasses..or clink whatever. She was excited to see that the spatula we use to make an egg looks a lot like the one she uses to "cook" her eggs. So I had her hold her toy spatula as I held mine..she wanted to clink spatulas and say "cheers!" When she found out that my nose was running also one morning, she wanted to clink noses.

Eliana is very sensitive to herself and others. When she hears a baby crying, she will stop what she's doing and say, "baby crying!" and express concern. She started doing a new thing recently where she will hold one of her dolls and say, "Baby is sad...about her mommy..about her daddy..she misses them." So we hold baby a little bit, and then baby seems better.

Her language abilities continue to expand. She now talks in full sentences most of the time, using many different verbs, more correct syntax, and adjectives. For example, "Mommy, you hide now." "I'm gonna hide now." "What are you doing?" For a while she would talk about herself in the third person, "Eli is eating," but now she has started to say, "I am eating," etc. We can understand her about 95% of the time... we feel bad when we can't understand her, and she gets frustrated also, but we do our best.

She knows a lot of letters by sight now: A, B, C, D, E, L, M, N, O, R, S, T. She is excited when she sees these letters on t-shirts, margarine boxes, or subway signs.

We haven't spoken to her too much about being a big sister. She is very much "in the present" and doesn't seem so interested in that right now, so we figure we'll address it when she wants to know more.

That's it for now..I'll share more soon.

February Fun

Way too much going on, I need to get some of it up here! So I'll start with today:

We met up with Alison, Emily & Mark at Appleseeds , a great play space in Manhattan for a play date. Last time we saw little Alison, it was August and she was almost a year old and wasn't walking yet...today she barely stopped running:



(I took a few other pictures but mainly of the back or side of her head as she ran past me...)

Meanwhile Eliana explored everything; the slides,



the tunnels,



the pineapples!



And the blocks and play food and plates and balls and other building stuff and...let's just say she was busy, so busy that she was hardly interested in lunch, even dining with Alison:




It was fun to get out and see Appleseeds, which I'd read about and was interested in experiencing since it was voted one of the best play spaces around. And it was a drizzly day so we wouldn't have been able to go to the playground...most of all we enjoyed catching up with our friends..it's amazing how these little girls are growing and changing.


On Valentine's Day we went out to an early dinner as a family:





We had dinner at the Chip Shop, an English style restaurant known for their fish and chips. Eliana asked for a beer like Abba, but we told her she had to be at least 3. (When she's 3, we'll tell her at least 5.) She liked the french fries, anyway.

A few weeks ago, our friend Nico and his mom Francesca came over for a playdate:



The funny thing is that with all the toys we have around here, he was most interested in the door to Eliana's room:



Sometimes it seems like we should just toss all the toys and let them use their imagination! Hide and go seek is very popular at this age, they can play for hours...

Eliana was happy to have her friend come over...Note that Nico is still behind the door.



We met Francesca and her husband Jason in our birthing class, so Eliana and Nico have been friends since before they were born. I tried to get a picture of the two of them in the big chair. Again it was pretty challenging to get two toddlers to sit in one place and look at the camera for more than a moment:





Not to mention that Nico had some drilling to do.


And the snow has melted now, but we had a number of days at the end of January and beginning of February with snow or ice on the ground. Eliana had a great time "skating" in her snow boots. I find it kind of scary to slide on the ice, but she loved it:



She was also fascinated stepping on big chunks of ice, and seeing what happened:



But if I'm going to share pictures, this one is the essence of life these days with Eliana:



First, she's wearing her polka dot shirt, which she loves. Every day she asks if she can wear polka dots. (Good thing we have some polka dot socks in addition to the shirt, which goes to the laundry after its weekly wearing.) But more important, Eliana is obsessed with her baby dolls: putting their clothes on, taking the clothes off, strolling them around, putting them to sleep...on and on, for hours. I am somewhat amazed that this captures her attention for so long, but it does...absolutely.

Guess it's a good thing she's interested in taking care of these babies. For those who haven't yet heard, Eliana is going to a big sister to a little sister, arriving in late July. We are thrilled. And we'll keep you posted on the adventures of our growing family....