The picture I wanted

This is the picture I wanted. Well not exactly but pretty close. I wanted a picture of my little boy with his crown of flowers, next to his cake, with his one candle, surrounded by adoring friends and family with their mouths in various states of half open singing Happy Birthday to him. I wouldn't have minded a smile too. But this picture is close enough. And it almost didn't happen.

I hit a low point last week right around the baby's birthday. On the actual day of his birthday we didn't really do anything. By the time Mr. Rosen came home from work (which was pretty early actually) and made the cake with the big kids, it was already nearing bed time and darkness. I hadn't had time to make his crown. We barely put up some construction paper garlands. And it was just us. No other family or friends. Entirely my fault. It was midweek and everyone was busy and anyway we thought of having family over on the weekend so I just let it go. Then on the weekend the plans got miscommunicated and suddenly there was no party. Not even family. And I started feeling very sad to be far away from my family knowing that had we still been in California I would have just gone to Michael's, picked out some streamers and napkins and whatever, some cake decorations and made him a little party with our closest friends and cousins and everyone would have found a way to come.

Mr. Rosen felt partially responsible for having downplayed the importance of this event. Indeed I downplayed it myself. But I was secretly wishing the party would plan itself because I have really reached the upper limit on sleep deprivation and plus there's no Michael's here so I don't know where to buy party supplies.  So Mr. Rosen made some calls and in fact a few of our closest friends planned to drop everything and come.

Except they didn't come because the next day Mr. Rosen contracted some nasty stomach bug and spent most of the day throwing up. So I cancelled the party. But the baby's aunt and uncle still popped over with some treats including the blackberries from their garden which I used to decorate his cake. The kids had all spent the night at their grandparents so I actually slept eight hours and finally had the time and brain functioning to make his crown out of the bougainvillea in our yard.

So in the late afternoon Mr. Rosen's parents arrived with the kids and we celebrated our little boy's first birthday feeling grateful for all of the people in our lives and everything they have done and continue to do to make us feel at home here.

And I got the pictures I wanted.

Five

Dear Sugar Bee,

You're five today and I can hardly believe I just typed that. What a year it has been for you, for all of us. We started off on the wrong foot with pneumonia and you are still talking about the shot of antibiotics you got in your butt. You might never forget that one. And then you got a baby brother. And then you went on a month long road trip. And then you moved to a new house. And then to a new country! Talk about resilience and an almost heroic flexibility. It hasn't always been easy. And you've had some rough spells. But you have an understanding of yourself that frankly startles me sometimes. You get upset; we all do. And then you remove yourself, set up your dolls and clear your head. That's your process. And soon you are back to your shining spunky self. And then you like to talk about what all just happened. How you were mad and crazy, how you calmed down and got back in control. How we can talk about it after and still love each other. I appreciate processing these outbursts together. I hope we can always communicate like that.

Probably the biggest event for you this year, even bigger than moving to Israel, was becoming a big sister. Even though I know you'd prefer to still be the baby, as you have made clear in words and actions, you are a fantastic big sister. And that little boy is bonzo about you. Everything you do makes him giggle and you know it. He gets flooded with joy when he sees you. I admit, I feel that way too sometimes. What a lucky boy he is to have a sister as animated and intuitive as you. And as much as you and your older brother make each other nuts, I know there is a closeness between you too. Not every brother would take the time to pick out his sister's birthday outfit for preschool. Thankfully he can put together an outfit.

Your Aba continues to think the sun shines from your tush. He's right. You are a lovely, lovely girl and we are so lucky to have you as our daughter. Watching you grow has been one of the universe's greatest gifts to me.

many many kisses,
Mommy

Lumpy birthday to me

Yes, today is my birthday. And my adorable southpaw baby boy gave me mastitis in my right boob. He prefers the left. Good times.

For my birthday I also reopened my shop and restocked it with all of your favorite prints and cards and for TODAY ONLY (possibly tomorrow if I can unplug these milk ducts) I'm offering 38% off (maybe you can guess why). Go here and use this code: BIRTHDAY38 and get those new baby and wedding gifts off your back, get all of your Jewish New Year cards and gifts out of the way and then reward yourself for being so on top of your gift giving obligations. Go crazy!

If you need me, I'll be alternating warm and cold compresses between pumping, massaging and nursing.

Four

Dear Sugar Bee,

Today you're four years old and pretty much a real person. It all kind of came together this year. You finally could hear and speak and now you don't stop talking and you have many opinions about your clothes and your hair and your friends and your brother and us. Many many opinions. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Your baby brother should be named either Toilet Head or Boy Beauty.
2. Mommy has a stinky mouth in the mornings and so does Aba.
3. Your big brother is nice.
4. You never want to talk to your brother ever again in the whole wide world.
5. Mommy doesn't know how to brush hair. Only Aba does.
6. Mommy is the only one who can brush hair because Aba doesn't know how.
7. Only your teacher makes good ponytails.
8. You hate baths except most of the time when you don't.
9. You don't like socks except with hearts or stripes. Or plain. Or dots.
10. We can always love each other, even when we're mad.

The truth is, for all of your opinions, you are a happy-go-lucky, funny, funny girl. You're a classic middle child - willing to share, easy-going, considerate, self-assured. That's why we had to have another baby, so you could fulfill your destiny.  As I write this you are rushing to clean up the Play Mobile castle set you just got for your birthday so that none of our baby friends will choke on any of the zillion bitty pieces. You're already such a good big sister.

Enjoy your special day, special girl.

I love you,
Mommy

Treasure hunting

**somehow this didn't post last Sunday. Posting now even though it is horribly out of date.

Today was the last day in a string of unending commitments that started at the end of August with the first day of kindergarten and just has NOT. LET. UP. The parent participation school, while incredible in many ways, feels like a day job. The amount of emails alone is enough to make me cry uncle. Every week there's something. Meetings, rocket day, potlucks, walk-a-thon, sign ups, parent education training, class pictures, conferences, observation. Not to mention the fact that starting week after next I am actually working there two hours a week. Teaching math, no less. Which would send my Algebra teacher Mr. Oster into hysterics.

So that coupled with five Jewish holidays, one of which is eight days long and involves inviting people to eat outside in your tabernacle and obviously cooking for them, plus the birthdays and last weeks big show, I am just WRECKED. GRIZZLED. KNACKERED. Pull me out of the toaster, BURNT.

And today was the final event - my son's birthday party. We couldn't celebrate last weekend because of the show so it was today instead. He decided to invite only kids from his new school which I thought was a bold choice. Twelve kids including a few younger sibs. We had it in our home.

Here is where I stop to mention that I would LOVE to spend $300 and have it at some kitschy bouncy house place where up to twenty kids run around like maniacs and then have cake. I would love that. Then I don't have to plan, call, clean, strategize, and run seventy-two errands.  We've been to a lot of these parties and my kids love them. But every time we go, I feel dirty. And they're all the time hosing you down with hand sanitizer which only exacerbates my feeling. I mean my son goes hog wild every time at these parties but it's not for us. I still reserve the right to have one of these parties if ever necessary. Just saying.

So my husband came up with the idea of a treasure hunt, which we were unable to plan until the day before out of shear laziness. But given this fact I would say it was still totally awesome. It even rained but that didn't scare our intrepid treasure hunters. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive we read my favorite book from the mid-seventies Sloth's Birthday Party. It's about a really messy sloth whose friends celebrate his birthday and it rains during the story so it seemed very apropos. Following the story the rain abated and we split into two teams. The reds and the blues. And then we sent everyone to stations around the neighborhood including our neighbors Juan and Irene, our compost bin, two different park locations and inside our murphy bed. I had my mom, Grandma Seuss, write the clues the night before and we made sure the order for each team was different. Each clue had a puzzle piece inside and once each team had been to each station they came back home to build the puzzle with all ten pieces which turned out to be a map! After much scrutiny and a little parental guidance the kids found "buried" treasure in the crawl space behind our house. A piñata! Hooray! We hung it up outside and bashed the crap out it, collected candy and headed inside for pizza and cake and the customary lifting of the birthday boy in the decorated chair, once for each year and one for next year. I think we even topped the year we got him a cell phone cake. Especially since the whiskers on his lion cake were made of tootsie roll.

And with that I prepare myself to take leave of this suburban life for a few days of relaxation and inspiration on the North Shore of Lake Superior with seven celebrated women. More when I return...

Six

Hi kiddo,

I haven't written in a while. I used to write you letters on your birthday but after we had your sister that kind of yearly obligation was more than I could handle. But you and your antics did inspire me to start this blog so that kind of counts for something. I can't hardly believe that you're already six. SIX! That's like 42 in dog years. You're almost as old as Uncle Aaron! We don't always see eye to eye on things, like how often you should wear your green J Camp tee shirt or whether marshmallows make for a nutritious breakfast, but we sure do have a connection, you and me. For better or worse, we are locked in tight. Here are the things I love about you lately.

1. The way you crack an egg.
2. Your singing voice.
3. Your loyalty to your (stuffed) kitty.
4. Your enthusiasm for electricity and science.
5. The way you draw fingers.
6. Your love of shoes (this kind of bugs me but I can totally relate).
7. Your heart.
8. Your goodnight secrets.
9. The way you look just like your Grandpa.
10. Your imagination.
11. The way you still crawl into our bed in the morning.
12. Your willingness to try new foods (that's new!)
13. Your compassion.
14. The way you memorized every word to the Oompa Loompa songs.
15. Your spirituality. 
16. That your favorite birthday present was the label maker.
17. The way you are unapologetically your awesome neurotic self. 

I love you.
Mommy

Having my cake and sharing it too

 

I woke up this morning to a beautiful and tasty breakfast of fried eggs on toast, chopped salad and chocolate. Because today is no ordinary day friends. Today is MY BIRTHDAY. And, since I lowered my expectations for my birthday by several orders of magnitude based on last year's fiasco, SO FAR SO GOOD. 

And coincidentally this year my birthday is also the birthday of the WORLD. It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starting this evening. Some of you may know that I have a thing about sharing my birthday. I don't like to share. Thank god I'm not a twin. But then I had to go and marry someone whose birthday is five days after mine and he has a brother with a birthday a week after that and now suddenly all of my birthdays are shared occasions. Which I hate have come to accept. But this year is especially communal because this year I have to share my birthday with the WORLD. And that's also why I shared my birthday with son's kindergarten class. 

I went in after recess to do a little Rosh Hashanah presentation for the kids and it was a AWESOME. I am now Miss Susie, loved and revered by 26 five-year-olds. Most importantly, I even managed to blow the ceremonial shofar which is like blowing a trumpet except it's the horn of a ram. Seriously. And we all had apples dipped in honey to signify a sweet new year but only after I made the kids sing happy birthday to me. And then I asked if any one had any questions and several kids raised their hands to tell me when their birthdays would be and one kid told me his grandma was 87. Love kindergartners.

On tap for the rest of this wonderful day:

1. Make dinner for mine and my brother's family.

2. Drink latte.

3. Revel in my facebook birthday wishes. 

4. Go to post office.

5. Buy heavy cream so my husband can make me a cake tonight.

ALSO, in the spirit of sharing my birthday, I'm offering BUY ONE GET ONE FREE (of equal or lesser value) through the end of the day tomorrow midnight (pacific time) on all items in my ETSY shop (except ketubahs - why would you need more than one ketubah?) Write BIRTHDAY in the message to seller and I'll reimburse you via paypal for the second item.

Happy Day everyone!

Thumb wrestling

The only reason I did not completely lose my shit after tonight's ritual tantrum was because I could see it coming after a very long and fun-packed day. The poor kid was exhausted. My husband, however, got the hell out of there the minute he could feel the flood waters swelling. Not a bad choice.

It was a busy day. We rode bikes over to our friends' house this morning to pick the vegetables in their garden while they're away. They've been gone for a month and it's tomato and cucumber harvest time so instead of going to the farmer's market we went to the Eilat household and picked ourselves a mondosalad. I like to make up words.

Then we get home and have lunch and my husband takes our son to his friend's birthday party at a gymnastics place where they run around for two hours before they eat cake. Then I pick him up with our daughter and take them to birthday party number two at a place where the kids jump in a jumpy house and slide down jumpy slides for two hours and then eat pizza and cake. We drive home and my husband then chases the kids around the house for an hour while I'm making a normal dinner. So by the time it's time for bed, I know this kid is wrecked though he appears to be keeping it all together to my astonishment. I was sure he would fall asleep during dinner.

So everyone's in bed in their undies because it's hot as all blazes in our house and the rest of northern California and instead of sitting right next to my son's bed and in front of my daughter's bed (they make a right angle and I sit in the middle), I'm sitting toward the end of my daughter's bed and my husband is sitting in the middle. This does not sit well for my son and he asks for a switch because he wants to hold my thumb while I sing. Fair enough. We switch but then he starts twitching around and putting his legs on the wall and generally being squirrely. It's not until the second song that he realizes that he forgot to hold my thumb during the first song. So he wants me to start over to which I refuse (the first song is long). But instead of holding my thumb for the next three songs he proceeds to sob about wanting me to start over. Why? Knowing you missed one opportunity, why would you then will yourself to miss the next three also? I offered the thumb but he was too busy begging me to go back. I vowed long ago to abandon the do-over. I couldn't give in. Finally I finished the songs and he was still quietly boo-hooing when I left. Poor guy. A tortured kid like that with back-to-back birthday parties...he never had a chance.

My Funny Valentine

My daughter just turned two on the 15th. Yes, I went into labor on Valentine's day in 2007. No, it wasn't because of the passionate love-making. It was the prostaglandin. And she showed up the next morning. So I plan to have valentine themed parties for as long as I can stretch it out because you can't beat the 80% off all Valentine crap the day after. Plates for $.39! This excites me.

So I ran out the morning of her party and snatched up all the valentine sale items. Our friends started to arrive around 4:00 and she basically slept through the first hour of her party. Then she woke up, walked out bleary-eyed, immediately asked for a piece of pizza (by ask, I mean she pointed at the pizza and whimpered. She still doesn't talk.), sat in a big chair like a queen and ate three pieces of pizza, jumped down and did a little dance, clapped for herself, stared at her candles, at a bunch of cake, did another jig and then said goodbye to all of our guests. Even my son was on best behavior. As long as he could play with his sister's new princess make-up and hair styling set. When they weren't gobbling cake, they spent much of the party applying pretend eye shadow and doing each others' nails.

And so we enter the terrific twos. Again. My daughter has a far sunnier disposition so hopefully the next three years won't be too challenging. Though she does have an angry, sometimes violent, streak. Lately she's been putting my husband and me in time-out. She wags her finger at us and says sternly no no no no. Then she says come and leads us to her room where she wags her finger again, utters a few more no-nos and then shuts the door. I'd say she has it down. We're not supposed to laugh but it's hard. She's really funny.

Second worst

I'd have to say that my worst birthday was when I turned 18. I had been living on a kibbutz in Israel for about three weeks and I was miserably homesick. The program that I had signed up for was postponed so I was completely lost. It was hot as hell. I was young and scared to just up and travel around by myself. I'm not even sure how I ended up in Israel with no friends, no family and my only plans postponed. The kibbutz found me a job in the interim so I worked in the chicken hatchery sorting baby chicks and cleaning incubators. My birthday was also the eve of Rosh Hashanah. So that day I worked from 4am until noon. Then the guys in the hatchery gave me a box of chocolates and sang happy birthday. They were adorable actually and had I been a little older and a little less pitiful I would have probably gotten a kick out of it. They even sang in English. But I was wallowing in a kind of self-pity that even chocolate could not cure.

I had made plans to spend the holidays with the sister of a rabbi that I had known from California. His sister had become religious and moved to Israel with her family and they lived with their three year old and six month old in a town about an hour away. So I had called them a week before and asked to be invited for the holiday. They were certainly happy to have me. So I took a bus and met the husband at the station and he took me home with him where I spent a weekend with a religious couple I didn't know from Adam and their two little kids. And these kids could have been actual Botticelli angels and I wouldn't have given a fart about them because I was a self-absorbed teenager. Anyway, to cut a long story short I spent my birthday depressed with strangers, dragged to synagogue for hours and hours in 105 degree heat. I was never happier to be back in that hatchery. I'm sure my adoptive family thought I was a giant pain in the ass. I can only imagine if some 18 year old showed up at my house for Rosh Hashanah and acted like a pill. Me with my two kids and husband and mortgage and job and you with your teenage angst and not a care in the world. How embarrassing to think back on it now. Anyway, this is not the point. Or is it. Where was I going with this...?

So yesterday's birthday was a close second. But I'll have to finish the tale tomorrow because I'm exhausted just thinking about it.