2013 in Pictures

Before I wax rhapsodic about what I did and didn't accomplish this year, let's have the photo spam. My favorite pictures of 2013:

January
Our decision to get a vasectomy was the right one. Even if I still feel sad every time I think that I'll never be pregnant again. Because I am insane.

February
Three of the most delightful children I've ever known

March- a tie
SI and DD helping Aunt Genocide with the four questions. The first time we've had a Passover seder without my parents, and hopefully the last for a very long time

March- a tie
Grandma and Grandpa came to town for Easter, and we walked up to the chapel for services. It was a beautiful day, despite my panic fueled humiliation. 

April- a four way tie
People have told me since they were born that my kids should be models. Well, if I were going to send a picture of DD to an agency... it would be this.

April- a four way tie
I love everything about this picture. Everything.

April- a four way tie
That's one stylish guy I'm married to.

April- a four way tie
We went to New York City for my cousin's bar mitzvah... and if there's one picture that sums up everything about it that meant the world to me, it's this one- my daughter playing with my cousin, while my great aunt watches. My children had never met half of my family. Never. And of course, everyone loved each other instantly. I will never forget it. And neither will they.

May
Poppa, SI, Aunt Something Funny, and DD.
We went to Grinnell for my father to receive an honorary doctorate. It was amazing, and wonderful, and beautiful, and one of the best long weekends we have ever shared.

June- another tie
I finally got to introduce my children to my best friends, and it was magical and amazing.

June- another tie
The bride- a friend of mine for fifteen years- kidnapped my children and took photo after photo after photo with them.

July- another three way tie
We saw the Body Worlds Animals exhibit at the MSI, with our Spanish loaner teenager.

July- three way tie
DD steering the River Queen in Au Sable

July- three way tie
SI steering the River Queen in Au Sable

August
SI and DD were flower girls at the wedding of another friend.

September
DD and SI second first day of school

October- another tie
SI and DD turn four years old

October- another tie
Our family of superheroes

November
I don't care about how much happened in November. This is my favorite picture. Aunt Something Funny reading to her nieces. It just doesn't get better than this.

December
The three sweetest little girls I know.

Now- onto 2014!

Each year, I eschew the traditional "New Year's Resolution" in favor of a to-do list. But rather than a bucket list of things I want to do, I give myself a checklist every single day of simple tasks I'd like to accomplish to make my life better.

I've been doing this for years now.

I know how many paintings I painted and how many books I read, and nearly how many hours I played with my infant twins in 2009.

I can tell you ridiculously mundane details about 2010. For example, I read 21 books that year, three shy of my goal. I cooked on 239 days.

In 2011 I wrote on 321 days. I cooked even more often, and I read a whopping 28 books.

In 2012 I started focusing on more self care. I managed to eat two meals on 347 days. Yeah, I measure that.

So what about 2013?

Me, hard at work, writing a book

Goal: Wrote Daily (365)
Outcome: 293
I feel like I should be shocked I wrote so little, but then I consider what I DID write. I was published on HuffPo a dozen times. I finished a first AND second draft of an entire book. You know what? I might not have remembered to sit down and pen a haiku each day, but I'm very pleased with what I accomplished.

Goal: Ate Two Meals Daily (365)
Outcome: 336
This number went down. And while part of me wants to feel guilty that I did so poorly at feeding myself, I have to remember... I kept getting sick. I kept not being able to eat. And maybe I wasn't as good to myself as I should have been, but I feel better than I did a year ago. I feel healthier (cold notwithstanding) than I did a year ago. I'm going say I succeeded here too.

Goal: Maintained Hygiene Daily (365)
Outcome: 281
Yes, this is still totally unacceptable. But I did better than last year, horrifically enough. And every day that RH is more independent and each day that her big sisters are more interested in playing with her is a day where I can take five minutes to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth. I'm determined to bring my weekly shower average up to at least a two. I think I can do it.

Goal: Went Outside 6xWeek (312)
Outcome: 268
I know I could do better, but I'm pleased to know this number is going up. Plus, now that RH finally walks, I'm confident there are more trips up and down the stairs in the coming year.

Going to BlogHer and meeting this awesome lady?
(And lots of other awesome ladies?) Rocked it.

Goal: Had Alone Time 5xWeek (260)
Outcome: 238
I totally nailed this one. That said, I only nailed it because I enforced nap time so strictly. If this week is any indication, 2013 will bring a fairly dramatic change in nap time. Mostly, in that most days I'm not sure the big girls will take one. And that's a little terrifying. I'll have to find another way to get some time to myself.

Goal: Exercised 3xWeek (156)
Outcome: 123
Pretty damn close! Of course, the bulk of that "exercise" was grown up private time, which I recognize only counts if you're a) very athletic about it, and b) take an awful long time. So I recognize that I didn't *really* get as much exercise as I like to pretend I might have. That said, the new year will definitely have me sweatin' with Richard Simmons some more, so I'm hoping that 2014 will blow that number out of the water.

Goal: Observed Sabbath (as much as 52- but realistically closer to 35)
Outcome: 29
And you know what? That's not half bad. Considering the number of nights M and I had Friday dates, or were out of town on a Friday night... I'd estimate we lit Sabbath candles at home four out of five weeks. So I think I can do better, but I'm glad it's becoming so habitual. Which is really the point of all of this.

Goal: Finished Book 1xMonth (12)
Outcome: 9
This is where I really failed. Especially considering how many books I started. I have four unfinished books on my Kindle, and two on my shelf. If I'd managed to FINISH them I'd be really pleased with myself. Instead? I'm kind of embarrassed. This year- less WordFeud and more reading!

Goal: Made Art 1xMonth (12)
Outcome: 13
CRUSHED IT. Yes, I counted costumes and cards as "art," but let's be honest... it's a creative enterprise, and there are lots of post-modernists who would completely accept a gallery show of homemade children's Halloween costumes as a legitimate thing. So I'm taking it.


I'm only making two changes in my 2014 goals. Instead of "Made Art," it will be "Finished project." And I'm adding another one- "Sang."

It shocks me how little singing I've done recently, and I know I'm emotionally healthier when I sing a lot. So now, it's a daily to-do. So- you can expect there will be many more karaoke nights in 2014 than the last year saw.

Happy New Year, one and all!

Thanksgivukkah- A Pinterest Wet Dream

Gobble Tov!

In case you've forgotten all about Thanksgivukkah, allow me to give you a recap:

Because of the way Thanksgiving moves around on the calendar (based on the third Thursday rather than the date) and the way Channukah moves around on the calendar (because the Jewish calendar runs on a lunar cycle instead of a solar cycle and has leap MONTHS), Channukah and Thanksgiving generally DO NOT overlap.

However, it's possible. The last time it WOULD have happened would have been about 150 years ago. Just a few years before Thanksgiving was invented.

That means that this year was the FIRST Thanksgivukkah!

Oh, but there's more. Because those two calendars are so darn wacky, they're not going to overlap again for 79,000 years.

And let's face it, a lot can happen in 79,000 years. It's entirely likely that this was the only Thanksgivukkah that any humans will ever have the opportunity to experience.

So I did what any modern-day American woman would do when faced with what is literally a once in a lifetime dinner party opportunity.

I went to Pinterest.

My Thanksgivukkah board is a thing of wonder. It's only the food- because let's face it, with all the food on the table there wasn't going to be a single spot left open for decorations.

So here's the big question- what did we eat?

The most important element of any Channukah meal, let alone Thanksgivukkah... the latkes. Also pictured- a bit of the Manischewitz brined Quorn and Celebration Field Roast, my mother's famous maple and chestnut brussels sprouts, and the most amazing squash I've ever eaten- Za'atar roasted squash.

You can't have latkes without apple sauce, but when you're having THANKSGIVUKKAH latkes you need to up the ante! Cranberry apple sauce, green bean casserole (topped with extra crispy latkes instead of onions), challah stuffing, cornbread challah (more on that later), and those amazing brussels sprouts. Not pictured- sour cream and gravy. And let me tell you- gravy on hot latkes was a revelation.

And check out those gorgeous linens! Dreidle napkins, and ornate menorah and Mogen David table cloth! Plus, my mother's dishes. I could write poetry about my mother's kitchen, and the dishes would have their own stanza. She's collected them individually- each plate, bowl, and mug is a work of art.

Even with endless bottles of cider and mead, we found room on the table to squeeze in a Menurkey- on a platter with candy corn and marzipan potatoes. Because mazipan. (There's the girls with Aunt Something Funny!)

But you don't think we stopped there, did you? For dessert my mother concocted pumpkin pie rugalach and pecan pie rugalach- which is even more amazing than it sounds. And on top of them on that tray? Cranberry filled sufganyot! Plus a giant box of the best chocolates Washington, DC has to offer. 

And if you thought it couldn't get any better, you'd be wrong. The next morning my mother created something unfathomably delicious. If there is ONE legacy from Thanksgivukkah to carry in our hearts and minds through the ages, for seventy nine thousand years, let it be this: pumpkin pie blintzes.

How I wish I had a picture. But no picture could convey the perfection. Nothing but eating a steaming plate of those magical blintzes will ever do them justice.

Oh yes- and the sweet potato keugle we ate for dinner a few nights later. Because you just can't stop the Thanksgivvukah spirit.

So how can you recreate some of this incredible food in your own home?

Never fear! Here are some of those amazing recipes. Enjoy!


Cornbread Challah- gluten free and vegan!
Yes, it's gluten free! That's because it's basically a braided, baked tamale. So if you like tamales, you'll LOVE this cornbread.

You'll note the recipe calls for pre-made masa- no worries, here's how it's done:
4.5 c masa harina (mexican corn flour)
3.75 c COLD water
1.5 c vegetable shortening (I used olivio)
1 tb salt

Cornbread Challah and Za'atar Squash

1. First, put the masa harina into a HUGE bowl. Then add the cold water. Now knead them with your hands- not a spoon!- until it's the same texture throughout. No lumps, no dry spots!

2. In a standing mixer, beat the salt and shortening. Once it's all mixed and fluffy, start adding the dough- one fistful at a time, beating until it's totally mixed in. You'll end up with SO MUCH DOUGH. You don't need this much for Challah, but for tamales... well... there's no such thing as too many tamales.

3. Cover and chill at least two hours.

Then you can go forward with the recipe above. I suggest really committing to the tamale flavor, though. For regular dinner purposes, I plan to make this challah again- only I'm going to glaze it with mole before baking. Mmmm!

Also enjoy the Za'atar Squash, Orange Cranberry filled Sufganyot, and Sweet Potato Keugle!

A Happy Thanksgivukkah to all, and to all a good night!


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The Content of their Character

DD at the park

"What's that sound, mommy?"

"There are people outside, marching in the street."

"Can we see?"

"Sure!"

I threw open the door to the balcony, and watched my children take tentative steps down onto it. They're not normally allowed, and the thrill of taboo with the tumult of the shouting crowd below brought excitement and wonder to their eyes. The gentle morning breeze lifted their curls from their faces, and they gazed down at the throng.

"Why are they yelling?"

"Some of them are yelling because they're happy. And some of them are yelling because they're sad."

"Why are they happy and sad at the same time?"

"Fifty years ago, another group of people marched in Washington DC."

"Where Aunt Something Funny lives!"

"That's right. It was much much more people. And they marched because some people want to be mean to other people because of how they look."

SI crooked her eyebrow at me, and I saw the gears turning.

"This wasn't like the march we went to at the big statue, where people are mean because of what you wear. This was because sometimes people are mean to people because of what color their skin is..."

I couldn't finish. Maybe because I'm emotionally fraught from a whole week of pain and nausea and doctor's visits, maybe because there is so much left unsaid when you talk about the evils of the world.

I couldn't finish, because I so badly want it to be not true that the greatest, kindest of people are those who are torn from the world too soon.

"Do you girls want to watch a movie about it?"

"Yes!" They bounced back into the house.

And before breakfast, we sat in front of the computer, and watched Dr. Martin Luther King (SI said, "I like to call him Dr. King!") deliver a speech that brought me to tears.

I remembered being in fourth grade and talking about Dr. King.

I remembered being in third grade, and my black teacher breaking down in tears as she recounted the Kennedy assassination.

I remembered watching this same speech a dozen times. A hundred. And never taking in the same things.

I know that when the bells ring throughout my city in a few short hours, I will break down and cry.

I am happy, because so much has changed since even my childhood.

I am sad because there is so, so far to go.

Because right now, we're moving backwards. Away from that mountaintop.

But I want my children, all children, to live there. Where they are never less-than, where all human life is treated with dignity.

We sat and we watched, and I know they didn't understand it.

And sometimes, I don't understand.

None of us are free. So long as oppression denies the inalienable rights of anyone in our society, we are all complicit. We are all caught in the mechanics of an engine driven by greed, and hatred, and fear.

But maybe in another fifty years.

Maybe in fifty more years, I can stand with my children and my grandchildren and maybe my great grandchildren on the mall in Washington and things will be truly changed from how they are today.

Maybe at last we can all cash that check.

Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa.

With thanks to Grinnell College

This past weekend, we went to Iowa for Grinnell College's commencement.

It's not just that I absolutely love college graduations, we had a reason. Poppa was being presented with an honorary doctorate.

He was very happy about this honor.

I know, he's so dignified.

Really though, he is. After watching him blush through his introduction, I recommend watching his whole address. It's only four and a half minutes long.

It was amazing to see everyone. It was the first time since M and I got married that all of us have been together at the same time. (That's five years on Thursday.)

We arrived Saturday afternoon, and caught up with Great-Grandmommy and Great-Granddaddy, as well as Great-Great Aunt E, Aunt Green, Aunt Genocide, Grandmommy and Poppa

The college wined and dined us in grand fashion.

The kids went to bed, Aunt Something Funny arrived, and we spent a lovely night together. For real, Grinnell really knows hospitality. We had a spectacular stay.

Poppa's old advisor took the entire gang out for brunch.

Aunt Something Funny taught the girls to play a new game...

Then after a brief rest, it was time for a picnic on campus.

It's a gorgeous campus, even in the balmy, oppressive heat.

Then we all gussied up for dinner at the President's house. (No, that's not it behind us. That's Grinnell House, where we all stayed.)

After a trip to the Observatory that turned into attempted waterboarding of the SuperMommy family by the sky, everyone raided the kitchen for snacks, drinks, and ice. It was a marvelous time.

The next morning, it was up and off to commencement.

We watched some truly wonderful speeches- including a poem performed by Sarah Kay. It was great.

Then Poppa was presented with his honorary doctorate, to match his real doctorate, but not plaid. (...because everything that has anything to do with Carnegie Mellon is plaid. The MASCOT is plaid. Excuse me. "Tartan.")

Poppa delivered a killer speech, link above.

And then, once again, my camera died.

We picnicked again, we laughed and chatted and then bid our tearful farewells. The SuperMommy family piled back into our minivan and trekked back to Chicago, where nobody is going to feed us amazing stuffed slivered eggplant or eight layer chocolate coffee torte, or take us out for eggs and hash browns.

Poppa should get honorary Ph.D.s every year.

Good Night, You Moonlight Ladies

Aunt Something Funny and I playing bedtime- circa 1986

It's hard to know just when we start forming truly permanent memories.

My earliest memory is, I believe, from when I was 16 months old. It's of an eye exam, I think  I can remember being strapped to a big blue table, and crying for my mother. My mother's face is young, her glasses enormous, and she seems very, very far away. She's not speaking to me, and she's not crying, but she's looking at me.

I have quite a few memories of life starting about a year later. Birthday parties, games with my sisters, babysitters, my father carrying me up to my attic bedroom. I remember watching my parents' friends paint the shed in psychedelic colors, the word "Peace" emblazoned in bold, tacky letters.

I'm sure Poppa wil LOVE that I posted this

I remember a small black and white television playing clips of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

But the thing I remember the most, the consistent, daily occurrences of my life when I was SI and DD's age, is my father singing to me.

Every night, he sat in the room that Aunt Something Funny and I shared, and sang us lullabyes. I remember laying in bed with my eyes closed and listening. I remember laying in Aunt Something Funny's bed (sometimes she was frightened of the top bunk) and staring at her poster of kittens in a basket, listening. I remember laying in the red tent I liked to have set up in my bed, listening.

I remember peeking at him from the top bunk especially, He is also young, his hair and glasses both big, his legs folded around each other. He looks like my father, but not as he is now. He's lithe and young, his voice maybe just a little clearer than now. In the dark, I don't know what color his t-shirt is, but he looks comfortable. Peaceful. The sight of him makes me feel happy, sleepy, and safe.

My daddy, singing songs.

I remember murmuring the names of the songs I wanted next, barely audible. Half asleep. He must have known exactly which songs I would want. No doubt they were always the same songs.

I remember being several years older. Playing with my stuffed animals on my bed in the room that Aunt Genocide and I shared in our next house. I sang the same songs to my stuffed animals.

I remember being even older. Practically a teenager. I remember trying to look cool and hide my shock when I learned that the lullabyes I had known my entire life, that seemed etched into my soul, were essentially the Best Of James Taylor. Hearing him sing those songs- his own songs- sounds disjointed and wrong to me.

Everyone told me to sleep while I could. Yeah right.

I remember my second night as a mother, laying in a hospital bed, with my two, tiny babies on my lap, propped up against a pillow. I remember staring at their tiny, sleeping faces, and being unable to sleep. Instead, I stayed up until 5am, singing them those lullabyes. The first time I sang lullabyes for my children. I will never forget it.

They're the same lullabyes I still sing.

Not all of them are the songs I listened to in my earliest memories. I sing songs from my choir days, I sing folk songs that my father never sang me, I sing Elliott Smith and Jewel and Sarah McLaughlin. A few Disney songs that didn't exist back then. A few that did. I sing a song or two from my mother's repertoire as well, But I also still sing the James Taylor songs.

And when Poppa is here, he takes his seat in the darkened room where two little girls lay, not sleeping, and sings them the same songs he sang to me.

I always knew I would be a mom. Never did I know that more than when my father was singing me lullabyes. There was something so magical about that time, I couldn't imagine there was more to adulthood that sitting in the dark, singing your children to sleep.

SI and DD playing bedtime

Now I know there is, there's much more to it. But there's nothing that makes me feel more like the grown-up I always wanted to be than sitting in the dark, singing them the same songs. Over and over and over.

Now, my children sing those songs themselves. In eerie, tiny little voices over the monitor, I hear them singing to their toys after they're supposed to be asleep.

Part of me is astounded to be part of this creation of history, this creation of tradition. Could James Taylor have known when he wrote his songs that there would be generations of families, singing them to their children as lullabyes, in their own voices?  Will my grandchildren lay in the dark, listening to the same songs that my father sang to me?

I hope so. I hope that my children feel the same closeness and love for me as I sing to them that I felt for my parents. I hope they feel as safe, as certain that all is right in the world.

I hope their children feel that as well.

These are the moments in which I feel the need to weep for my children. For their childhood that is flying past me at breakneck speeds. For every night that I'm too tired or too busy to sing every song they know.

RH, sleeping peacefully

I remember sitting in a rocking chair in my twins' darkened room, seeing my reflection in the mirror. I am singing the same songs my father sang to me, as I rock in that chair, draped in sleeping toddlers.

I remember sitting in a different rocking chair in RH's darkened room, staring at her owl mobile as I crane my neck around the bulk of her chubby head, singing the same songs as her breathing quiets and her fingers relax in their death grip on my hair.

I feel like I've always had these memories. That since my earliest childhood, listening to my father sing, they've been lying dormant. Waiting to happen.

I feel supremely blessed, living a charmed life. A life of love and of quiet music, murmured requests in the dark, peaceful sighs from sleepy children.

In these dark, musical moments, I have everything I ever wanted out of life.






Do you sing to your kids? What songs did you grow up with?