Chanuka

This year we decided to do a little something on each night of Chanuka, so that each candle was associated with a special activity or event (not necessarily a present).  Here are our Chanuka activities:

• First night: I made sufganiyot (traditional jelly doughnuts) for dessert.
• Second night: We went through our bazillions of stuffed animals and chose some to donate.  We decided to give the new-looking ones to the firehouse for Toys for Tots and the gently-used ones to an organization that gives stuffed animals to traumatized children.  We are hoping they will be sent to Haiti, since Akiva did some fundraising for earthquake relief in January, so he is familiar with the situation there.  (I am waiting to hear from the contact person to see if we can make the Haiti thing happen; otherwise they will go to other organizations that distribute them to children’s hospitals and the like.)
• Third night: We delivered our stuffed-animal donation to the firehouse and had Shabbat dinner together as a family.
• Fourth night: We had some dear friends over, and I made latkes for dinner.
• Fifth night: Thanks to my parents, we went to see Shirim Klezmer Orchestra perform in Cambridge.
• Sixth night: We made ice cream sundaes after dinner and had a wicked game of dreidl.
• Seventh night: We attended the Chanuka performance/celebration at Akiva’s school.
• Eighth night: We went to a friend’s house for latkes and then came home for another game of dreidl and more Chanuka chocolate.  I also wrote a love letter to each member of the family and gave them on the eighth day.

Thanks to my in-laws, there were wonderful and plentiful gifts for the children.  Here are pictures of each boy opening a gift.

Field trip!

Akiva had a day off school recently, on a day when Gideon was home as well (G. only goes to school two days a week) so in the morning we baked up some cookies, and in the afternoon we delivered them to the local firehouse and stayed for a visit/tour.  Gideon is in a big phase of loving all things to do with fire trucks and firefighters, so I was surprised when it was Akiva who really threw himself into the visit.  He climbed up into the driver’s seat of the fire truck, he asked interesting questions, and he tried on all the gear on offer.  Gideon was too shy to participate that way, but he did seem to enjoy the visit and still talks about it.  Here’s a picture of Akiva in the firefighter pants!

This week at Ima Day Camp

The two boys have been at home with me this summer, and this week was particularly delicious.  Herewith a recap:

Monday

We walked to Waban Square to do errands: bank, post office, and deli.  Deli?  We’ve been making ice cream at home lately and thought a root beer float would be just the thing.  Thus, a trip to the deli was in order, so we could pick up a bottle of the sacred brew.  The fellow behind the counter looked a little misty when we told him what it was for.  Who doesn’t love a root beer float?

On the way back home, we saw an interesting bug — green, shaped like a shield.  Gideon had finished his snack by then, so we captured the bug in his snack bucket to bring to our wonderful neighbor, who is a biologist and who generously answers every science question Akiva has.  (He’s the one whose doorbell Akiva went to ring when we found this dragonfly several weeks back.)

Anyway, our neighbor invited us in and taught us about the bug we found (it was a stink bug).  Then he showed us some other insects, including a polyphemus moth he’d hatched.

After our impromptu nature lesson, we went home and had lunch.  By then it was too late for Gideon to have a proper nap, so instead we had some quiet time and then came downstairs to make the root beer floats.

Sated with the perfect combination of cold, fizzy, and sweet, we set out for the new, amazing Cambridge Library, where we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the children’s room and getting lost finding our way back to the garage.  Other than having to pay for parking (and an embarrassing error in the Hebrew portion of the welcome sign) the Cambridge Library is fan-flipping-tastic, practically a tourist attraction.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning we puttered about the house and went to the park.  For reasons I don’t quite remember, Gideon didn’t nap again, and so on Tuesday afternoon when we went to the Farmer’s Market, we took the stroller.  I’ve been trying to wean us from using the stroller, because it sometimes makes it hard for the boys to get along if one is walking and the other riding, and because I want it to be natural to them to consider walking as an option, rather than always heading for the car.  Or the stroller.

Anyway we saw lots of friends at the Farmer’s Market and bought some delicious corn for the evening’s dinner.  There was a booth for Green Decade and we stopped to see the animals and talk about environmental stuff as well.  Although the kids wanted to get ice cream, I reminded them that we had homemade ice cream awaiting us in the freezer.

Dinner was pink pasta with chard, using chard from our farm share, and it was both scenic and delicious.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning we saw that there was a concert of Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars at the MFA.  Although the ticket prices were prohibitive, I saw two opportunities on Facebook to enter a drawing to win tickets.  Miraculously, I won two free tickets!  (The catch was that we found out around 3:30, had to claim the tickets in person by 5, and the concert was at 7:30.)  Thus, Wednesdsay after Gidi’s nap, we grabbed some snacks, hopped on the train, and went into Boston.  We managed to get the tickets, go straight home, make and eat dinner, say a quick hello and goodbye to Bill, and hit the road again, Akiva and me.  We got back on the train and made it to the courtyard at the MFA in time for a night of deliriously good klezmer music under the stars.

Thursday

Thursday morning we did more puttering around.

After Gideon’s nap we went to pick up our farm share, which this week included you-picks.  We always love it when the share allows us to go out in the fields.  Today it was tomatilloes and cherry tomatoes, a pint of each.  The boys enjoy picking food, and I love the opportunity to expose them to the reality of where food originates, i.e. it doesn’t grow in the grocery store.  Our farm is across the street from the Weston Library so we stopped there for Akiva to claim his latest prize in the various summer reading programs he’s doing.  (These are like easy money for him, as he reads voraciously anyway — the prizes he’s won so far have been ice cream, a whistle, a drawstring backpack, and a new book, Half Moon Investigations.  Which he’s reading on his own and for which he will get points toward another prize.)

Friday

Friday is Bill’s day off from the jewelry store, but he has been spending summer Friday mornings at the farm.  (He trades four hours of work each week for our farm share, a wonderful trade for all concerned.)  Meanwhile the boys played in our (freecycle) water table and I did some work in our garden at home.

The week was not particularly eventful (except maybe the concert) but it was filled with many joyful moments.

I’ve been trying to emphasize paying attention to the good things in our lives, so it thrilled me on Friday night at Shabbat dinner, when Akiva said he thinks I’m a good camp counselor.

Mother’s Day 2010

Can he really be that smart?

My Gideon seems to be a pretty deep 2 1/2-year-old.

A recent conversation:

GIDEON: My mouth feels sleepy.

ME: Hmmm, I wonder what that might feel like…

GIDEON: It feels sleepy.

ME: I’ve never felt that before; is it a good feeling or a not-so-good feeling?

GIDEON: It’s a different feeling.

Shiver me timbers!

Akiva decided to be a pirate for Halloween.  We did a homemade costume (most of which was his idea) accessorized by a sword he found.  OK, it was just a stick, but it was ferocious enough to get him lots of candy.

This was his first year going trick-or-treating.  After dinner, he got suited up in his pirate outfit, and he and I went out in the balmy October night.

We went around the neighborhood to see about ten families we knew and had a grand time, just my boy and me.  He was very funny and clever (kept calling the scarf around his head his “matey hat”) and I thoroughly enjoyed his delight in all things Halloween.  He is not by nature an outgoing person and it was cool to see him start to say “Happy Halloween!” to fellow trick-or-treaters as he warmed to the whole experience of being out after dark.

After a few houses, we ditched the eye patch because he kept tripping in the dark and falling on his sword.  We decided that not all pirates had eye damage and, in fact, this one had 20-20 vision.  Not being familiar with how vision is described, he said at one point, “I have ten vision!”

It was so fleeting that it’s now hard to articulate, but I just really enjoyed being out with him and sharing this experience.  Although he was doing a big-kid thing, he brought his little-kid sweetness to it.  It was all so new to him that it became new again to me for just those few hours.

A pun in two parts

Several months ago, the boys and I had a good laugh over Gideon’s having mispronounced sesame as Stephanie. As in, “Ima, I want some soba doodles [sic] and Stephanie seeds.”

No mention had been made of it in the intervening months, but this morning as I was trying yet another shortcut to avoid traffic on the way to Akiva’s school, I turned on the street where Stephanie used to live, and without missing a beat, Akiva said, “Sesame Street!”

First day of kindergarten

Saying goodbye at home:

Walking to the car:

Making his cubby tag:

The classroom has a bathtub!

Gideon checks out the bathtub at pickup time:

Saying goodbye was a little hard (for both of us!) but Akiva had a fantastic first day, coming home with big smiles and lots of questions and lots of great stories.

Funny things they say

Akiva is sure he wants to be a scientist (along with being a clarinetist), but he vacillates on the topic of what type of scientist.  He likes snakes (or the idea of them) so he might be a herpetologist.  On our walks in the woods he notices the fungi, so he might be a mycologist.  And he’s really into explosions, so he might be an explologist.

Gideon’s verbal skills are increasing exponentially.  He’s in a poetic phase.  The other night he drowsily told me he wanted to, “sleep the nap.”

Tut, tut. It looks like rain.

We’ve had something like monsoon season here lately.  I was lucky to miss two weeks of it while we were in Michigan, but today we have a reprise.  Akiva is going to day camp only on Mondays and Wednesdays this month, so I’ve got both boys at home today.  They were already driving each other wild by 9:30 a.m., so I decided that, rain be damned, we were going out to the woods.

Dressed in their rain gear, they look completely adorable.  And getting out of the house and into nature always improves things.  We listened to the sounds of the rain and the birds, broke open pine cones to smell their aroma, jumped in puddles, and left trail markers à la Hansel & Gretel.

After getting completely soaked, we came home, changed into dry clothes, and made hot chocolate.  Other activities of the day included greeting the trash collector with applause (he took a bow and beeped the horn for the kids, it was awesome!), reading Blueberries for Sal, and making whole wheat pretzels.