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.