Half of us

Noah and I are in Austin, meeting up with lots of family, many of whom are Segals. Micah and Jessa live here, Joel, Kristen and Ezra live nearby, and others flew here from Raleigh - Judah, Nina, Kristy, Aharon, Dezi, Zakai, and Jorie. We've been celebrating Hannukah and doing Texan things.

Ezra + Noah
Ezra is doing something that is SOOOO cool and see,
Mommy, I have to play that game also because he's doing it

Noah's been making me Surprise Waffles at the breakfast bar at the hotel

Salt Lick BBQ w/those of us who are not vegan and don't keep kosher

Playing baseball with a stick and a piece of cow bone

Jessa + Noah, happily eating vegan latkes and play dreidel

Noah + Dezi, at a playground where we saw a bunch of kids wearing cowboy boots

Noah is happy playing with Princess Buttercup and Koozy, Micah and Jessa's two dogs. Noah made up a bunch of dog holidays for them (he knows what that means, though I don't exactly understand). Jessa made vegan tacos with handmade tortillas and last night we had ice cream for dinner. Dezi is 3 and he and Noah mostly get along and play together. Noah really likes to play on Micah's electric keyboard and slide down the stairs.

At the Thinkery, science museum

Micah and a magnified image of one of his dreadlocks

At the Thinkery, there was this crazy climbing structure. Dezi
and Noah were playing in it. Dezi was in that top part there
and got scared and felt stuck. Noah helped get him down, by
showing him how to do it and he modeled it several times

Dezi/Aharon

We're leaving tomorrow and I will soon blog about our snow adventure we will have later this week. 

You see we are very busy.

Eenie Meenie Miney Mo + Thanksgiving

Noah and Aviva have been discussing and debating everything, and there is a lot of exploration and discussion about what is Fair and Equal and Right. Aviva pointed at Noah and herself and started saying "Eenie meenie miney mo...." and when it landed on her, she gloated a little and pointed out that she won. Noah was not happy and started complaining, until I pointed out that it wasn't for anything. There wasn't something that Aviva won or got to do first. It was just a means to make her the winner at something. Noah liked thinking about that, and how he could also say, "Ha ha! I'm green and you're blue" or even "I'm 17 and you're the letter F!"

Aviva is counting everything and also counting to 100 all the time. Sometimes she goes from 28 to 29 to 80, or sometimes 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, then 90, but she understands it more or less. She counts the noodles on her plate and the people in the room and the leaves on that sidewalk square. 

Aviva helped me peel the 5 pomegranates it took to fill this bowl

Aviva's bed/closet

Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving, we got to hang out with aunt Joanna, uncle Steve, and cousins Anya and Mika. The kids got to play a lot of games and just generally hang out a lot and that was really nice. 

This is David and Alea's new baby Solomon, who is 2 weeks old here.
Aviva keeps calling him King Solomon by mistake

King Solomon's big brother Avery

Avery + Aviva

Avery + David

We met up with our friends Rachel, Zack, Norah, and Ellis

Aviva is also doing a ton of pretending and wants us to play with her, but she wants to dictate the situation. Yesterday: "Pretend you're a baby and I'm the teacher and you don't know how to swim and you're dying and drowning, and then I'm saving you." And when I do all that, she's comforting me and petting my face and saying "It's okay, sweetie, I've got you. And now pretend that you don't know who saved you and you are looking around but you can't talk because you're still a baby but you're really happy. And now you want me to call your mom but you don't have any words but you still want me to call your mom on the phone and I did and now she's parking...." and it goes on and on. This is her favorite kind of play lately. 

Dan's mom Evy, (Papa's mom, Bubbe) moved on Monday, after spending a few weeks living with Nana and Papa. Aviva says she moved to Fancilvania. Which is kind of like Pennsylvania.

At their school on Friday, there was an all-school assembly and many kids got special "shout-outs" including Aviva. 

Her award says she's good at sitting in circle and coloring in the lines.

October and November 2019

On Veteran's day, Grandma's birthday, we visited her and played with fallen leaves

Playground in Benecia with Dorian

Playground at City Hall in SF

Kitty and Dragon Knight on Halloween

Dragon Knight and teacher Ms. Kyla

Lots of interest in letters

Aviva has been interested in numbers also, in both English and Spanish. In Spanish, she can count to 100 but there's some necessary prompting, and she's pretty sure that after diez y tres, comes catorce, then catorce uno, catorce doz, catorce tres, up to catorce nueve. Then she's pretty sure it's viente, but she's not totally sure. She knows that in English, 100 comes after 99. But she also likes googol and googelplex, and when she sees a lot of something, she says it "could be googolplex or maybe 20 or something".  There are sometimes confusions about numbers in general -- When she was pretending to be a doctor, she took my temperature. It was 225. No, it's 2. And my height was 22 or maybe 23.

She still likes guessing games and she likes us to guess what song she's thinking of, or how many fingers is she holding up behind her back. Can we guess what color marker she's holding and hiding? What word is she silently saying? She likes for us to pretend we don't know something we know.... I guess she likes being the advantaged one, the holder of information that only she has.

We were reading a book about Harriet and the garden, and Harriet accidentally threw a ball into the neighbor's garden and when she chased it, she stepped on a bunch of flowers. She ran away at first because she didn't want to get in trouble. Aviva said it was because she didn't want to go to jail or get a hit. This led to a longer discussion about being sorry and consequences and apologies. 

When you want someone to stop doing something, you're supposed to tell them, "Cut it off!" 

And now you pretend you're a one year old kitty, who was just born, out of an egg, and you have stinky feet, and you're tired so you go back into your egg. 

More Avivisms:

• When going to the bathroom, sometimes Aviva wants to be piracy, which maybe similar to wanting privacy. 
• The GPS always knows which way to go, but how does it know? Maybe it's because it's been there before. 
• When she's reading she likes to conchestrate on the story. 
• The reason why adults take showers and kids take baths is because kids are short and adults are tall. 
• When you're walking with people and they're going a lot faster than you, you need to "power up." That's what it's called when you tell someone to walk faster. 
• She wants to have a party with just kids, but she wants the parents sort of nearby, so if someone gets hurt, you can call them. 
• She wonders if clouds are more fluffy or furry. 
• Mommy plays the eucalyptus (similar to the ukelele)
• If there's a fire, you get your stuffies right away. You go so fast and then you slam the door, so fast. And you get in your car so fast, and you buckle your seat belt so fast
• Over there where they're tearing down the building -- they wear gloves so they don't get splinters. They don't want to get splinters in their belly buttons. Look I can pull out my belly button. But I have to find it first. See? Do you know that if you're playing and you get a splinter but you don't really feel it, then you can just keep playing.

Noah says:

• He has a secret eye, so he can see things that other people can't. But it only works if you're facing the right direction
• He was collecting pledges for the walkathon, which was for the school's PTA. They need money so they can have PE and art classes, and go on field trips. They actually need 2 million dollars. Each year. No actually it's 20 million dollars. No actually it's 2 billion dollars. Each year!!
• Babies like to have their sapphires to suck (like a pacifier, but it's called a sapphire)

Noah's camping trip and Aunt Shira's visit

These are all the people on the 2nd grade camping trip

Noah's second grade class went camping a couple weeks ago. Aviva and I came for dinner, but Josh and Noah stayed for the night and slept in their tent. They had fun. They ran around a lot, carrying big sticks. They ate a lot of chips and marshmallows and cake and junk food. They played with lots and lots of glow sticks. Noah had a lot of fun and Aviva missed out. So Aviva and Josh are going camping this weekend.

We made a sukkah with the Growing Together group.
Aviva + lulav 

This was the sukkah 

Aunt Shira came to visit and we did a lot of fun things! We went to the harvest festival at Ardenwood Historic Farm and got to churn ice cream, pick corn, play with a water pump, and see a peacock in a tree.

Aunt Shira and Noah are owls

Steam train at Ardenwood

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The kids made sunprints on special paper with Shira 

That girl is COOL in her cowboy boots

Candyland is all the rage and Aviva is a mean player