"This is not for babies"

Last Friday at Shabbat dinner Judah expressed strong interest in Abba and Grandma's wine glasses. In order to quell his desire, I got out a plastic champagne glass I had bought years ago for a New Years party and filled it with a little bit of water. He was thrilled!! The following hilarity ensued.

What a crazy Summer so far!

It's been a long time since my last post! I apologize to our die hard fans. But in my defense, there's been quite a lot going on lately.

About a month ago we said good bye to Ramita (at least as Judah's nanny - she's still our dear friend).



And Judah started preschool at Temple Emanuel.

These happy pictures notwithstanding, the first several weeks of school were extremely difficult for Judah (and mommy). It's a wonderful school, but it's incredibly different surroundings from what he was used to - so many kids, so many adults, new place, new routine, and crazy things like needing to line up to come inside. And let's face it, Judah has not always been so quick to adapt to new situations. So the adjustment was very hard. In addition to crying a lot at drop-off, he refused to eat at school, had a hard time napping, and frequently reminded me at home how "mommy left Judah at school" with a sad, forlorn tone. He also started waking frequently during the night crying for me and we both became unbelievably tired. Of course, this all coincided with Doug's three week trip to Israel, which likely also contributed to Judah's discombobulation (and certainly contributed to my stress and sleeplessness!)

But I'm very happy to report that Judah is now doing extremely well at school. He doesn't protest going and he talks very happily about it in the evenings. He sings the songs they sing at school and tells us things about his day. He speaks very fondly about many of the teachers and he seems to have already developed very strong bonds with many of them. It's really very exciting. We feel that Judah is being exposed to a much bigger world, and he really seems to be soaking it all in.

And now Abba is back, which is wonderful!!

In addition to school, we've been spending our Summer doing all kinds of fun things. We've been going to the park and doing pull-ups,

we go on other excursions, like downtown Silver Spring,

And, as always, we spend a good amount of time just hanging out at home.

Last weekend we were looking for something to do on a rainy Sunday so we decided to go play at Ikea. We started out in the toy area where we found some fun things to do...



But the real fun to be had was in one of the kitchen displays. Judah was in heaven - his very own life-sized play kitchen. What could be better than that?!

Happy Father's Day to Abba!

Okay, I'm a week late, but here you go...

Summertime and the living is easy

We've been enjoying the warm weather - spending lots of time outside. Judah particularly loves going to the merry-go-round,

and the park nearby,

and we also recently discovered the joy of the fountain in downtown silver spring, where kids are always having fun getting soaked. Judah was definitely skeptical at first, but ended up loving it.

It was a great outing, including the post-soak snack and rest.

Just some nice shots

Here is a collection of nice pictures of Judah, the first four of which were taken by Boo (Doug's dad) on their recent visit to DC.

And here are some others, just capturing some of our daily lives:

Gardening

I've really been getting into the garden this year, mostly because Judah's finally old enough to keep me company and play independently so I can get things done. Judah, of course, is very interested in what I'm doing back there and constantly talks about "mommy pulling weeds!" So he's begun his own version of gardening, which mostly involves digging in the dirt and splashing in the water - true toddler heaven.