Bring Your Kids To Work Day 2013

Last Thursday was Bring Your Kids to Work Day at GiftCards.com. Yaeli and I had been looking forward to it all week and the day did not disappoint (Sophie came too but she doesn't know where she went). Traffic that morning was quite bad but we got there around 8:15. Breakfast went until 9 so we had plenty of time and we weren't eating the bacon and eggs anyway. As soon as we came in we picked up the kids badges:

and headed off to my desk to put our things down. After that we went down to the breakfast and everyone glommed onto Sophie. Yaeli was incredibly shy for most of the morning so we sat at our own table during breakfast.

The kids were split up into groups after breakfast, older than 6ish and younger than 6ish. We had different activities spread out across the building including: security demonstration with our security guard, card matching game with some of our secondary gift cards, a QA activity that involved finding the differences between two almost identical pictures, skype set up between two different floors, chalk coloring on the sidewalk outside, writing on our whiteboard walls with dry erase markers and several more activities I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Anyway, the consensus over the days since is that this was the best planned and executed BYKTWD in recent history at GiftCards.com. I am very proud to have been on the planning committee and really glad Yaeli and Sophie both had a lot of fun.

My Advancing Children

Yaeli is such a parrot. It's really weird and pretty cool to hear phrases I say come out of her mouth. "Oh geez!", "Sophie, be quiet!", "I have to go to work". Pretty much anything I say on a regular basis comes out of her mouth.

Sophie on the other hand, is not talking quite yet but she has been mastering some other skills. If we sit her up she's basically able to stay sitting up for quite a long time. If we put her on her tummy she finds ways to make her way around a room without quite crawling. It's more of a backwards scootch. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth.

Sophie is also starting to eat solid foods and, with this, Yaeli is starting to develop some care-giving instincts. This morning she tried feeding Sophie her banana. Luckily we were there to stop her but we applauded her for trying to share. Make her feel good for her intentions while still preventing her from shoving half a banana in Sophie's face.

That's it for now. Next post will likely feature Sophie actually crawling.

I'm Coming Home

I've been away from my family since Saturday night at a conference in Toronto. It's is now Thursday. I. Miss. My. Girls.

I have never been away from Rivkah or the kids for this amount of time and, while I've had plenty to keep me busy I miss them constantly.

Sitting in the visitor center at Niagara Falls eating my dinner I am reflecting on how lame it is to be here by myself. Toronto was one thing. I had a purpose there. Here in Niagara, I'm all by myself and it's pretty boring that way. I want my family to be here too. I want to share the experience with Rivkah, Yaeli and Sophie and build a memory with them.

Anyway, the PA system just announced that the building is closing in 15 minutes.

See you later blogosphere!

The Little One Said Roll Over

That's right, my little one is rolling over. Sophie has been rolling front to back and it's so cool. I forgot what seeing that was like from when Yaeli was learning to do it. Sophie is also starting to try and crawl. She is scooting around backwards and ending up all over the place. It's amazing how many different things she's learning how to do.

On the two-year-old side of things, Yaeli is learning how to procrastinate and buy time. She's asking for extra things during bedtime that have never been part of her routine. Books read twice, dancing during Shema. The other night after I put her to bed she called out to Rivkah "Mommy, I need your help!" Rivkah went into her room, even though we try very hard not to go back in once we've put her to bed, and Yaeli said so sweetly "Mommy, I need on chocolate chips!" Such an intelligent little kid.

Until next time,
Yehuda