So many moons later...

Well, I guess the time gap between blogs suggests that time has been tight.  Which it has.  But we've also been trying to sleep more, with a little bit of success.  And trying to occasionally do things beyond just the necessary, also with a little teeny bit of success, sometimes. So maybe that has gotten in the way of keeping blogs up to date.  See pictures from last weekend's Great Race 10K in Pittsburgh -- running slow but nice.



Meanwhile here's the speed run-down from the past 7(!) months.


In March, we went to D.C. for a weekend to visit cousins Antonio and Sebastian (and Jason and Dallys and Pa and Nana) and also for my agricultural policy class field trips.





Also saw some of my old grad school friends there.



Back in Pittsburgh, taught a class on tree climbing.



In April, Li'el turned 4.  I was commissioned to make a "rainbow unicorn" cake -- this is how it turned out.







And we tried to go to NY to surprise Safta for her birthday, but Delta went on the fritz that day and all flights were cancelled so we couldn't get there.  But Safta and Rafi came for the tail end of Passover instead.  Here's Eytan making chocolate matzah.



In May, goats Finn and Oliver went to a new home.



And here are some almost-end-of-school-year pictures





I can't say the kids always do quite this much cleaning, but I like to document it when they do.

In June we went back to Washington State to visit and for my Orchards class.

 

It was cherry season.  Here they are on the packing line.

And little apples.

Apple seedling nursery.

Fancy apple cider.

And kid pictures.

We were back in Pittsburgh for a few weeks, and then picked back up in July to go to upstate NY.  Mike ended up switching jobs this year, from the school he'd been at for the past few years to becoming the 6th grade teacher at our kids' current school, and he had to go to a week of training in NY.  I, of course, didn't take any pictures (sorry!), but we got to visit Safta and Saba and Great George and also see friends Chavi and Josh and kids and adopt their van.  In the absence of NY photos, I'm just putting other random summer kid photos here.

Despite the travels, we were actually home this summer more than most summers.  And so we actually had moderate success with a garden!  Even weeded a little. And ended up with a lot of tomatoes, kale, chard, and potatoes.

Inspired by a winter visit to Stonebraker friends, we put up a tree rope swing in the yard.



Oren, meanwhile, has been really funny. He has been going through a period of many fears, including lots of fears of inanimate objects that he sees as animate -- worrying that the table is looking at him, and that he doesn't like that, calling most objects he and she, and the like.  It's been really interesting. And inspired by some yoga-doing spring visitors, he occasionally likes to do this (see below) and announce that he's doing tree pose (I guess it's more like downward dog, but no matter)



In August we went to Minnesota and visited Grandma and Grandpa, Pa and Nana, and coincided our visit with cousins Jack, Caleb, Siobhan (and Kevin and Leah).  I didn't take a lot of pictures there either, but here's one that someone else caught.



And when we returned home there were goat babies (I had a student goat-sitting. He had many adventures). There were 4 mamas overall -- 4 babies born before we got home (oops!) and 7 babies after we got back (although one was a set of quintuplets of which only 2 made it in the end)... so now we're at 8 baby goats.  I have a fuller class schedule this fall, including my Dairy class again, and a new student with a LOT of goat milking experience, so we're getting goat-milking up and running these days.

Noa has gotten VERY mobile -- crawling, standing, walking with help, trying stairs.  In the picture below, she looks to me a little like Eytan when he was a baby, even though more often she seems to resemble Li'el.  Anyway, she's very talkative (we think she says "Ha Ti" to the cat, meaning "Hi Timber" -- meaning her "first word" seems to be "hi"... I think Oren's was too actually).  She's still really independent in terms of being more interested than the other kids were in playing on her own... although she does also really like being around the big kids. Now that she can move herself over to where they are, she does.

And then September was back to school.



I gave the kids haircuts right before school started, and Oren's turned him overnight from a "baby" into a kiddo.



Eytan and Li'el dressing up with their good friend Penelope.



Li'el swinging at a "kids' climb," part of a tree climbing competition that happened to take place this fall at my school.

And that's that.  My goal is now to write again before another 7 months go by.

Mostly kid photos

Hi all.

We are doing okay.  Finding part-time work post-baby to be busier than part-time work pre-baby, maybe because it requires more driving around, fitting into constraints of part-time daycare, and just somehow more juggling.  But I'm also probably appreciating my job more than I used to (I always liked it but it used to be WAY too busy, and now it's still too busy but much better, and somehow feels clearer that I'd rather keep it than not, so that makes the juggle better).

Meanwhile, Noa is doing well, smiling, growing, 3 months old.  We're learning the challenges of her name (not that they weren't predictable, but...). Basically, although it's much easier to pronounce for people than Eytan and Li'el's names, most people assume she's a boy (especially given that we don't pay much attention to what color clothes she wears), and even the people at the hospital added an "h" to the name on her birth certificate (grrrr... so now we're waiting for that to be fixed).






There are some name confusions at home too, but funnier.  Mostly, things like Safta visiting and asking Oren (about a toy boat with animals) "is that Noah's ark?" to which he replied "no, that's mine!" (i.e. "no way, it's not Noa's!")  Oren is talking up a storm, with funny grown-up inflections, asking "who dat?" about everything (it means "what's that?" too).  He is the latest of our kids so far in his coming to appreciate books but just in the last couple of months has really come to like them, especially those that primarily identify things (see "who dat?" above) and books about trucks.





Other than that, not much news.  Eytan and Li'el started doing gymnastics again once a week (we'd really been trying not to schedule ANYTHING but school and home so as not to cut into weekend free time, but they do like it), and they've been sorry we haven't had much snow this winter (although we did have a little, see pictures).







Other collected photos...

 

 

Hoping all is well with you.

Not just the reasonable

We've been trying lately to bring back the optional.  Because life is pretty busy.  Work and school and commuting and sleeping and kid time and life maintenance (supermarket, cleaning (sort of, occasionally), cooking etc.) takes up more than all the hours available.  And not that all that isn't satisfying and nice, but we've been trying over the last year, and especially the last couple of months to bring back a little more of the optional fun stuff, having spent the last several years quasi-successfully paring it down.  So the trick is, without becoming overextended, how go beyond only just what's reasonable and realistic, to also occasionally do the not-at-all-necessary things we'd like to do.

So, when Noa was born our old friends Rachel and Lina came to stay with the big kids (and come hang out a little) while Mike and I were at the hospital.  Big treat to see them.  And then my bro Jon came out to help us with her simchat bat instead of us trying to do it ourselves or find someone local.  Again, super nice.  Later that month we had Thanksgiving with friends here, and stayed just a little bit later than we normally would have.  There were enough people there who the kids knew well enough to run around pretty independently of us, which meant Mike and I had a tiny little bit of grownup time.  We also re-joined Netflix for a trial month to watch the new Gilmore Girls run -- once a week for four weeks, doing TV instead of house or work stuff after kids' bedtime.  And over the break, we went to Atlanta for 4 days to visit old friends Kate and Rob and kiddos -- Eytan and Li'el were so excited to run around with their big kids, Oren alternated nap schedules with their youngest, and Noa slept a lot.  And to add to the mix, during the week everyone had off from school post-Atlanta, we watched a movie with Eytan and Li'el (who have seen clips of Curious George, Sesame Street, and Cinderella, but have never really seen a whole movie before -- except once when Eytan's old daycare showed one as a treat, but he found it frustrating to have to sit still for the hour an a half).  Anyway, sent as a present from Mike's brother and family, we watched Frozen, in short episodes during Oren's naps.

So, that's the theme, getting fun and friends back into life here and there, alongside kids and work and drives and sleep and family and travels.  Slowly.  Just a little at a time.  Of course I didn't end up taking any pictures of any of these things (there's one below from Atlanta that Kate took, along with a couple taken by the mom of a friend of Li'el's who came over to play last week), but I'll chalk the lack of photos up to enjoying the time we were spending where we were.

Oh and here are two videos, one of making "sparkle soup" and a funny out-take from when we were trying to make birthday videos for some folks with recent birthdays.