Will the Real Adi Please Stand Up

For the past month or so Adi has been continually getting better at standing on his own. Until last week when he finally took his first few steps!
Kol hakavod Adi! May you continue to grow from strength to strength.

The Gigantic Preggy and More Birth Days

Rewind 1 year and eight months (approximately).
We know that I'm pregnant but I've been pushing off going to my first ultrasound just because I was finishing off stuff in school and couldn't find a convenient time to go. Finally, in to my third month I make an appointment for the ultrasound. When I walk in and tell the receptionist that I'm there for an ultrasound she responds "Oh, you didn't get a call". Oh, no. "Well the machine is not working." Groan. "But maybe it's fixed now, why don't you go see." So I go to the ultrasound room, and sure enough the technician is on the phone with tech support and fiddling with the machine. After a few minutes she's off the phone and turns to me saying "Lets do this fast before it stops working again". So I pull up my shirt, get lathered with gel and we start trying to see whats inside of me. After a minute or two the technician says to me, "Well, I think God fixed the machine so that you can have your US today." I'm thinking - oh, no. But then she says - "You have twins." I was totally shocked. I couldn't stop laughing and saying no way, it can't be, I can't believe it. When the ultrasound was over I called Micah and just said "We need to talk, but don't worry, it's nothing bad." When I got home I told him, and he reacted basically the same way I did. After we got over our initial shock we were like - "Well, I guess we're moving to Alon Shvut."
Thank G-d the pregnancy went by fine with no complications at all. I was so humongous by the end though, I could barely stand up. Just walking a few steps was exhausting.

The later ultrasounds showed that Adi, who was positioned higher up, meaning he would be born second, was breach. We decided to hire a private doctor to deliver the babies to try and avoid a c-section as much as possible. We met with him for the first time on Wednesday, Sep 17th, after a long day of running around on errands. That night, or actually the next morning, I woke up at 4am feeling contractions. That wasn't so unusual, because I had been feeling contractions every so often for the past month or two. So I waited to see if they would stop. Well, they didn't. So at 5 I woke up Micah and we started timing them. At 6 we called, Joyce our midwife who was going to act as a doula, and our doctor, and told them we were heading to the hospital. We dropped Aliza off at my parents and headed out. I walked in to the hospital at 7. When we got there they tried to get a monitor of both babies, to hear check their heart rates and my contractions. This was not an easy task. They would be able to find one baby, but then not the other. And when they did finally hear both, one would slip away. So after fiddling with it for a little while (and me trying to deal with the painful contractions meanwhile) our doctor decided to insert a monitor onto the first baby's head. He had told us about this possibility ahead of time, so we were fine with it. This way they would easily be able to monitor baby A (later known as Eyal) from inside, and baby B (Adi) from the regular monitor on the outside. So they finally get everything in place, but now I cant really move around, which makes dealing with pain much harder. The contractions were getting pretty intense by then, so I thought maybe to get an epidural. They started giving me some kind of liquids as a prep for the epidural. But then I felt like a needed to push. It had only been a little more than 4 hours from the start of labor, so I was sure the doctor would tell me not to push yet. But a nurse checked me and said that I was fully dilated and that I could begin pushing. A few minutes later, after only a couple of (really hard and long) pushes, at 8:30am, Sep 18th, Eyal was born. I was so shocked that he was out already that the first thing I said was - Jesus Christ!!
We knew that Adi was breach, and our doctor had said that he could deliver him that way by basically putting his hands in and guiding him out. So thats what I was expecting to happen at that point. But apparently, after Eyal was born Adi turned a little and was sort of sideways. So the dr. put his hands in and nudged him a bit so that he was head down, then told me to push some more. I was like - what?? I thought you were just gonna pull him out? But no, I had to push some more, and a few minutes later, at 8:40, Adi was born.
From start to finish, a total of 4.5 hours. Baruch Hashem. May all my births be so amazing.
My stay in the hospital, including Shabbat, was ok and pretty uneventful. On Sunday morning we all came home to start our crazy life together.

Bee Sting. OUCH!

Adi was bitten this morning by a bee. I think the intruder got into the house yesterday, and was on his last legs this morning. Adi was playing nicely by the window, and he just picked up the bee (I didn't see, but I assume that's what happened). The bee didn't like that very much, and with his last dying breath stung my poor little boy on the finger.
Adi cried for about half an hour. His hand swelled up. We applied an ice pack and gave lots of love. He seemed to calm down, and finally fell asleep, about an hour after his regular nap time. The swelling seems to have gone down, and if he's asleep, I assume the pain has at least lessened. His finger felt smooth, so I don't think the stinger is still there.
After his nap Adi seemed fine. His finger doesn't seem to bother him at all and the swelling is gone. Hurray!

Birth Day

OK. Lets back up a bit to Aliza's birth.
She was born at home, in our apartment in Katamon. The entire birth, from start to finish was 10 hours. I wanted to insert an email Micah wrote after her birth, but I can't seem to find it. If I do I'll add it. I actually already wrote about Aliza's birth in my little book, so I'm not going to go into it here. But here's a picture from 2 days after her birth, Feb 2.

Unfortunately, I can't really remember any stories right now. I do know that Aliza took her first steps very close to her first birthday. Here is a video of first real walking taken on Jan 7, 2007.




UPDATE: Thanks to Shani Rotkovitz I now have the email Micah sent out after Aliza's birth, so I'm adding it in here. Thanks Shani!

At around 10:30 last Monday evening Miriam started having somewhat painful and irregular contractions. By 3:30 am they had become regular and we called our midwife and Miriam's mother, Donna. We were planning on having a home birth here in our apartment so there wasn't much to do but sit and wait. No bags to pack, to taxi to call. The midwife, Joyce, her partner, Rena, and Donna all arrived around 4:30 am and Miriam was at 3 cm. From that time on the contractions seemed to be very close together and very strong. Because we had a home birth we had the freedom to arrange things as we liked. We had all the lights off in the living room with only candles lit around the room. It was a very peaceful atmosphere which helped Miriam relax and concentrate. By 7:15 am Miriam was at 6 cm and we figured we had a few more hours to go. The contractions were getting very intense and were one on top of the other by this time. Miriam was exhausted and even managed to fall asleep for the 10 or 20 seconds between contractions. Finally, Miriam felt she really wanted to start pushing so we moved her to the bedroom which was also very dark except for a little light under the bed. The darkness was also great because it helps relax the baby and not startle it when it comes out. It was sufficiently dark that the midwife was using a flashlight much of the time. We also had the room very very warm. At 8:20 am Miriam was at 10 cm and she started pushing. At 8:42 a little girl came out, caught by Grandma Donna once the head was out, and placed right onto Miriam for a little mother daughter bonding and immediate nursing.

What an experience. When I asked Miriam about the pain she often objected to the term, saying instead that it was very intense. She wanted to experience the birth of her daughter in full, experience an event which has bonded women together since Eve. From my perspective it was amazing. I got to be there the whole time, helping Miriam through, moaning with the contractions, pushing like crazy at the end. When it was over I thought I would dehydrate from crying so much, my two girls in each other's arms.

On Shabbat I got called to the torah in the town of Alon Shvut where Miriam's parents live. It was amazing to be up there, the gabbai calling out to the world that this new little girl shall be forever known as Aliza Yaffa ben Micha Daniel. Our little girl had her name. Suddenly, she was so much more real.

Miriam and I wanted a name that reflected the journey our families took over the last hundred years and the eventual process of return to the Land of Israel. 9 months before Aliza (pronounced Aleeza) was born my grandmother, who's only given Jewish name was the Yiddish Freydel, passed away. As she got older, and a Hebrew name become more important, our family called her Simcha. Simcha is Hebrew for Freydel which means "joy." In Hebrew we have many words for joy, one of which is "aliza." We have, therefore, named our daughter Aliza after my grandmother. My grandmother had a great love for life and as she grew older she developed into a beautiful person who touched everyone she met. She survived a severely debilitating stroke and lived for two more years before she finally passed away, yet during those years she always affirmed her wish to live, her love for life. In Jewish mysticism the soul's journey does not end with the death of the individual but the soul continues perfecting itself through reincarnation, passing from life to life, growing ever closer to the Creator. With Aliza's creation so very close to my grandmother's passing, we can only hope that she will merit to have the heights my grandmother reached as her starting point.

Her middle name, Yaffa, has its roots in my family's long history in the United States. My great-great-great grandfather came to the US during the civil war, going straight to Virginia. My great grandmother's name was Maybel, or Maybelle, and she had a sister Florabelle. As I said before, we wanted a name that reflected our return to the land of Israel. There are two ways people often respond to Teshuva (return) whether it be return to the land of Israel or returning to observance of Jewish tradition. One way is that the ba'al teshuva (the person returning) rejects his or her past as an evil existence that must be forgotten. Another way, the way Rav Abraham Isaac Kook refers to teshuva, is that our process of return, or repentance, actually changes the spiritual makeup of our past, transforming the shortcomings of our past into merits. We wanted our Aliza to understand in a deep and meaningful way the journey of our ancestors, the teshuva of the Jewish people, and to see herself as in some way embodying the transformation of the Jewish people from a group of exiles to today's Nation of Israel. And so, we gave our Aliza the English name Belle, beautiful, a name my great grandmother and great-great aunt took from the South, and we transformed it into the Hebrew Yaffa, beautiful. We hope that Aliza Yaffa can draw from the wellspring of the Jewish nation's strength when she battles her shortcomings and she can successfully transform them into merits.

Two Cute!

Eyal and Adi have gotten to the age where they really interact and play with each other. It's the cutest thing to watch. It also means that I can actually sometimes get things done while they play together. Here are two vids of the cuteness.

Laziness may lead to ..... a blog! Who knew??

So I realized the last time I wrote anything down in a "baby book" (a plain old notebook) was when Adi and Eyal were born. That was over a year ago! And before that was when Aliza was a few months old. So I figured - this is pathetic. I can't remember anything about my children's development, any cute stories or anecdotes, nothing!
So maybe if I did it on the computer, I would actually do it. And then I can add pictures, videos and who knows what. Also, then I can share it with you. Yay! Fun for everyone!
To start of with, here is us now:

Well, it's actually from 6 months ago, but that's the best I've got for now.
Hopefully I'll be adding little cute stories, updates on development, etc.

Enjoy!