Shhhh! i'm on the phone

(this is what our living room looks like after a couple of days of not putting things away. luckily ben came back from his meeting in DC, and order is back in our home)

Snow

 

it's not uncommon for us to have that much snow, but i would like to complain about it nonetheless.
the drive to work this morning was a big mess. it was fine going down to Ella's daycare (phew!) but once i got to Hyde Park the roads resembled a ski slope (luckily it's flat here) and the drivers seemed to not know anything about driving on snowy roads. no plows to speak of, and the roads were not saulted. i drove very slowly and still felt the car sliding around a couple of times. i'm glad it was after dropping Ella off at school!

 

the road in this picture is one of the better ones - it's not plowed, just enough cars went through it to paint the snow brown.

[enter ben's complaint about Hyde Park below.]

Sleepless

This is mostly for the record, just so we can look back and (maybe) laugh some day.

Ella is 8 months old today (Happy Birthday!), but the last few nights she goes to sleep about 9 pm, then wakes up almost every hour between 12am-6am. At 6am she wakes up for good. It would seem that ever since we started with solid food, she's been more restless at night, and we know for a fact she's been a little 'backed-up' a few times. Otherwise during the day she's pretty happy!

Keren does most of the pacifier-replacing and bottle-feeding at night, and I get up with Ella at 6 or 5:30am to play with Ella and to get all of her stuff ready for the day. That way, Keren can sleep a little later. Needless to say, we're friggin-tired, and I'm a little afraid to leave for a couple of days to go to a conference for fear of what new punishment Ella will mete out to poor Imma while I'm gone.

CLAPPING!

we were playing with ella, admiring how she puts a ball through a hole, and encouraging her by saying "yayy!" and clapping every time she put the ball in the hole.

then suddenly she put her two hands together... and she put her two hands together again... and before we knew it she was clapping with us!
WOW!!

that was the fastest i've ever seen her to learn a new skill.

after repeating that for a few minutes (ella takes ball -- puts ball in the hole -- we say yayy and clap -- ella claps with us) we remembered to turn the camera on. i'm so excited!

Shedd Aquarium

Jan 3, 2009

It's always fun to go to the aquarium, and now it's even more so when we see things through the eyes of little ones. This sunday we met the Naozim and Nicole and Peter at Shedd -- FUN!!!
Ori was extremely excited to see all the fish and called at them "GIM! GIM! GIM!!!" (shord for "dagim" = fish). Peter seemed like an old pro at the aquarium, and ella couldn't figure out what's more interesting: the fish tanks, the explanation posters, or all the little kids running around her.
i think we're gonna get our membership's worth this winter :)

photoshoot

it's probably not the first time that i mention what a great photographer our friend Karin is. here are a few photos she took of Ella when we visited them this weekend.

Happy New Year!

Dec 31, 2009
we celebrated with Nicole, Dan and Peter.
it was a children-oriented party, the countdown was at 8pm and noise was not frowned upon.
after dinner we went back home, and tried to get a good night of sleep. ('tried' being the key word).

Nicole, Dan and Peter with traditional miso soup, crab rangoon, and an extra-dirty, extra-olive martini.

you can't even tell from the pictures that ella had just banged her head in the table... she sneezed and hit the table. poor thing. she didn't know what hit her, literally! she looked at us for a few seconds, very confused ('wait, what was that? sneezing is supposed to be fun!') and then started to cry, and then got distracted by something, and all was forgotten.


ella loved her party hat.


ima had to try the hat on too...

and of course, the best use of such a hat is as a musical instrument.




the three of us having a drink for the new year (at 8pm): champagne - formula - champagne.

party girls!