10 Months

Dear Ilan,

Your personality is starting to shine through.  The word for you this month is: excitable.  You are excited about everything!

When I put you down for sleep I lay you on your back in your crib and you smile up at me and pump your legs up and down, in this manic sort of excited way, fast fast fast, your heels make a swishing noise on the sheets and your whole body slides up and down.  You are so excited about going to sleep!

At mealtime, especially on Friday nights when we have challah and juice, you are so excited to eat that you can barely contain yourself.  Your whole body quivers and you wave your arms and try to lunge out of your chair to get to the food.  Sometimes we have ice cream for dessert and I share with you.  You smile and bounce and moose and make this gurgling noise of happiness in the back of your throat.  Your baby anticipation is so sweet and infectious.

At bath time, or anytime when anyone is in the shower or bath, you charge into the bathroom and pull yourself up on the tub and moose until we let you in.  And when we do, you reward us with the biggest grin and hit us repeatedly with your arm slaps of happiness. You love taking baths with Roan, even though he constantly splashes you and squirts water in your face.

There are two things you like to say: mum mum mum mum, and bah bah bah bah.  Mum is both me and Jay. Bah is bottle and food.  You are always excited to see us and always excited to see your bottle.

You play a game at bedtime that we call The Game.  We try to read you books and you try to crawl off the bed.  We grab your legs and pull you back and you laugh and laugh.  Repeat.  If we don't grab your legs quickly enough you stop and look back at us, waiting.

Roan has taught you how to growl.  The two of you growl at each other constantly.  And you growl at Jay and me, when you are happy, when you are angry, when you are hungry.  Or, when you just feel like growling.  You have also started to wave and play peek-a-boo.

Some photos from Month 10:

You have  only been on the swings a few times.  You like them.

You love pushing cars around the floor, you and Roan follow each other around the house with various cars and trucks.

You have a walker that you are just getting the hang of.  You push it until it crashes into something, then you  growl until somebody comes and turns you around so you can push it back.

Happy 10 months, Lani Lou.

Sandy

I've had so many e-mails, texts, and phone calls in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and just wanted to say that we are all okay.  We live at one of the highest points in Brooklyn (something I really hated while I was pregnant and had to walk up the hill everyday, but something I'm really appreciating now) so we were not directly impacted by the storm.  We have a lot of trees down, but none of them fell on our car or our building, or even on any of the bars, restaurants, and stores that we frequent.  Our gym, a converted armory, is now being used as a shelter for evacuees with special medical needs (mostly elderly and disabled) from lower lying neighborhoods  We are not avid gym-goers, so haven't really noticed the unavailability of our elliptical machines.

We cannot leave the neighborhood, because public transportation is extremely limited, and what's running is overcrowded and slow.  Traffic is horrendous, many streets are closed because of trees and debris - we aren't driving, and car services are all booked.  We are working remotely when we can, hanging out with the kids, taking walks around the neighborhood to see all the stuff that the downed trees smashed.  Public schools are closed (many are being used as shelters) but Chai Tots opened yesterday on a scaled back schedule, so Ro and I rode our bikes there this morning.  It was nice to have a break from him.

Last night we celebrated Halloween with friends and went trick or treating.  Finally, Roan is getting the hang of this Halloween thing.  Last year, when people offered him candy, he said, "no thanks, I already have some."   This year he accepted it, and would run to me and exclaim, "Mommy, everyone wants to give me candy!"  like he can't believe his good luck.

Here are some photos I took outside our building, before we went to the Halloween party.

Here are our next door neighbors' jack-o-lanterns, which we saw shining brightly as we trudged up our hill, heavy with candy:

Collaborators

Playground

Cowboy

Me, Your Mother

There are barely any pictures of me.  I'm always the one taking the pictures, and in all honesty, I don't want my picture taken - I'm fleshy from two pregnancies and rarely take the time to put on makeup or fix my hair.  My outfits are a haphazard combination of whatever I was wearing the day before and whatever I've left in the dryer.  The kids are much more photogenic.

But maybe, someday, when I'm old, my kids will be curious about what I looked like, who was this person that raised them?  So Jay took some photos of me out in the yard.  Ilan steals my thunder, but here I am.

It is clear in this photo that I have an absurdly large, bumpy, and crooked nose which will continue to grow as I age.  I really hope you boys don't inherit this.

*

It really bothered me this year, how ugly our Sukkah is.  These last two years I've proven that I can design and build a functional Sukkah, but that's no longer enough.  This unrest is part of a general trend - I've been oddly compelled to clean stuff, like the dishes, and put away toys, and unclutter clutter, and all in all, it's pretty annoying, to be spending so much of my free time tidying up, but I guess I'm on the path to becoming a Real Domestic Woman, who cleans up after everyone.  It's like a switch got flipped inside of me - it never used to bother me that our apartment looks like a preschool, now it does.  I even moved all our bikes out into hallway, because something inside me finally recognized that they weren't the avant-garde / steampunk decor I once thought they were.

In line with this transformation, I'm ready to graduate to a wooden Sukkah, but just didn't have the energy this year.  Instead, for beautification, we painted the Sukkah.  We put it together up-side-down and invited some friends over for a painting party.  It is still ugly, but now it's ugly in a colorful way.

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At Prospect Park, with the Portnoy boys.  Fall afternoons are the best.  I'm relieved to say that I've finally figured out how to prepare dinner with two kids underfoot, and still have time to spend the pre-dinner-time hours playing at the park.  The old me wouldn't have cared about coming home late and popping a frozen pizza in the oven or making PB&J, but the Real Domestic Woman I am turning into is all about meal planning, everyone eating the same thing at the same time, no food left behind. I spent years confusing feminism with a disdain for cooking and cleaning, which left me with an amazing tolerance for rice and beans and dirty stove tops, but lacking in some practical skills when it comes to running a family.  I'm finally figuring it all out.

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By the end of summer I had to admit that I could no longer keep up with Roan on his bike.  Jogging alongside him was no longer viable.  He constantly wanted to race, and could ride for several miles without stopping. Me, not so much.  The time had come for me to ride my own bike.  It was the only way I could keep up!

This is the part of parenting I've always looked forward to - me and my kids, playing outside together, tiring ourselves out.  Every weekend Ro and I take rides on the green road, up to the farmers market and Grand Army Plaza, and rides through Prospect Park.  The other day we rode about 6 miles, through puddles, on the wide bike path where cyclists train for centuries, on gravel roads, on the horse path, over bridges, under tunnels, we stopped to watch a band play, bought lemonade at a street fair, laid in the grass and ate snacks.  This part of being a mom is every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped.

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Maybe you noticed, we cut Ilan's hair.  I hated to do it, because he has fabulous hair, just thick enough to stick up all over.  But we had to give him a buzz cut, to get a good look at the dent in his head, and see how noticeable it would be.  We thought it would help us make our decision.  We think it's very noticeable, but nobody else seems to.  Either that or we are surrounded by polite people.  Hmm... polite people in New York City?  That's probably not it.

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I don't understand why Roan and Ilan are making these grossed out faces, I was just signing them a song, but this picture made me laugh because they look so much alike.

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Plum Island II

More photos from Plum Island.  This vacation marked the first trip we have made since having children that didn't involve visiting a family member, and didn't require getting on a plane!  It did require a 5 hour car ride, with many stops.  But still.

We are already day dreaming about next year....