Kally's Blog

Recently I dropped my kids off at school.

You’re waiting for the funny story that follows this mundane, daily event. I am waiting for applause.

My husband and I recently did something out of character. We bought some Nice Things. We decided we had outgrown some of the furniture we inherited as newlyweds from people we considered to be old (over 26), rich (they did not eat wacky mac multiple times a week to save money), and sophisticated (they liked wine that wasn’t bubbly).

There’s no shame in admitting that economic times are tough. When my ‘get rich quick by writing a semi-regular blog for a crafty Jewish website’ didn’t pan out, I realized it was time to start moonlighting in order to better finance my Target habit.

I took my car in for an oil change a few months ago and the mechanic informed me that a specific belt under the hood would soon need replacing. Parts plus labor would run me about $600. That’s $600 to fix something that I am not entirely certain exists. Awe-some.  

Dear Dora,

I’m Kally - long time watcher first time caller. I have been following you and your explorations for nearly 6 years now, starting from way back when 8 was a toddler leading up to the frenzy of today when 2 holds the remote control in her grubby hand and chants your name until that catchy music starts and the adventures begin. 

Today I achieved a new echelon of momhood: I sent a child off to overnight camp. There was no doubt, 8 was ready. So I filled out the paper work (What else would you like us to know about your child? He only eats macaroni and cheese. He loves ninjas and chocolate milk. He is a nice boy and I love him and do you think someone they will snuggle with him if he feels sad? Because he’s tough, but I think he could use an occasional cuddle, like maybe if there’s a thunder storm) and packed his bags. 

by Kally Kislowicz

4 misheard me at bedtime the other night. When I told him to go brush his teeth, he thought I said ‘please lie on your stomach on the bathroom floor and trace the path of a tiny bug as it weaves its way between the tiles’. It was my bad, really. I should enunciate better.  

My dryer got lazy a few weeks ago. It decided that towels didn’t need to be fully dried and that wet shirts and socks were beyond its jurisdiction. No problem, I just pulled out the old clothes line, strung it up outside in the sunshine and – yeah right! I called a repairman like any good electricity-addicted consumer would do. He told me he would be at my house between 10 AM and 2PM, which was perfect because I had absolutely nothing else to do that day. Not one blessed thing. 

by Kally Kislowicz

This summer my big kids will be going to day camp while my two younger children will be hanging out with me. This is a good arrangement as it allows 8 and 5 to spend time with their friends in a structured environment with more activities and excitement than I can provide. And the little ones (formerly known as ‘3’ and ‘the baby’, henceforth known as 4 and 2 - Happy birthday to them.) will have days that are more geared to their tastes and abilities.

They say 'it's like riding a bike' meaning it's the kind of thing that you won't forget how to do.

They do not say 'it's like teaching your 5 year old how to ride a bike',unless the ‘it’ in that statement is something superlatively frustrating.
 

The early evening time slot often finds me running around getting dinner ready while simultaneously refereeing my children’s playing, timekeeping their turns on the computer, and repeatedly offering them healthy snacks. I hold out hope that one day they might actually reply to my pleading suggestion of ‘fruit kabob?’ with something other than disdain. On the odd evening when my husband is coming home for dinner this hour also finds me counting down the minutes until he walks through the door.

Tis birthaversary day season around here – that means in a 4 week period my husband and I celebrate our birthdays, our anniversary, and both Mother’s and Father’s day.

Warm weather is my best friend. My kids and I agree that sunshine and popsicles make for an excellent afternoon, and so after school we hit the backyard. For me the best thing about spring and summer is the footwear, in that I don’t have to wear any. While I love me a stylish pair of sandals, grass beneath my toes makes me a happy woman.

Last week we had a dinner guest. We often play host on Shabbat or for the odd Sunday barbeque, but a guest on a regular Wednesday night threw my children for a loop. As I pulled out a table cloth and began to set the dining room as opposed to the kitchen table, my three year old looked at my questioningly - ‘I didn’t know it was Shabbat’.

Life was getting too simple around here, so just for kicks we decided it would be a good idea to pack up and move around the corner.

I am a good sport. You name the game, be it with a ball, a board, or a deck of cards, and odds are I will be up for the challenge. I love friendly competition, and I am not a sore loser. That said, I really, really like to win.

While perusing the stacks in the children’s library a familiar title jumped out at me - The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese.

To encourage myself through the vacation wasteland of the late winter months, I often set my sights on Passover, when we spend ten days in the fabulous city of Toronto. February and March find me daydreaming about all the upcoming family togetherness – no work, no school, limited errands.

My oldest son invited a friend over this past Shabbat afternoon. They were playing nicely in the backyard when another friend stopped by to join them. Through mitosis or spontaneous generation (high school science was not good to me) I soon had a crew of 5 8-11 year old boys running around outside, inside and through my home. I love this. My house is not always the ‘it’ place to be, but on this day we were hopping.

While we will not technically celebrate Purim for a few more days, in our home Purim came early this year as we were blessed with a series of miraculous events that made our holiday preparations non-disastrous and dare I say, fun.

I got a postcard in the mail advertising a free trail class at a local baby gym. I love free, especially when it comes with the added perk of interaction with other adults. So my daughter and I put on our gym shoes and headed out.

My son moved out. The top bunk where he sleeps is empty. His closet is bare. The trophies that proudly indicate that he ‘participated’ are no longer on his dresser. Gone are the halcyon days of sharing a room with his two younger brothers. Wanderlust set in, urging him to depart for the new horizon formerly known as The Guest Room.

Someone finally vomited on the new couches. I knew this day would come, and given that the ‘new’ couches are 11 months old, I am feeling pretty good about our collective ability to keep bodily fluids in their appropriate places. Perhaps we are slowly moving away from the land of ‘See! This is why we don’t have nice things!’

My kids had their winter break last month. We spent the week with out of town family -museums, bowling, sledding, cousins, grandparents and an extravagant amount of ice cream made it a wonderful week. But I have to say, the highlight of the trip was the introduction of my family to Angry Birds.

There is often talk in my town about passing a law banning the use of cellphones in cars. I am both a proponent of this law and an unrepentant hypocrite for talking while driving without the use of a hands-free device.

But I happen to think that this is an example of soft legislation that will do little to make the roads safer. If government officials are serious about protecting drivers and passengers, they should make it illegal to operate a vehicle which contains children.
 

Like many a proud preschool mama, I receive backpacks full of exquisite art projects on a weekly basis. The mediums range from finger paint on construction paper to colored shaving cream on tin foil; and the subject matter spans ‘my family’ to ‘the dead raccoon I saw on Highway 80’.

I recently came across a long forgotten gift card for a children’s store and I decided to use it to buy some things for my kids. Although I have been a mother for 8 years, buying children’s clothes is a new endeavor for me. My Bubbe was the shopper in the family. Apparently that is a recessive trait, or a gene that skips two generations, as my mother, my sister and I are not blessed with her patience and skill.

I made a bad parenting call yesterday. I got mad and stayed mad over something that I could’ve let slide had I not been so tired/hungry/worried over the fate of Downton Abby.

Imagine that you’re feeling particularly worn down by consecutive nights of child-interrupted sleep and mornings of strapping unwilling children into car-seats. An older, more experienced parent notices that you are not your adorable, chipper self, and inquires as to your well-being. You explain in between yawns that you are being terrorized by your toddler and abused by your infant. But instead of a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, you are greeted with a smug and superior 'Oh, little children little problems, big children big problems. That’s nothing compared to what I am going through….'

Out of nowhere my boys have entered a most wonderful phase where they can play together for significant amounts of time without fighting or gravely injuring each other. Don’t be overly impressed, ‘significant’ can mean 3 minutes, which is sometimes all I need to read an email, change my clothes, or hide in the closet and eat chocolate like a crazy person who will be damned if she has to share.

I am the type to make New Year’s Resolutions. I once heard that it is a good idea to make a resolution during the Jewish New Year in September, and then use the secular New Year in January as a check in point to monitor your progress. But this becomes a study in depression as I am also not the type to keep a New Year’s resolution. I have never lost 10 pounds without having a newborn to show for it, I have never grown 5 inches, and I have never developed more patience for whining children despite my repeated attempts at exposure therapy.

My daughter has taken to waking up at 5 AM. 5 is a great hour for people that like to seize the day. I am more of an anti-seizure gal. I prefer to greet the day once it has had time to brush its teeth, have its coffee, and check its email.

I caught a clip of Barbara Walters interviewing Barack Obama in which she asked him what superpower he would choose if he could have only one. He answered that he had discussed this question with one of his daughters and they had agreed that flying would be pretty cool. Without getting political, I happen to think that ‘flying’ shows a lack of imagination on behalf of our Commander-in-chief.

There is so much to love about Chanukah. The continuous celebratory atmosphere, the way the candles look reflected back at us through our big living room window, the expression of joy and power on my kids’ faces as they get their first taste of pyromania. I love that it is 8 nights long, and while I recognize that there are historical and esoteric reasons for the length of the holiday, I take it as tacit acknowledgement from on High that sometimes it takes 8 nights to get it right- the candles, the singing, the dreidle, the latkes, the spirituality, minus the fighting over whose Chanukiyah is taller or whose dreidle could fit farther up whose nose.

My husband went on a quick business trip last week. I hate it when he goes away. I miss having another rational human being in the house. Sometimes my favorite thing about him is that he is older than 8. But the upside to his being gone is the sense of power I develop at being able to run my household entirely on my own. I can get everyone up, dressed, fed, out, cleaned, carpooled, entertained, comforted, etc. all by myself. And even though single parenting makes for hectic times, I always feel supremely capable and accomplished by the end of the day.

Sometimes I give my daughter a cracker for getting in the car. It’s an activity that she does not particularly enjoy which we have to do several times a day, and I find that if I sweeten the deal with a saltine she is a much more pleasant passenger. Say what you will about bribing children, munching is preferable background noise to shrieking.

There is a Happiness Maximum in my family. This means that at any given moment the available happiness is divided, often unequally, amongst the six of us. The parameters of the equation make it all but impossible for each of us to be feeling entirely happy at the same time. This explains the Bad Mood Principle which accounts for the fact that no matter how much fun we are having, one person will always be flirting with, if not entirely subsumed by, a bad mood.

My baby is almost one and a half. She is my only daughter, and I feel an allegiance to her in this house full of boys. I am torn between wanting her to stay small and wishing she would hurry up and get big so we can start having some real fun (no disrespect, ring-around-the-rosie). I have elaborate daydreams of afternoons spent leisurely window shopping together with cups of hot chocolate, and girls’ nights out where we see movies in which there is no blood or dead bodies. These fantasies make it imperative that she grow up to be someone who I really like to be with; someone who is talented, freethinking, kind, enthusiastic, and intelligent. So as we go about our day I often check her progress against this weighty list.

My skirt came back from the dry cleaner with a tag on it. It read ‘This garment is stained. Attempts to remove the stains have been unsuccessful, and further stain removal attempts could cause lasting damage to the garment’.

There are flyers posted all over my community announcing an adult education lecture entitled Growing Good Kids: A Jewish Approach. This interests me from the get-go. I would like to grow good kids. I tried to grow good tomatoes last spring and it did not go as planned. It’s a good thing that my children can verbally express their need for hydration.

At the pediatrician’s office the other day I saw the following sign:
Children spell love… T-I-M-E. – Dr. Anthony P. Witham.

At first glance, this is a lovely, meaningful quote that makes us want to snuggle up with our children for hours on end. But when the snugglefest is over we have to ask ourselves a serious question. Why can’t our children spell?

Kally Kislowicz

It is not the three days of yomtov that hassle me, but rather the days preceding them. Trying to cook while yelling at children is hard work, and not enough awards are given out to people who do it as efficiently and effectively as I do. (I have trademarked my best move - the one handed pulling something out of the oven while holding the baby and creatively devising threats as to what will happen to the next paper airplane that flies through my kitchen. It is a thing of beauty.)

By Kally Kislowicz

There is a special blessing for parents to give their children on the eve of Yom Kippur. It is a beautiful bracha, one in which we ask that our children be granted all the things we could ever hope for them. My husband and I were lucky enough to get to say it four times this past Friday. It is a longer version of the traditional Friday night blessing. A much longer version, actually.
There was a lot to be done in the waning pre-Yom Kippur minutes. The table was being cleared, leather shoes were being removed, teeth were being brushed, candles were being arranged, timers set, etc. And amidst all of this we decided it was a good time to give a multi- paragraph blessing to each kid.

By Kally Kislowicz

It is well known that the High Holidays are often referred to as the Days of Awe. A less common, though equally fitting name for this solemn time is ‘the Days of Playing Candyland and Spreading Cream Cheese on Crackers (Because Shul is Very Long)’. And that more or less sums up the heights of spirituality that I reached over Rosh Hashana.

by Kally Kislowicz

I have become a soccer mom. On Sundays I pull up in my minivan carrying my lawn chair, mini-cooler full of snacks, and upbeat attitude. I am thoroughly enjoying my weather permitting stint as a cliché.

by Kally Kislowicz

Having children who can shower on their own is a most fabulous parenting milestone. But much like I imagine it will be when I one day hand over the car keys, handing over the sponge and liquid soap was not without its glitches.

by Kally Kislowicz

I took my son to the library last week. He was absentmindedly putting every book he picked up in our basket and I was very focused on secretly vetoing and replacing 85% of his choices. We made a great team. Suddenly my non-reading, preschool aged child stopped and held up a book saying ‘Look at this one, doesn’t it look great?’ I looked over to see him holding a very colorful book entitled Everything Your Child Needs to Know About Sex.

by Kally Kislowicz

After being blessed with 3 boys (and by blessed I mean besieged), we finally welcomed a baby girl into our family a little more than a year ago. After boy #3 was born, I made my peace with being a boy family. Save the times when I walked wistfully by the baby girls’ section in Target, I was quite content with the number of Y chromosomes in our home.

by Kally Kislowicz

I am happy to report that this summer worked out really well. I had some kids in day camp and some at home with me, and there were times when I actually believed that each child was getting exactly what he/she needed.