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.
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