More Bris Pics

Bris and Baby Naming

About ten days after they were born, Ella and Sam had their debut at their bris and baby naming. Oma and Opa (Marcel's parents) and Nana and Zayde (Jaime's parents) as well as Uncles Mike, George and Allen and Aunt Lauren were all there to help welcome them, along with about 250 members of their new community.
As most of you know, a bris (brit milah) is a circumcision ceremony for boys. This can be a very scary experience for the parents but luckily we had a great mohel (pronounced moy'l) who dosed Sam up with some heavy penis numbing drugs so that he didn't feel a thing. Ella had her own covenant ceremony too, a welcoming ceremony with water. Aunt Lauren, Uncle George and Uncle Mike all washed little Ella's hands and feet just like our ancestors Abraham and Sarah did to welcome their special guests.
After the ceremony (which was beautifully conducted by rabbis Kahn and Keller) we ate some seriously yummy grub. Besides for the bagels, tuna and egg salad, fruit salad and other yummy brunch stuff, we were also treated to two special brews made by Daddy -- Ella's IPA and Sam's Milk Stout -- and several gallons of freshly squeezed orange juice, grapefruit juice and lemonade from our garden. There were also some seriously delicious deserts. So all in all the day was fabulous.

Road Trip!

 

Happy Monday Y'all.  We are preparing for an upcoming 2.5 week long road trip to southern and central california, which will start this upcoming sunday.  That's an ambitious first trip, so this past friday we decided to do a test run, with an overnight trip to Tucson on Saturday/Sunday.  On short notice we called up our friends Dara & Knut, who offered to host a barbecue for us, and Greg & Ilene, who offered to put us all up for the night, and packing was begun.  I didn't get enough sleep on friday night as I tried to get some lingering work done (paying off old bills, sorting through insurance claims, that sort of thing),  but we did manage to get everything packed up pretty much on time, got the kids fed at 1pm, and got onto the road at 2:06, almost making my 2pm goal departure.   Then as we were driving down, I remembered that Dara & Knut live about 30 minutes further than Greg & Ilene, so that rather than arriving just before the next meal time, we would be ~20 minutes late.  True to expectations halfway across tucson, and 20 minutes away from our destination, the loud screaming kicked in from the back seat.  A meal was needed.  Now.  Really, NOW.  So we pulled over on the side of the road, got the bottle out of the cooler, and gave the kids a snack to tide them over.  Lesson learned: make sure you have a good place to stop just before the next expected feeding time, not ten minutes later.  

The barbecue at D&K's was great, with lots of old friends who used to live in Chile, but now live in Tucson, in attendance.  We had delicious food, showed off our deliciously cute children, and only had to unpack half the car to get all the baby feeding & diapering accoutrement into the house.  Around 9:30, just before the 10pm feed, we repacked the car, drove over to Greg & Ilene's, and started prepping for the next meal (I used to think my old life & travel was all about food, but I had no idea...).

And then we realized that we left half the feeding stuff at Dara & Knut's, half an hour (each way) away.  No way we were going back saturday night, so we made do with what we had for the evening.  Lesson learned number two:  double and triple check the packing any time we leave from one place headed to another.   I was exhausted by midnight, and was up to help jaime with the 1am feeding, which we both did in a daze.  At 4am, the daze was even deeper, but luckily the kids didn't fuss much as they ate.  By 7am, I was mostly sleep recovered, and actually woke up a couple minutes before the kids, or the alarm.  I went to grab the car seats to try out the simultaneous feed ability of those (at home we use their boppy bouncy chairs, but I don't want to schlep them to Cali).  It worked out well, and jaime was able to sleep while I fed them.  Back to sleep at 7:30  until 9am, and then started to pack everything up again.  Dara found the stuff we had left at our house and was kind enough to drive half way into town, meeting us in the middle, so that we had a hope of making it back to phoenix in time for the next feed.  Always fitting things in before the next feed, or at least trying to.  We had some serious rain squalls during the ride home, but made it home within five minutes of baby hunger explosions, and our first road trip was completed.  Quite successful I think, and now we have fewer trepidations about the upcoming mega-trip.  California, here we come!

Oh, the picture.  This trip was the first time for most of our Tucson friends to meet Ella & Sam, and they were passed around and cuddled by many a person.  The picture above is Tyra, almost five years old and to whom I am the godfather, holding little Ella in her lap.  Check out Tyra's cool blue fingernails.

playing & sleeping

 

Wednesday's morning shopping trip was to Home Depot.  Thursday I was more aggresive with my to-do list, and I had planned to go Fry's (a big grocery store, for dry goods and other stuff), then the bank, the gas station, the auto body shop (we had a crack in the windshield), Sprouts (another grocery store, for produce & meat), and finally our friend Mike's place to return a casserole dish.  And I hoped to do this all in the 2.5 hours between when the 7:30 am feeding finished and the 10:30 am feeding starts.  Well, I made it through the first four items on the list and it was 10:15, and I was in the Sprouts parking lot waffling about whether to go in or not, because it shouldn't take me too long to run through and get all my salad & barbecue stuff, but also because the happily sleeping kids could wake up and melt down at any moment (as Ella, especially, is wont to do at 3:01 after the previous meal).  I had pretty much decided to chance it when Jaime called and said come home now, someone is coming over to bring us that night's dinner and the kids need to be there to say thanks (in the form of cooing, farting, and generally looking adorable).   So I drove home and it was the better decision as two minutes in the door Ella woke up and explained quite loudly that she was ready for her meal.   Note & re-note to self:  don't push it... these kids will want to eat every three hours (still).   Anyway, this is all just a ramble and an excuse to post a cute picture of the kids in their new rainforest playgym thingy since I sent out word of this blog on wednesday and then promptly failed to post any updates until now, saturday (too) early morning.    We are heading down to Tucson tonight for our first overnight away from home (not counting the hospital).  I hope it all goes smoothly!

Shopping Trip

March 3, 2010:  Day 1 without grandparents, uncles, aunts, or nannies.  That means that in addition to the ~4:30am shift, I had the ~7:30am feed, and Jaime hoped to sleep in until ~10am.  No problem.  Early to bed, early to rise, short nap between feeds, now I'm done at 8am and what to do with the kids...  I know, take them to Home Depot with me!  So the kids got in their first hardware store shopping experience.  We got stuff for the sprinkler system (no small load for our yard), some chicken wire/netting to keeps the bunnies out of the vegetable garden, and some tubing for the kegs so that my taps can be more than 1' from the keg nozzle (i.e. so that daddy can more easily get beer from the kegs in the fridge when the kiddos give me only one spare moment to rush back there.  When I left for the store, going back and forth between car and house about five times to grab that one last thing I forgot the previous time, I had hopes of making it not just to Home Depot, but to Babies R Us and the grocery store as well.  No such luck.  Jaime and I learned last night that the kids are on a roughly three hour ticking time bomb scale from the beginning of one feed to the next, and it's better not to attempt to stretch that by even ten minutes.  So, just one store, but the trip was successful, and Sam & Ella were a big hit with the guys in plumbing and the grannies at the cash register.

Hello World!

Aloha Y'all!
Sam & Ella turn four weeks old today, and we thought it was about time that we got a blog up and running, to share (and archive) pictures and stories about them.

 

So here they are at about 10 minutes old (on the left; Ella on top, Sam on the bottom), and at 4 weeks old (on the right; Sam in the Pink Floyd onesie and Ella in the Grease/Summer of Love onesie).  They are growing up fast, and have each gained 2.5 - 3 pounds in their first month.  Those bergmann kids sure can eat!

We'll try to keep the blog up to date and full of pictures and posts.  But right now, I've got some crying kids to go feed.