Visiting Joe, Dhea, little Joey, Nolan and The Train

Last weekend we went to Berkeley to visit the Maloney family

They introduced us to the trains at Tilden

Not too long ago a picture of all of us would have had half as many people in it. Pretty crazy.

Celebrating Bubbie's and Popsie's Birthdays

Chinese food in San Mateo. Samuel is a convert. Not a shocker considering all of the salt involved in Chinese food. I ordered steamed broccoli.

Passover 2010

Our Fearless Seder creator and leader

I love Passover. It has long been one of my favorite holidays. Food and Cousins. Can't go wrong.

This Passover was Shira's first and is probably the first that Samuel will remember. You won't see any pictures of Shira, though, she spent the entire night crashed out upstairs. We did get to use Andrew and Rebecca's crazy baby technology video baby monitor, though.

This year's theme was Chad Gadya. In addition to wearing super cool masks (Steve is the King of Kings and Samuel is the Shochet (butcher) - that red stuff on the top of his mask is a slab of steak) we looked at several ways to interpret and tie the Chad Gadya in to the traditional Seder.The busy search for the Afikomen. The biggest joy I got out of the evening was watching the pleasure that Samuel took out of following Brendan, Shane and Lena around looking for the Afikomen. I'm pretty sure he didn't have any clue what they were doing, or why, but he LOVED it. The smile on his face was priceless. And yes, I did get more pleasure out of watching him than eating this...True to form Samuel loves his matzoh ball soup as much as his mommy:

Aviv pays out the ransom for the Afikomen. He cleverly paid in quarters, making Samuel, Brendon and Shane feel like they got so much more value than they would with the flimsy green stuff.Steve does his job holding up his end of the Birkat.

nursing two babies

WARNING: If the idea of a toddler nursing makes you uncomfortable, read no further.

"Nurse two babies" is what Samuel asks for when he really wants to nurse and he knows that Shira needs to nurse. This is the only time when Samuel is willing to call himself, or be called, a baby - his usual response to being called a baby (or little boy) is, "No, I big boy."

My preference is not to nurse them at the same time for a variety of reasons, but it is occasionally unavoidable, unless I don't mind if one or both of my children proceeds into complete meltdown. I realize this post could be considered political in some ways, but what I really wanted to capture was the bonding between Shira and Samuel. It is unbelievably sweet to see them interact while they are both nursing. Samuel frequently puts his arm around Shira and pats her back. Sometimes they play with each other's hands, smile at each other, and make silly faces.It is too bad that something so sweet and special is considered so taboo in our culture.

Banana Trip

We don't do much shopping at our around the corner market, since we don't eat packaged food and we get our produce at the Farmer's Market. But you can't buy bananas at the Farmer's Market. For a little while, I banned bananas from the house since they aren't local. That didn't work out well. Bananas became, quite literally, the forbidden fruit. And really, how can I complain when my son begs me for bananas as if they are the best treat on the planet.

So when Samuel asks for a banana, and we don't have a TJs trip planned, we head out to our around the corner Persian market, even though they cost about twice as much there. Why? Well, Samuel will walk all the way there and back (or sprint both ways). I'm not sure if that is because he is excited about buying bananas, or if it is because 90% of the time the cashier finds a way to slip him a lollipop when I'm not looking.*Since we committed to making some more rocket pops for the Saturday potluck, off we went on Friday afternoon after all of our friends cleared out of the house from Friday lunch. With banana kiwi cinnamon yogurt rocket pops in mind.

*Gotta love the inability to lie when you don't have an inner voice. Samuel tells me he wants to go to Rose's for a banana, and then tells me he also wants to go there because they will give him a lollipop. All the while giving me that smile that says, "I know you won't buy me any candy, but if they give it to me unasked..."

Hippos Eat Babies at the Jungle

Mason's 3rd birthday party. What should we drop on the people down there?

Let us out!
Shira made some new friendsAnd Samuel and Mason made some new trouble

mmm....yummy...vegetables

The new CSA season has begun. This is only about half the boxes since I forgot to take a pic when they first got here. Samuel and I are very excited. We both missed the community aspect of being a drop site. And Samuel was quick to find the carrots and take a bite out of those chantenays as soon as he saw them.

Friday Lunch Feels Like Summer

I hosted lunch last Friday and was thrilled to get a day with unbelievably beautiful weather. In addition to just enjoying the sunshine, I love it when I can convince all the kids to eat OUTSIDE ;)

Of course there's usually a trade off involved with that. Less food on the floor inside, but more sand tracked in. Such is life.

We had the usual diversions of the trampoline and sand table, but I added in a couple of new ones. Now that the weather is nicer, I am back to making popsicles, and I made an impulse buy of some rocket shaped popsicle molds that are BPA free at Whole Foods. The rocket pops were a big hit with the short humans. And the ice pops (yes, that's right, just plain old frozen water) were also highly prized by the miniature beings and larger sized ones alike. They were in such demand that there were a couple of meltdowns when they were all gone, and I decided I would make them again for the next night since it was our monthly potluck.

In addition to the popsicles, I pulled out all stops with some sprinkler fun.Leave it to Samuel and Jessie to figure out how to make trouble by turning the sprinkler ALL the way up.Samuel enjoyed having another boy around for once.Storytime seems to be a frequent component of lunches now. It's great to see how much all the kids enjoy books.

playdate

So Shannon stopped by to return some clothes to us this afternoon, and Sophia wanted to come in. Samuel and I were relaxing with a little Sesame Street while Shira napped. I invited Sophia to come hang out with us, while Shannon ran a couple of errands.After Sesame Street ended, I pulled out our last two popsicles and sent them outside to jump on the trampoline and play in the sand. How great is that? Samuel has friends who can come over, and they actually play together. It is so cool to listen to them have conversations together.I know everyone says that I am going to miss the baby stage, etc. as the kids grow up, but so far I am only enchanted by each new development. Terrible twos? How about terrific?

The Wave

We went to dinner tonight with the fam, so everyone could get a chance to see Daniel before he went back to UW.On our way out of the restaurant, Shira waved at Marybeth and then Scott. And when everyone waved back at her, she waved at them some more. Pretty darn cute.

Mark it in the baby book! Shira's first wave.

Snails

Do you remember how much fun it was to play with snails? Bubbie taught Samuel all about it. Unlike some of the other sometimes questionable games my mom finds to play with them, I'm so glad she taught him this one.Which one is going to win? Samuel agrees that they are racing, but says they are racing by themselves. I'm going to hold off explaining competition to him. It's much nicer his way.In non snail racing news, Samuel acquired a yet to be named pet rock at preschool today
and planted grass. Which I'm pretty sure he promptly killed by putting it in our planter with the bay tree and flooding it with water. I'm just hoping I'm not going to have to start weeding grass out of the planter.Taking a break after all that snail herding and gardening in the hot sun

Potty Party

I'm probably jinxing it by writing about it, but this was day 6 for Shira with 5 poops on the potty, zero in diapers. Let's hear it for EC! (And yes, that is toilet paper in Shira's mouth. We can only hope it's clean toilet paper...)

9 months and a beautiful day at the park

Today was Shira's 9 month check up. No comments about freakishly small heads, but she is quite low on the weight chart.

We proceeded straight to our Monday park date afterward and enjoyed an unbelievably gorgeous day. I am loving day lights savings. Our 7pm bedtime has moved to 8pm, but the best part - our 6:22am wake up is now 7:22am. Woot! We'll see how long that lasts...

A gorgeous day, lots of sunshine, a later bedtime, and no naptime means we stayed at the park ALL DAY. We only got home about an hour before Steve came home from work. Good thing I brought lunch.

This reminded me of when we first started frequenting Mercy Bush and would all sit around on the ground with babies that couldn't do a whole lot. Now they all sit in a circle and share snacks, instead of us.Nothing better than swinging with your big bro

Six hours at the park will do that to you