Chilly morning

On this lovely crisp, morning, I started and ended another shot at soccer tots. Dad is pretty bummed, but he kept saying something about "hungover instructor". I'm not quite sure what the instructor guy was hanging over, but they didn't really have control of us tiny tyrants.
I was so excited about going that I woke up at 5.30 and spent the whole morning running around like a lunatic. It was AWESOME!
That said, Dad did get a couple good pictures of me...

Meanwhile, Mom bundled Nugget up for a little run. She's really getting back to form and is finishing her runs with under 10 minute miles, which isn't bad for a lady that had a baby not quite 4 months ago. I'm pretty sure I can still beat her, though.

pretty sure Mom was all about the shoes

 Of course, there was a costume change after running... You may recognize that onesie...

Mom's great photography skills

Nugget's great photography-subject skills

yay!

October

October has been super busy so far and has just flown by. School is a lot of fun and my new teachers, Miss Julie and Miss Carol, are working hard on teaching us how to write, cut better with scissors, and learn zoo-phonics. I mostly work on playing hard with Jacob and Chase, and Zoe and Libbie some.

My social calendar really picks up in October, too, with birthday party season (which actually started in September). And I start soccer again!

Nugget has been very busy being a baby and all that entails. The day before her 3 month visit, she rolled over both ways -- front to back and back to front. It may have been an accident, but she's really perfected it now. It's made for some interesting nights -- like her waking up Mom every 90 minutes for 3 or 4 days. Or was it a week? I don't know, but Mom was tiiiired. She also found her feet. Aunt Darra tried to show her where they were the day she rolled over both ways, but Nugget wasn't into yet. Last week, she discovered them herself and is very busy holding her toes and staring at her hands while she practices princess waves.

Why would we want to look at the camera?

Tia Chavie's excellent taste

Picture for Willoughby/READ party

Sophia's zoo birthday party

Queen Debbie at Zoo party

...and there she goes...

Carousel action with Dad

Giant caterpillar eats entire tomato plant (again) in 6 hours

Nugget finally slept on her stomach after rolling over

Picture for Aunt Sam at 6.30 Saturday morning 

we luv bath time

and feet!

The rest of September

More smiles. Aliza's got nice gums!

Perspective is everything. Her head is not actually bigger!

And she got her first amber necklace to help with those pesky teeth

surprise!

clearly related to Grandpa John 

August

Smiles!

Cuddles. Or giving Dad the stink-eye

Old man face

Wrapping 101: Tie number 3 (kangaroo cross carry)

lots of tummy time

and lots of drool

and spit up

and a little teething

Close encounters...

... Of the bench kind.

Back in August (August 10th, if you must know), while Tia Chavie was rocking our world here, I finally got to do something I'd been bugging Mom about for a long time: 

GOING TO THE ER.

Yup, that's right folks, the ole' Emergency Room.

You see, I thought it would be a perfect way to spend a Saturday night while Dad was out of town.

After bath that night, I was so excited to get into bed and have Tia Chavie read, that I took a flying leap into the sharp, pointy corner of my bench, thus splitting my head open and leaving lots of blood on the carpet (good thing Mom wants to get rid of that carpet! Someday...), towel, Tia Chave, Tia Chavie's shirt, my shirt, my boxers (don't ask), and, generally speaking, any other light colored surface available.

After summoning Mom with my shrieks and Tia Chavie's utterance of, "Uh, Chantal, I think you need to come here."
Mom: "Is he bleeding?"
TC: "uh, yeah."
Mom: "Oh dear lord. Jesus Christ. What happened?"
Later that night Tia Chavie admitted that she might need to work on her delivery of this kind of news in future. Mom is rather hoping that it never happens again, but realist versus optimist... tomayto tomahto.

Anywho. So we cut Nugget's massage short, poor kid, threw some clothes on her, threw her in the car seat, stuffed Aunt Chavie between the car seats in the back to maintain pressure, and raced off to and urgent care place called East Jefferson After Hours, which turned out to have no hours. Groan. Redirect and off to the Emergency Room.
Where I got 5 stitches and a whole lot of shots of lidocaine. Mom and a nurse held me down and Tia Chavie held Mom. Nugget, incidentally, slept through the whole thing after screaming her head off in the car. The triage nurses did give me some cool stickers.
And then the doctor sent us a cool bill in October.
All in all, we were all troopers, me especially. Everyone pretty much agrees that I am super brave. And I have a super cool scar (that we're still treating with Mederma).
While I thought about capitalizing on this incident and being Marcustein Monster for Halloween, I'm afraid Buzz Lightyear won out.

Camp week 7

It's hard to believe that camp is almost over for the summer -- well, M-F camp. Week 7 was a lot of fun, no big surprise there. Our newsletter this week summarized things pretty well and I'm going to use some of it here...Chaverim 1 pretended to be little Michaelangelos: We got to make our very own picture by drawing upside down. It was silly, and fun, and we loved every minute of it. We all asked our counselors if we could do all our art upside down.

Note the crossed legs. I am concentrating hard on my art skillz.

I, in turn, asked Dad to hold me upside down. By my ankles. Slightly different affect.
We learned how to say mom and dad in Hebrew thanks to Mr. Tamir's teachings. I told everyone that my "sister is prettier than any girl!" Watermelon Wednesday involved one of my favorite fruits and a heckuva lot of pre-treat on my shirt.

technically lunch, not watermelons; Jacob really likes turkey

Thursday I got the all clear (on the fluid in my ears) from the pediatrician, and Mom denied me the nectar of the Gods, aka Milk Bar shake. Boo hiss, Mom. Finally, on Friday, Aunt Donna came to Oneg Shabbat and then I went home with her for a little while. Mom helped me pack the night before since I needed to bring some toys, books, and my jammies. Mom didn't quite understand that I only needed 2 cars because "Uncle Dan doesn't know how to play cars"; she mostly just found that statement very funny. I may or may not have ingested large quantities of sugar. I'm not telling. We had a a lot of fun and Aunt Donna and Uncle Dan brought me back for bedtime. Good times.
Saturday and Sunday I continued to perfect my waking up early to go into Mom and Dad's room. For some reason, they are not so excited about my 5.30 and 6 am arrivals... It makes for so much more interesting of a day, so I don't get it. When I get an early start like that, it insures I hit "train wreck" status early enough in the day to exhaust everyone. I did go to Dad's soccer game on Saturday and had fun holding down the bench, but Sunday I was mostly just a Betty Bunny handful.

Divine Miss A

The lovely Miss Aliza finally arrived on July 2, 2013 at 6.03 pm.

She came after Mom was in labor for about 21 hours, but only 45 minutes after Mom's water broke, whatever that means.

She weighed in at a hefty 5 pounds 14 ounces but was almost as long as me when I hatched. She came home on the 4th of July and the country club celebrated with fireworks.
I was busy having a blast with Gramma, otherwise known as Super Gramma, who really kept me thoroughly entertained and crafted for 2 weeks. I was also busy with that nasty cold I mentioned in an earlier post, so I guess I was kind of keeping Gramma busy, too. She let me practice taking pictures with her camera, which was a lot of fun:

And we picked up leaves and did other gardening every day. We ate banana pancakes almost every day and talked to Grampa, too. We generally had a really awesome time while Mom and Dad were at the hospital and figuring out which way was up the first week home. (I'm not actually sure they know which way is up yet, but they do seem to be keeping our names straight. For now.)
I think Aliza is pretty awesome, though it has been a little bit of an adjustment, and I'm still not crazy about this whole sharing Mom thing.

Mom and me on July 5th

Mostly, I'm just a really great big brother and love trying to help her be happy if she's crying and holding her. (NOTE: Mom did kind of freak out this morning when I picked her up with out asking for help... something or other about her neck and breathing being important). I enjoy coughing on everyone right now, but am trying really hard not to cough on her -- since apparently germs are not something I should share. Rules, rules, rules. Share this, not that. So hard to keep it all straight.
There's really too many pictures to share, but here's a few we like:

First week home

Not Mom's chest. Swear.

Put your hands up! or the Harry Houdini of swaddles

First week home

The cake Mom made for Aliza's bday

To eat or not to eat? That is the question.

Little piggies

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