I'd like to thank...

My loyal readers who come back day-after-day to check why I haven't written anything new. It's probably because I'm either insanely busy, severely disorganized or a combination of the two. I kind of wonder if it's what people describe as ADD. Sometimes I feel like there's a seven-ring circus going on in my head (three rings I could handle, I mean, I do have 6 kids...) and everything's so interesting and so colorful and appealing that I don't know what to do first... On a good day, the solution is to shut everything down and work on the things I have to work on (you know, the stuff that brings in the soy schnitzel). On a not-so-good day, I start doing seven different things and sometimes, miraculously, I am able to stay focused on one thing long enough to realize I've worked on it. I have learned not to rely on my memory too much (to do things) because I forget just about everything that isn't very important... So we've got a calendar on the fridge and I write down everything that's going on and I do remember to look there (at least usually).


Anyway, I've got a whole bunch of ideas that I'm trying to develop - one's a spin-off site of fertilitystories. I bought a new domain, but now I want to build a content management system so that at least one of my websites will actually be built properly. But since I don't like risk, I haven't taken someone else to build it for me - and I don't have the time to build it myself... I've also continued to work on internationalshippingshops (do I have a thing about long mushed-up names? For this one, I bought the domain OverseasJoe, which for some odd reason I think is hilarious...) and it's actually starting to get some traffic. I'm also an affiliate of Book Depository... oh yeah, and my brother, Ben, and I started building a really cool site about a year ago - only Ben got a real job in the meantime and decided that money was more important than helping his sister (can you imagine? ;-)) so that's a bit stuck too (although I've got an idea up my sleeve to get it jumpstarted again)... And, in the meantime, I decided that I had to design something that kids could make for Chanuka that would let you turn a wheel and have the Chanukiya light up the right number of candles according to the day of Chanuka. You can't see it that well, but when you turn the dial on the bottom then through the holes you can see the 'lit candles' that correspond with the number on the top. Hadas decorated this one :-)

And then we hosted a "Bayit cham" where 4 kids from the preschool come over in the afternoon and you do some sort of activity with them - so we made these (and used my fancy new laminating machine, which made them very impressive, but also impossible to photograph). Amazingly *all*of them came out well. This is the first time I've ever planned something so complicated and it was really exciting to see the results.

When I say complicated, I mean the bottom part looks like this:

After getting good feedback on it from pretty much everyone, I am going to look into selling the design - anyone want to test it for me? I can send you a pdf...

I'm also taking my next-to-last course at the Open University - Survey Methodology - it's a great course, but requires a lot of time (doesn't everything?) - and I think I've decided not to sign up for next semester. With Hadas being in 11th grade, I still have a chance to finally get my degree at the same time as she does... (I have to write 2 seminar papers, so I plan to write one during the spring semester this year and one next year, after I take the final course.) This degree really isn't going to give me anything, but it is really important to me to finish things I've started... Uh oh, which takes me back up to the first paragraph and all the things I want to do.

Hey, I managed to get through writing a blog post today. That's something.

Music. I love music…

I remember, when I was living in Shikunei HaElef  (Hebrew University dormitory) in Givat Ram (Jerusalem) back in 1986 just how quiet Shabbat was. I lived in the building of the observant girls. A total of 7 of the 20 rooms were occupied and I’d managed to get rid of my roommate by having her upgraded to the better dorms (the Kiryah – yes, I actually went and begged them to give her a room and she was very thankful), so I had a room to myself. I think there was one other girl who wasn’t Israeli-born, but she had a boyfriend who she went to visit on Shabbat and all the other girls went home. I was almost always left in the building completely alone. In fact, most of the buildings were empty over the weekend and the few people who stayed weren’t the ones I’d choose to talk to. I was also significantly younger, being just 17, when most students there were in their 20’s. So I spent Shabbat on my own. I read books, slept a lot and I sang, sometimes for hours. I could sing as loudly as I wanted, since there wasn’t anyone there to hear – and with it being so quiet, I found that singing made me feel less lonely (and hey, it seemed more normal than talking to myself). I don’t remember what songs I sang, but I know it always made me feel happy. In every house I ever lived, I knew where the best acoustics were and even before Hadas was born, I started singing to her. She knew all the words to Leader of the Band by the time she was 4 and we sang it together in a talent contest about then.

After I got divorced, I took voice lessons for a while. My teacher was convinced that I should sing opera. I told her I was willing to try, but she never actually brought me the music. I enjoyed the lessons, but I don’t think I’d ever sing in front of anyone but my family – and I don’t think they care how good my voice sounds, so I stopped taking lessons, but I kept singing to the kids, of course. They know all the songs I love… and if they hear a song on the radio, even Abigail will say, “Is that John Denver?” I often sing to the little kids before they go to sleep (usually they choose the songs – one of the ones Abigail loves is No Wonder – not exactly what you’d expect a 4-year-old to like).

These past few years have been crazy-busy. I just realized that I hadn’t bought a CD for about a year (the last one was a Barbra Streisand one that I didn’t have yet – I have quite a few)… and I realized I enjoy the few songs I know that Sarah McLachlan sings –(like  Blackbird & Ordinary Miracle) so I ordered a disk (of course it turned out to be out of stock).

I was thinking about how much I missed having time to listen to music (I mean, who can hear a whole song with 3-4-5-6 kids at home?)  and I remembered a tape that I had with this song – but this video is so much better :-)

Shabbat isn’t as quiet as it used to be. I think I kind of miss that sometimes.

Some things lose their meaning (at least temporarily)

As a child, Yom Kippur meant counting down the pages until the service would (finally) end. From the time I was 8, I was pretty serious about fasting – and that year, I made it through to the very end - only the service ended later than the fast and I ran out to the water fountain to get a drink (thinking I was about to die). I think that it was the same year that I was in a choir of 4 that participated in the service. (My dad was the Rabbi, so the auditioning process was fairly simple.) As a young adult, I was able to understand more of the prayer and connect with more of the ideas of the day, probably giving it some of the meaning I’d learned and some of my own. Yom Kippur began to be extremely powerful, giving me a true opportunity to look at who I had been up until then and being able to make a decision as to who I wanted to be from then on… I would sit in shul and daven, not necessarily paying attention to every word (I don’t know who can), but feeling the importance of the prayer and of repenting. When finally, the shofar was blown, I  burst into tears… As a mom, I want to pass these feelings on to my children. I want all the holidays to be meaningful for them.

My little kids don’t behave well in shul. It could be the fact that there are 3 of them. Or that the shul is way-too-crowded (it is). Or the fact that other kids are playing outside. Or that I just have wild kids (not really).  So even if I took them with me, it’s impossible to concentrate between handing out bamba and drinks, wiping noses, changing diapers, taking one of the girls to the bathroom and breaking up their fights… And, living in Israel, you can’t really hire a non-Jewish babysitter to care for your kids (I know some synagogues in the US have some sort of arrangement), so instead of spending the day in shul or at least in solemn thought, I spend it figuring out how long I can keep the kids busy building with Duplo, what stories will keep them calmest, and trying not to forget to feed them, since they don’t fast (in addition to listening to one of the older kids moan and groan about how impossible it is to fast and that s/he just can’t do it…). Instead of counting down the pages, I count down the hours and minutes until the fast is over, hoping I’ve gotten a little bit of thought in at some point during the day.

Today, as Yirmi sleeps, I’m trying to get into the mood of 9 b’Av. It’s hard. It’s not only hard because I spent half the morning feeding the little kids and the other half playing with them. It’s hard because when it’s finally quiet and I have a moment to think, so many other things keep jumping into my head… And I think that’s one of the hardest things for me about being a stay-at-home-and-work-from-home-mom to little kids. It’s difficult to find time for uninterrupted thought. I never realized how important that is.

I am looking forward to a time when I will be able to feel the holidays – and feel that they are meaningful to me again - and not just be busy finding a way to somehow survive them.

Making pita

Ever since we took Abigail to Kibbutz Gezer, where they had an activity that included making pita, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to make pita at home. I’ve done it once in the past and it came out great, but then I lost the recipe and couldn’t find another one that looked worth trying.

Here are some of Abigail’s pictures – she really enjoyed it!

They made sure to keep the kids safe – only the taboon guy got close to it.

Mr. Taboon also made sure the pita didn’t get burnt.

Too bad they couldn’t protect the pita from the destructive things a four-year-old can do – in this case, putting chocolate spread on it. What a waste! Anyway, when Ohad said today that he preferred I use the outdoor barbeque to make chicken, I figured I’d finally use the cheapo wok we bought and make more pita. (You flip the wok upside down on the barbeque. Works like a charm.) Instead, I ended up finding a recipe that actually recommended you make the pita in the oven and I didn’t feel like standing in front of the barbeque anyway, so I made them in the oven.

The recipe makes 8. We were able to take 2 to freeze – the others all got eaten straight out of the oven.

The kids kept asking me how you make the pockets. You don’t. They just magically appear :-)

Tefillin...

Today, 13 years less 30 days (in the lunar calendar) - Matan was born. And today, on Lag Ba'Omer, he put on tefillin for the very first time.

Me with Matan and Yirmi (and a head covering). And, believe me, it's just the way I'm standing...

My dad with Matan, after shacharit, taking off the tefillin.

After shul, most of us went for breakfast and I even gave a very short speech - now translated to English (only because I never give any speeches at all, so if I've already written something, I may as well share it):

I chose to speak about “Shma Yisrael”.

“Shma Yisrael” is the first prayer I taught my children. Every night before they went to sleep, I made sure to say the first line with them. As soon as they were able to say that, we went on to the second line and then I taught them to sing the whole first paragraph, just as my parents taught me.

Shma Yisrael is unique in that it includes rules about when to say it, “teach them diligently to your children and speak of them while you sit in your home, while you walk on the way, when you retire and when you arise” and about the places where we should put the passages, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.”

As young children, only parts of this can be fulfilled – “speak of them while you sit in your home, while you walk on the way, when you retire and when you arise”. Later on, one can fulfill, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes.” (Putting on tefillin) – which is what Matan has begun to do today.

Matan, I hope that in the future, as you grow, you will be able to fulfill more and more of the words of Shma, to “write them upon the doorposts of your house” and, when the time comes, also to “teach them diligently to your children”.

---

I think (hope) it sounded better in Hebrew :-)

Thank you once again to all who joined us today!!!

If you need a good laugh

Loved, loved, loved this...

What do we leave behind us?

As I sit in my little kids’ room waiting for them to fall asleep, I sometimes wonder what they’ll remember of me when they’re older. Will they remember me sitting in their room, singing to them, often for a whole hour, with them setting up their own ‘playlists’? The songs I sang? Will they remember how I matched their clothes and set up outfits in the drawers so it would be easy to dress them in the morning? Will they remember the silly voices I make for them when I read them stories? Or how I we play a game we call, “hug me but don’t make me fall”? And then I think what my parents have given me and what I remember of my grandparents… and what of all that is really important.

I’ve even come to some conclusions about what is important to me… I guess I could sum it up as two things:

Values and devotion. I know what things my grandparents valued and to what things they devoted their lives – (two obvious examples are Judaism and education).

Interests and talents. I know my maternal grandfather was interested in photography, he wrote and sang beautifully… My maternal grandmother knitted fabulously (she could copy anything she saw in a store) and had an ability to distinguish more colors than the average person. My paternal grandfather was incredibly organized and read a lot… He also translated quite a few poems (both ways, I believe – from Hebrew to English and English to Hebrew). My paternal grandmother – hmmm… I don’t really know that much about her, even though I was 6-1/2 when she died. Time to ask my dad…

One of my aunts loves movies, is a talented artist and likes dinosaurs (we have a whole collection of stuffed dinosaurs :-)). My other aunt died when she was just 16, but I know she doodled in her notebooks and I think we have a lot in common…

With parents, I think it becomes even more specific, beyond the things I wrote about above, it’s also what type of books and music they like, specific things they do or have done, how they like to spend their time, expressions they use, places they visit and even physical objects that they are particularly fond of… and habits, quirks… I’m sure a lot of other things too.

These thoughts have made me even more aware of the things I want to emphasize to my children. So, Hadas knows that I have an organ donor card that I carry in my wallet and that I signed up to the bone marrow registry. All of them know that I donated my hair to children with cancer. (It was fun, highly recommended – pics below.)

Before

The braid

After

I spend time talking to the kids about things that are important to me, explaining my belief and giving them examples of the way I interpret things (e.g., despite the fact that I don’t drive on the Sabbath, when one of the kids was in bad emotional shape at their dad’s house, I felt that the right thing to do was to drive to them right away). I get silly with the kids and dance with them to Bryan Adams… and they’ve seen me eat peanut butter with a spoon (like my mother used to :-)) Sometimes Hadas (who goes to a boarding school in Jerusalem) calls me and tells me she heard a song I like on the radio (yes, she still knows what a radio is). And Matan  laughs at me when I’m not sure about a word and I pull out the dictionary. Lilach can always catch me when I’m being ridiculous (often) and trying to trick them. Abigail and Nomi know that when I take them out of the tub, I wrap them up in a towel and tell them to be careful not to fall and then I laugh with them that they “fell into my arms” as I carry them to the other room. Yirmi knows that I sing silly songs to him all day long… (oh yes, I do.)

I believe that making our lives meaningful to us is what makes them meaningful to our children (and then to their children). This also gives them the message that they should work to make their lives meaningful… and maybe the title of this post is misleading, because it isn’t just what we leave behind when we die, it’s what our children and grandchildren (and maybe even generations beyond that) have with them throughout their lives.

What do you think is important? What do you want to give your children ?