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