Pesach, Pesach iz Shein

One good thing about being such a *procrastinator* is that I still haven't put up many photos from the past half year (like beautiful fall foliage, Adi's birthday party, Sukkos, Chanuka, Purim...) so they didn't disappear with my deleted account.
So with that encouragement, I will begin posting photos again. :D Starting with the most recent and moving on backwards.

Pesach is going pretty well! I had actually gotten a normal amount of sleep on bedikas chometz night. I woke up to a clean and fresh house that smelled like the air after a spring rain. :) It was a perfect moment, with newly shorn boys and freshly bathed children.

The boys went out to the yard to burn chometz and a picture of their yetzer hora that they drew just for this occasion. And in that spirit, they helped me a lot on erev yontif! They brought me things from boxes, put away groceries, peeled vegetables and "chazer'd" the Ma Nishtana so beautifully.


Gedalya nicked a finger while peeling veggies. He's usually the type that freaks at any sight of blood, but this time he was very calm. He said, "It's okay, because Hashem will heal it very fast. The Yidden in Mitzrayim were always being hurt and Hashem helped them and took them out. So any time you get hurt preparing for Pesach, Hashem will heal it right away."

He has all these adorable divrei Torah that he says. On Yom Tov when he wanted milk but was still fleishik, he said, "It's good that Hashem made the halacha not to eat meat and milk together."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he replied, "*everything* Hashem does is good." 
(He didn't actually say, "Duh," but I heard it in his tone.)

On the first day of Chol Hamoed, we took a trip to Prospect Park and got together with a bunch of friends. I wasn't going to take Adi. Every time I take her somewhere, I end up vowing never to do anything so crazy again. To add to that, I was sick. On the second day of Pesach I was so sick, I couldn't get out of bed. I was feeling much better in the morning, but still didn't want to deal with Adi. In the end I took her because my husband wasn't able to stay with her at the last minute.

And I was so amazed! She tolerated a half-hour bus ride, 2 hours in one park where she played nicely with other kids and let me socialize, 20 minutes in another park, let me take her out of the swing the first time I asked her, over an hour at the Audubon center where her brothers were creating nature journals (she napped for part of it), a walk by the lake, half an hour wait for the bus, another half hour bus ride, grocery shopping and a 20 minute walk home. ALL OF IT WITHOUT ONE TANTRUM! What did she eat or inhale? Because I'm stocking up on it.

And if anyone out there read any of this, you deserve some photos. :)

First part of the day, Imagination Playground.

Then we went to a playground with swings. After behaving for two hours and letting Mama play with her friends, Adi deserved swinging time. :) She's signing "help" for me to push her.

Our next stop was the Audubon Center. It was totally unplanned, and since I hadn't packed much food, we weren't planning on staying long. But we ended up staying for over an hour!

Digital magnifier.

Bird migration paths.

The reason we stayed soooo long was that the boys wanted to make nature journals. There were four stations to go to, and each one took a long time.
At this station, you have to find and sketch an animal. (Some of the other stations were learning to use a field guide to identify plants they laid out on the table and finding birds using binoculars and identifying them.)

Some of the stations were upstairs, and I didn't want to let Adi loose. So I let the boys go up by themselves. Sometimes Id go up to check on them, staying on the part of the stairs where I could still see Adi.

 My phone took this photo by itself. Pretty cool, huh?

Looking through their nature journals.

A pocket full of posies! The white flowers smelled like heaven.

 Back in our neighborhood. Gedalya was marveling at that tree behind him, and then noticed some blooms had fallen off. He gathered them, and did what he saw some of my friends do that morning... put them behind their ears. :)

 The quality of some of these pics isn't the best because they are cell phone photos. Here I was using the front-facing camera of my phone so Gedalya can see himself while I photograph. That made him smile!

A happy rest of yom tov to everyone... hope to post more very soon!

Annoyed and Overwhelmed and Discouraged

I started this blog 5 1/2 years ago. That's a long time! I just signed up for it then, not knowing it was a Google service. Eventually, Google began offering more and more services, and they all were tied into your one Google account. Except that I had two Google accounts. One ancient one that I created this blog with, and one active one that I used for gmail, my android apps and many other things.

To make things simpler, I decided to merge my accounts. I made my other account a co-author of this blog, granted myself admin status, and used that status to kick my old self off.

All was going great, until several months later, I decided to delete my old Google account since I am not using it. Since I transferred my blog, everything should be honky dory, right?

Not exactly. All the photos I uploaded onto the blog under my old account got... DELETED. D: Not all my old photos are gone, because I hosted some off blogger. But very many of them are. And now I am discouraged from posting more, with a huge chunk of my blog missing. I can go back and find the missing photos and upload them again. But what a terrible mess! It's going to take ages.

I have no time for this. I am constantly exhausted with this annoying time change. Pesach cleaning is somewhat happening, but I can't put my whole self in it being so tired all the time. And I have to go to treatments for my back every weekday as well, which eats up more time and energy.

Can someone re-upload all my photos while I sleep? And then wake me when my blog looks good as new and Pesach is over??

Chanuka

Happy Chanuka, everybody!

All these photos are from last year... Interesting to see how much everyone changed! This year's Chanuka photos are still a work in progress. :) You know me. If they are up by Purim, I'll consider it on time. :D

A Good Choidesh!

Happy Rosh Chodesh Kislev!
We are getting very, very close to...

Chanuka!

 

{Zusha with the dreidel that he made}

What an exciting time of the year.

We celebrated five Chanukas in our old apartment, so everything was familiar. We set up Hillel's menora in the same spot, at the top of the stairs, and the boys' menoras took their place at the kitchen or dining room window. But this year we will have to make new memories and settle into new familiarity. Chanuka is the only yom tov that we haven't experienced in our new place yet.
So exciting!

Happy Everything!

A good Yom Tov, a good moed... a good yohr!
Happy new beginnings, happy sukkos celebrations, and a happy upcoming birthday to our almost three year old girl!

It's been one year since Adi took her first step. Two years since we started therapy. And three years since I got the most wonderful Simchas Torah present... my wonderful Adibaby!

I am surprised it took my boys this long to figure out something is different about their sister. But really, they never realized! They once asked me if they also had teachers come to teach them to walk and talk when they were babies. I told them that no; some kids learn it by themselves, and others need help. They asked me why Adi needs orthotics. I explained that they help her feet stand straight on the ground.

But still they never realized Adi was different.

Today we were preparing for Adi's birthday that's coming up on Friday. Gedalya, who was 3 not that long ago himself, said, "But she will be three, and she still won't know so many words!" Says the kid who started reading when he was half a year older than Adi is now.

Yesterday we went to a Chol Hamoed event by A Parent Speaks. It's an organization that is involved in the special needs community. It was just awesome. All my kids enjoyed. Adi got very into the craft, and danced to the live music. She wanted to get a fishie painted on her face, but backed out as soon as I sat her on the chair, after a 15 minute wait on line. Gah!

But the BEST part was... at the end they gave snack bags with a squeezy artificially colored drink, sour sticks, colored marshmallows and flavored chips. None of the things my kids are able to have! I brought them back, and instead of snickering, or rolling her eyes, or saying something like "come on, let them enjoy," she apologized to me! Apologized! In an environment like this, people know some kids can't have some things, even if they seem benign. 

Oh, and another best part: There were kids that actually shrieked louder than Adi! No one stared when Adi shrieked. Or when she threw herself on the floor and refused to let me pick her up. Everyone was able to be themselves. It was so beautiful and natural. My boys didn't even seem to notice that some of the kids had differences.

Events like these give me hope for the world. Everyone felt at ease. Happy. Gedalya stood on his head for a good percentage of the time. :) And you know what? He wouldn't do it at any other party. But this was a non-judgmental place. 

So talking about Adi's not-so-many words...

...here's just a sampling of her recent words and phrases:

hohie = horsie

toe-lue = turtle

goggie = doggie

guckie = duckie

bowie = birdie

han = hands

(Adi said, "doin han" when we were all making funny shapes with our fingers.)

hoon = phone

nowani = don't want it

awani = I want it

teen = train

weeng = swing

on/off

button

pan = pants

tawid = carriage

wolue = water

backpack

bock = book

cookie

ainga = traingle

(She finds them everywhere, like sails on boats...)

go-lee = girlie

pa-ee = potty

(The girl knows what to do and when, but has no patience to sit on the potty long enough!)

ponny = pony

(as in pony tail for the hair)

ca-yoo = color/draw

And what might be the best quip EVER:

"Oh, no! Aaah-di! Nah-nye!" (Oh, no! Adi! Not nice!) Sad that the most words she ever strung together are scolding words for her trouble-making!

But as long as she continues to make trouble, I'm happy! :D

Shana Tova!

Here I am, reporting from the *other side*. Heh heh. I really haven't updated in a long time, have I? It's a new year, a new chance to fall behind on blog posts, sleep and housework.

It's funny how I blame my lack of blogging and sleep on sweeping, laundry, and dishes... but those things remain neglected as well. So where does the time go? Parks, crafts, phone calls to doctors and specialists. I guess.

Adi is getting new braces for her feet. It's almost her birthday, and we have a genetics appointment coming up. She is aging out of Early Intervention and will be going to school soon. We need to have a meeting in order to continue services, and that meeting has to take place in the ten available days before her birthday. Yikes.

Talk about birthdays, I had mine recently. Yay! The boys drew presents for me. Adi's present was bedtime weaning. Notice I said "BEDTIME" weaning, not night weaning. She still nurses when she wakes up at night, but now she falls asleep without nursing. But now she is sick. So she screamed for over an hour at bedtime.

Everyone in the family is sick, actually. The boys missed a day of school. I think Gedalya might be well enough to go tomorrow, but I myself am not well enough to judge his state of health.

A bunch of people I know started cooking for Rosh Hashana a week or so before it began. I thought they were nuts. I was planning to do the cooking Wednesday, erev Rosh Hashana, and some on R"H itself. But those friends of mine really got to me, and I just couldn't help but start cooking Tuesday night. And I didn't even have to cook on Rosh Hashana at all! (Except rubya, black eyes peas, which I totally forgot about.)

Karsi: leek

I left some fried leek to accompany gefilte fish, and the rest I made into a kugel.

It was really yum!

Silka: spinach patties

Some steamed veggies:

I made kreplach (no photo- meat in dough to put in soup) and had so much extra ground beef that I had defrosted. So I had to use it up. Hamburgers. Oh, were they delicious!

Um, a meat kugel? I had extra dough and extra meat. I was desperate! But the kids really liked it.

 There was a lot more... salmon, soup, gefilte fish, FISH HEAD.

We recently found two snakes in our yard, bringing the summer's total to three.

It's officially fall...

Adi just came out of bed, so I leave you with a day in the park...