Surprise! and More Dresses Than Most Dads Can Handle

Nahum and I got a fun surprise at the end of February.  Instead of an IUD preventing pregnancy there's now a baby.  Our 3rd, and final (greater steps will be taken), offspring is due in the early fall, probably October.  

Shayna is stoked about her baby "sister" but not so happy when I remind her that it could just as likely be a boy.  At which point she says, "If it comes out a boy, I'll cry."  She's decided that talking through my belly button is the best way to communicate and desperately wants to be able to feel the baby.  I had her poke my belly to feel the fat then the muscle underneath and explained the baby  was under all than and really tiny (about 2").  It's gonna be a long wait for her.  Luckily we've got a beautiful spring/summer on the way with a long trip to Israel to distract her.  After the initial shock and following acceptance of our new challenge, it's been the easiest pregnancy, both physically and mentally.  Yes, it's been a normal tiring 1st trimester but mentally it's been an easy acceptance of the physical takeover that I hated when pregnant with both Shayna and Elijah.  That could just be due to the sheer terror of dealing with a toddler, preschooler and a new born but I'm taking advantage and enjoying all the sensations that typically come with my pregnancies.

Elijah's latest obsession is dresses, or as he says it, "dretchy".  "Right back!" he shouts as he runs to their room, "Dretchy." 5 seconds later he hands me, or Nahum, his selection on it's hanger.  As he started wanting to change dresses throughout the day, I finally started documenting his attire of choice.  The kids have been on spring break but just before that, Elijah started wanting to wear a dress to school.  Nahum would have him show the dress to his teacher Ms. Nancy then would take the dress off Elijah and back to the car after dropping the kids off at school.  Elijah's insistence in keeping his dress on while out has grown so I wonder how successful that tactic will be on Monday when school starts again.  Shayna is always told, "what a pretty dress," whenever she wears one.  Elijah just wants the same attention and thank goodness the whole family is quite supportive of his choices.  I just try to keep them shorter if we're going to the gym or park so he can still climb easily.

Nahum recently spent a week traveling for work in southern CA and Las Vegas.  The kids and I did better than usual even though all our normal sitters were on spring break as well.  I had a 13yo come over a couple times and one visit from a new college sitter and that seemed to be all the break I needed to stay sane.  While Nahum flew home on Saturday afternoon, I even took the kids hiking at the Cascades trail.  They did awesome!  Shayna probably could have done the full 2 miles to the water fall, but Elijah still has some stamina to build.  We made it about 20 yds from the sawmill boiler (about 1/2mi from the trail head) before Elijah decided he was done hiking and either wanted to play with sticks and rocks or be carried.  We snacked by the old boiler then risked the rain by hiking quickly (Elijah on my shoulders) back to the car.  While there was thunder quite close, it never poured on us and left both kids with a happy taste of hiking in the mountains.  As soon as it warms up (still winter-esk here), I'm going to take the whole family, and a child carrier for when the boy, all the way to The Cascades.

Notice the orange blur of the trail.  That's speedy Shayna.

Birthday Girl, WHO, and "Pee Pee"

Happy 4th Birthday Shayna!!!  Nahum and I took Shayna out for dinner on the 27th.  Of course she chose the Sake House where she can get Ikura (salmon roe).  (That's the only sushi she'll eat, yet.)  She was quite well behaved and loved having Ima and Aba all to herself.  Poor girl got strep on her party day so we postponed the party until last Saturday.  She loved it.  Lots of bouncing, running, and princess playing.  Plus, her favorite pizza and a strawberry ice cream cake.

Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of things to gush about this year as it's more like the year of frustration.  I love her continued growth and development and it's so fun, when she's nice, to hear her talk.  She's got a great imagination so keeps herself busy around the house with all her daughters and animals.  Sometimes her "son" is involved too, this means Elijah gets bossed around a lot.  Luckily she also still loves running and jumping so it's not all bossy-pants time.  The frustration comes because she has been busy asserting her independence for the last few months which includes lots of yelling at me ("Fine!! Then I won't like/listen to you!!", "No!!!", or "I'm never going to talk to you again!" to say a few.)  or hitting, kicking and the occasional full body slam if I'm not naturally in hitting/kicking range.  Then there's the peeing in her bed before she goes to sleep to get attention thing.  It's just another attempt at social manipulation but I got so sick of doing laundry that once she pees now she just sleeps on the plastic mattress.  At least, after months of struggle, we figured out and implemented a, currently, working solution.  She was moved into the guest bedroom, so she won't disturb Elijah's sleep, given a laundry basket, a pile of clean shirts, pants, and towels (so she doesn't have to lay on the plastic) and one sheet, told to take care of herself and we don't want to see her until her clock light comes on in the morning.  She hasn't peed awake in 1-1/2 weeks!! The asleep peeing is still an issue but at least most of the time she takes care of the situation herself.  Now, if only the yelling and slapping me and shoving Elijah when he won't listen to her directives would lessen, I would be a very happy mama.

Two-years-old, now that's an age I love.  There's growing independence and communication but there's  still innocence and he listens so much more than my 3-now-4-year-old did/does.  (Plus, if he doesn't listen, I can still physically make him rather easily.) The communication thing has been the star for him in the last 2-3 weeks.  The crown jewel of which is he tells me, and others, when he needs to potty without any dribbles in his pants, even in the middle of an engrossing activity. He's also working really hard on helping get his pants off then on.  It's so nice to finally have a break through on that front.  He seems to add 1-2 new words to his vocabulary every day too and he's started to "read" books to himself, not just look at them but tell himself out loud the story of the pictures.  He also loves to tell people he's 2-years-old.  He goes around asking himself, "howyou?" then doing his best to hold up 2 fingers he shouts, "two!"  Whenever we go up and down stairs, we have to count them and he gets a thrill when I, or anyone else, hold up my fingers for counting.

The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding until the age of two and I am so excited to have made it that far with Elijah.  We made it 2 years, 1 month, and 3 days until I decided that I was done.  He would have gone on for who knows how long but has been content with the new situation as well.  He loves reading the "car" book before bed and having me sing "Visit the Moon".  He actually runs to his room before nap and night saying, "car, car, car?!" because he's so eager for me to read to him.  He has a few other favorites too.  It's been a week and, after the first 1.5 days, he's only asked to nurse 3-4 times.  I'm so happy that he's happy with the new rituals and that I don't feel bad at all for stopping nursing.

Nahum has been in CA & Vegas for the last week visiting 3 universities there.  He's had a good trip and we've done fairly well but will be so happy to welcome him home tonight.  I have a sitter with the kids this morning so I can have some time to myself at my favorite coffee shop.  The weather is so beautiful here that, as long as it doesn't rain again, I'm going to take the kids "hiking" this afternoon.  "Hiking" because I doubt they will walk far but at least we'll be outside in the forest/hills.

Last but not least, Shayna's latest labs (last week) were awesome again!!

Feb 24th: Visiting Aba at work during his 10-days-straight of work on 2 proposals.  The next generation of Professor Aravs is already hard at work too.

March 10th: Shayna's birthday party.

Leslie, Patricia, and Yaniv prepping snacks for the hungry jumpers.

Bouncy house/princess fun for everyone. (Genny, Elijah, Shayna, Mara?, and Peyton)

Enjoying strawberry ice cream cake (Matar, Nahum, Shayna, Elijah, Sofia, and Michelle).

A Little More About Elijah

Yesterday after nap time, I took the kids to the local pool for some fun, something I really need to do more of.  Elijah took to bossing me around like Shayna does her sitters at which point I realized he was using two-word sentences, just a day after I said he was still having trouble with that.  They consisted of my title and a command.

"Mama, hep" (help): which meant he wanted me to swim him around a bit.  He puts his chest in my hands and holds onto my forearms.

"Mama, back": when he wanted to be taken back to the ramp where he could run and splash in the water on his own.

"Mama, bo": when he wants me to swim up to the ramp next to him.  ("Bo" means "come" in Hebrew when one is speaking to a male. As this is what he hears a lot, this is what he repeats.)

It's like his language skills exploded in the last couple days and he's so excited to use them.

In addition to bossing me around, they both enjoyed jumping off the side into the pool to me.  Shayna is back to walking down the ramp to neck-deep level but instead of going back up she walks to the side to climb out.  She fell under once during a stroll but righted herself within a second, just as I got to her.  I helped her balance, told her how amazing she did, and, while startled, she didn't cry, recovered in a couple seconds, and continued playing with more enthusiasm.  I think those little easily corrected spills add to her confidence.

A month ago, we took Nahum to that pool for the first time.  These are some of the pictures from that trip.  Yesterday, we had Shayna's water-wings but she didn't put them on until the end so she was unassisted for most of the time, which is how I prefer her to be. Elijah will throw a fit if one comes near him with a floating device, thankfully as I think they should learn to handle the water without such assistance.

Elijah will also throw a fit if one comes near him with underwear to put on, not-so-thankfully.  Here he is hiding under the table from his pumpkin underwear while yelling, "nooo, nooo, nooo, nooo...."

Happy Birthday to My Baby Boy

Elijah officially turned two-years-old on February 6th.  He's been 2 in my mind for a while so it's nice to have it finally be official.  

We had a little party for him over the weekend with a handful of friends, including his best friend Henry from school.  He and Henry are a month apart in age and share the love of the game Chase, which they play together every chance they get.  They and the other kids enjoyed yelling and running around the house Saturday.  There were three 4yo girls, a 3yo boy, and three 1.5-2ish-year-old (lots of siblings) so it was a very mild gang compared to the usual ruckus.  While the noise wasn't nearly so piercing, they still managed to destroy the house.  Elijah is in love with Thomas the Train and his friends (he has me sing him the theme song at least once each night) so I made him a Thomas cake.  All the kids dutifully scraped every last drop of icing off while only nibbling at the cake.  Luckily, the grownup were not so picky.  (Shayna now asks for a Bambi cake, not gonna happen.)

A few stats about Elijah:

Favorite game: Chase and tickle: Even Shayna can get him giggling hysterically.

Best Friends: Shayna and Henry: I say Shayna too because he doesn't like doing anything without her.  She started dance class, he wants a pink leotard too so he can join her.  She goes to her friend Addison's house and he screams, "Addison, Addison," while trying desperately to climb into their car too.  He loves doing everything she does including wearing dresses and crowns to dance around the house.

Number of words: I have no idea.  He talks, we listen and try to answer.  Some things ("whereareyou?") are like one word to him as he has lots of trouble consciously putting two words together.  Maybe 2-3 dozen but it seems to grow a word every other day at least.

Physical Growth: 35.5" and 31.6lb (he wouldn't let the nurse measure his head, instead he hid under the chairs screaming, "letgo!, letgo!").  It's the first time he's been on the growth chart coming in about 75% and 92%, respectively.

Favorite color: He proudly calls everything, "purple," and seems to be happy with anything.  (Where as Shayna seemed to gravitate toward orange at an early age.)

Favorite song: Probably Thomas and Friends but he'll sing anything as singing is one of his loves.  He's got Baa Baa Black Sheep, ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Wheels on the Bus, and a couple others that I haven't figured out yet.  He doesn't have all the words down yet so he just puts his own sounds in there to keep the rhythm going until he gets to more words he can say.  Plus, he already sings better than Shayna.

Something that astounded me in the last week: He counted to 10.  He usually only says, "A, B, C," then jumps but when I wrote the numbers for Shayna's hopscotch, he beat me to their names each time.

Happy running birthday boy with Henry and Shayna in the back.

Running Princess

followed closely by a Henry and fairy Addison traffic jam.

Singing Happy Birthday to an anxious birthday boy (Gray, Lynn and Dan in background and Izzy next to Elijah).

Probably his favorite part as he loves singing.

He did awesome blowing out the candle...

but did not expect the smoke to fly in his face after.

Enjoying a Jewish December

We had a wonderful family Chanukah.  For the first time we remembered to light the candles every night. Since we were each busy with kids and fire, there are no pictures but I did do a video of the one night Nahum missed.  It's such a sweet video. Elijah is excited, Shayna lights the candles and attempts a prayer, and I attempt the prayers too.

The kids really got into the evening ritual and miss it now.  Nahum would sing a couple songs after lighting candles and we would dance with the kids while he sang.  That had them both laughing (that's what Shayna asks to do at the end of the video).  We even did presents for the first time.  Since we have enough toys already, I only gave them stuff on two nights which they intensely played with for the following few days.  The highlight for Shayna is the Fisher Price doctor kit with the stethoscope replaced with a real one since the toys these days are such duds.  I'm thinking of adding the infant blood pressure cuff to it as well since I'm hopeful I won't be taking her blood pressure anymore.  (The steroids she was on post-transplant elevated her blood pressure dangerously so we had to give her medicine to keep it down.  However, if it happened to be down when we gave the medicine, we could kill her so I learned how to take a manual blood pressure reading from our awesome nanny-nurse Katie.)  It's fun to have extra medical supplies that I don't use anymore.  Shayna pulls out the kit everyday to happily administer shots and check vitals.  They also got a couple puzzle type toys each.  Elijah has amazed me with his easy shape and color matching abilities.

The last thing that got me was Elijah saying the prayer as I took him to bed on the last night.  He says very few intelligible words but is quite the yakker anyway so it wasn't the defined words but the flow and texture of his speech.  Beautiful.  When he starts speaking English, I swear he's going to start with full sentences.

Liverday 2012

I cannot believe we are already three years out from transplant.  I remember comparing 3-year survival statistics, along with others, and thinking three years out seemed so very, very far away.  That was over three years ago during the summer we were trying to wrap our brain around what our life had become with all the possible roads we could be lead down.  We have been so fortunate to have been taken on one of the great ones.  I could not ask for a better place to be three years post-transplant.

Life feels so normal and my little girl is so healthy.  We did labs last week with stellar results and Shayna didn't shed a tear.  Today we had a beautiful party with wonderful old and new friends.  My parents are in town helping so much.  It's a magical time.  Thank you to all of you who have shared this journey with us or joined us along the way.

Here's this year's card:

Front

Inside

Back

Happy Halloween

October has come and gone in a flurry of beautiful, warm days filled with much time spent outdoors playing and digging in the dirt.  At the end of September, one last attempt was given with a new contractor to get us a back yard full of green, soft grass.  With the dirt loosened and mainly mat free after his work, I started two new garden spaces on either side of our Sugar Maple and sandbox.  The new grass is still young but the yard looks beautiful and, the week before October ended, I finished the two new gardens in the back and the one that I had started last May in the front.  Even in the fall, they add a much needed texture and life to both sides of our yard.  Plus, I had so much fun designing, mixing dirt, and planting.

The following pictures were taken on the 28th just before hurricane Sandy moved in.

The front garden which has some ornamental grasses, cone flowers, an azalea, and two lilacs, all of whichwill eventually hide the electric box most of the year.  There's also a pear tree and lots of perennial flowers and bulbs.

 My new gardens in the back on the south and north sides of the Sugar Maple and sandbox, respectively.  The kids love the paths and it keeps them from trampling the rest of the garden in their excitement to see dirt.

The green leaves just above the purple violets are a lilac bush that will grow to 4-6' tall and round.  I'm curious to see the progression since it came to me, by mail, so very small.  

Besides having time and energy for a major gardening push, two other miracles occurred at the beginning of October.  I joined Blacksburg Crossfit and spent a weekend in DC with my old college friend Marya and no kids.  The DC trip with a blessing as I've been needing a break for some time.  I was successfully able to fully remove myself from worry over the kids as soon as I hit the road and Nahum did not need to call once for help or advice.  We had a couple sitters to help him and give him a break over the 2.5 days I was gone.  He did awesome both on his own and with the sitters.  (I hadn't trained the newer one very well so Nahum helped both Adrianna and myself in giving her a second house tour, advice with the kids, and showing her where the diapers are.)  Elijah was a little upset for the following week that I had had to gall to "abandon" him for a couple days but, besides that, the trip was a huge success both in my reconnecting with Marya and just getting a break.  I got to stay up late and sleep in, someone (Marya) made me breakfast and coffee in the morning and did my dishes, and we went for a beautiful, lazy bike ride from Marya's condo through Rock Creek Park.

Crossfit!!! I'm in love.  Other than my joining and going regularly twice a week, nothing else miraculous has occurred but, if anyone is familiar with my life before, for October that is enough.  I have not has the mental or emotional energy or time to exercise regularly since I got pregnant with Elijah.  Getting through each day and week was enough of a roller-coaster slog as I could handle so to be able to regularly enjoy tough exercise again is beautiful.

Oh my, that's a lot about me (yet another sign life has improved greatly over the last two months).  I better move on to the kids since that is what everyone really wants to hear about.

They continue to be wonderful and trying all at the same time.  Elijah has, hopefully, reached a peak frustration with his lack of language.  He can say many, many words but is so busy that he cannot apply them in the midst of any activity.  Last weekend we saw a breakthrough when he came to me and asked for water, "wa, wa?"  It had never happened before and has happened a couple times since.  Other than that, he turns into a limp or very strong, wriggling eel when we ask him to help us dress him, go potty, pick up some mess he just made, etc.  All of which he and we know he is perfectly capable of doing since he's done them many times before.  Oh, he will also run away shaking his head and yell-singing, "Noooooooo," with a gleam in his eyes.

Shayna has also been working on expanding my ability for patience with her simple, "No, I don't want to," etc when asked to pick up her toys, put away her dishes, put her clothes where they belong, get dressed, etc.  I tried the toys-go-in-a-trash-bag-in-the-basement technique to which she replied, "yes, do that," and was totally un-phased as I did.  With that not working well and time outs no longer working much, I moved on to longer periods of time either in the guest room or her room ("Go to your room until Aba is home, lunch/dinner is ready, your cloth are on," etc).  That seems to be much more effective as it removes her stubborn statements or yells from my presence and she usually gets bored enough that she behaves much better for the rest of the day.  Elijah is allowed to come in to play with her, which is another blessing because now I'm free to do something uninterrupted for a few minutes.  (She knows she'll be in even more trouble if she's mean to him and how boring it is without him so is usually nice.)

Shayna does continue to be a wonderful big sister for the most part.  She has those normal impulses during play like "I wonder what will happen if I fling him around by his shirt" at which he usually runs into something hard, starts crying, and I hear her say, "it's okay, Elijah, it's okay."  When I come to investigate, she quickly states, "I gave him a hug and kiss," plus she freely admits what happened (most of the time) so I don't punish too much since she was truthful.  We talk and she resists those impulses for the rest of play.  (She does do things out of anger or frustration sometimes too, which do result in punishment.)

Halloween week was a lot of fun this year as Shayna could anticipate it and Elijah learned to say candy, "Nandy? Nandy?"  Shayna was excited to go as Cinderella (it is a costume she usually can only wear around the house).  Elijah was not so happy about the duck suit until I told him he was a duck and showed him in the mirror.  At which he smiled and said, "duck, duck." (He loves ducks as much as Shayna.)  On Friday the 26th we went to VT's sorority/fraternity row trick-or-treating extravaganza (that's where almost all the Halloween pictures are from), on Saturday we went to First & Main (a group of stores that had an awesome juggling act booked and lots of other fun activities including trick-or-treating at the few businesses left there), and on Wednesday we went to the Baptist Church's trunk-or-treat (too cold for pictures) and did our first door-to-door trick-or-treating at a very small cluster of  houses where we knew people.  Elijah learned right away to look for the bowl of candy and was very picky about which piece he took, dum-dums being his favorite.  (I've never seen a toddler mull over a random bowl of candy like that.  He did it every time and when people tried to hand him candy instead of present the bowl he continued to search for the bowl totally ignoring the person trying to hand him candy.)  It was also a great time to practice saying, "thank you" clearly and directly whenever someone gave them something.   A couple of the lingering effects are whenever Elijah wants a door open, instead of just knocking like he used to, he knocks and says, "Nandy? Nandy?" (someone's bedroom, the front door, garage door, etc) and Shayna is now earning her candy back with her first ever chore chart.  She is supposed to help me put the dishes away (she does all the plastic/low-belonging stuff), put her clean, folded clothes away, pickup her toys/dirty clothes, and not talk back.  If she does all that each day by 6:45 each evening and has less-than three strikes for back-talk, she gets two or three pieces of candy (size dependent).  If she doesn't, then she gets to watch Elijah eat the one piece he gets.  So far, it's been great for all of us.

Our annual visit to Sinkland Farm and its pumpkin patch with tractor ride was on October 13.

Shayna even got to ride on her first pony.

We enjoyed the final "fruit" of my garden on October 31:  My first ever successfully grown watermelon.  If was tiny but tasty.

Shayna showing off what an awesome big sister she is.

Nahum got to join us for the first 2/3 of the outing before he went to give his "Paranormal Universe" talk that evening

Each sorority had candy and an activity.  They put on an impressive show.

The last two things to tell about are Elijah got his first hair cut and we did are first ever professional family pictures.

Oct 4: baby-man gets turned into little-man.

But before that, on Oct 3, we did professional pictures with his still curly baby hair.

On one final happy note, Shayna's liver labs were fantastic yet again!