Festival of Lights

And some catch up--we've been seriously busy since before Thanksgiving.

Blogging is funny. I feel pressure to keep track of things and when time passes seemingly too quickly to document our day-to-day, it feels wrong to not catch up right here. But with all due respect to Thanksgiving, which was lovely, I am just going to put up a few photos and say thanks for all that we have--each other, our bigger family, our health, our extreme good fortune to live in this incredibly vibrant, beautiful city. It was a good holiday.

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Now we are in the throes of Hanukah and loving it. Avi made a menorah at school; he has been so excited about the holiday that it feels infectious. This afternoon all the Netas came to celebrate together. We even skyped our candle-lighting with Auntie Maital. The kids made out with some serious loot and we reveled in gratitude only a short time after we did the same during Thanksgiving.

I love these rituals of coming together to share food, conversation and the simple act of just being together. It's all we want for our family sometimes.

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Change is all around us--Lilit has been 6 months old for a couple of weeks; she's sitting, chatting, eating, engaging more and more with her big brother. As for Avi, he nonchalantly decided to wear jeans today after months of some pretty rigid outfit-wearing. I tried not to make too big a deal about it but man, the kid looks cute in a pair of jeans! And he is so much more kid than baby . . . I feel like such a cliche when I muse about how quickly time seems to be passing but when did he get so big? When did Lilit stop being a tiny newborn? She weighs almost 18 pounds and remains so incredibly sweet.

And I love to chronicle the details of our lives, but for now, I need to go to bed. My girl has been sleeping well and waking only once a night, but her new daily wake up seems to be sometime between 5 and 6 AM and I can't seem to ever go to bed early enough. That, plus a big fat transition at work and the ordinary wildness of the day-to-day and here I am, shoving my laptop in front of Leeor's face and asking him to read the post before I hit publish. I've become insecure in my blogging hiatus. But there is nothing big to say tonight except--

Happy Hanukah to my family. I love celebrating together.