Ben and His Mini Twin

At Temple for Sukkot.

Maybe She Won't Be Wearing Pull-Ups to Kindergarten After All

Ok, I did not really think she'd be wearing pull-ups to Kindergarten anyway. But, it is true that we've had potty training battles out the wazoo with Rebecca, and to this day she still wears a pull-up to bed at night. (Ben, in contrast, was out of night-time pull-ups shortly after turning 3, although I believe he did back-slide a couple of times after that briefly).

Rebecca's been on both Detrol and Ditropan in an effort to curb presumed bladder spasms that were preventing her from being able to stay fully dry, but these last few days without having to take medicine, she has been dry BOTH DAY AND NIGHT. Which has never ever happened before. Nighttime dryness- we are talking, she has NEVER EVER stayed dry all night long A SINGLE TIME. And now, TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW, she has been dry. Without medication.

Maybe, the magic of turning 5 has kicked her bladder into gear. Whatever the reason - YAY! I am even starting to think, maybe after another week or so of this, we can say goodbye to the pull-ups at night! Fingers crossed.

Caroline Update (9 1/2 months)

So I haven't talked much lately about Caroline's milestones and she is starting to do some pretty cool stuff! She has this adorable "byebye" wave, where she holds her arm out straight and waves just her fingers, so it kind of looks like she is trying to get something sticky off her hand or something ;) And she has perfected her army crawl, she can get around FAST! She is also showing signs of being about to lift her tummy off the ground and start crawling the "right" way.

Also she is starting to be able to push herself up from her tummy to sitting, and has started attempting to pull up on things, like, the side of the bathtub yesterday for example (kind of a dangerous spot to practice pulling up, though).

Also, she say "da da", "ma ma" and "ba ba" and I swear she sometimes says them somewhat appropriately ;) Like this morning when Joel came downstairs and I said, "Look there's Daddy," she said "da da". And when we were leaving day care, and I told her to wave bye bye, she said "ba ba". Coincidence???? I don't know, I think I have a future Nobel Laureate on my hands.

First Blog Post From New iPhone

(It's story time)

5 Year old Well Checkup and Scream Fest

This is the first time I have NOT been present at a well-checkup for one of my children. Yes, even all those baby appointments, I have never missed one. But today I had a ton of work to do and Joel had, well, none, so he had the honor of escorting Rebecca to her check-up.

Which was fine with me because this one was The One With All the Shots (as Ben says, still having fond memories of his own 5 year appointment I am sure). Four of them in fact - Rebecca came home tear-stained and covered in various shades of neon bandages. "Were you brave?" I asked. "No," she replied after a moment's hesitation. Apparently, there was a lot of screaming. And thrashing. It's just as well that I skipped this one.

Rebecca is 39 pounds and 43 inches tall. This is 50th percentile for weight and 65th for height. She didn't catch the tall gene from her siblings, apparently. Besides the shots, the rest of the visit was uneventful from what I understand.

Sorry to do that to you on your birthday, Becca! We made up for it at home with more presents after dinner.

Officially a Birthday Girl

Baby's Got Back

Joel thinks the cramming of Caroline into skinny jeans is cruel ( also it required quite a bit of work). In my defense, she has to wear 18 month clothes and most 18 month olds are not built nearly the same way as 9 month olds are!

Becca's 5th Birthday Party

Birthday number 5 is not until Tuesday -- also coincidentally the start of Yom Kippor, so not the best time to have a party. We celebrated today with a dozen of her (mostly school) friends. I think we are going to have to say goodbye to the co-ed parties after this for a while! We could get away with it this year because a lot of her friends are still four, in fact all of them I think, though a couple of them turn 5 in the next month or so. I did get an exasperated, "Oh, WHY did you have to invite GEORGE?!" when reviewing the guest list with her yesterday though. (George was very well behaved).

Anyway, it was the first time in a few years that we were brave enough to have the party at our house, and it went pretty darn well I think. The weather was great, so the kids did their activities (bead stringing, music, dancing) outside on the back deck, and played in the yard to burn off their sugar high from the birthday cake. We sat 6 inside at the breakfast room table and 6 outside on the deck for the cake-eating, and everything seemed to work out just fine. Rebecca only had one tantrum which involved storming into the house and locking herself in the downstairs bathroom. But, she came out after a minute and was fine ;) We had bagels, fruit, and coffee besides the cake, since the party was an early one - 10am to noon (I like to get birthday parties out of the way early!)

Here are some pictures:


And here is some happy-birthday-singing-candle-blowing-out video.

Becca Through the Years

I did one of these for Ben when he turned four, so one was over due for Becca! For her birthday party today I used the Apple TV to stream this slide show to our living room TV, complete with music and a "scrapbook" theme. It was pretty cool if I do say so myself... Her friends really enjoyed seeing all the baby pictures. Although, I kept having to tell them to take their hands off the television set ;)

So Far so Good!

Ben brought home his first four quizes to be signed and sent back. Even with a much tougher grading scale than I ever remember -- you need a 93 or higher for an A, there are no plus/minus grades, and anything 70 or below is failing -- he got 3 As and 1 B. His teacher wrote "Great start to third grade!" in his quiz folder. I promised him $10 for every A on his report card (they switch to letter grades in 3rd grade) and so far he is really motivated I guess! Hopefully he can keep it up! The homework, which was ridiculously light the first couple of weeks, has now picked up. Last night he had four math worksheets, some pages in his science book to read, spelling homework, and he had 3 quizes today (math, spelling, science) that he needed to study for. (None of those are the four mentioned above, so hopefully he did well on those!) He also got a science project assigned which is due next Friday. Keep it up Ben!

9 Month Check-up

This morning Caroline had her 9 month check-up. She weighs 23 1/2 pounds and is 30 inches long. So she's got 3 1/2 pounds and an inch and a half advantage over Becca at the same age. (I don't remember exactly what Ben's 9 month stats were but I *think* he was 24 pounds and 31 inches). She got a clean bill of health, a hepatitis B vaccine, a flu shot, and her hemoglobin checked. She didn't even notice the finger prick, and I'm not sure she noticed the shots either, but she was already crying for that, having been removed from her bottle and returned to the exam table. She certainly didn't cry any harder, anyway. I am pretty sure all that thigh fat must be good for something :)

Oh and for those of you who are wondering, that's >97th percentile all around!

Underfoot in the kitchen....

Happy new year!

I have wanted to do this for a long time

Does This Count?

Take Your Baby to Work Day ;)

So You Might've Noticed I've Been a Little Quiet Lately

I've been doing things like

1. Taking care of all house and kid related activities while Joel has been at a conference in Atlanta since Tuesday
2. Sending out invitations for Rebecca's 5th birthday party (yes the big 5, the half-decade mark, a little over a week away).
3. Pre-ordering my new iPhone 5! YEAH Mommy finally gets an iPhone.
4. Listening to Caroline scream her head off while trying to work, because her day care is closed today for a conference. (Why won't you nap??? Mommy needs you to nap....)
5. Working
6. Working
7. Working

Cool Spider

Beware of Dragons

So a week ago our family movie night movie was Hotel for Dogs. Ben enjoyed the movie so much he started looking for some games to play on his iPod where you can take care of dogs. Then he branched out into other pets, and eventually a game where you can raise dragons. Now, all these games when he came to me and asked for permission to download them, claimed to be free. Or at most 99 cents, but most were free.

This morning Joel was checking the American Express recent charges and discovered around $200 in charges from iTunes over the last week. Upon investagation, almost all were listed as "in-App charges", and many were coming from the game Dragon Village, although there were definitely some other games involved there too. Apparently Ben was spending real money inside the game without realizing it, such as purchasing 1500 gold pieces for a very real $40. The kicker is, the games don't ask to confirm the purchase, or explain that it's a real purchase, or ask you to put in your iTunes password, or anything. Ben was quite insistent that he hadn't spent real money, and rather upset when we informed him that we would need to take all the games off his iPod that had charged him while he'd been playing. Joel called iTunes and is trying to get the charges removed.

Fun!

Ready for Some Football?

Rebecca's ready for some Eagles football, are you?

Baby Naming

Caroline had her baby naming at the Temple Friday night. Her Hebrew name is Hannah Rut, after her grandmother and a couple of great-grandmothers. Caroline was very happy with all the attention, but not so well-behaved afterwards. We ended up having to leave early (fortunately the baby naming was at the very beginning of the service). She fell asleep on the 5 minute car ride home.

Hottest Ticket in Town

Yesterday Joel and I went uptown and sat in line with our friends Melanie and Jeff for Daily Show tickets, which we procured and then went to eat lunch and jump up and down like idiots in the MSNBC audience. An hour before we needed to report back for the Daily Show taping, Melanie's brother in law, who works for DNC CEO Steve Kerrigan, came through with credentials to the convention speeches. Melanie and I decided to bail on the Daily Show in favor of being assured of getting into the convention; Joel and Jeff went to the Daily Show with the idea that they would try to get into the convention center afterwards. Unfortunately by the time they arrived at 7:30, the convention center was full and they were not allowed in. Too bad for them! It was the experience of a lifetime! I got to see speeches by Caroline Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden, several Governors, celebrities, performances by James Taylor, Mary J Blige, The Foo Fighters, a rare public appearance by Gabby Giffords (she led the pledge of allegiance) and the list goes on and on... and of course, President Obama!

Happy Birthday Clara

The Calm Before the Storm

Since our concert outing Wednesday night we have spent a very mellow few days. Ben finished up his first week of school - no significant homework yet but expecting that to start piling on in the coming days - and Joel and I finished up busy weeks at work.

We are both off for the three day weekend, and have been doing a lot of nothing-much. Our biggest accomplishment Saturday was buying and successfully installing a new shower head for the master bathroom, followed by a free dinner at PF Chang's courtesy of American Express rewards points (the shower head and related accessories at home depot would have been free if I'd been able to locate my Home Depot gift cards in time, but alas I only found them afterwards).

Yesterday Joel went to the gym and did the grocery shopping and the kids and I lounged around the house and were so lazy that Ben did not even get dressed until 10 minutes before our company was due to arrive at 3. We had friends over for a barbecue and some lively political debate while our kids and their kids made a mess in the bonus room upstairs. Despite still needing to clean that up, it was a good time.

Now it's time to gear up for DNC week! Joel and I have tickets (pending final babysitting arrangements) to see Thursday's taping of The Daily Show at Imaginon. Being a huge Jon Stewart fan, and after watching his highly amusing RNC coverage / Tampa bashing last week, I am very curious to see what he'll have to say about Charlotte ;) Joel also, rumor has it, has rustled up a single credential to Obama's speech on Thursday night. History in the making - ready, set, go!