Jonathan and Ellycia, Yom Kippur, Sukkah Building...

Happy Monday!

Last week was the first full week in a while (although it wasn't so full since we all left early on Friday to get ready for Yom Kippur), but it definitely felt long.

Last week was fun -- had the 3rd of our 4 childbirth preparation classes, where we learned all about pain management, including epidurals and gas (which hasn't been used in years but Jem liked the idea of the gas cause it works immediately and knocks you out so you don't feel any pain). Hopefully we won't have to use any on him to keep him calm in the delivery room. This week we are going to watch a video in our class which will hopefully get him in the right mindset so that he doesn't pass out in the delivery room, which he keeps threatening to do. That being said, Jem has already been a great birthing partner in the classes, learning how to time contractions and help with breathing, etc. and of course the massaging (my favorite part). Wednesday night we had a breastfeeding class, where we learned a ton of stuff. I was already planning to breastfeed, but we learned lots of helpful tips and common problems, etc. The other good thing is that the class taught all the husbands ways that they could be helpful in terms of breastfeeing, etc. Thursday night, my mom and I visited Tiny World, one of the stores where we registered for stuff, to take a look at the things she is thinking of getting for her house, so that she has stuff already at her house for when we go over to visit and also for the one day a week she plans to take care of the baby (thanks in advance mom!). She's probably going to get a crib, a swing and maybe a pack and play (aka a play pen) for her house so we don't have to drag ours there every time. Also a car seat base for her car so that we can just use the one car seat and pop it in and out of all of our cars. After that, Jem and I headed over to our friend Dalia's place (she runs a baby stuff store called Go Baby LA) to look at chairs for the baby's room (aka nursing gliders). We wanted to make sure we got something very comfy since we know we'll be spending many late night hours in it feeding the baby. Dalia is a fellow aussie married to an american guy, and they live a block away from us. Jem and Dalia were both bragging about how delicious their spag bol (Dalia calls it spag bog) is and we decided we are going to do a spaghetti bolognase cook-off soon to see whose is really the best.

Friday Jonny and Ellycia arrived in LA. Unfortunately Jem and I were both busy at work and couldn't go down to Long Beach to pick them up at the airport, but we all met back at the house in the afternoon to get ready for Yom Kippur. We made dinner and hung out a bit, and then ate our pre-fast dinner and headed to shul for Kol Nidre. The day went by pretty quickly and before we knew it, we were at a breakfast at our house and Jonny and Ellycia were heading out for the airport to go back to Aussie for a visit. Our break fast was lots of fun, though kinda crazy since almost all the women there were pregnant -- must be something in the water here at our shul, cause there are TONS of pregnant people. Great for us, cause that means our friends kids will all be in the same class as our baby. And we have friends to go to mommy and me with and to share stories, etc.

Yesterday (sunday), we (when I say we, I mean Jem and our friend Jeff) put up our sukkah, then Jem, Milo and I headed over to Rancho Park for Milo's obedience class. He's doing great and we're very proud of him. Then we headed back home, had some lunch and Jem went over to Jeff's house to put his sukkah up. Then we headed out to shop a bit. Our mission was to find a desk for our current guest room, which is turning into the guest room/office in the next couple of weeks. After looking what seemed like EVERYWHERE, we found a great place near us that custom builds whatever you want, so we ended up designing a desk and hutch as well as a little file cabinet to put our printer. All of it will be ready in less than 2 weeks. Perfect!

Then we headed home and then went over to our friends Lauren and Jeffrey's house (Lauren and Jeffrey are having a baby in January), along with our friends Ellie and Daniel (they are having a baby in March), for dinner. After the boys jumped around in the moon bounce that was in their backyard from a kid's bday party earlier in the day, we decided to BBQ. We had a great time.

A great week. This week is another short week, with sukkot starting on Wednesday night. Tonight we are having dinner with our friends Wittney and Cody, and then tomorrow night is our final childbirth preparation class. For sukkot, we're out for some meals and having a couple at our house in honor of Jem's 31st bday, which is Friday. Then we're planning to go out to dinner Saturday night for Jem's bday with my mom and Larry. Sunday of course will be another clean the house and organize things day :-)

Have a great week!

Lisa and Jem :-)

Shana Tova!

Happy Monday everyone,

Today we are 33 weeks down, 7 to go, if baby Kolieb decides to come on time, though anytime after October 15th is "safe" since he'll be full term by then.

Last week feels like so long ago already. Wednesday after work, I made the baby rounds. First, I stopped by to see Jen, James and baby Sasha, all of whom are doing great. Its so fun to see friends with babies. After that, I stopped by to see Sharon, Boris and baby Miles, who are also doing great. Jen and Sharon are lucky enough to have their husbands around for the first few weeks. I've actually convinced Jem to take a little time off so we can have family bonding time at the beginning and we can get used to being parents together. Hopefully he'll be able to work from home a bit as well.

We had a great Rosh Hashana. We spent lots of time with the same people, which was really fun -- basically just rotated houses. Wednesday night, we were at Taffy and Claudes. For those who don't already know them, Taffy is due 10 days after me and we are doing all our childbirth, baby classes together, which has been a blast! Since Taffy and Claude decided to wait to find out if their baby is a boy or a girl, we don't know yet if our babies will be best friends or future spouses, or both -- no pressure :-) Also at Taffy and Claudes were Adi and Larry and Mordechai and Shana.

The next day, after services which lasted until 1:30, we headed over to Jeff and Reyna's house for lunch. Reyna is also pregnant -- due in March (notice a theme with our friends? its crazy! we're turning into grown-ups!). Also at lunch were Adi and Larry and Mordechai and Shana (and their kids Caleb and Tehilla), as well as Jeff and Reyna's friend Avi, who works for a toy making company. Needless to say, after Wednesday night dinner and Thursday lunch, we were stuffed. Luckily, we didn't make plans for Thursday night dinner and we stayed home, cooked dinner for Friday night and had a very light dinner. I had apple juice and Jem had cereal. That was all we could eat. Friday, after services which ended a bit earlier (1:15), we had another light meal, and then headed out for a long walk over to Sharon and Boris' house again so we could see Miles. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for Sharon and Boris, Miles slept through our entire visit. I guess we'll have to go play with him another time soon!

Friday night we had Adi and Larry over for dinner, as well as our friends Nick and Sharon Merkin, with their 3 kids. The two older boys (Eytan and Yoni) had a blast playing with Milo while the baby (Ilan) slept. We had a very non-traditional and non-chaglike meal of spaghetti bolognase, which was very refreshing after lots of meals. Our friends Ellie and Daniel stopped by as well (Daniel and Sharon are brother and sister).

Shabbos lunch we went to a "grown-up" house -- our friend Rebecca Mittman (married to Jeremy, who I went to USC law school with and who works at Proskauer now) invited us to her parents house. It was a lot of fun. They live in a great house in Beverlywood, complete with a basketball hoop in the front that the boys took advantage of before and after lunch. After lunch, we relaxed at home.

Sunday was a very productive day. We had Milo's obedience class in the morning and then cleaned up the house all afternoon -- making room for the baby. We emptied and threw out tons of boxes from our garage and office, and continued the organizational process so that we will have room for another person to live in our house with us. At the same time, Directv came by to install our high definition receiver and DVR, so we can now see the blades of grass on the green when we watch Tiger Woods put. Its really quite incredible. We then had dinner with my dad and Rochelle and watched a bit of the Emmy's. It made me realize that although we feel like we watch a lot of tv, we really don't. I had never seen most of the shows nominated.

This promises to be a normal week -- with 5 days of work! crazy! of course, if we can take off early on Friday we will, and hopefully one of us will be able to pick Jonathan and Ellycia up from the airport on Friday, but it will depend on how the week goes. Tonight, we are having dinner with my mom, tomorrow night is our childbirth preparation class, wednesday night is a breastfeeding class, thursday night will hopefully be mellow and then its yom kippur. Pretty jam packed!

Thats the update. Have a great week!!

Lisa

32 Weeks and a New TV

Happy Monday everyone (or tuesday for those of you down under). Jem and I had a fun weekend -- it started out with visiting Jen and James and their new baby -- Sasha Sicily Takata -- on our way home from work, which was lots of fun. Then we had a relaxing dinner friday night at home with our friends Adi and Larry -- we decided on Friday afternoon to combine our efforts and eat together since neither of us had plans. Saturday we went to shul and then had lunch at our friends Rebecca and Jeremy Mittman's house (jeremy and I went to law school together at USC and both worked at Proskauer -- jeremy was in the NY office while I was in the LA office and moved to the LA office right after I moved to Manatt). Adi and Larry and the Fishmans (Mordechai, Shana, Caleb and Tehilla) were there as well, so it was a very fun group. We got home from lunch close to 6pm so just vegged the rest of the day. After shabbos, we FINALLY organized some photo albums on kodak gallery and ordered them -- its been on our To Do list for months -- so now in a couple of weeks, we'll have photo albums of our trip to Israel over pesach, as well as our trip to Spain, and then another album of summer 2007.

Sunday we got up early and I did some grocery shopping while Jem took Milo out for a run. Then Jem and Milo went to Milo's obedience class while I stayed at home and waited for the delivery of our new tv. Yes, after over 2 years of researching, we finally got our flat screen tv -- its a 42 inch, LCD, 1080p Toshiba. We also set up a little surround sound system for the tv in our bedroom, so now our To Do list for the house is FINALLY done! Next its reorganizing rooms for the baby, but at least we have a little time to do that.

Then we went to our Baby Care class with our friends Taffy and Claude (who are having a baby 10 days after us), where we learned lots of helpful tips about taking care of a newborn, including how to swaddle, which will be very helpful. The class was lots of fun. Then we headed home to make dinner for my dad and Rochelle in honor of my dad's 61st birthday.

A great weekend.

This week promises to be crazy, with only a few days of work and then Rosh Hashana starting Wednesday night. Jem is off to Seattle for the day tomorrow, but, being a good husband is making sure he'll be back in time for our birthing class at 7pm.

Rosh Hashana should be fun. We're having meals with friends, and luckily, a few mellow ones at home so we can relax a bit.

Shana Tova!!!

Adventures in Yosemite

Jem, Milo and I had a fantastic trip to Yosemite over the long weekend (labor day). We headed out bright and early Friday morning and got up to our hotel -- the Tenaya Lodge -- in the early afternoon. We spent the afternoon frolicking in Bass Lake (or rather watching Milo frolick in the lake), hung out by the pool at our hotel and had a low key dinner in our room and passed out very early.

Saturday we went for some great hikes next to our hotel -- one Meadow Loop (1.5 miles) and one hike up to some water falls (5 miles). Luckily most of the trails were well shaded so it wasn't too hot. We specifically picked a hotel that was dog friendly and had trails we could go to right from the hotel so we could enjoy the great outdoors on shabbat. After our hikes, we once again jumped in the pool and had a mellow dinner at the hotel.

Sunday we headed into the actual national park and drove immediately up to Yosemite Village (about an hour from our hotel) and did all of the hikes that a dog and pregnant person could be on -- i.e. all of the easy, paved trails. They were all really beautiful. We spent about 10 hours hiking and wandering around the park until we could all barely stand we were so exhausted. Then, back to the hotel pool, mellow dinner in the room.

We were woken up at 11:30 pm to very exciting news. Our friends Jen and James had their baby girl -- Sasha Sicily Takata -- 8 pounds, 5 ounces (go Jen!!!). Unfortunately we didn't have any cell phone service or email up in Yosemite so we hadn't gotten jens "water broke" and "at the hospital emails" from earlier that day, but luckily she knew where we were staying so she could call us with the exciting news!

Sunday morning, we got up super early once again to head out to the park. We spent a little while in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, only to discover that it was not a dog-friendly part of the park, so we moved on to Wawona, where we did a great 3.5 mile hike around a golf course and some meadows through some gorgeous and huge trees. After that, we headed back to the hotel, packed up the car and headed back to LA. We wanted to make it back in time for our friends Sharon and Boris' baby's bris which was at 4:30. Luckily, we made it back to see Miles Fiedler Shimanovsky welcomed to the 'tribe.' A great day -- ended having dinner with my mom and Larry, who have been busy cleaning up their house for the renovations going on. My mom had found her notes and certificate from the lamaze class she took almost 30 years ago in preparation for me, along with our baby books and many of my favorite childrens books.

This morning, we had our growth assessment ultrasound which revealed that all is great with the baby, though he's VERY big! According to the measurements, he's already weighing in at 4 pounds, 3 ounces (most babies at this stage weigh closer to 3.5 pounds), so we are looking at a very big baby :-) Probably close to 9 pounds. Luckily, my weight gain has been totally normal -- he's just a big boy :-)

Tonight we're off to our first childbirth preparation class with our friends Taffy and Claude (whose baby is due about 2 weeks after us). Should be lots of fun!