Ruben Shachar 365.287

today was our son's brit milah welcome to the tribe little man.

we also announced his name: Ruben Shachar.

Ruben with his Uncle Jesse.
Ruben with Uncle Eli
Two very proud grandmothers.

lela 365.286

grandmother in spanish. Sadly this is not the best picture of my mother, she smiles a lot especially when holding her grandson, but i was too tired to take another picture and i am sure she will forgive me . nonetheless family has been critical in making the transition home work so again this post is about thanking them.

all my boys 365.285

there is so much that goes on in this little man's life. today he had a play-date with MOMP's little man and more importantly MOMP got her fill of baby head smell. its her crack, i think that if when you went to the car wash that were a scent available called "newborn baby head" she would get her car cleaned every week just for the smell. (this is no way meant to imply that her car needs cleaning that often just that she's an addict) anyway while there are pictures of this play date... this picture is what took my breath away. jackson is adjusting to have a younger person in the house and today he proved it by being able to share the bed with more than one person. who knew i would a woman in a house full of boys.

saba v' savta 365.284

grandfather and grandmother in hebrew.

i think these two people, along with my parents, exceed the joy we have in our son.
also thanks to them and uncle eli the house is starting to look ok again.

going home 365.283

today we brought our little man home. because we are so happy to be leaving the hospital you get three pictures. little man, big car seat.

sheer cuteness
tired but happy family ready to go home!

will gets to feed the little man 365.282

so the little man and i have been working on breast-feeding and while we had a rocky start, things are progressing very well. latching and sucking happening, in the right order! i am also pumping to make sure he gets enough to eat and to stimulate more milk production. this is will's first time feeding our son (it was 4:00 am) i have never loved my husband more!

skin time (this time with dad!) 365.281

lets hear it for my boys!

skin time 365.280

less than a day old and we are enjoying skin time. i think he kinda looks like will.

birthday! 365.279

this is my son.
5lbs 12 oz, 18 inches long. born on June 24, 2008 8:31 pm EST

welcome to the world little man i look forward to getting to know you!

name that movie! 365.278

i know its a little bit of gimmie and its not a great picture.. but still one of the best movies of all time! first one to answer correctly via comments gets a prize.

CSA 365.277

what is CSA you ask? community supported agriculture, i answer. we joined the stillman farms CSA and today was the first pick-up the bounty was plentiful despite it being early in the season. we got radishes, golden beets, argula, swiss chard, strawberries, spinach and lettuce. i am excited to play with greens in my cooking! (ok i'll be honest i'm excited to taste the things that will makes with the greens!)

1000 degrees 365.276

this whole pregnancy things makes me feel like i am 1000 degrees all the time. while will tells me i am cool to the touch i feel like i am burning up. i have complained in the past about the reverse effects of the thermal camera on the isight, so invert all the blue to red and you will get a sense of just how hot i feel.

style 365.275

in my lifetime the furniture i have acquired was basically take it as is, either free or there are no choices you have to take it in this color if you want it. for this chair, will and i chose the color and the style and we are so happy! since its a glider type chair it lives in the little room, until such time that we can bring into the living room and enjoy it all the time. also extra style points come from jesse who gifted us the beautiful throw from mexico you see artfully draped along the back of the chair . (the artful draping is mine but i couldn't have done it with any other throw so easily.)

butt 365.274

for those of you with cats or dogs, you know what it means when they start scooting their butts on the ground. well i noticed it happening which meant it was time to go get those bad boys "expressed" because i am a nice person "expressed" is what i will call it for you. really this is just a picture of jackson's butt much happier!

tired boys 365.273

after a long night of watching the celtics win my boys, they were tired. it was all they could do to muster the energy to go for a walk.

getting the next room ready 365.272

tomorrow eli is going to start painting the dining room. so tonight we emptied it and stacked the big furniture in the middle, jackson was excited because the tarps we used smell like camping and he hearts camping. goodbye semi-gloss blue paint!

favorite summer things 365.271

i love summer fruits. i would eat nothing but fruit if my digestive system would allow it. in this bowl is one quarter of a watermelon we got at costco last week. self control is not having cut the whole thing and eating it in one sitting.

new paint job 365.270

today eli finished painting the little room. i love how it turned out and i also love that our house didn't smell because we used no-VOC paint, Freshaire Choice Paint available at home depot. we used summer dragonfly (turquoise) and distant star (white) for the colors. thanks eli it looks great!

36 weeks & pride 365.269

this is what i look like 36 weeks pregnant.

also today was the boston pride festival. will and i went to volunteer at the Keshet table, I was really excited to make my belly a GLBT safe zone! (see sticker below)

basketball? 365.268

he can palm a basketball and apparently also my belly.

tourist or something else 365.267

something else... only two papers left! yipee!

deservedly honored 365.266

today a good of friend of ours was honored by the community. there is no one i know who deserves this kind of recognition more than he does. so here's to you Alan, keep up the good work, I am proud and honored to call you my friend.

**picture taken by DT

shadows 365.265

i was getting something out of the fridge this evening and i noticed this nifty shadow. while my camera is mostly awesome capturing dark lit shadows is not its strong suit, so while the picture is grainy you still get the idea (squint a little and you will see it even better)

the process 365.264

this is what it looks like when i transfer tapes to mp3. its an annoying process (you have to do it in real time and the cord is short so i can't play on the computer whilst the dubbing happens) but thank goodness for AZ who clued me into the trial software (i have 18 days left to finish up the tapes) and what kind of cord to buy.

the little guy from tatooine 365.263

"he looks like one of the little guys from tatooine" says will. "huh? what is that?" says me. apparently in this picture jackson looks like a star wars character, news to me, i think he just looks adorable (full disclosure i had to look up online how to spell tatooine)

voyeurism 365.262

everyone likes to look into someone else's life. there are many ways to do this, open the cabinets in the bathroom, peek inside bedside tables, or open the fridge. well dear reader here is your peek into my fridge. what does this peek tell you about us?

*points of note we cleaned the fridge, thus being able to cross something off the task list
and Al Gore has prominent fridge placement!

decisions (aka nesting) 365.261

we are in the midst of reorganizing our house to make room for the kidlet. this is a complicated process, when will and i moved in together we got rid of ton of crap, when we moved we got rid of a ton of crap, when i started this blog (and we had the street sale) we got rid of a ton of crap. yet somehow we still have crap. we have given away furniture and we are still getting rid of crap. how are we solving the problem? we are getting a new piece of furniture to store the crap that we aren't getting rid of. so i was in the store today with the new piece trying to figure out what baskets would go in the bottom to store the linens that we want to keep there. there are two choices. the dark one or the light one. i know its a long post to basically ask one question. the room walls are tan, the floors are roughly the same color as in the picture and the piece will be in a well lit room but not super bright. (also keep in mind that you are only seeing the bottom part, there are three more shelves above that won't have baskets.)

fetch 365.260

will has been teaching jackson to fetch. its a simple concept i know, but our dog he is special, he didn't want to fetch, he just wanted to chase whatever it was and chew on it where it landed. however he is learning that he if he brings something back he will get to chase it again. here he is chasing the frog head down the hall into the kitchen, he then brought it back, ready to chase again. i am so proud!

what its meant to be 365.259

today my isight wasn't working. so there is supposed to be a picture of me, working on a paper. i can tell you that i wasn't happy, both with the paper and the non-working isight. sorry but for today there isn't a picture. but close your eyes and imagine me working on a paper and being cranky about technology.

ugly ducklings 365.258

I know that I now notice babies (of all types) more than I did before, for this I blame the fetus, but as I walking to class this morning, i had a flash forward walking with a kid and seeing this scene. I wouldn't be able to just walk by. We would have to stop and watch the baby geese and most likely talk about it. Usually thoughts like this overwhelm me, but today I was oddly at peace with the idea of it.

my rake 365.257

so this is meant to be a picture of my rake. but a picture of a rake hanging on a wall is boring, so if you add my husband it makes it a better-looking picture. i got this rake from my brothers-in-law at our wedding, its meant to symbolize how they have accepted me into the family (one of many sibling bonding indentured servitude tasks was raking the leaves in the yard on thanksgiving). every time i look at my rake, i smile and for that daily smile i thank my "brothers"

we miss saul 365.256

this morning i had breakfast with two of my-brothers in law and husband and there was something missing. . . saul

kenmore square 365.255

this is what is happening in kenmore square this weekend. i recommend you don't try driving through this weekend at all.

innards 365.254

in past posts i have talked about how jackson likes to "kill" his toys. while of course it was a great post they didn't really capture what happens when toys die, usually we are quick to clean up the mess, here is a great example of jackson being quite pleased with the mess he has created.

tired dog 365.253

today we walked to radio shack with jackson to pick up a line to go from the stereo to the compy so that we can convert old cassettes from my youth to mp3s, so that i can relive my youth through my offspring, this long walk made jackson so tired... that he didn't even flinch when the flash went off.

new phone 365.252

last night will and i got new phones. mostly because my phone would randomly decide that it didn't want to make calls. now i have a phone that makes calls all the time and has an adorable picture of my dog as the background.

things that make me smile 365.251

mirrors, now stop what you are thinking, its not that i am vain, but rather i like to see two things at once. a long time ago before Cara made the move out west, we spent an afternoon at the botantical gardens in NY. we took a bunch of pictures and we were silly and just plain ourselves. to be sure she didn't forget me i bought us a set of these frames so we could showcase my favorite pictures (as seen above), the beauty of course being that you can choose to have the silly or the traditional picture facing out. the placement of this picture frame in front of a mirror allows me to have both views and almost everyday i smile when i look at this picture.

bridal shower 365.250

these two women are getting married to very lucky men in the next year a friend from school and i thought they should have a proper shower from the ladies at the school of management. so the party was today and it was good time and i hope they enjoyed themselves as much as i did. may their weddings be stress-free and their marriages be full of joy and happiness.

they are both mine! 365.249

jackson has recently realized how much fun chasing a ball can be. he came home from the park carrying one ball (identical to the one we have for him as seen above) that is broken. but when he got home he started hoarding both balls. there must be something so delicious inside these balls because even after breakfast was served he stayed on his chair chewing on this ball, ignoring his food. i just love how happy he looks!

the future of keshet 365.248

Will is on the board of a Keshet, a grassroots organization dedicated to creating a fully inclusive Jewish community for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Jews in Greater Boston and across the country, this summer three families who are either on the board or on the staff are having babies. We missed out on getting the picture with the three families, (one baby born two to go). But at least we got two proud Keshet families!

new windows! 365.247

we moved into our house a little over a year ago, when we moved in we did what we had to do in order to live here. we knew that we would have to replace the windows. today we got three replaced. small wins, small wins.

civic engagement 365.246

this evening, along with 100+ other brookline dog owners went to the library to talk about the future sustainabiltiy of the green dog program. it was a good meeting, way better than the picture i took.

uncle eli! 365.245

eli has graduated and now he is staying with us until he moves into a place with friends. i know he will be back to visit. why? we have (free) food and (free) laundry. nonetheless its a pleasure to have him. i give you one guess, who likes having him around the most?

five 365.244

thats how many papers i have left this semester, which also means EVER! yipee! i have a new appreciation for the number 5.

recycling 365.243

i know it doesn't look like much but after I completed a class, i was able to recycle the 200+ pages associated with it. it felt really, really good.

insanely early breakfast 365.242

because i wasn't feeling well, you are just going to have to deal with how not good i look in this picture. anyway this is my friend jason, we went to high-school together and we lived together for a summer in chicago. he currently lives in LA (shiver) and is on the east coast for his younger sister's graduation. what makes this picture remarkable? well jason was at our house at 7:35 am! am people! he had to have been awake before that because thats when he came to our house. people who know jason will understand just how huge this is, really i am still in shock! anyway we had french toast made with real french people! it was tasty and fun and great to see him!

32 weeks 365.241

this is me at 32 weeks pregnant.

we had forgotten to take the picture before i got ready for bed, so the awesome pants i am wearing are in fact my pjs (which i stole from will, because mine don't fit anymore)

bow 365.240

in an attempt to further refine our dogs social skills, i am working with his natural instincts. dogs bow to each other to indicate that they are ready for play. i figure this is a good way for jackson to let us know what he wants, i.e. i don't want to go out, i don't want to be pet, I WANT TO PLAY! as with any training its a slow process but we are making progress, here he is in worcester telling me that its play time and to put the flashy light thing away!