Ten Tinies

The tiny things in a kids' life are sometimes the most interesting and important ones. Not to mention cute! They are the details that are most often forgotten, but ones that you'd really want to remember.

I'm going to start recording the tidbits of everyday life, and once I have ten, I'll post them.

Here are ten tinies that I have in my mind right now.

1> The first Tiny is... tiny! That's what the boys call chocolate. When Zusha was little, we'd give him chocolate, but tell him he can only have a "tiny" piece. So it stuck! And Zusha passed it on to Gedalya. So now, chocolate in our house is called Tiny. When I call Adel a tiny baby, the boys interject and say, "She's an apple! She's a potato chip!"

Zusha's Tinies:
2> Zusha sometimes mishears new words he picks up from cheider, but refuses to listen to me when I correct him. So Clics used to be "clips" for a long time. And envelope is embelow.

3> Zusha calls a computer mouse an airplane!

4> He just loves actocavu! (That's avocado, for those that aren't multilingual enough. )

Gedalya's Tinies:
5> Gedalya is always either a baby zebra or a baby penguin. Haha.

6> Gedalya can't say "girl." He says "groll." Rhymes with "crawl." That's what I call Adi now, as well as meibooboo- Gedalya's version of maidele.

7> The poor kids always gets his hair caught by Adel's chubby fist! He has an obsession with touching Adel's face, so he gets really close in, and SWIPE! Adel has a handful or orange curls. Ouch.

Adel's Tinies:
8> For some reason, Adel likes to be on the bare wood floor MUCH better than on a mat or blanket. When I put her on her tummy on a blanket, she doesn't last more than 7 seconds before bursting out in tears. But on two occasions recently, I put her on the floor, and she stayed happily on her tummy for 15 minutes or more! Same goes for her back. Today she stayed on her back on the floor for ONE HOUR. She didn't have any toys, but just waved her arms and legs around and giggled.

9> Whenever Zusha passes by Adel, she starts smiling at him and making noises to get his attention. It works especially nicely when she's a bit fussy.

10> She loves to have her diapers changed, and giggles during the process. When she's crying and I put her on my bed to change her, she knows what I'm doing, so she calms down and smiles.

Yippeeee

My house is PESACHDIK! Except for kashering, but that will be done tomorrow, after 24 hours of no sink and stove use. So excited! I'm farther ahead than I ever was, I think!
We have no food now, though. Haha. We're eating pistachios, and my two little squirrels are crawling on the floor, insisting I throw nuts to them. So I do.

Last night the boys went to sleep SO late- after 9! I was losing my mind. I had so much to do, and I was so tired. Today the cleaning lady did a lot, B"H. By mid-day everything was ready. And as a treat for me, the boys actually went to sleep at a normal time, without fighting, giggling or plotting against me .

I just came back from a partial shopping... will have to finish more tomorrow!

Around Town

"Zebra Pigeon" as per the Poozils.


Our wintry friends...

whom we had the pleasure of feeding and observing...

are no doubt as glad as I am...

to see THIS:

after months and months of THIS:

Maya Wrap

When I was pregnant with Gedalya, I was really not looking forward to dragging two children up and down the steps in our old apartment building. We lived on the fourth floor!
Zusha wasn't able to walk up without holding on yet, and the hallway stairs were so dirty that I couldn't possibly let him touch them, or the railings. (I wasn't being neurotic. By dirty, I mean bodily fluids, including blood, and roaches that died on the stairs and stayed there until they decayed and disintegrated. Ahem. Back to happier things.)

So I needed a way to carry the new baby upstairs while holding on to Zusha's hand. I didn't want anything too complicated (I was only going to use it to bring the baby up and down) or flashy (no one in BP wore their babies, and I felt a bit self conscious.) So I got a black Hotslings pouch.
I really liked it! It was convenient, and really worked nicely to calm Gedalya when he was hungry and needed to wait five minutes before we got home.

Then, when Adel was born, I wanted more options, since I didn't feel funny being the only baby wearer in BP anymore. So I got another Hotslings pouch (in olive green) and my mother in law bought me a Maya Wrap.
I tried out the wrap in the beginning, when Adel was a newborn, but it does have a learning curve, and I haven't mastered it yet. And since Adel cried in it that one time, I decided to give it a try sometime later again.

Well, I pulled it out again recently, and WOW! I think I'm in love. It is so comfortable. The adjustable rings are awesome. I love the custom fit. Adel seems to love it as well.
And as I mentioned before, the long and wide material is a great nursing cover.


Happy squished little baby girl!

The Zusha Kid

It's getting a bit tough to take good photos of my big boy. He is in cheider during the sunniest hours, and he's not always in a good mood when he comes home. Not to mention the stage in which he sticks out his tongue and makes faces at me when he sees the camera pointed at him!

But finally, I did manage to get some nice ones. He was climbing on exercise bars at the park, having a grand time. And a grand time makes for grand pictures!

Feeling Accomplished

We're not done Pesach cleaning, but we're pretty close!
Yesterday and today I washed the big stroller. I have the two lightweight ones left, and the frame of the double (seats are clean.)
Yesterday I did 42 trillion loads of laundry, and folded all the kids' stuff. I still have a pile roughly the size of a small volcano to fold and put away.
Today I did the dining room chairs, finished up the kids' room/toy room. So now, both bedrooms are CLEAN! The dining room is CLEAN! 1.5 strollers down, 3.5 to go. The stairs also need to be vacuumed, and the ENTIRE shopping done.
Kitchen is clean, but will get chometzed up over Shabbos. On Monday the cleaning lady will come to give the house a once-over, and we'll be ready to kasher and cover!

Today I tried out "Space Bags," the ones you fill with clothes and suck the air out with a vacuum cleaner. It was so cool to watch it shrink before my eyes. All the clothes up to 6 months are packed away. The bag is pretty small, HEAVY, and hard as a rock.

Annnnd... today while I was nursing Adel, Zusha found a packet of spelt couscous I was planning on preparing for Shabbos. He brought it to my room and asked what it was. I told him it's chometz and he must bring it back to the kitchen. But instead, he pushed on the inflated bag, popped it, and sent the thousands of tiny couscous balls rolling all over the freshly cleaned dining room and bedroom.
Oyoyoyyyyy.
The chometz spread all over the floor, and hid in the cracks between the walls and floor.
Took me at least a half hour to clean the work!

If any sentences in this post are incoherent it's because I am half asleep. Sorry!

Warm Spring Day. Classic!

The weather is finally beginning to resemble the season... which calls for a big outing! It was Erev Shabbos, but we still played outside most of the day.

Here I go again, using Adel as an entertainment prop for the boys. She seemed pretty apathetic to all the "fun" we subjected her to. The boys, on the other hand, were beyond themselves with excitement that Adel is playing in the park just like them!



But this... this is real joy. Zusha's presence never fails to make Adel smile and squeal with glee.


The following photos are probably my favorite ones of all three Poozils (for whoever asked )



This is also a favorite... but comes in second place, since not all the faces can be seen properly.


They climbed up a tall ladder, and Zusha kept shouting, "I climbed till the sky! I'm in the sky!"


Six weeks till we cut this... taking all the photos I can! LOL