More Elish and Leba

People always ask, how is Elish getting along with the dog? Elish now grabs Leba's ears. The dog now walks away when she has had enough. Other times she can't get enough of Elish.

No respect.

These are the nice ones. There are a bunch of others that poke fun and are just mean that I am not posting.

Our Future Machatunim

Our good friends, Mindy and Dovid just had a baby girl Avigayil Yael / Abbey who is just perfect for Elish. Her personality is a perfect blend of the sharp dry humor of her father coupled with the compassion and dedication of her mother. While Elish has shown much interest in Abbey, she has yet to express her feelings. Maybe she is concerned that she has more hair than Elish.

I'll try to post the picture of Chavi and mindy breaking the plate together.

Finally, back to pictures.

Children are always so expressive in pictures. Psychotoddler wrote about the development of children's smiles.

These are Chavi's (and my) neices and nephew. Chanan and Shira are now in St. Louis.




Shlomo and Nadiv visiting from Israel.

Protect your children!

I know I usually don't write about such serious issues, but I feel this is extremely important. Because of 'Megan's Law' and other such laws in states throughout the US, the public is allowed to access information as to the location of sex offenders. Check out this site:

http://www.mapsexoffenders.com/index.asp

We typed in our address and found out that there was a sex offender who lived 2 houses down from our old address!!! Scary!

It's important to check this site out before you rent or buy in a neighborhood, especially if you have children! (and even if you don't)

And on a related note, it's important to teach your children how to protect themselves. Moody moma says it best:

http://moodymama.com/?p=102

Sorry for such a serious post on a generally light-hearted blog. This is just too important.

CRASH!!!

You're probably wondering why we haven't posted pics of Elish in a while. We are one of the unlucky victims of a computer crash. We hope to be up and running soon - we have a computer geek coming to the house to fix it and (hopefully) recover all the wonderful pics of Elish - yes, many pics didn't make it to the website...

In the meantime, enjoy the cartoon!

"So, how is the baby sleeping?"

I don't know why this is, but the first question people ask upon meeting a new mother is "How is the baby sleeping?"

I don't mind the question, I just find it rather amusing that it's the same question, over and over.

Usually, to be polite, and not bog people down with details, I just say, "Baruch Hashem (thank God), he sleeps very well."

So do you want the details? Really? Really, really, really? (if not, you can skip the rest of this post.)

Elish is a very good sleeper at night. Many nights, he can sleep until 5 or 7 or more hours in a row. It's the timing and GETTING him to sleep that is a challange.

I usually start to feel exhausted by 9:00 or 9:30pm. After a full day at work, and comng home to an adorable baby who wants quality time with his mommy, rustling up some grub in the kitchen for the adults to eat (frozen meals, bowls of cereal, nothing complicated...)I am ready to curl up in bed for the night by then. But at this time, Elish is still raring to go, smiley and cute, and then a little fussy. I wind up holding him a lot (not a bad thing!), much more than Daniel, because when he gets fussy, only a mommy (with breasts) can comfort him! Even when I try to nurse him down to sleep, he just won't cooperate - he has other things in mind.

So I usually wind up crashing in the living room on our lounge chair, with Elish on my lap, and I am a zombie until around 11:30 or 12:30, or even later, when Elish finally conks off into deep sleep and I can finally put him down.

This is taking a toll on me. I know I am lucky that he sleeps so nicely once he falls asleep for good. I just wish we could get bedtime to be a little earlier.

We've tried.

Elish doesn't even nap a lot during the day. When I try to put him down earlier, Elish tends to wake up after 15 minutes, rejuvinated and ready for more action.

I have started to feel like my work performance is being affected by my exhaustion. I almost fell asleep in a meeting with a board member on Tuesday. It was rather embarrassing and unprofessional.

This shabbas I will do take-out, and try to get some serious shluf time. I need a nap!

Shevy Interviews Chavelamomela

This is not an original idea for a post, but I thought it was a cool idea. This is the latest trend in blogs - to be interviewed by another blogger. Shevy has given me some pretty thought provoking questions. Here they are...




Question #1: Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.

Most recently, I was able to convince our pediatrician to agree to something she generally doesn't do:

As I am very interested in breastfeeding Elish, and part of that interest is making sure that Elish gets the best nutrition possible. I also want to avoid giving him unnecessary things.

At our first visit to the pediatrician, she prescribed a vitimin supplement for Elish called 'trivisol.' The Dr. said they do this with all babies, to make sure they don't have a vitimin D defficiency. When I bought the vitamins, I looked at the ingredients on the box, and it listed 'caramel color' and sugar, and other seemingly unnecessary things. Why does a baby need caramel color? I gave Elish one dose, felt very bad about giving him the supplement, and then never gave hom another dose.

At the next dr's appointment, I asked the pediatrician if I really needed to give Elish the supplement. After all, isn't my breastmilk enough? I eat healthy and the baby gets some sun every day.

After some discussion, the Doctor agreed that in my circumstance, Elish is not in an at-risk population, and she agreed that I didn't have to give him the vitamins. I was glad that I was able to convince her that Elish had no need for this supplement, especially since I am so careful that he gets 'only the best'


Question #2: What is your typical way of dealing in conflict with your spouse?

There are typically two types of responses that I use when we have a conflict:

For Major Conflicts:

My first response is to act like b*tch to him, complain about how unfair he's being, etc. Daniel will usually not respond well to this tecnique (you'd think I'd have figured that out by now!), and I will reapproach the issue and try to rationalize with him why my way is better than his. Sometimes I can persuedue him to see my way, but other times I cannot. Sometimes, when I feel Daniel is being irrational, I will tell him that he's acting like a b*tch (and that cheap shot sometimes works!)

For Minor Conflicts:

We will 'shoot it out' - by playing '3 takes it' - I am always odds. We solve most minor issues in our marriage this way (like who takes the dog out, who changes the baby's diaper, etc). People think it's funny to watch us do this, but it avoids a lot of arguments. We try to out psyche each other and try to guess what the other person is going to put out (one finger or two).

Question #3: If you were on a desert island, which 3 books would you want to have?

1."The klutz book of solitaire" (hey, it even comes with a deck of cards!)
2. A Harry Potter book (they're long and entertaining)
3. "How to build a raft" - I will want to get off the island, after all!


Question #4: What would you say is your parenting policy on disciplining children?

Last week, Daniel and I practiced an interesting exercise. We took turns with 'role playing' being the parent and a child of various ages. We would each play out the scenario. My approach was not so good, and everything became a confrontation. Daniel was able to difuse the situation and minimize the conflict. I am practiciing and trying to change my instinctual approach to discipline. A book I love on this subject is:
"How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk" by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. They have a wonderful approach to effective communication with kids and over the years, whenever I have used their techniques with children (and adults!), the results have been marvelous. It just requires effort and much thinking, so I am trying to encorporate these tools into my behavior to become more natural.

and now, the final question: What are your ambitions regarding your career?

Hmm, good question. This is an answer that is constantly changing for me, as I am never 100% sure what direction I want to take. Before I had kids, I would have said that i want to be a stay at home mom, and nothing else. When the baby was born, I loved being a mom and enjoyed my maternity leave immenseley. However, now that I am back to work, I have to say that I enjoy having a dual career of mommy and career woman. There's something wonderful about being able to balance the two world succesfully. I know that not every woman can do this, and frankly, not every woman wants to do this. Right now, I think I want to, but ideally, I would modify my work responsibilites so that I could be home a little more and have a flexible schedule.

So what are my career ambitions? I always want to work at a job that serves the Jewish people and the world. I don't know what I want to do in 15 years. I just know that my next job I would like to have would be something in Israel that can utilize my skills and talents to serve the Jewish people, and at the same time, come home to my kids and spend quality time with them.

Ask me this again tomorrow, and I may have a different response!



Now here are the rules which you need to include in your post:
1) Leave me a comment saying "interview me please."
2)I will respond by asking you five questions ( not the same as above)
3)You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4) You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5) When others comment asking to be interviewed you will ask them five questions.