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...