Sunday part II

When we arrived home to take down the Sukkah, Tani was still sleeping. I hoped to make good progress while he slept but he woke up soon after I started. So Melissa and Tani came up to help. It's important to give Tani jobs to do - he helped put the black bungee cords in a bag. He ate rice cakes on the ladder while we were taking down the poles. Then he helped put the bamboo roof in the box along with individual, 4 foot poles. He was able to get most of them in the box, only needing help with the last two. We moved everything back into the garage including his car and tricycle (which we had in the backyard by the sukkah for the week). As we were heading back into the apartment building, Tani saw his canine friend Emma, a little white dog who owner is named Suzanne. Suzanne is great with Tani and lets him walk Emma a bit. Tani walked Emma down the hall and then went back to retrieve his tricycle, which he road down the hall and into the elevator and then up to the fourth floor. When we got up to our apartment, we saw our neighbor Angela, who told us thather mother had just passed away on Friday. We had known that her mother had been declining and was on hospice. Tani was curious about what we were talking about, so Melissa explained that Angela was sad because her mother had died. "Why?" Tani asked. "The angels asked her to come with them and she went" answered Angela. Tani thought for a moment and then asked Angela "where is your other mommy?" Melissa explained that not everyone has two mommies; in fact, it's a pretty special thing to have two mommies. Angela nodded her head in agreement.

Melissa talked with Angela in the hallway, and Tani and I went inside the apartment. It was late afternoon and we asked Tani if he wanted to go for a walk into woods or to the Jenks playground. He chose Jenks, which is a community playground built mostly from wood on the campus of an elementary school in Chestnut Hill. It has towers to climb in, tube slides, and a bunch of balance equipment. Lots of kids come to play there and Tani loves it. We met a two year old boy and his Dad, who takes care of him during the week while his wife works. We then came home and Melissa made pizza and salad while Tani watched a video from the library on the laptop. We ate dinner and then it was time for Tani to go to bed. Melissa has pointed out to me that I tend to let Tani extend bedtime with every stall tactic in the book and her goal was to have him sleeping by 8-8:30. Well, he did fall asleep - but so did she - they are both sleeping in Tani's new bed with the train sheets, pillow cases and comforter :) (a gift from Grandma Susan and Grandpa Morris).

Sunday part I

Melissa, Tani, and I spent a wonderful day together. We began with a walk in the Wissahickon. We parked at the upper lot at Valley Green and walked the short trail into the park. Tani enjoyed looking at the creek and walking over bridges to get to Forbidden Dr. Once on Forbidden Drive, Tani pretended he was a bus and we were his passengers. His motto is "taking wonderful people to beautiful places-- anywhere you want to go." We came up with this a week ago on our first hike in the park, and he still remembered it. Being the bus driver motivates him to keep walking down the trail. We found a pretty spot with a view of a small waterfall. There was a picnic bench and we sat down for a snack. On our way back to our car, Melissa pretended that she was a car running away from her Mommy and Tani pretended that he was a bus who wanted to crash into Melissa. It kept Tani moving quickly and was a lot of fun!

We had a short visit to the park today, because we were on our way to the Abramson Center for Jewish Life, the large Jewish nursing home in the Philadelphia area where Melissa had worked as a student rabbi. We went to help out at the Simchat Torah services led by our friend Debrah, who is a chaplain there, and who has a delightful 2-year old daughter Levana. (Debrah and Levanah have become good friends, who often join us for Shabbat, and who introduced us to the Morris Arboretum and invited us to the fabulous outdoor Tom Chapin concert this summer). We were hoping that Tani would march around the sanctuary with his stuffed Torah and participate in the childrens' aliyah during the Torah service. Alas, that was not to be!

The granddaughter of one of the residents brought her black lab Midnight to visit and Tani immediately went out of the sanctuary to visit with the dog. Midnight's owner was wonderful with Tani and helped Tani "walk" the dog around the lobby a few times. A lot of people delighted in Tani's presence at the Abramson Center. At one point, Tani noticed an elderly man lying in a Geri chair (a recliner on wheels). Tani approached this man and sat down in a nearby chair. "Are you sick?" he asked and the man smiled weakly and nodded his head. Then Tani asked what was the matter. The man pointed to his heart. Then Tani asked if he ate too much food. The man shrugged "maybe" - that morning Tani & I had read Tani's book "Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons" and one of the pages talks about how you might feel sick if you eat too many. Tani sat next to the man for a few moments and then waved to him. The man waved back. Then Tani went back to the Midnight.

Tani then discovered a sunny play room full of toys and books, right off the main lobby-- what an oasis in a nursing home! He and Levana loved playing in this room. Levana had a babysitter with her from Tani's school, who also knew Tani. This allowed both of us to help bring folks who lived at Abramson back up to their rooms after the service. We also spent some time visiting with the mother of a friend of ours from Allentown (or, in Tani's world, with Rebecca's grandmother). We left around 2 pm and were both very hungry. We decided to drive to the nearby Whole Foods for lunch and were wondering how we were going to be able to pick out food/eat with a tired Tani on the move; however, Tani had already fallen asleep during the 7 minute drive. We took turns going into the store to get our food for takeout. We then drove back home and took down the sukkah.

Tani at the fire station

As you all know, Tani loves fire trucks. When we first came back to Philadelphia we were in Center City walking to dinner in Chinatown when we came across a fire station - of course Tani wanted to investigate. The firefighters there let him sit in their truck and turn on the siren. There's a fire station less than a mile from our apartment in Mt Airy on Germantown Ave, and Melissa has taken Tani to visit it several times. She says the firefighters there are wonderful to Tani and he loves to sit on the fire truck. During this visit they let him wear their gear! Just down the block from the fire station is a clinic where ambulances come and go and there are often Septa buses going by. Melissa's office in Mt Airy USA is just a block from all this activity with a great view out her window.

A day with Aiden

This is Melissa writing. Tani has a good friend, Aiden, who lives right down the hall here in our building. They're the same age and share a lot of the same interests (trains, trains, trains, trucks, trains, music, trains). They love to run up and the halls together. I have Tani with me on Mondays and Wednesdays and generally share their toys nicely, and today (Wednesday), Aiden spent the day with us. He came over in the morning to play. He loves Tani's toys! and then Grandma Susan (who was visiting from DC) helped me take the two boys to the Please Touch Museum, where we have a membership (we got a membership that allows us to brings up to 6 people, so please come visit with us!) The museum wasn't very crowded, so Tani and Aiden had the run of the place-- the excavator, the city bus, the musical instruments, the mountain with tracks for wheeled wooden birds, the flying bike...it was a bit challenging to keep track of two boys; however, overall, it was a lot of fun. We then drove Grandma Susan to the train station. The boys wanted to get out, but I knew they were tired, and they were both asleep soon after we got onto the highway towards home. We all napped in the car for about half an hour (Tani woke up at 5:30 this morning) and then went upstairs to play some more. We also made pizza-- Grandma Susan had bought some whole wheat pizza dough from Trader Joes yesterday, and the boys helped roll it out and put on tomato sauce and cheese. It was really good.

I checked out a picture book called Guts from our local library, and Tani loves the picture of the insides of his body-- how food travels-- the esophagus to the stomach to the small intestine to the large intestine, and "then you poop it out." I made a copy of the picture and taped it up next to Tani's diaper changing station. I don't think I was anticipating that he would be so interested--but it does make sense that he is curious about what happens inside us. We bought Tani a beautiful picture book about the insides of the human body. We took the train downtown last week and went to the Franklin Institute, which has a huge heart that you can walk through. Tani has been talking about walking through the heart.

After Neysa came home tonight, Tani, Neysa, and I went down to the sukkah, as I hadn't been there yet today to shake my lulav. Tani shook the lulav for the first time. Tani is starting to wear size 4T--tonight he's wearing PJs with firetrucks and dogs. Tani and Mommy Neysa fell asleep around 8:15 tonight. Moadim l'simcha.

Hiking in the Wissahickon

Yesterday for 2nd day Sukkot Melissa decided she wanted us to take a family walk in the Wissahickon to her favorite spot in the woods. So we all headed out early - well, getting us all out the door a bit after 9 am on a Sunday morning counts as early. We drove to the Mt. Airy entrance to the park and began walking down the hill into the park. Tani wanted to eat his snack of cereal but we explained it would be more fun to eat it at the entrance to the trail by the creek. He seemed to agree when we got down there. After our short break we began our hike to Melissa's spot. The trail was rocky and steep in some parts and wet in others, but Tani seemed to enjoy the challenge. We finally got to the metal bridge and went across to a very nice spot to sit and eat another snack of bread sticks and hummus. By this time it was 10:25 am and time to turn back to make it to services at GJC at 11 AM. Tani was so enjoying his adventure that he was in no hurry to leave. He wanted to walk up and down the bridge and found a walking stick and decided to hit fallen trees and logs. Although he managed not to step in any rivulets on the way in, it was too tempting on the way out. I think we have an outdoor guy and look forward to more family hikes. In the next post, Melissa will tell about Tani's volunteer experience at the Morris Arboretum's garden train area...