Water Slide Fun!

Daddy Can 'Do

Avery loves to have her hair done. She would love if I put it in 2 braids every day. I lack the dexterity and the know-how to do it on a regular basis, so most days she is content with a ponytail +/- headband. Today I came home sick from work and found Avery with a ponytail. I wasn't sure if it was the same one from the prior day, but it turns out Daddy can make a mean-looking ponytail, with a little guidance from our girl.
Never mind that both kids were out of their pajamas and it was only 10 AM on a Saturday. Very impressive. No joke, Jon makes things happen on his days home alone with the kids. There is always park time, farmer's markets, jogs in the stroller, and vegetables on their plates. I'm a lucky mama and they are some lucky kids. And he, as a husband of a nurse practitioner who works weekends, is lucky too, to have this precious time with the kids that a lot of dads don't have (I think)!

Published

About 2 years ago an acquaintance of mine at work approached me to see if I might be interested in authoring a chapter for a Pediatric Surgical Nursing textbook; specifically to write about 1 of 2 neonatal surgical issues. After coercing my friend to co-write the chapter with me, I graciously accepted. Emi and I made a good team, I think. She could always motivate me when I felt overwhelmed and she is much more organized than I am. I brought to the table that I had written a chapter before, although about a much less complex and more concrete procedure rather than a complicated and at times controversial disease process. Somehow the deadline managed to coincide with Emi changing jobs and our big move and the birth of Landon. We were able to buy a little extra time, which put Emi stuck coming to the new house on several occasions, while I tended to a newborn and we reviewed our final drafts. The actual publishing of a textbook takes a long time. We submitted our final draft in March of 2011. I have since told Emi, don't ever let me do this again!!
Our editor was a wonderfully helpful woman, Dr. Carmel McComiskey from Maryland, who actually came to speak to the Advance Practice Nursing group at CHLA shortly after our chapter was finalized. I had the pleasure to meet her after she spoke. I stood in line to meet her and said "Hi, I am Karen Rapoport, I just wanted to shake your hand" and she said "No come here and let me hug you, you did a wonderful job." So nice to get that kind of affirmation from a really smart, inspirational lady. The textbook arrived at my house on April 12th; 13 months after we submitted our final draft. Remember Emi, never again :)

Egg Hunt Preparation

My friend Emi is a crafty girl. She and her husband recently came to have brunch with us and then we sent the boys to play tennis. I recruited Emi to help Avery decorate a little bag for an upcoming easter egg hunt. Of course she did a great job, insisting that gluing paper eggs onto a felt bag was not going to cut it. She even inspired/forced me to find the glue gun. Avery had a fun time. Here's a picture from the hunt, with the cute girl holding a cute bag full of loot!

Picture Day

Picture day at Avery's school has never before coincided with a day she was there. Finally this year it did. How they could not get my perpetually smiley boy to smile is beyond me. Good thing they weren't all super cute since they were ridiculously pricey.

Language Explosion and other things Landon

Getting ready to throw a block...

Always Climbing

In the past week, Landon has gone from randomly saying words like "nana", "dada" and "mama" without understanding the meaning of these words, to now saying and understanding all sorts of words. He now says "hi", "more", "mama", and "dada". He will yell upstairs to Jon saying "dada!!", it is so sweet and funny. He holds on to my leg while I try to make dinner saying "mama, mama". I love(d) language development with Avery and look forward to all the things that L will learn over the next months and years. He also follows verbal directions much better and knows who Avery and Quincy are. When we ask for a kiss he leans forward to give us his forehead. He has one molar mostly in, one that has broken through and the other two are very swollen. He loves to dance and clap when music plays. He also loves to carry books and toys around the house. He loves to throw balls, along with all other toys. He can do the "wheels on the bus go around and around" which he apparently learned at school. After a month of rejecting shoe-wearing he will finally wear shoes. He loves to run around, climb stairs, touch leaves, and occasionally throw down a mean tantrum hitting his head on the floor. He is a sweet, busy, and adventuresome little boy. We love him so very much!

Exploring plants at the Getty

Special Visitors

My sister and her family ventured out on a cross-country trip in March. We were so fortunate that their adventure included a 7 day stop at our house. It was only going to be 5 days but thankfully for us their camping in Zion became pretty much impossible when it was forecast to snow those days, so they came early to us! Yay! We enjoyed some great meals, art projects at home, art projects at The Getty, a day at Disneyland with friends, and a trip to the Palos Verdes tide pools. Although we went at high tide rather than low tide, it was still a wonderful time together with rock collecting and exploring.
I have taken to crying like a baby whenever my sister leaves me. It reminds me of how my dad's mom, GranHaysel would cry every time we (especially my dad) would leave her house. I understand what she must have been feeling a lot more now than I did as a child/teenager. My dad was the only one of her five boys to venture too far away, all the way to California from Georgia, so I am sure she wanted him closer, especially as 2 of his brothers lived so close to her, just on either side of her house.
I always wish we could be closer geographically speaking to my sister's family and I see that is not in the near future for us. It makes me sad but it also inspires me to get on with planning our next time together. Thank you for coming all this way, over 5000 miles round trip, to spend the week with us. It will undoubtedly be one of our favorite weeks of the year. I only have a few iPhone pix from the week, mostly of food but hope to post some others from the real camera and from Katie's pix, sometime soon.

caramel sauce made from boiling condensed milk + homemade panna cotta with berries

Auntie Kate helping Avery sew the mermaid top to the outfit she made Av for her doll

Teaching Katie to make matzo ball soup, which I learned from GG

Simon Says with Bee at the Getty: Elliott, Mazie, Lucia and Avery

Landon exploring the leaves at the Getty

Playing in the family room at The Getty

Landon did not cooperate for this picture but we took it anyway, just as we did 3.5 years ago when Avery turned one. I love Van Gogh and love this painting.

So Proud

Redondo Kite Festival

This weekend our neighbors invited us to a Kite Festival near the Redondo Beach Pier. It was a beautiful day with tons of kites flying through the air. Avery enjoyed flying her kite for a little while, until it got taken out by a shark kite. Then we just watched all the kites and Avery built sandcastles. The babies (Landon and our neighbor Olivia) hung out on the blankets, which I didn't capture a picture of. It was a great day. Oh and we walked there and back. It was 6 miles and took us hours and hours because Avery walked at least 3 of those miles, in Uggs. I hope to make this a family tradition, excluding the walking part of it.

See the shark kite already imfringing on her airspace, it wasn't long before ours was taken down

Avery Skiing for the 1st time and seeing snow at Big Bear

Avery Skiing for the 1st time and seeing snow!

Big Bear

We rented a cabin in Big Bear this last weekend. We were fortunate enough to spend time with dear friends, the first night with Deirdre and family, the second night with Bjorg, Abdul and their boys. As usual not enough pictures were taken but here are a couple of the girls with the tiny snow man they built. Little did we know that by the time we left the mountain on Monday we could have built a real snowman!

Ella, Avery and Charlotte

Sweet little Snowman

Sound asleep after skiing all morning in the falling snow

Siblings

Now at school, when I drop the kids off, Landon doesn't go into the infant room, he sits out with the older babies and big kids to have breakfast. This morning I asked Avery to sit with him at the baby table. She begrudgingly obliged. I didn't get a great picture of both of them so I include all 3 mediocre pictures.

Freecycle Patio table

So we recently expanded our patio for the purpose of putting a dining table out there. I was going to go the usual route and buy one when I came up with idea of building one... I will let you decide if it was good or bad.

We have several slabs of quartz laying in our backyard from our kitchen. I have wanted to do something with them because it seems like such a waste of a really cool material



I needed legs for the table, but they would have to be really strong to hold the weight of the quartz and they would have to be weather proof. After going to home depot I made my way into the outdoor fence section and realized that if I took a small fence post and turned it upside down and then cut 5 inches off, it would make a great outdoor leg. Each leg cost me around $8. I just had to make sure they were all cut the exact same size so it wouldn't wobble. Thank you articulating saw!


Next the guy at home depot recommended the right kind of plywood for the slab to sit on and showed me how to counter sink bolts. I then had to weatherproof the plywood with some primer.



Then it was just a matter of putting it together and praying the table didn't wobble


I then took the slabs and glued them down with industrial glue. The table probably weighs over 200 lbs and doesn't budge. Here's the finished product that cost me a grand total of $40.

Bye Bye Binkie

Landon has had an 11 month love affair with his green binkie, paci, binkbink. Daddy decided L's New Years resolution should be to give up the binkie. Mommy was not so sure about this decision, I felt really sad for the little guy. I kept saying "but he loves his binkie". Actually we started talking about taking it away months ago, but I just couldn't bring myself to actually do it. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for everyone, Daddy was right. It was one day of a little extra crying at naptimes and then our sweet boy was back to normal. Although now he has apparently found a new binkie amongst all his Christmas and Chanukah presents. Haha.
**The top picture was sent to me by one of Landon's teachers at school. I exchanged numbers with 2 of his teachers in Infant 1 and occasionally they have taken a cute picture of him and texted it to me. These brighten my days. He was so very loved by all his teachers, we have been so fortunate.

Avery update

1) Avery is constantly saying funny and surprising things, like how she calls meatloaf "meatlove".
2) She asks funny questions like "did you wish you had a brother when you are a children?" I don't correct her grammar with this one because I love how she says "when you were a children", too cute.
3) For a while now Avery has wanted to be an astronaut, she loves the moon and thinking about rocket ships. She likes to ride the rocket ships at Disneyland. She also thinks Santa and the North Pole are in outer space. But recently she's had a change of heart. "I don't want to be an astronaut anymore, I want to be a teacher, like the yellow group (her current class) teachers. I want to be a strong teacher like them. Or a pre-K teacher, they are even stronger. Actually a college teacher because they are a lot stronger." Where do these things come from? (11/4)
4) Starting in October, Avery started taking piano lessons at school with Teacher Mary every Friday morning. She really enjoys it and has been practicing her little songs. I am reminded to ask her how piano lessons were each Friday when I pick her up and see the big LH on her left hand and RH on her right hand and the little numbers on her fingers. Jon bought a keyboard and the whole family enjoys it.
5) This year Avery has enjoyed art class, gymnastics and ballet/tap. She can't do all three classes during the same session so we have to pick 2. After 6 months of gymnastics and nearly learning to do a cartwheel, she elected to go back to art class and has really enjoyed all the little projects, playing with playdoh and painting.
6) Way back on July 10 Avery counted to 100 for the first time. She has a gift with numbers, I think. I always loved math, until calculus. I hope that she loves math too, maybe even calculus, although I won't be able to help her.
7) Avery also has a gift with nicknaming Landon. It started a few months ago when she took a name from a beloved little book "HUG" and applied it to Landon. It has evolved every few weeks since then. Bobo, Sho, Shabadu, Jun, Gogo.
8) We love this girl!

Hannukah Song

Rudolph the Red Nose Reigndeer

So Happy Together

What would I do without my beloved bookclub? I feel so blessed to have five wonderful friends from college and beyond, along with their precious families, with whom to share our lives. We enjoyed a lovely Christmas party at Kelly and John's new and improved house. Our ever-growing families enjoyed an evening of playing and gifts for the kids, yummy drinks and dinner, and the ease of conversation with old friends. Laura and Tim were missed, maybe next year we can all be together!?

Landon and his buddy, Quinn

The big kids in the under-stair nook

November Sledding In LA

Driving Lessons

Infant 2

Our little baby is ready to transition from the baby room (infant 1) to the cruiser/walker room (infant 2). It is hard to believe but it's true. For several weeks now the teachers in Infant 1 have been picking him up when the administrators visit their room so they can't see how mobile he is. He has been so loved by his teachers Carolyn, Young, Evelyn and Gina. One day when I was taking him home early because he was sick they said they would take Landon sick over some of the other kids healthy any day. He has been so happy and well adjusted.

In Infant 2 he will learn to walk, feed himself, sit at a table for meals, have music/dance time and be reunited with his friends who have recently transitioned too. He will be loved, I am sure, but it will be different. I never thought with Avery when she was a baby "oh these little babies will become her friends in a couple of years" but now I think about that for him. Likely one of these little boys will become a best friend for the first 5 years of his life, so I do look at them differently. Sweet growing babies. The picture above was sent to me by one of his Infant 1 teachers to show him sitting at the big kid table.

So You Think You Can Dance or Material Girl?

Karen and I personally guarantee you that our latest video from last night will put a smile on your face. During the video try to listen to a quick chorus line "It's Not Acceptable"

Independence: A lesson (sort of) learned

When I started grad school in 1998, I was fresh out of college. I relocated to a new city where I knew no one and was fortunate enough to make 2 of the most wonderful friends, Angel and Aubrey. When we started school Angel had at the time a 4 year old daughter. I can see her sweet little face to this day (now she is a beautiful 18 year old woman). I learned so much from Mama Bear Angel, she was such a good friend to us youngins. I watched her love her daughter with all her heart. This was something I guess I had never seen from that perspective. None of my friends had kids at that time, we were still just kids. I distinctly remember that Angel would allow Rebecca to dress herself, even if it was a crazy little ensemble. I remember thinking I wasn't sure if I would be able to do that with my own kid, that I might not have the courage. I remember thinking that again once I had Avery. But nowadays, when we don't have anywhere too important to be :) I try to foster this independence in Avery by letting her choose what she wants to wear. I don't even go in her room, because if I did I would probably have to stop her or provide recommendations. Here is the recent outfit that got me thinking to write about Angel and Rebecca. I love and miss them as they live too far away!
Isn't she wonderful in this delightful ensemble!?!

Post-bath Hairdo Fun

Tee hee.