Its been a while!

Sorry for the long lag between posts! I've been really busy at work and don't really have time to go online much at hoem either. Let's see what's been going on in the meantime...

Daniel is studying hard for his first big mivchan(test), which requires learning a remebering a huge amount of info. The test is next Thursday.

Zachi has started to talk a lot more. His words include dooo-meaning juice, some form of "cracker" (caka), and "ish" refrring to anything he wants. He also now loikes to read certain books. Other books he will look at for 1 second and then throw on the floor if he doesnt like it.

Matani loves to draw and this week we have been playing with play-dough,which he really likes. Daniel made up a story charcter named "Blocky yellow," who, coincidnetally, is a yellow block with a life very similar to Matani's. Matani frequently request Blocky Yellow stories now and will give us a topic, which gives us hints to things he has heard about or is thinking about. The other day he wanted Blocky Yellow goes to the circus, he also went swimming etc.

ok- gotta run to go pickup the cuties. I will try to write more soon!

Quick Break

I have a few minutes now where I am in between projects at work so I am trying to post a Rosenfeld update. hmm lets think what is happening.
This past shabbos Daniel's brother and his family- Avi, Esther, Eliyahu, Hadassah, Shlomo, and Tani stayed with us for shabbos. It was very nice to have them and very exciting that we actually have room to host a family of 6 in our house! You are all invited! They are getting psyched up to move to Yad Binyamin in about a month and a half and we will be happy to have them as neighbors. Matani and Zachi really enjoy playing with their big cousins.

There is a new minyan in YB for the new community (us). It will hopefully be housed in the new shul that is currently under construction but for now is in the Matnas, community center type building. I am sort of involved in the morning youth groups- we'll see how that develops. They have a class at the end of davening for 20 minutes so Daniel will be giving it next shabbos. It is nice that there is definitely room for us to contribute to the community. Daniel will also be giving a shiur (class) on Shavuot.

We got Matani a new kippah that he likes a lot- more like a knitted hat. I will post a pic soon. He continues to ask "why" about absolutely everything (great educationally but a bit annoying!) His counting and drawing skills have been getting really good!
Zachi has been much more verbal- I'm waiting for some words very soon! He plays peek-a-boo with me know while I change his daiper which is really cute. He has managed to get himself up to the second rung of the rope ladder in the park but gets frustrated there when he realizes he is stuck. However, his favorite thing to do at the park is to play in the muddy water near the water fountain. Once he remembers about it, park time is pretty much over since he will just keep running back to it and getting upset when I pull him away.

ok back to work!

Kids Update

I am trying to think of the new things going on with our kids.
Zachi is getting big and is a very happy, smiley kid. He loves to play with toys and climb. At the park he loves to play in the little tunnel and then fearlessly go down the slides with no assistance. He really wishes that he could climb up the ladders and frequently hangs out on them for an extended period of time, but I think the steps are still too far apart for his little legs.
At home, sometimes when other people are sitting at the kitchen table, he wants to sit there too. He will try and try until he successfuly climbs up on the chair to get to the table. He is happy just to feel that he is sitting there, but if I give him something to eat he is even happier.
Yesterday he spent a very long time playing with blcks on teh floor under the table, putting them into a bag, taking them out of the bag, putting them on the table, taking them off the table etc. While he still does not say many actual words, he is getting much more verbal.

Matani still loves to read books and will be happy to sit on the couch for quite a while being read to. We have neighbors who are South African and they have a 3 year old boy named Asher. Matani has gotten very good at imitating the South African accent- I don't think I can imitate it any better. He will say "Do you know how Asher says car? He says caah." or "Do you know how Asher says bike? He says bahk." Its pretty funny.
Matani also likes to make brachot on his food, although for some reason he does not want to wear his kippah lately-even on shabbos. Its pretty wierd for a kid who loves Jewish rituals and wants to be a big kid. I think we will try to take him to a store where he can pick out his own kippah and maybe then he will want to wear it- we'll see.
Matani loves to play with Zachi (and of course vice versa) and is usualy pretty patient with him. They both like climbing on each other, which they tend to do often.

Yom Hazikaron

Sorry I have not posted for a while. Work has been very busy lately so I haven't taken time to post. Today is Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day), which is officially a half day and many people are taking off so it is pretty quiet here (although its usually pretty quiet before 9).

Memorial Day is one day that is celebrated totally differently in Israel and in America. Last night at 8:00 and today again at 10:00, a siren sounds for a full minute. During that time everyone stops what they are doing and reflects for a full minute on all of the people who have fallen to create the state of Israel and continue to fall making sure Israel stays a safe place for us to live and visit. Cars even stop on the highways and people get out of their cars and stand up. It is very cool that the entire country really stops for a minute and I think that really imapcts that whole day and makes it more meaningful, even for those of us who thank G-d don't have personal losses to think about.
The siren also goes off on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust rememberance day, which was last week. I was in a meeting at work at the time and I totally did not realize that a siren would go off for Yom Hashoah. When it first sounded, it took me a minute to realize what was going on. In the meantime, the other 2 people in the room had already stood up and were probably wondering what took me so long.
There is an exhibit in Yad Binyamin for Yom Hazikaron so I think I will try to go there later to try to actively do something for the day. When I was here for the year after high school we went to Har Herzl military cemetary,w hcih was very powerful, but I don't think I'll be able to get there today.
Anyway, I think if Israel can still remember where it came from , that says good things about its potential for staying around.
Lets all have the Israeli captive soldiers in our tefillot/prayers- Zecharia Shlomo ben Miriam Baumel, Tzvi ben Penina Feldman, Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman ben Sarah Katz, Ron ben Batya Arad, Guy ben Rina Chever, Gilad ben Aviva Shalit, Eldad ben Tova Regev, Ehud ben Malka Goldwasser.

Tonight and tomorrow are Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independance Day. Tonight there will be a festive Maariv service, that hopefully Daniel and Matani will go to since Zachi will be sleeping. Then there is a program at the municipality that maybe I will go to. Hopefully tomorrow morning we will head out early and go to the kotel and old city. I haven't been there since January so I'm excited to go and think it is a very appropriate way to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut. Here is a link to a great article by Rabbi JOnathan Saks about Israel-http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/israeldiary/Israel_The_Gateway_of_Hope.asp

Preparing for Pesach

Daniel is off for the month of Nissan. Last week he spent the whole week doing the stuff most people do before they move into their house but we never paid someone to do nor had time to do ourselves. This was primarily scraping lots of excess paint and tile caulk off of floor tiles and walls and cleaning out the tracks of the windows. After this, along with our nice new couches that we finally got, we are nearing the end of stage 1 of moving into a house and making it livable and a bit homey. Stage 2 will have to wait until we save some more money :-)
We took some pictures that I hope to post here shortly.

So now this week we can clean for Pesach. This job also got delegated to Daniel primarily :) Lucky him, Matani (whose collarbone is pretty much healed thank G-d) came down with a mild case of chicken pox and has been home so far this week and "helping Abba clean." Matani had the chicken pox vaccine and so the case is really mild and already going away. Hopefully he can go back to gan soon!

Tonight we have a follow up appointment and xray for matani's collar bone and then tomorrow night I hope to go Pesach shopping (after I hopefully clean out the fridge and freezer tonight). I am still trying to find out the best place to go to potentially get everything I need in one place. It might not be such a practical goal but we'll see.

Zerachya is starting to talk a little- yay! He now says "Mma" for more and "Nna" for banana, which also refers to food in general. This joins "Abba" which he says occasionally. Zachi's favorite thing to do right now, aside from eating, is climbing up slides at the playground and attempting to climb on the ladders there that are totally not age appropriate.

More to come soon.

Weekly update

The big news of this week is that Matani broke his clavicle (collarbone). It happened when he fell outside on shabbos (I was standing right nearby) onto his arm. He was in a lot of pain right away but it seemed to calm down and he was acting relatively normal but a bit quiet. But he was still holding his arm and shoulder unusually so I took him to an orthopedic Dr. last night. He got an x-ray and it was very clear that the bone was broken. The good news is that kids usually heal really well and quickly from these things and the Dr. said it should heal G-d willing in about 2 weeks and in a few days he should already be able to use his arm more. Matani is a real trooper and is doing great!

Zerachya has started to play in a more mature way. He sees what the big kids are doing and wants to do it too. For example,Matani and his good friend Elyasheev were sitting at our kitchen table eating and laughing. Zachi started reaching up to the table because he wanted to be up there too and whenever the big boys would laugh he would also laugh. Whenever Zachi is in the bathroom, he wants to climb up on the stool and wash his hands- he also loves climbing into his stroller, which was his favorite activity last night at the Dr.'s office.

This is Daniel's last week of yeshiva before he is off for the Jewish month of Nissan. He is very excited to have a much needed break from his intense scehdule. There are about a million things that we have said , "oh we'll do it in Nissan," so we'll see how much of it actually gets done. We really need our builders to come do some things in our house while someone is home during the day- a rarity for us. Daniel also gets to clean our house for Pesach- which is good timing (although not coincidental).

I am enjoying my work. I have finally started doing real projects that require me to speak with topic experts, organize and write up the information (sometimes from scratch), and figure out what is still missing and where to get that information. There are definitely still lulls though, which is when I write long blog posts like this :-) and check out http://www.aish.com/, which I highly reccommend for easy to read interesting and sometimes inspirational articles.

have a good day!
(See pictures from Purim below. Also, our couch is G-d willing supposed to come this Wed. and then we will try to take some house pics)

Mishenichnas Adar Marbim B'simcha (When Adar comes we increase our happiness)

Purim here is not just a one day holiday -it's a season. Starting from the beginning of the Jewish month of adar, the kids came home from school with their faces painted almost every day and there was a sense of something fun and exciting in the air. They listened to Purim music every day in gan and in Matani's room, the purim tape also had someone reading sections of the megillah that had "Haman" in them. So the kids would dance around and make noise with their graggers- very cute.

For Purim Matani and Zachi were Torahs- costumes I made last year when I was on maternity leave. They looked very cute and it was funny to see that Zachi knew to be proud of himself and even pose for pictures in his costume- I guess all of the dressing up at day care prepared him. I took Matani to Megillah reading and he sat pretty nicely and listened while holding his little Megillah. After Megillah there was a nice community kids party with music and dancing.

Our neighbors, the Yisraels, made a Purim seudah for our building project. In the end it was them, us , and two other families and was very nice. The Yisrael's son, Elyasheev (goes nicely with the last name Yisrael, no? (it means G-d should return the Jewish people [to Israel])) and Matani are best friends and are very cute together. Its also cute for us to hear Matani speaking Hebrew with him.

It was very nice to have my mom here for Purim and the whole week. On Wed. we spent the day together and went on a little tiyul to a place called givat hatormusim, which is a hill that, in the height of the season, is supposed to be covered with very pretty purplish flowers called tormusim. It obviously was not the height of the season when we were there but it was still a very pretty place with nice flowers and a beautiful view of other hills and countryside around us. It was also fun to just do something totally different and go on a hike. When we came down the hill I was looking around for our tour bus and then realized that we had driven there :-) We then went to Beit Shemesh and did some shopping- also a good thing. Today is Shushan Purim which is Purim in Yerushalyim so Daniel is off from Yeshiva and Daniel, my mom and the boys are going to have some fun in Yerushalyim for the day while I go to work.

There are lots of pictures for this post coming soon!

P.S. Matani is still doing great with toilet training and loves his big boy underwear-hooray! Zachi's favorite thing to do is to play in the bathroom so it works out well for him that we spend more time in there these days. He likes toilets a lot and even threw Daniel's cell phone into one a few days ago!