Drips and drabs

Before August is over I want to post a few vacation photos. I only have a few on this computer because we are getting ready to change the operating system and Matt is afraid the computer might explode or something like that. I have been waiting patiently for him to bring home the work computer or give me access to all the pictures but he has not, so will have to make due with some drips and drabs. We went on a nature cruise that included a visit to a touch tank where Sydney touched a star fish,

Jordan touched a star fish,

and Lior touched a star fish. While on the boat we saw tons of birds, dolphin, and a shark! It was a great day to be out on a boat and we were just thrilled to see the dolphin.
Later that afternoon while the girls were sleeping Matt and I saw a manatee while we drove through the nature preserve.
The girls played on the beach
and the pool where Matt threw Sydney in the air, Lior in the air and well he tried to throw Eric too!
I think I took about a thousand pictures on vacation so keep checking back for more pictures.

Solid food

We did it! I should say I did it because I was the one who was not ready to give Akiva solid food. Apparently I was the only one who was not ready because the second I put the spoon to his mouth he popped it open and gobbled the food down. He liked it!



It is funny, the first time I gave Sydney and Lior cereal I read the package directions and measured out the cereal, measured out the formula to mix it and monitored how much they ate. This was not the case with Akiva, I poured some cereal in the bowl mixed in formula until it was a nice mushy consistency and fed him. When I was all out of cereal and he looked like he wanted more, I made more. How things change for the third and fourth child because she did not have carefully measured portions of cereal either. Now I think he is ready for a sandwich!

Magic

Apparently there was some fairy that visited our house this week. Lior woke up the other day and came into our room and asked to hold Akiva. I explained that I had to feed him but that when I was done she could hold him.
"Mommy I can feed him now"
"Lior you can't feed the baby, only Mommy can."
"No Mommy magic happened and now I have milk in my boobie's to feed Akiva too."
I guess she knew I needed the help!

Mommies

Today while I was laying down with the big girls for a much needed nap Sydney and I had a nice little conversation that went something like this:
"Sydney, you are such a good Mommy to your babies."
"I'm a good Mommy?"
"Oh, yes Sydney you are a very good Mommy!"
"I am a good Mommy to my babies."
"Am I good Mommy?"
"No you not a good Mommy, I am a good Mommy!"
"Sydney I am not a good Mommy?"
"No Mommy you not"
"Why aren't I a good Mommy?"
"Because you don't let me drive! My babies like it when I drive the pink car and you don't let me drive!"
...and she is not even a teenager yet!

One hundred things

My cousin Ann (my favorite commenter!) sent me a challenge today. She and her sister Joan are planning on throwing away one hundred things during the month of September and they invited me to play. I am so excited I can not stand it! I was planning on throwing tons of stuff out this month but now I have people to play with. I am going to have Matt ship off the three boxes of baby clothes to assorted friends and family next week so I get credit for those items leaving the house. They have only been in his trunk for a few days, what are a few more?
I am going to give Dan and Tanya some furniture that has been cluttering the house. Now they can clutter his. I just hope they do not give any of it back. I want the stuff to leave the house and never come back!

School

The girls started school again on Monday. They were less than thrilled. They want to stay at home with me, they want to go to a different school, they want to go back to bed, they want to be anywhere but there. I hope this passes soon!
Matt is convinced that the girls learned more in camp than they did during the entire school year. This may be true as they really excelled this summer. I found a list of benchmarks for three and four year olds that I am using to assess the girls abilities. I want to make sure that they are where they should be developmentally and targeting areas that they may be deficient in.
Lior has really taken an interest in writing her name this week so we have been practicing that. Sydney is interested in drawing every member of our family. It is funny, in her pictures Matt has far more hair than he does in real life. She really loves her daddy.
Jordan is not ready for school either. On Wednesday she turned to me while we were dropping off and said "Don't yeave me, take me wit you!" January should be tons of fun!

Akiva

I took Akiva to the pediatrician yesterday for his four month checkup. I was a little late but at least I got him in during the fourth month of his life. Jordan never got in with any frequency and is still behind on her shots. Akiva has mastered his developmental milestones. He is rolling when we put him down on his belly and has rolled from his back to his belly. The only problem is that he does not get tummy time very often because I am afraid his big sisters might mother him too much.
When the doctor walked in she asked me if I had any concerns about him. I replied "Yes, he is broken... do you think you can fix him, today? He started sleeping through the night at six weeks and stopped. Can you make him sleep again?" She had several suggestions and pin pointed one problem that we always suspected but are now treating with medication. He has acid reflux and it is really bothering him which may or may not be impacting his sleep. He is now taking Zantac twice a day to help prevent any damage. She also suggested starting him on rice cereal twice a day. The rice helps keep the food down and it will also add some weight on his frame.
His weight was another problem. He weighs thirteen pounds. Apparently he should weigh more because he is in the seventh percentile for weight. "He is falling off the charts." The words every mother wants to hear. I feel so terrible! She reassured me that he is fine and did gain two pounds from his last visit. I think he should have doubled his weight by now and has not. She decided that rather than start formula, which I do not want to do, that we would introduce cereal twice a day. I really do not want to start cereal either. I think he is too young and not ready. Because I do what I am told I will be starting Akiva on cereal soon. I am going to give him some time on the medicine to make sure he can tolerate it and then I will start the cereal.
He was twenty five and a quarter inches long which puts him in the fiftieth percentile for length. I can not get too caught up in these percentiles because when I look at him he just looks huge to me. He is growing and absolutely engaging. He has a sense of humor already. He watches his big sisters constantly and coos in absolute delight when they come close to him and talk to him. In the last month he has started using the Bumbo chair which allows him to sit up and look at the word. He has started sitting in the exercauser, when his sisters are not sitting in it, so he can stand and play with toys. He has discovered his feet and gets great pleasure from grabbing them and singing!

"It"

"It" hit me today, I do not know what "it" was but "it" hit me and I was sad. I think "it" could have been exhaustion. Akiva my beautiful baby boy spoiled me. When he was six weeks old he started to sleep through the night and while we were on vacation he stopped. He now wakes up at about one am to eat and again between four and five. I am tired. I am so tired that I fall asleep while the baby is nursing and he winds up sleeping right next to me all night nursing when ever he wants to. It has to end because this is a bad habit I am not willing to continue. It is not safe and it is not teaching him how to sleep on his own. We all know how I feel about sleep! I am going to have to enlist the help of my husband and get him to help me get Akiva back to his own bed in the middle of the night, then we can start to work on getting him to sleep through the night again.
"It" could also be the lack of sleep I got over the weekend because the big girls decided to have a slumber party on Saturday night and went to sleep after midnight. They were taking their babies to the doctor, singing songs, reading books and driving their cars. What they were not doing was sleeping which meant that we were not sleeping either. They are actually upstairs not sleeping now. Matt put them up two hours ago and they are too busy building a farm and taking their babies to the potty to sleep.
"It" could have been the dime. I was really worried about what we were going to do if that dime did not come out.
"It" could have been Jordan and her never ending illness. Jordan is a tough kid and when she is sick or does not feel good she is even tougher. Everything was making her cry. I should say everything made her scream and yell and fall to pieces. Maybe now that she has had antibiotics in her system for six days she will calm down and be the child I know and love.
"It" is making me crawl into bed before eleven tonight and not touch the pile of clean clothes that need to be folded and put away.

And the x-ray says...

NO DIME!!! The dime has been evacuated. Matt took her for an x-ray this afternoon after we went shoe shopping. There is nothing in her body that is not supposed to be. The doctor who looked at the original x-ray said that it was so low originally that it probably came out the first time she pooped. Do you know what that means? I stuck my bare hand into a toilet bowl filled with poop for nothing. Matt touched poop (but that is just funny!) and there was nothing there. I could not be more relieved.
We were so happy we took the kids out to dinner and everyone got an ice cream sundae with gummy bears and M&M's.
We cheered because there was no dime. Lior is pretty determined NOT to swallow any kind of money, at all. Although she is not above teasing us about it. Right before bed she walked up to Matt and told him she swallowed "the penny". You should have seen the look of panic cross Matt's face but then she started to laugh and told him she did not swallow the penny. I am so glad she has such a great sense of humor because she has taken a lot of good natured teasing about this dime and handled it beautifully!

Why?

Why oh why won't that dime come out? First thing this morning Lior pooped. Matt said it was huge. He even put gloves on and checked it, no dime, just poop.
When she came down stairs we had a very nice conversation about what else? Poop.
"Lior did you do poopy this morning?"
"I did it upstairs with Daddy."
"Then what happened?"
"Daddy put his hand in there!"
"He put his hand in there?"
"Yeah, he put on a glove 'cause you can't touch poop."
"Did he find the dime?"
"No"
"Lior when are you going to let that dime out of your belly?"
"On Wednesday."
So it looks like the dime is not making an appearance until Wednesday. Unfortunately we will have to go take x-rays tomorrow to see if, perhaps, the dime snuck out and we missed it.

Poop

Poop. All day long Lior and I talked about poop. Every time she went to the bathroom I asked her "Do you need to do poop?" or "Are you doing poop or pee?"
"No mom just pee pee today, I did poop last night at the doctor."
"OK Lior wait until Daddy comes home to do poop, OK?"
"OK."
Tonight we took the girls out to dinner and right before the soup came out Lior looked at Matt and said "Daddy I need to do poopy" and when I asked her if she wanted me to take her or Daddy she said "Daddy!" My brainwashing worked, unfortunately it does not work on dimes because that dime is still in her belly. Matt claims that after careful visual inspection that her poop was change free. I say he is not dedicated enough because he did not dive into the toilet to squeeze her poop. It is a good thing he is planning on being home all weekend because there is a lot more poop in his future!

Vacation

We went on vacation right after the girls birthday party and right after we sent Liel home. We went to Captiva on the west coast and stayed in a house on the beach with my parents and my brother Eric. It was very nice and everyone had a lovely time, once they felt better.
Matt was sick and in bed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Sydney was sick Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Jordan started running a fever on Wednesday and she is still sick.
Lior was sick before we even left and started to feel better on Monday.
Akiva is starting to feel bad and I am trying my hardest to stay healthy because Matt has informed me that I am not allowed to get sick until the weekend and that I need to be better by Monday.
I need a vacation after our vacation! I also need my husband to bring home all the pictures I took on vacation so I can post them. He says he is too busy and keeps forgetting, maybe I should tell him the same thing when I call out sick tomorrow!

Insurance

Matt and I have new health insurance this month and boy have we used it! Matt hates health insurance or I should say Matt hates how much it costs. When we were sitting with the agent discussing the amount of the family deductible Matt inquired about a very high deductible this year because it was a short year and we would not meet it anyway. That is when the agent told us a story about a guy like Matt who hated insurance and got a policy with a ten thousand dollar deductible because they would never need it. Well it turns out that his kid swallowed a quarter and it needed to be removed and that quarter wound up costing him ten thousand dollars. After hearing the story Matt looked at me and in all seriousness said "Do you want to gamble?" I remember looking at him and saying "Matt, one of our kids will swallow something or do something... they are related to you!" I am so glad we listened to me and Lior's dime will not be costing us ten thousand dollars! I was right again!

Got change?

Poor Lior! We keep teasing this poor child about the dime in her belly. As far as we know it is still there. She pooped twice today and after a careful visual inspection of the first and a gentle squeezing of the second I decided that it had not passed.
Why did I squeeze the second? The doctor told me to and I do what I am told. Do you want to know where we were when Lior pooped the second time? At the doctors office. I grabbed some paper towels and just dove right in. Why didn't I ask for gloves? If I had opened that bathroom door I would have lost the kids and the poop would have been flushed. I feel like I need to boil my hand. I must have washed my hands up to my elbow at least a dozen times and I still do not feel clean! What I do for love!!!
Day one no dime!

Another trip

Today marked my third visit to the doctor in four days. We had to take Jordan to the doctor on Monday because she had a fever for over five days. Lior went yesterday for her dime and today while we were sitting in our music class I noticed that Jordan had a rash all over her stomach and her back.
Needless to say we were back to the pediatrician. This time I made an appointment for Akiva as well because the poor little guy seems to have or is getting the same "cold" the other kids had. It turns out that Jordan is allergic to penicillin, just like her mommy. She is now taking a different antibiotic that we hope she is not allergic to, apparently now medicating her is trial and error. Keep your fingers crossed that she does better with the new medicine because I would hate to see her covered with another rash and I do not want to see what they charge for the next level of medicine!
Akiva seems fine and weighs a whopping twelve pounds and twelve ounces. He is a little eating machine. We have to watch him and hope that his cough does not progress into anything more than a cough.

Lior and the dime

I have been trying to get to a computer for days and days but I have just been way too tired and way too busy but I am compelled to write tonight and I will update about our vacation another night.
I took the kids to the mall this morning so we would be out of the cleaning ladies way and while I was there I took the kids out to lunch. As I was paying Lior asked me for money and I thought to myself "Why not? She has a pocket and she likes to carry money..." So I gave it to her and she placed it in her pocket like she had won a prize. Matt met us for lunch and Lior ran to meet him and pulled the dime out of her pocket and showed him her money and tried to give it to him. Matt refused the money and told her to buy herself something.
Flash forward about an hour and we are now home and I am changing Akiva's diaper on our bed. Jordan is safely tucked into her crib and I am trying to get the big girls calmed down for a nap when I hear Lior choke and see her swallow hard. I quickly tell her to take the money out of her mouth and she looks at me with panic in her eyes and says "I can't! I swallowed it!" "You swallowed it???!!! Lior you do not put money in your mouth!!" and that is when she looked at me and told me she was going into the bathroom to throw up. I picked up the phone and called Matt who quickly called the pediatrician who told us to go to the emergency room or urgent care to make sure it was not stuck in her esophagus. My next step was to Google "children swallowing coins" to see what the course of action was. Thank goodness for the Internet and my i-phone!
Lior was less than thrilled about going to the doctor but she went without fight and was excellent at the doctors office while a little girl annoyed us. She was excellent while they examined her and while we waited for Matt to come and hold her for the x-ray. I could not hold her while they x-rayed her because I am nursing Akiva and we do not want to expose him to the radiation. When they were done with the x-ray Matt walks into the room and says "Lior needs to poop! The dime is in her stomach (the best place for it) but she needs to poop!" He then shows me a picture of the x-ray where you can actually see all the poop in her tiny little belly. She really needs to poop. You can also see a dime somewhere in her stomach. So we will have to watch her closely the next three days and inspect all of her poop for change and if it does not pass we will have to go back for another x-ray and plot a new course of action.
When we arrived home Lior went running into baby jail to see Sydney who ran to Lior and said "Your, you OK? Did the Doctor take the money out?" They are just so cute! They have enjoyed inspecting the pictures of Lior's belly and seeing her bones. I just hope she does not get any ideas!
We have learned several things today the first and most important thing Lior learned was not to put money in her mouth. She has informed us that she will never swallow another dime again! I learned never to give Lior money, something I will have to remind her of when she is a teenager. Matt learned that when your three year old hands you money, take it! or you might wind up with a couple of pictures that look like this:

Pincess party

We celebrated the girls birthday on Sunday with a few friends. I am tired of huge birthday parties where I am so busy running around that I do not get to enjoy my friends. I am also tired of cooking for days in advance and worrying about all the things that go along with having a great kid's party. I was extremelly laid back in my planning this year. I did not order balloons and t-shirts until the Wednesday before the party. My husband, who knew the girls were having a princess party, was surprised when I wanted balloons and t-shirts in a hurry. After more than a dozen e-mails while I was out and about, thanks to my handy new i-phone, I apparently signed some art approval which said: "Hear ye, hear ye a great time was had by all at Sydney and Lior's Pincess party!" and that is how the balloons were printed. Of course we did not realize that the balloons had a misprint until all the balloons were blown up and of course my wonderful, loving and compassionate husband told me it was my fault that he misspelled princess. He reminded me that I sent back an art approval so he was in the clear. Thank goodness the t-shirts were made with different art or they would have said pincess also.
This party was small and we had a great time!
The kids all jumped in the pool and played in the sprinklers while some of the adults watched and prayed that the water did not drench us from head to toe. Matt had a blast tossing any child who would let him. Sydney had fun swimming from one side of the pool to the other.
Lior is a big fish now, so a pool party was right up her alley.
Jordan had a great time floating on her own.We even had some adults who went into the pool with the little guys who were too little to be in the pool by themselves.



After all the fun in the pool everyone came in for princess cake. The princess cake that I must have worked on for about ten hours and was torn apart in less than thirty seconds and that the girls loved.
I had a ton of fun decorating this cake. I fear that they are going to get more and more elaborate every birthday because I learn something new every time I create one.
I hope that the girls do not expect a princess cake created by their mother for their school party because I am done until October. They are going to have to make due with a store bought Disney Princess cake from the Kosher bakery. That cake I ordered about two weeks ago and I am willing to bet that it wont say pincess anywhere on it.

Dan's update

Since Blogger is not uploading my pictures tonight and I actually have time to write, I will fill everyone in on what has been going on here this summer.
We have been beyond busy entertaining family and friends. My brother Danny and his family visited for close to three weeks and left their daughter Liel behind to help me with the kids. What we did not know when we made these plans was that Danny would have the opportunity to move to Florida with his company. About three weeks before his trip he started asking me about the cost of living in Florida and what the average electric bill was and I figured he was asking me these questions because he was considering a move. I was right, so we spent the majority of his vacation trying to find schools for his children and a place to live. All while trying to have fun and celebrate Eitan's Bar Mitzvah. We were very very busy.
Liel stayed behind to annoy me. I should not say that because most of the time she has been helpful, when she was reminded to take her head out of the clouds. Sometimes I wish I could be fifteen so that I did not have a care in the world but then I remember how much I hated high school and I am content to have my feet firmly placed on the ground. Liel is really a delightful person to be around. She has a fantastic sense of humor which keeps you on your toes because she always has a come back. Matt has enjoyed having her around because when her father is not around he has someone to tease on Shabbos. The girls really enjoy her and want her to do things for them all the time. "Liel, I want juice" or "can I have a snack?". She even changes diapers and wipes poopy bottoms! She is leaving on Thursday, which makes my girls very sad. "No Liel I do not want you to go!" They do not understand that she is coming back in about ten days and they will be seeing her more frequently.
I wonder what it will be like to have Dan's kids around our kids on a regular basis. Liel has all the girls speaking Japanese and taught Jordan to say "Up yours Daddy!" The girls actually repeat what ever she tells them to say. I am sure Eitan and Adina will take full advantage of our little parrots. Maybe they will teach the kids Hebrew instead of Japanese? Matt and I may be in trouble!

Grrrr

I actually could come up with a few expletives right now but I will have to refrain from cursing because my nieces and nephews read this blog! Blogger appears to be experiencing some technical difficulties tonight so I can not post pictures of their birthday party. you will all have to wait until blogger can handle uploading pictures of pink princess cakes.