Dr. David Michelson (Graduation)

IN THE HOTEL (BINGHAMTON, NY)

Grandma loves books :)

Then. . . (mama's graduation:  2010)......................................and Now (dada's graduation:  2012)

GRADUATION

Dave being hooded (see screen to the right if your eyes are bad)

Proud Mama

MIA/GAVIN'S PLAYDATE @ TAMMI'S WITH SARAH

Mia and Lizzy

2 mamas (Tammi, me) with their tired boys (Carson, Gavin)

Thank you so much ladies for watching the kids while we were at graduation.  I don't think "watch" accurately captured what these women did for us.  While the boys stuck to being mezmorized by the singing snowman collection, the girls decorated the windows with Christmas gel stickies and made personalized holiday ornaments among other activities.

AT FUJI SAN (DINNER)

As if the first fire display wasn't horrifying enough to Mia, this guy did it again with the flaming onion trick.  Clearly he wasn't good at reading people because his in-your-face tricks were often aimed at Mia who was clearly disturbed by his silly games.

Earl, these family photos are AMAZING.  

Thank you to Kim who was busy deciding between scallops and steak ;) 

Mia did this pose on her own, so cute :)

Binghamton Besties!

Congratulations Dr. Michelson.  I am so proud of you.  I know it has been hard and you have had to overcome one challenge after the next.  It wasn't easy bouncing Gavin in the baby Bjorn while typing simultaneously (AND have dinner ready for me when I came home from work) but you did it and you did it with grace.  No complaints, no despair just dedication and hard work.  So admirable.  I love you sweetie.  Or should I say Dr. Sweetie ;)

Mia update (and The Nutcracker Ballet!)

Mia has been heard from the car seat singing "5 little speckled frogs" and she actually goes from 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 when previously she used to just sing one number over and over or jump around sporadically.  She has also started to say "duh" and "oh my gosh" and "stupid".  I grapple over letting her mimic these things she has heard from others or actually telling her my distaste for them.  On the one hand, making a big deal out of it will only make it more fun to say (I fear) and on the other hand, I HATE her saying "duh" to me and I try to teach her about respect and not being rude.  

In general though (especially if she has taken a nap), Mia is a great gal and we have tons of fun together.  She is learning about calendars at school and knows the days of the weeks, months of the year and even that it is 2012 (although I think I blew her mind when I told her in January it would be 2013).  She is still very confused by the concepts of "today" and "tomorrow" though because one night recently she said that after she woke up it would be tomorrow (as I've told her in the past) and the next morning she told me "it is tomorrow" and I failed trying to tell her that it is always today but that today is yesterday's tomorrow and tomorrows yesterday (I could have seen this failed explanation a mile away but I still thought it was fun to try and it will be fun to see if she gradually "gets" these concepts or if she "gets" them more suddenly).  At night, I give Mia kisses and hugs, then we do "nosies" (rub noses) and we do "eyeglasses" as Mia used to call "eyelashes" where we do butterfly kisses and recently I was being silly with her and started doing "earsies" and "chins" etc (you get the point) and Mia said, "we should do vaginas. . . that would be funny" and I just ignored it and said, "good night" before promptly telling Dave and having a good snicker or two.

Well recently, my girly and I went to what I hope to be our first annual Nutcracker ballet together.  She has been hoping to start ballet classes and we told her that when she turned 4 she could (though she sometimes says she wants gymnastics or art classes too).  So I thought this would be a fun tradition to have.  I knew she could sit still the whole time but wasn't thrilled that it fell during nap time (1pm).  Still, we grabbed a cupcake beforehand and had M&Ms from the concession stand during intermission and she was good to go.  Everything in moderation, including moderation as Mia's wise aunt once taught me.  Here we are all dolled up before heading out to Red Bank's Count Basie Theatre::

Gavin is 18 months old

18 MONTHS

Although Gavin is now 19 months, here are some notes from a month ago, when this post was intended before Hurricane Sandy and also some newer updates.

• Gavin can be heard doing the "Quack Quack" portions of our animal music CD and loves to dance (raises his arms [hands in fists] alternately and then. . . well I may just have to get a video of this someday)
• Gavin loves to clean up and will do so while singing his own version to the clean up song "keen up keep up ah wuh ah wuh ah keen up keen up"
• Gavin is still a big eater (oftentimes eats more than Mia and equal to Dave or I) though he is getting picky with veggies recently and will say "no" while shaking his head side to side.  
• Gavin has all 12 teeth (only missing 2 yr molars though he started teething these recently).
• He is in size 5 diapers and 18-24 mo clothes.  Sad to say we've taken a break from cloth diapers due to our space constraints at the loft and our need to really clean/sanitize the ones that got damaged and I just haven't had the time nor motivation to tackle this chore yet.  
• Gavin loves cars, trains, balls (and throws very hard/far with decent aim too!)
• He is also a huge hug addict and I dare anyone to hear his pathetic open-armed request for one (huuuh) and deny him!  It is a good thing Gavin loves to hug too because his sister does too.  Sometimes I just feel like I am going to get a cavity from all their sweetness towards one another although I guess he occasionally does diss her hug attempts and she does occasionally knock him over with her overly enthusiastic hugs.  
• Gavin was super gentle with Cookie as well as our cats before they had to temporarily start living without us (sniff). 
• LANGUAGE
• Gavin has been saying Mia perfectly now for sometime.
• After starting to count to 10 during diaper changes (to distract him, as we had done for Mia) he quickly picked up on counting and, although he has a proclivity for odd numbers like 3 and 5, he can pretty reliably count all the way to 10 with little to no help.
• started saying his colors.  His favorite to say is "purple", which he says just like that.  He can also say green ("geen") and blue ("bue").  Although he likes to try to figure out colors and is sometimes accurate, I'm not sure that accuracy has risen above chance levels yet.  
• calls strawberries "Saturdays" and brocoli "braclova".  He also called grapes "boblios" for some reason and calls clementines some weird name with an "M" sound.  The funny thing is he can imitate anything we say and can say many things correctly ("pear", "apple" etc).  
• started stringing more words together in "sentences" like "mama more nana" though mostly it is just 2 word sentences, if that.  
• Said "Gavin" for the first time recently after much prodding.  
• Although language is a big development right now, he is also interested in developing his climbing/balancing skills as is evidenced by his climbing on his toys, toy buckets and even a book if that is the only "tall" thing in sight.  

SLIGHTLY SHOE-OBSESSED :)

PopPop's shoe

Daddy's shoes

Hurricane Sandy- Part 3 (back in NJ!). . . and Thanksgiving

With work starting back Monday November 12th, we decided to get on the road Saturday to give us a whole day to get our lives back together before starting a new normal rhythm in our house, well in our landlords' loft anyway.  So bye bye Boston and hello 50 Valley St again but this time in the loft behind our house.  The cats still have to stay in the old house because our landlord doesn't want pet hair in his loft.  So to this day we feel like cat sitters and although we finally cleaned out our old bedroom upstairs so they could have a more comfortable/sunny place than the bathroom they still aren't living with us.  Sigh.  We are still very lucky to be living right next to where we were living.  Very often we find that we need something from "the old house" and can get it when feeding the cats.  If we lived in a place located by FEMA it would likely be one room in a hotel hours from where we need to be AND it wouldn't allow cats AND it wouldn't have a kitchen AND it wouldn't have laundry facilities.  So all and all our 2 bedroom loft with washer/dryer and kitchen/living space is a luxury.  

We should be able to move into our old place just before the new year (if Dec 21st 2012 doesn't actually turn out to be apocalyptic).  Here are some pictures of the damage:

This is the saddest part for me.  Hardly expecting even the floor to get damp, I (in what I felt was paranoia) decided to move all the bottom shelf photo albums, scrap books, year books and baby books to the couch. . . just in case.  Well here is the couch, which dutifully soaked up much of the 3.5 feet of water that came into the house, which is at least 3 feet above the ground.  The scrap books were. . . well. . . scrapped as they were "disintegrating" according to Dave who tediously took all the pictures out of my old school albums and air dried the pictures in what now amount to be a big curly pile of messy memories (all out of order and somewhat distorted).  I must let go of that nagging feeling:  why didn't I just carry them upstairs?  Luckily my other paranoia, the filing cabinet contents, fared a little better (I placed the stuff atop of the baby changing table, which floated around the room a bit and eventually landed in a different corner).  

Here is the water line on the door to our 1st floor bathroom.  

Should have taken out the trash before we evacuated although then I suppose this would have just been floating around outside somewhere.  A no win situation I suppose.  I still can't believe that all of our spices had to be thrown out, that drawer was above my waist, at around stove-top level!!

Here are all the ruined VHSs (background), luckily DVDs could just be wiped off.  Lots of board books got it and some toys too.  For this, I am just trying to see it as an opportunity towards furthering my dreams of minimalism.  Dave recounted all the places he had to empty water from including the pantry drawers, refrigerator "crisper" and the dryer among other places. 

This is our house with our junk waiting to be picked up.

and here is our new view of our old place (from behind, in the loft).  

One of our first meals in the loft (tiny kitchen, big Dave)

here is the living/eating space with an open-ceiling bedroom seen in the back right-hand side.  That is where Gavin sleeps.  With a dose of sarcastic hilarity I tell you that no one sleeps in that big room, which includes a queen-sized bed, except for Gavin.  It is a long story but lets just say we are finally getting sleep again. . . so long as we are not in there.  So we sleep in the other room in the full-sized bed where Mia also sleeps-on her twin mattress on the floor.  

That is how it is now anyway.  We were originally going to be the ones hosting Thanksgiving (for the Miller-Licon's and my parents) but seeing as how we have tighter quarters now AND we didn't want to turn right back around and go to Boston again, my parents ended up joining us for 2 weeks (11/17-12/1) so we wouldn't be alone for Thanksgiving and to help out while Dave was undergoing his CRUNCH time before his final PhD defense, which successfully occurred 11/30 (graduation is 12/15, pics to follow).  Unfortunately, Cookie had to be kenneled but I appreciate my parents choosing us over her and I was told she did fine especially considering it was her first time being kenneled.  

Here is a picture of Mia and I watching Chrarlie Brown's Thanksgiving, a first but I hope to make this an annual tradition.  We don't really have TV but this is our landlords and we were able to hook it up to our computer and get it from YouTube.  

Here is Dave wrestling Gavin and Mia, I just love watching them in action!  Gavin does this funny thing where he stands back and says, "wa, wa, wa" (as in walk?) and then goes charging at Dave!

Thanksgiving dinner (loft style)

followed by dessert (pumpkin/pecan pie)

The night after Thanksgiving it was about 8 nights before my parents had to leave and we decided it would be the first night of our Chanukah, which Dave and I preferred to share with Bubbe and PopPop, the "real" Jews ;)

Here I am reading the Menorah book to the kids

and here is Bubbe singing "Don't let the light go out" via an internet lyric's site

Mia waving hello to Hannukah (don't be confused by our dinner candelabra) 

Hurricane Sandy- Part 2 (Miller-Licon's)

     With the cats safely inside yet another basement, I went upstairs to say hello to my new home for the next (almost) 2 weeks.  I didn't know that yet though.  I arrived on a Thursday evening and as far as I knew, I would likely be called to go back to work that very Monday.  But at least it is a long weekend in a warm house with family we love.  The sleeping arrangements varied:  I started out with everyone in Jeremy's room (me and Mia on his twin and Gavin in a borrowed pack-n-play).  Although somehow Dave (6'3") and I managed to cuddle/sleep at Knox College in an extra-long twin somehow this just wasn't working with Mia (3" and change).  That paired with cousins wanting a sleep-over and we finally allowed Mia to sleep in Randall/Mattie's big room.  Just a simple bribe of morning pancakes if no craziness occurred and we were good to go.  Now this 11 people (and 3 animals) in one house thing gave Gavin a nasty habit of not sleeping through the night since I pretty much had to pacify him in any way possible whenever he made any noise in hopes that we can keep the house sleeping until at least 6am, which happened way less than we all had hoped.  Eventually, we banished ourselves to the basement but apparently overactive bladders upstairs still woke the crew up mighty early (whew! it wasn't all our fault).  

     Sleep deprivation coupled with boredom and close quarters left me close to tears one afternoon when "knock knock knock" it was DAVE!!  It had only been half a week but I was so happy to see him.  It is funny how tears look the same despite the emotion, which causes them.  He came bearing stories and pictures of our home and of NJ in general.  Stories of gas lines that took 4 hrs to get through, of gas rationing by license plate #s, of the church around the corner from us which, since the day after the storm (to this very day!!!) gives out clothes, toys, food, coffee/hot cocoa etc etc every day from morning to night, of a phone charging station at the town hall, of curfew cops and address checks to enter our town, and the list goes on.  He had his own stories about cleaning the house and drying things out as best he could.  Deciding what should be salvaged or tossed, rising with the sun and turning in when it got dark, with no electricity or warm water he emptied cabinets filled with water, swept trash sludge from the kitchen floor and ate the same thing day after day (canned pears, granola bar, PBR).  

     During our stay in Boston, the boys still had school and guys still had work and after a couple of days of cabin fever with Mia an amazing thing happened.    Harold called to say that there was an activity at Randall's preschool and Mia was invited.  After the activity, the director asked me if Mia would like to join Randall in his class so long as we were displaced out here, free of charge.  Mia was thrilled at this prospect and when I tried to say good-bye to her she was literally too busy with her art project to kiss me.  When I picked her up and the teachers described her as "chatty" I just knew she was happy/comfortable there because Mia will not talk if she is in any way uncomfortable with her surroundings.  I think she was just so happy to be playing with kids her age and to have a bit of structure in her day again.  Of course I was happy to have the time to help Matt around the house since having so many house guests made day to day business hard to stay on top of.

     After a week passed, I became nervous that the electricity in Highlands, NJ wouldn't be back before I was called to work but finally on Saturday Nov 10th, 9 days after our arrival and several hours after I was told I had to be back at work on Monday (11/12) we got word that the electricity was back.  Here are some shots of our time in Boston.

     

Bubbe, Gavin and Jeremy

Bubbe, PopPop and Cookie

making cookies

Sounds simple but this was a proud moment for me.  Everyone had been so rowdy that I thought I might be nuts to enlist their help in cookie making but it had the effect I was going for:  it focused us all on a common goal, that of sweets!  Everyone was great about taking turns as we went through the steps in the recipe.  They loved the part where they got to make thumb prints in the shortbread cookie balls and fill them with jelly

Randall and Mia, in a ball.

Gavin, in a boat (I think you're a little too big to sail that ship buddy!)

Lemonade

When someone, who shall remain nameless, accidentally put a laundry packet instead of a dishwasher packet in the dishwasher, Gavin took these lemons and made lemonade. . . or bubble soup.

FORT!

It was take a friend (cousin) to gymnastics class day. . . how perfect!! Mia had a blast :)

The Noreaster who thought it fun to pelt a bunch of storm-stricken East coasters who had no heat in their house.  Thankfully, we had warm shelter and coats and some of us ventured out all bundled up. . .

. . .others preferred to watch from inside

Wrestling with Dave is always good for some fun (and a workout!).  I am happy to report that Gavin is almost ready for this pastime.  He wrestles daddy at home and was very interested in watching but was a bit too uncoordinated still to stay in the thick of these tangles you see below:

I am not happy to report that for some reason it was easier to put Gavin forward facing for the drive home (I think it was easier to install [we don't have latch unfortunately] and we needed extra room for stuff) so although I prefer to wait until the rear facing maximum weight limit is reached (at 32 lbs he had 3 more pounds).  I know we CAN just turn him back but I'm certain he'd protest and I HATE installing car seats so. . . I think he's a forward facing dude and although he and Mia can't see each other as well, he likes the view. 

Next stop:  Highlands, NJ --loft living!