The First Night of Hanukkah

Hanukkah seemed to come around fast this year. We decided to break in the holiday in traditional style with menorahs, gifts, and a game of dreidel. Livia helped us light the menorah and say the holiday prayer.


At Sharyn's request I bought some potato latkes from Whole Foods so that we could give some to Livia this year. Unfortunately, the latkes were passed down the food chain from parent, to child, to dog. After devouring the latke Cassidy was in especially good spirits because she also got a gourmet dog treat for the holiday.


Finally, we topped everything off with a game of dreidel. This may go down in the books as the most unsuccessful game of dreidel ever. In fact I think someone needs to write a new Hannukah song about playing dreidel with your dog....

Thanksgiving in New York

These Thanksgiving photos are a little overdue, but just in time for Hanukah. We had a nice weekend visiting family in New York. We arrived on Thanksgiving day and spent the day at Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa David's house, with lots of cousins. Livia had her first meal on a tablecloth and spent most of the meal playing peek-a-boo by pulling the end of the tablecloth over her head. She thought it was hilarious and the rest of us did too. She actually stayed at the table, content, for about 45 minutes, which is a record I think. As Aunt Michelle would say, the experience was actually not totally unpleasant -- which can be unusual for big meals with Livia, so we were pretty happy. Livia LOVED Grandma Marilyn's turkey and ate a ton of it throughout the weekend.


The female cousins: Lauren, Sharyn, Livia, Maddie, Dani, Jacklyn, Jordana, Jillian


Dan and I are actually able to eat


Jacklyn reads to Livia


Lauren reads to Livia

On Black Friday we went to the Long Island Children's Museum. Livia loved exploring everything and she especially loved the life-sized lava lamp.

On Saturday we went into the city to the Children's Museum of New York, where we met Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Howie. We stayed almost 2 hours while Livia explored everything. There was so much to see!

Livia loved the life-sized Lite Brite. She took out every single piece and stacked it upright. Here she actually managed to stack two pieces on top of each other while upright.

The mail truck was fun too

Some of these photo credits actually belong to Howie and to Amy Temares. Thanks for sharing! We had a great weekend!

Dan's nightmare

I have to admit, I am drawn to those ridiculous shows on Discovery Health where people unexpectedly have quintuplets or sextuplets. Dan hates these programs and cannot imagine being in that situation. When we were at the Long Island Children's Museum a couple of weeks ago, we got a brief glimpse of what it would be like to have 5 Livias.

Who needs toys?

Now that she is walking, Livia's favorite activity is wandering around the house and getting into EVERYTHING. She has little interest for being in the playroom with her toys. She is actually very adept at navigating the stairs-- going up and also turning herself around to go down on her own -- I think she climbs the equivalent of half a mountain every day. She loves to dump the clothes out of the dresser in her room, or to open two drawers at a time and transfer each piece of clothing from one to the other. Dan ended up putting locks on the tupperware/cup cabinet after the above incident. I wasn't too upset about it though because in the process of dumping everything out, Livia discovered a few of my favorite cups that I didn't realize we still had.

I know we are overdue for posting Thanksgiving photos-- but I need to gather some from a few different people and I haven't had a chance to do it yet. So stay tuned for Thanksgiving in New York!