This takes the cake!

SM is small for her age - she weighs approx. 7.5 kg at 12 months. She is just starting to get interested in eating solids, after being adamant that she wanted nothing of it these past few months. My dr. is very unhappy about it. I think (scratch that, I know) she thinks that if I only tried harder SM would eat more. She also wants me to wean SM and start her drinking cow's milk. Which seems counter-intuitive, because nursing is the only reliable way SM will get nutrition at this point. At least that!

Every time I go in to get her weighed, she gives me the homo milk shpiel and asks me how it's going trying to get her to drink the milk. Not very successful is my response :) In any event, on Friday I got an invoice from the Dr for SM's visit. Reason: apparantly my health care is no longer valid. Which makes sense if it's MY health care -- I just recently got a new visa and didn't realise I had to submit it. But for SM?? She's Canadian! She shouldn't have a problem. I gave them a call and they confirmed, that yes, of course they had billed the visit in SM's name and yes, her health care was still valid. But, I was also being invoiced because... apparantly the dr had noted down... 'maternal concerns over homo milk'... Nice! Not only do I have to listen to that, but now I have to pay for it too??





(The good news is that at least now I have health care)

What's Happening?

A quick update on the kids!

Dovid is 5 now and a big brother all the way!! He is caring and protective of his sisters ... when he isn't teasing them mercilessly... oy! He loves to draw and learn! Right now he is drawing a picture of Daddy and Dovid -- Daddy has a giant head with giant eyes! He's my little tzadik -- it's amazing to hear his emunah! The other day he told me, after he had heard us discussing going to Israel for the BIL's wedding -- Im Yirtzeh Hashem the tickets will be cheap, then later he asked me 'Did you find cheap tickets yet?' He is very excited about the wedding!!!

Hadassa is 3 and I can hardly believe how big she is! Her hair is slowly, ever so slowly growing back after her big haircut (courtesy of her older brother). It was a really thorough haircut... down to the scalp in some places. It happened on a Shabbos afternoon, no less, I was putting the baby to sleep -- very grateful that D and HM were keeping quiet downstairs. You'd think after 5 years I would KNOW that a quiet child is not a good thing, and two quiet children is even worse... Sure enough, D came rushing into my room, Look at HM's hair... ARGH!

Now What!?!

I took a look at this blog and realised that I have been very very negligent. I haven't updated since summer of 2008! According to this blog Sarah Miriam hasn't even been born yet ... :( I'm not sure where to go from here -- how do you go about updating the last 18 months of life??

The most important thing is the birth of Sarah Miriam!! Which, amongst other things, means that this blog is no longer called Dovid & Hadassa Malka! And it is too long to call it Dovid, Hadassa Malka & Sarah Miriam... so I need to think of a new name for this blog... Any ideas??

IT's A GIRL!! In true Ross tradition she's wearing a blue blanket! Dovid was given a pink blanket in the hospital, HM was wearing a blue hat (that's the one DH got ready for her before she was born -- at which point I KNEW she was going to be a girl). SM I was absolutely sure was going to be a boy. The pregnancy was so similar to Dovid (easier than HM) and the labour and birth was so similar that I was convinced she was a boy, so much so that my doula asked me in the hospital 'Do you know what you are having?' and I told her 'We didn't find out, but I KNOW it's a boy' :)

More later! Meanwhile, reply to the thread with suggestions for the new name :)

Vancouver Island 2008

Sunday
Sunday morning I set off early with the kids, luckily we were able to leave the house at approximately 8:30am. The plan was for me to drive down to Merritt. Samuel was flying back from London to Vancouver and would take the greyhound from Vancouver to Merritt. Great plan considering what had just happened on Wednesday night on the Greyhound bus. The drive down to Merritt was good. Roads were clear and kids were well stocked with books, colouring stuff and food of course! We got to Merritt at 6:15 (after getting lost!) and met up with Samuel shortly after.

Monday
We headed down to Vancouver on a quest to find the kosher pizza everyone had been telling us was great (and the ferry that would take us to the island). We got to Vancouver and of course we couldn't find the pizza place, so we stopped off at people's houses to track it down, but we had no luck finding it and ended up at Pinny's instead. We were actually really impressed with the pizza (see what going without kosher pizza for 6 months can do?) bought a few provisions for our stay on the island and headed over to Tsawassen (can you pronounce that?) for our ferry.

Aww, sweet. A pretty typical picture of Hadassa clambering all over me.

The view of the Olympic Mountain from the port and ferry. We arrived in Nanaimo (as in the Nanaimo bar) and drove to Courtenay in the Comox Valley, where we discovered that the infallible Google maps are actually fallible!! We drove around for an hour or so until we found some kind soul who actually knew the road where we were staying and directed us to our house. The owner noticed we were Jewish (I wonder how?) and commented that one of the coffee shop owners was also Jewish.

TuesdayBeing the good wife I am, I woke up early on Tuesday morning and took the kids with to Superstore so that Samuel could sleep in - he was pretty tired after his trip to London, and so that we could have a little bit of food to eat. We headed out to Goose Spit for the morning and after driving around for about an hour and a half we arrived in time to have lunch there (On the way back it took us about 10 minutes to get home).

The kids had a great time at Miracle Beach, where we spent the afternoon. I think it was the first time they have been at a beach. Definately HM's first time. They loved playing with the sand and burying limbs in it. Meanwhile we (the parents) took turns sleeping.


Wednesday
We went to Campbell River in the morning, had lunch at the water, where we watched the planes take off and the kids threw rocks into the sea.

We then took a chair-lift to the top of Mount Washington. We decided to hike down the mountain instead of taking the chair-lift - the exercise can't hurt (or a certain someone was scared of going down the chair-lift). There are quite a few hiking and biking trails down the mountain. Somehow we made our way down one of the 'extreme' biking trails.

Thursday
We took the ferry to nearby Denman and Hornby Island - the undiscovered Hawaii of BC. You decide.

At the beach in Hornby Island.
A walk along the coastal line.

Friday
Before leaving Courtenay, we had to get a picture of the Comox Valley which you see from downtown.

We drove down to Victoria and had a little time to drive around Victoria and take some pictures:
Monday
The garden of the Lieutenant Governor. Apparantly this is where the Queen stays when she comes to visit. The gardens are open to the public.
Dovid's bus. I'm not sure how it happened but somehow these buses got dubbed 'my buses' by Dovid.
Hey! There is a hand in the olive jar!
Snapshots from a viewpoint on the scenic drive.
Chinatown
We got this view by mistake - we took a wrong turn and saw the beginning of sunset - we were hoping to make it to the inner harbour so we could see the full sunset but we missed it by a couple of minutes.
We waited until dusk so Samuel could get pictures of the government building lit up. Then we drove to Nanaimo where we were staying until Thursday. Which was fine ... until we got to where we were supposed to be staying and we couldn't find the house. We were looking for the number 425 and a driveway - but it was too dark for us to find it. Eventually after driving up and down the gravel road numerous times we realised that the gap in the hedges was actually the driveway.

Tuesday
Our home in Nanaimo - easy to see during the day but very difficult to find in the dark.

Tuesday was the first day we had in Nanaimo and the first day we had of bad weather. It was grey, cloudy and raining. In the morning we went down to one of Nanaimo's beach. The kids had a great time playing in the playground there - but it wasn't the right weather to really enjoy the beach.
In the afternoon we went to our private beach (on a lake) - we had our own private boat too. It was really nice - even though it was raining!


Wednesday
Eating breakfast on the deck.
Hey that's a nice picture!
We drove to Tofino, passing the famous Coombs and the goats on the roof. Dovid loved seeing the goats - and spent the day asking if we could go back to see the goats on the roof. Hadassa, of course joined in the chant for 'goats on roof'.
Long Beach on the Pacific Rim - part of the miles long beach between Tofino and Ucluelet. The waves here are magnificent, very popular with windsurfers - when we were there it was a high risk of tsunami (out of moderate, high and extreme) and along the drive to the beach they have signposted the tsunami evacuation route.
Much to Dovid and Hadassa's delight we passed the goats on the roof on the way back!

Thursday
Rathtrevor Beach - one of the places we were told was a 'must' to see on the island. It was beautiful, but Samuel wasn't impressed - when we were there (on the way to catching the ferry) the water was very far and out and uncomfortable to get to.

The view from the ferry port in Nanaimo.

Friday
Vancouver is beautiful on a sunny day. We've been there 4 times and 3 of those times it has either been raining or snowing!

Monday
On the way from Golden to Calgary we stopped off at the natural bridge of the Kicking Horse river.
Emerald Lake
Takakkaw Falls - the second highest waterfall in Canada. Takakkaw comes from the Cree word meaning 'it is magnificent'.