It's a... girl?

Well, we got our ultrasound and it looks like this baby is a girl. Maybe. They got several between-the-legs shots and never saw evidence of a boy but also couldn't get a good enough picture of the bone structure to confirm it's a girl. The doctor said she is 88% sure it's a girl, but not to get our hopes up. We don't really have "hopes" of gender one way or the other-- either one is really fine for us, but I would like to know which one it is, for planning purposes. I'd love to purge our closet of boy clothes, for example, but we'll just have to wait for that I guess. As my sister Kerrylin put it, "Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence."

Regardless of gender, we have a healthy baby who is very cute, and looks distinguishably different from both our boys.

You can see her little hand sticking up in front of her face. So cute. (Yes, we have decided to settle on feminine pronouns.)

Apple Picking!

This weekend we went up to CT and drove with my sister Kori and her family to go apple picking upstate. It was really great to get some fresh air. The kids were in heaven.

On the train ride to CT, Aaron asked me, "How come in Connecticut they have big animals like deer and antelope and in New York we only have rats and squirrels and pigeons, but Connecticut isn't very far away from New York?"

Well, we didn't see any deer or antelope but we did see lots and lots of green.


We ate almost as many as we picked. Aaron was so excited by the idea that when we were hungry, we could just pick an apple off the tree and eat it. He kept saying things like, "I think I want to have a second lunch again" then go find a "red, juicy, fresh-picked apple" and munch at it. We need to have a garden someday.

Baby Tony had his share of freshly picked apples, too.

Elliot insisted on holding his bag this way

A particularly difficult apple-picking operation

Apple loving brothers

Elliot found a large stick and decided he wanted to go apple fishing.

Aaron, Elliot, Tony

Aaron loves to take care of anyone littler than he

After we had our fill of apples, we let the kids each choose a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. Here's Elliot jealous of Aaron's choice.

And here's Elliot, happy with his find.

The View

Drawing

The last few months, Aaron has been really into drawing, and more particularly into writing. He often sits down and writes something important to him, usually related to hunting. It's so cute to hear him sounding out words in the next room, exploding consonants very slowly. Several months ago he was frustrated with the whole idea of writing and sounding out words so we told him to forget about vowels-- just concentrate on the important sounds that are clear. So, most of his words are without vowels, which is fine with us for now. He is, lately, starting to incorporate vowels and learn the correct ways to spell things. Here are a few pictures of Aaron creations.


Aaron drew this back in June. It's a picture of a van he designed. He had been brainstorming about a way to get to North Carolina and after several weeks of trying to build a boat, he decided a van would be better. So he drew up the plans. The camel humps on the back are for people to sit on. Then of course there is lots of room for luggage.

"Will I be able to hunt deer all by myself?" This was one of Aaron's very first notes to us, written around July.

Most recently his most common activity is writing lists. Here is one that he wrote the night before taking a trip to CT to see my sister and her family.
"Make dinner, pack, go to bed. Next day go to school, train?, go to Koki's, hunt deer, hunt fish."

Spanish

Since Aaron is in a Spanish-English Dual Language Kindergarten, my sister Kami asked him the other day if he can speak Spanish yet. He replied, "Well, only when I'm at school and everybody is speaking Spanish. Then my brain is full of Spanish."

I feel the same way.

Days off School!

Aaron had a couple of days off last week for Rosh Hashannah. He, of course, wanted to go hunting during one of those days but due to the lack of huntable animals (and parental desire) here in NYC, he settled for the Bronx Zoo and Chinatown.

Here's Aaron with friends Lillian and Madeline on the Bug Carousel

Elliot with friend Naomi

Elliot and Aaron popping out of the tree climbing apparatus in the children's section of the zoo

Aaron was in charge of the camera for a bit and took this picture of a pond full of fish (which he of course wanted to hunt).

Madeline and Ashley, taken by Aaron



And, of course, on his second day off, Aaron enjoyed himself immensely at Chinatown, admiring the many variety of exotic meats...
Munching on dried octopus