Changes

If all goes the way I'd like it to, my life is about to temporarily explode into a frenzy of activity with even less time to blog than usual, if such a thing is possible.
I'll share what I'm talking about when I know for sure whether or not it will work out.
(UPDATE: I haven't published the post before, and since writing the above, our exciting news has been confirmed! So I will spill the beans. We are moving! And as to why it's SO SO SO exciting, I'll share that next time. )


We have had many changes in our family recently, and this one will top them all if it materializes.

I wrote about the new camera. We also got a new couch. Not *new* as in *replaced the old*. No. We never had a couch, and I had had enough. So we got one!
It's actually a love seat, because a full couch would not fit into our dining room.

Lemme tell ya what's what about this thing. It came in two boxes. Boxes full of foam, fabric, and... pre-cut wooden boards. Yep. Hillel put this thing together piece by splintery piece. I did the foam placing and covered it in fabric. It was some experience.

So new camera, new couch, and a new carriage, too! We had our Graco Coach Rider

 (it's an old style and not even Google can find a trace of this type of carriage online.) for almost three years, and while that isn't a lot in carriage terms, I must admit we really abused ours. I've had up to three kids riding this one-seat stroller at once. It's been used as a delivery car for our groceries on an almost daily basis. We stuffed that thing to the brim. And since we are a walking type of family, this carriage had mileage to rival a car. I estimate that I've pushed it close to 2,000 miles over the time we've had it. So it was time for it to step down and make room for:

 

Graco Modular Signature 3-in-1 series.
It's great so far, and has really proven its worth in the atrocious snow mountains we've been climbing just to get around the neighborhood.

Then there is another change. A sad change. A change I'd rather do without.
Our wonderful hamster, Moorkitz, died a few weeks ago. I knew he was getting on in years. He has become less frisky and his fur started thinning. Unless you have owned a pet and watched your dear animal that you cared for, played with and cuddled, deteriorate and die in front of your eyes, you can't imagine the feeling. Many people dismiss the feelings a pet owner has for his pets, but it's not trivial.
I took care of Moorkitz the last days of his life. I bathed him daily when he was too weak to use the bathroom properly. I held him in a towel until he was dry and warm. I bought eye drops to help his eyes that got stuck shut every time he awoke. When you put that much time and care into someone, it hurts to watch them die.

I'm going to write a special tribute post for this special pet of ours. But in the meantime, this was Moorkitz.





We really had some good times. Here I put him into the back of Adi's car and the boys took him for a ride!




We miss our dear little hamster.

Before I Forget

I'm tired of waiting for myself to gather my thoughts. So I will have this post open and add to it throughout the day.

I'm so excited about Adar! And I'm even more excited that I don't have to go into pesach panic just because it's Adar!
We have our Purim costumes planned out and we began putting them together. We're going to be penguins! The boys will be grown up penguins and Adi will be a baby penguin. We dressed her up to try it out and she really looks like a real one! I think I should hurry up and get them done so I can photograph the kids standing in front of the snow mountains. There aren't that many of them left anymore, though.

I did promise to post photos of the kids playing in the snow... they are ready for the posting!

We had a cleaning lady at our house recently. She washed the floors, and for about 24 hours Adi kept slipping while walking. Soon enough, the floor was restored to its previous grubby state and Adel had no more slipping issues. Ahem.

Adi puts together two words sometimes. She likes to give the cat treats, and a few days ago she saw me handling a bag similar to the cat treat bag. (It was a bag of Dropps laundry detergent.) So she held out her hand and said, "Ai-nya. Amm." Translation: "Cat. Food." I was so happy that I was able to understand her without any effort, on the first try.

I haven't folded laundry in a long, long time. the kids have nothing to wear. I drag things out from the clothing mountain when I need to.

Gedalya is an awesome reading machine. The kid will be five in a month and a half and he is a genius.
He reads anything with ease. Things I never taught him. He stands behind me at the computer, and when I write anything about him to anyone, he reads it and asks me about it. I need to remember not to do that anymore! Interesting how things evolve. First you spell things so your kids shouldn't understand. But I am not able to get away with that for a long time already. But who's imagine that writing is out of the question, too. LOL. Once he read the word "mission." Please tell me how he could have known the correct way to read it was not miss-see-on?
He also randomly comes up to me over the course of the day, announcing things like, "2 x 3 = 6"
Then he shows me the Jacob's Ladder toy, which he arranged into two rows of thee squares to demonstrate.

 

 I love the way he finds math in his surroundings like this.

He knows how to multiply any number 0 to 9 by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90.
One day Gedalya said to me, "Morning is the evening of the day." I told him, "What does that mean? I think morning is the morning of the day." "No, morning is the evening of the day," he maintained his stance. "Okay, so then what's evening?" And Gedalya answered, as if to a child slow in understanding, "Evening is the evening of the night."
Oh, silly me. Of course!


I've been editing a lot of photos lately. I have this gnawing in the back of my mind that I need to go through all the old, old photos and print some of them. The last batch of photos I had printed was from summer 2008, before Adi was even born! So when Shutterfly offered me 50 free prints, I jumped at the opportunity to catch up slightly. And wouldn't you know it, in the photos I edited and printed last night, Gedalya was the same age that Adi is now!




As far as Adi has come, she is nowhere near what Gedalyamonkey was doing back then!


Like throwing rocks in an excavator. LOL.








I'd have a panic attack if I'd find her with both feet on the lowest rung. Yet I watched and calmly photographed Gedalya attempting to stand on the highest one.



All the funny memories! It was a fun summer, that's for sure.








Well, that was a fun post, and I didn't even share all that's on my mind! Till next time. :D

Addiction

When Adi was born, I bought her bows, clips and headbands for her hairless head. I started a pony holder collection as well. This was my dolly and I was going to accessorize her!

I needed a clip in every color to match all of Adi's clothes. And having the clips in a little box, it was hard for me to find the right color. And sometimes, thinking I didn't have a certain color, I'd go and buy some. And sometimes clips come in a pack of a few colors, so if I wanted to buy a green one, I'd have to buy the purple ones from the same pack. Eventually, the little box began to overflow and I decided to do something about it.

I made a little clip holder. And then I began putting up the clips.

And that's when I realized...

That I don't have a small problem on my hands. I have a real hairclip addiction!

...and you haven't even seen the headbands. {..dum..dum..dum.. foreboding music plays}

Bootless in the Ice

As serious as Gedalya can be, he can also be a little clown. He loves everything silly. The sillier the better.
That's why when he lost his boots in the icy snow last week, he didn't put them back on right away. He thought it was great fun!

It was a really icy day. The top layer of the snow mountains melted and froze again into a crust of ice.

 

But soon after losing his boots, Gedalya began to feel like this:

And then like this:

Eventually he wasn't able to walk, so Zusha brought the poor kid his boots. But his socks were soaked. It would be impossible to go home like that. Luckily, I had an extra pair of mittens in my bag. Adi's mittens.

Which is what he wore home. I don't think he'll pull a stunt like that anytime soon!

And he didn't... at least not on our sledding day earlier this week.

We went to Prospect park. My in-laws took us.

Gedalya tried out a new climber.

Grandpa did, too:

Zusha, Grandma and Mama didn't really care to climb up.
But Gedalya climbed enough for us all.

We visited the lake and saw all the wonderful water fowl.

 

Then we gathered our sleds and headed towards the hills.

This place is breathtaking in the winter.

 

 

And we had a great time sledding!

It was just right. Last winter we has two sledding trips. One was pretty wimpy. The hills were just bumps. We couldn't gather enough velocity for the sled to go by itself. The second time we found gigantic hills, which required lots of climbing back up, and we stayed entirely too long.

But this time was perfect! The hills were just steep enough to go fast, but not so tall that it's a pain to climb. And we didn't stay too long. A good day, indeed!