Sleep

So Landon, aka LB (landon baby) or Gogo bear, isn't the best nighttime sleeper I've ever known. But he sure does know how to nap in the car seat like none other. On more than one occasion he has fallen asleep before we even got out of the parking garage at work or driving down the street from home.  He can also fall asleep being held at the beach surrounded by friends and family.

Now if he could just channel that into good home sleep...

No Way

I was at work on December 23 and Avery called me at work to tell me she learned how to ride her bike. Jon just brought the bike along to the park, she hasn't really been interested in trying to ride lately. We took the training wheels off over 6 months ago and worked on coasting mainly. So he didn't think that he should bring the camera, it was just another day. But alas, she decided to figure it out. So on Christmas day, after seeing what Santa brought, opening tons of wonderful gifts, eating frittata and blueberry coffee cake, we all trekked over to the park to watch Avery in action. We are so proud. It is strange, I can't explain why it is such an accomplishment, but it's such a cool thing to watch my big little girl ride her bike all alone (and to see her write about it too!).

Hot as what?

There has been a recent hot spell in So Cal. The other day we were outside and Jon says "it is hot as Hades" to which Avery replies, "It is hotter than Katie's, because in Alabama there were thunder storms and clouds. But today is just hot. Hotter than Katie's".
Jon and I just smiled at each other. She cracks me up sometimes. Most of the time I forget what she says though.

Carnage in the Rapoport Garden

So last year, I lovingly planted a garden and tended to it everyday - watering, weeding and fertilizing.  We never got to eat ONE thing... Our dog Quincy got to it right when everything ripened and was ready to eat. He sacked and plundered our garden and made it look like a horrific crime scene.  All I found were tomato seeds and half eaten peppers all over the place. 

So this year I tried it again, only I decided I would outsmart him and put up a fence. I have been even more vigilant this year with watering, weeding and fertilizing. Everything is coming in really nice. We even got to eat a single delicious tomato that came early.

So last night I let Quincy outside and I guess he has been secretly planning his attack. We heard noises coming from outside, but I figured there was no way it was coming from our garden because of my fort knox like fence. I went out there and sure enough I smelled tomatoes in the air and that little stinker had breached the fence and was scarfing down some tomatoes. 

In the morning I went out to survey the carnage and thankfully he only got two of them. I then spent 25 minutes rebuilding and reinforcing my fence to protect the remaining tomatoes. 

Then Avery and I let him out of the house to test my engineering skills and this is what we saw...

Pictures from Last day of Preschool

End of Preschool

This week I have been acutely aware of the end of an era, the end of bringing Avery with me during the week when I drive to work. If I had to add up all the hours we have spent commuting since she was 3 months old, it probably ends up being thousands of hours in the car together. She has gotten so much more fun as the years have gone by. We have conversations about all kinds of things, from where the sun rises and sets to who she enjoyed playing with at school that day.

Last week Jon and I realized that it didn't make sense for her to go to school after 6/29 because she would only be there a few days in the next 2 months due to swim lessons, in-town company and a trip to the South, so I let her know 6/19 that she had 5 more days of school left. I thought she might be upset, but she was fine, happy even.

Recently, Landon has been crying incessantly on the drive home from school and Wednesday I sat in the front seat and marveled at how Avery will sing to him when I want to pull my hair out or scream! She must have sung 5 rounds of "Hush Little Baby" followed by "Twinkle Twinkle" followed by "Rock-a-bye Baby" and lastly "ABC's" until he Finally fell asleep. I will miss these precious moments. She also has taken to distracting him in the morning when I drop them off so he is not upset when I leave them. I hope he can start distracting himself now that she won't be with us. Friday was her last day. We made black-bottom cupcakes for the teachers and kids on Thursday. Avery was a big help in the kitchen, we made 8 dozen cupcakes! 6 dozen were mini cupcakes though. She loved licking the spatula and bowl.

Avery has been excited for her last day. She is excited to be "off school for the summer". I got through the morning ok, just a little teary eyed as I looked back to wave goodbye. Fine during the day until I went to pick them up and Teacher Edna, her teacher from blue group when she was 3 years old, had put a picture of her in the mailbox for us. I got totally choked up looking at how she has grown. We are so proud of Avery. She is growing up and we are excited for this next chapter in her life.

"Da"

Our little guy is growing up. He is funny and loving. He is slowly but surely outgrowing his "bang my head on the floor, or bite you, or hit you when I am frustrated" phase. Thank goodness.
He calls out to us throughout the day, "mama!!" "dada!" He says "da" for yes and often says "no!" when he means yes. Jon has figured out if he says no but you think he means yes, ask him to say please and if he says please (signing) then he really means yes. We have been asking him to say "Avery" for a few weeks now. He says something unintelligible and then we ask him again and he says "dada", reliably. It's so cute and sweet. The nickname "gogo bear" has seemed to stick, at least for now, thanks to Avery now we all call him gogo bear more than Landon.
He is about to transition to the toddler room at school next week. He will have the same teachers that Avery had when she was a little one. Teachers Sheila and Beverly. I like both of them very much and know that he will love them. I went to talk with Miss Sheila and saw all the little ones asleep on their cots. It is hard to believe he is finished with cribs at school, growing up. I also remember when Avery transitioned to this class they told me she would be drinking from cups and would not miss the bottle and they were right. So I have sort of just waited for him to go to the toddler class to start weaning the bottle aggressively because I know they will help me so much with this transition. They are doing lots of water play now that it is summer time and he will love this.
The teachers were sharing with me about seeing Avery after her piano lesson in the community area interacting with Landon during his snack time. He kept going to her and giving her hugs and he became upset when his teachers told him it was time to go back into the infant room so Avery said "Landon you need to go with your teachers into your room now" and he listened to her. They really are so sweet to each other, almost all the time.

The Great Flood of 2012

I should have known May 9th when I pulled up to the garage with the kids in the backseat after a long day of work and saw the garage door open and the wet-vac in the garage that something bad was going on. But I didn't. I should have known when Avery went inside and said "wow, look mommy!" that something bad was going on, but I didn't. I really thought it might still be a good surprise. But alas, our dining room had flooded. Jon had spent the past hour or so wet-vaccing the floors to get up as much of the water as he could. Over the course of the next week or so, our floors were slowly ripped up by various workers. We found mold, possibly from an old flood from before we bought the house. So we tried to see that as a silver lining, flood the house but get rid of mold. We also ended up having to remove about 1/2 the downstairs flooring, which got rid of a few bad scratches we had from the past year. Lastly, we got new baseboards which had been kind of shoddily done and now they look wonderful. This is the tiny hole in the pipe that caused all the trouble.

 We are so happy to have our house put back together again!

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.