Once again - Updates

It's 11pm and I should be going to sleep, but I happened to stumble upon my blog and enjoyed reading it so much that I thought I should write a new post. The problem is that it has been soooo long since the last one, that getting up to date is difficult.
Let's try anyway.

So - Maya. Born March 1st, 2011. Her birth was amazing. I had her at our home in Alon Shvut, with our regular midwife Joyce. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and even though I was having some contractions every so often I picked up all 3 kids as usual from gan at 1:30. By 3 o'clock the contractions were getting more regular and stronger, so Micah took Eyal, Adi and Tiger (the dog) to my parents' house. Aliza stayed with me, as she had decided to attend the birth. By 3:30 Joyce was at our home and Micah had returned. Joyce immediately put Micah to work running around the house finding different things she needed and preparing clothing etc. By around 5 I felt ready to push, and out came a little baby girl. It was so fast and incredible. My mother had just made it over, about 20 minutes before the birth. But unfortunately by the time my sister Chana got there, Maya was already born. My mother gave the other kids dinner and with Micah's help put them all to sleep. But not before Eyal and Adi came in to meet their new sister. The next morning when everyone woke up they all climbed into bed with us, being extra careful not to bother the new baby. It was so special having everyone cuddling together, enjoying each others company and warmth and appreciating the new addition to our family. It just felt so right, and I once again was so happy and grateful that I had given birth at our home and was able to experience this in such an intimate setting.

Micah was amazingly helpful in the next few days taking care of everyone and everything while I rested all day in bed.


Life since then has been non-stop hectic craziness. Getting everyone ready in the mornings for gan, picking everyone up, making and eating lunch, entertaining them all afternoon, making dinner, feeding the brood and then bedtime. All day, everyday. That's my motto.
Seriously though, by now we are in a nice routine. In the mornings everyone can feed themselves, so while they eat I can make them food to take to gan/school. After Aliza, who has started first grade, gets on her bus, the rest of us get dressed and get ready to take Eyal to his gan and Adi to the gan across the way. When I get back from taking them I can clean up from breakfast and get some errands done before Maya's nap.
I feel that life in general has a nice, if fast paced, rhythm to it. For the most part everyone gets along and I feel that my kids see me smiling and happy more often than upset about something.


Aliza has started first grade and seems to be enjoying it so far. She has a relatively small class of 20 girls and her teacher seems to genuinely care for each girl and is very on top of everything that is going on. We do homework together almost everyday, which Aliza does pretty easily and happily. I hope her school experience continues this way.


Eyal has had a slightly harder time being in a separate gan from Adi. He is still a bit shy of his teacher and I frequently have to leave him there crying. I know that he calms down very quickly and when I pick him up he always looks happy. At home he still seems like his regular crazy, energetic, lovable self, so I think he's OK. I need to try to stay on top of it to make sure that it doesn't become too hard for him.

Adi goes to gan pretty happily everyday. He seems to be easy going about the whole thing. He gives his teacher hugs and likes seeing his friends in the morning. He does ask to go play in Eyal's gan for a few minutes before he goes into his gan, but usually is OK going to his class afterwards.

Maya is now 1.5 and ever so cute. She has started saying a few words and is amazing at climbing up the (much too high) ladders at the park. She can be very aggressive at times and never lets anyone get in her way. If you are standing at the top of the slide she wants to go down, you better watch out! 

All in all things are good. Busy but good.

It is now 12:15 and either Eyal or Maya will be up at 6:15. So I should get to bed.
More next time!

Ok, ok, I'll write a new post!

First of all, for all of you who have been complaining that I haven't written in a long time - my blog is call "Confessions of a Lazy Mom" for a reason. If you assumed that I didn't update all this time because I was busy working, shopping, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children or doing errands, you were wrong. It was just pure laziness. :)

Ok, so about the kids.
Thank God everyone walks beautifully now. Runs even. The kids can now really play together, or alternatively beat each other up. Today we were playing a game were one person (i.e. Aliza or I) does some kind of action, like clapping, patting the head, stomping feet, etc., and then everyone else does the same thing. It was really fun. Adi and Eyal were really able to participate and Aliza had fun being a leader.
On the flip side, the other day Aliza was having a tantrum about something, laying on the floor and kicking her legs. Eyal and Adi decided that it would be fun to throw anything they could get their hands on at her, kick her and step on her. It was a blast, let me tell you.

We have some of those wooden baby puzzles with pegs in each piece that you take out and then have to put back in the appropriate spot. Both Eyal and Adi enjoy doing these puzzles now. Sometimes when one boy can't fit a piece in the spot he'll call over his brother, hand him the piece, show him where to put it, and basically ask him to try to fit it. It was really fascinating watching this interaction.
They also play ball together, rolling it back and forth or throwing it to each other. Another fun game they like to play I call Jump! It goes like this - one boy is standing around innocently, and suddenly his brother comes up from behind and jumps on his back, tackling him to the floor. He then proceeds to jump on him. Sometimes this results in crying and a fight, but sometimes in a fun game of wrestling. Boys will be boys :)

A miracle has happened. Aliza trained herself to stay dry at night. One night, at around 2am, Aliza wakes me up and says "Ema, you forgot to put a diaper on me." There had not been a single night previously that she had woken up in the morning with a dry diaper, so I assumed she had wet the bed, and that I needed to wash her, change her sheets and all that. Blehhh. But no, she says that she didn't have an accident. So I took her to the bathroom, she went back to sleep, and in the morning was still dry. It's been about 2 weeks since then. I've been putting her to sleep with no diaper, and except for once or twice she has woken up dry.
I know, a true revealed miracle!

In September Eyal and Adi are supposed to be starting gan (daycare) for the first time. I'm looking forward to having a few hours in the mornings to do whatever I please. I'm thinking of finally looking for a high-tech job. I guess we'll see where the future leads. Whatever it is, I'm excited to find out.

And just for fun, here's an updated family photo from a photo shoot we did for my brother, Bentzi's, Bar-Mitzvah.

Confession

Last week my sister Nechama babysat for us and put the kids to sleep. The next morning , at 6am (the usual time for Eyal) I hear someone wake up. Sure enough, the boy in Eyal's pajamas and in Eyal's bed is awake. Must be Eyal. I take him downstairs and we cuddle and play a little while until the next boy wakes up. He's in Adi's pajamas and in Adi's bed. Must be Adi.
About 10 minutes after that Aliza wakes up. She hears me say something to Eyal, and immediately says "Ema, that's not Eyal, that's Adi".
I say - What do you mean? Of course that's Eyal.
No, look at him, its Adi.
So I looked, and for the life of me, I HAD NO IDEA WHO WAS WHO! By just looking at their faces I could not tell at all. The 2 boys looked exactly the same. I was freaking out. I always thought that I could tell by now, by just looking. Oh well..
After a minute or two of being shocked by myself, I looked for their features I know each of them has. Adi has a little red spot on his right cheek, Eyal has a birth mark in his right ear and they have different teeth growing in at the moment. And sure enough, Aliza was totally right!
My sister had by mistake switched their pajamas and put them in the wrong beds the night before, leading to my confusion.
At least we have Aliza to always tell us who's who!

Developement update:

Eyal - Takes a few steps on his own when encouraged. Will hopefully be walking in a month or so.

Adi - Walks everywhere. No more crawling.
Really shows it when he is upset. The whole laying on the floor screaming and kicking his feet thing.

Aliza - Becoming really great with her brothers. More and more independent by the day. Has a sense of humor and curiosity. Asks questions sometimes that I have no idea how to answer. (Like - "Ema, how did Hashem make people?" or "How do snakes sleep?")

LA LA Land

We just returned from a month long trip in LA. It was wonderful to spend time with all our relatives who we don't get to see regularly. Aliza was able to spend a lot of quality time with Grandma and Grandpa and also her Adatto cousins.
The other day Aliza and I were talking about how nice it was to see everyone and how much fun we had on our trip. I asked her what her favorite thing had been. She thought about it for a bit with a look of concentration, and finally said - "Coco Pebbles".

Will the Real Adi Please Stand Up

For the past month or so Adi has been continually getting better at standing on his own. Until last week when he finally took his first few steps!
Kol hakavod Adi! May you continue to grow from strength to strength.

The Gigantic Preggy and More Birth Days

Rewind 1 year and eight months (approximately).
We know that I'm pregnant but I've been pushing off going to my first ultrasound just because I was finishing off stuff in school and couldn't find a convenient time to go. Finally, in to my third month I make an appointment for the ultrasound. When I walk in and tell the receptionist that I'm there for an ultrasound she responds "Oh, you didn't get a call". Oh, no. "Well the machine is not working." Groan. "But maybe it's fixed now, why don't you go see." So I go to the ultrasound room, and sure enough the technician is on the phone with tech support and fiddling with the machine. After a few minutes she's off the phone and turns to me saying "Lets do this fast before it stops working again". So I pull up my shirt, get lathered with gel and we start trying to see whats inside of me. After a minute or two the technician says to me, "Well, I think God fixed the machine so that you can have your US today." I'm thinking - oh, no. But then she says - "You have twins." I was totally shocked. I couldn't stop laughing and saying no way, it can't be, I can't believe it. When the ultrasound was over I called Micah and just said "We need to talk, but don't worry, it's nothing bad." When I got home I told him, and he reacted basically the same way I did. After we got over our initial shock we were like - "Well, I guess we're moving to Alon Shvut."
Thank G-d the pregnancy went by fine with no complications at all. I was so humongous by the end though, I could barely stand up. Just walking a few steps was exhausting.

The later ultrasounds showed that Adi, who was positioned higher up, meaning he would be born second, was breach. We decided to hire a private doctor to deliver the babies to try and avoid a c-section as much as possible. We met with him for the first time on Wednesday, Sep 17th, after a long day of running around on errands. That night, or actually the next morning, I woke up at 4am feeling contractions. That wasn't so unusual, because I had been feeling contractions every so often for the past month or two. So I waited to see if they would stop. Well, they didn't. So at 5 I woke up Micah and we started timing them. At 6 we called, Joyce our midwife who was going to act as a doula, and our doctor, and told them we were heading to the hospital. We dropped Aliza off at my parents and headed out. I walked in to the hospital at 7. When we got there they tried to get a monitor of both babies, to hear check their heart rates and my contractions. This was not an easy task. They would be able to find one baby, but then not the other. And when they did finally hear both, one would slip away. So after fiddling with it for a little while (and me trying to deal with the painful contractions meanwhile) our doctor decided to insert a monitor onto the first baby's head. He had told us about this possibility ahead of time, so we were fine with it. This way they would easily be able to monitor baby A (later known as Eyal) from inside, and baby B (Adi) from the regular monitor on the outside. So they finally get everything in place, but now I cant really move around, which makes dealing with pain much harder. The contractions were getting pretty intense by then, so I thought maybe to get an epidural. They started giving me some kind of liquids as a prep for the epidural. But then I felt like a needed to push. It had only been a little more than 4 hours from the start of labor, so I was sure the doctor would tell me not to push yet. But a nurse checked me and said that I was fully dilated and that I could begin pushing. A few minutes later, after only a couple of (really hard and long) pushes, at 8:30am, Sep 18th, Eyal was born. I was so shocked that he was out already that the first thing I said was - Jesus Christ!!
We knew that Adi was breach, and our doctor had said that he could deliver him that way by basically putting his hands in and guiding him out. So thats what I was expecting to happen at that point. But apparently, after Eyal was born Adi turned a little and was sort of sideways. So the dr. put his hands in and nudged him a bit so that he was head down, then told me to push some more. I was like - what?? I thought you were just gonna pull him out? But no, I had to push some more, and a few minutes later, at 8:40, Adi was born.
From start to finish, a total of 4.5 hours. Baruch Hashem. May all my births be so amazing.
My stay in the hospital, including Shabbat, was ok and pretty uneventful. On Sunday morning we all came home to start our crazy life together.