Because You're Mine

Here it is- another post-breakfast Dance Party video!



This week, we had some post-pre-school dance parties.  And one night, M came home mid party!  It was nice to get to boogie as a family.  Well, RH watched once M was here.

I'm trying not to think about the weight.  I'm trying to just think about feeling good about my body and in my body, not about numbers.

And I am feeling better about it and about how it's working.

Not there yet, but... progress, definitely.

Also- any good Halloween song suggestions for next week?

Oogie Boogie-ing

I know, I said I'd post these every Monday.  Yesterday was an interesting day though, so I'm posting it now.

I figure, it's October.  And there's still plenty of time for me to keep the music thematic.  After all, come December I think all of you want to see us dance to the Maccabeats or Joan Jett's "Little Drummer Boy," don't you?

So for the rest of October- we're doing Halloween!

Enjoy!

 


So what made yesterday so interesting?

Shots.  Freakin' shots.

As you probably recall, I am pro-vaccination.

I believe that it is part of the social contract that we vaccinate, in addition to doing what I believe is best for my children's personal health.

So yesterday, poor little RH got four shots, as the producers have run low on combo vaccines.  It put her out of sorts all morning.

DD and SI each got a flu shot, that they took like CHAMPS.  For real, I wish *I* was as good at taking shots as those kids.  SI was a little surprised- "The doctor POKED me!" she exclaimed, over and over.  And I explained that while it is not okay to poke in general, her doctor needed to poke her to get the medicine inside of her body.  She seemed fascinated by that, and accepted it well.

Neither big girls cried a single tear.  Neither screamed.  Nobody fought.  It was almost eerie.

...and then I had my first day of therapy in about six years.

So yes, for all of you who have been concerned about me and my PPD, I have sought help.  I am seeking help.  And I'm pretty happy with my therapist so far, so that seems like a very good thing.

Hopefully, come spring, I'll be a whole new person.

Months of dancing will have made me happier with my body.
Months of therapy will have made me happier with myself.

And maybe by then, months of experience will have made me happier with my movie editing.

I feel like I'm going to finish off 2012 strong.  Now all I have to do is make/plan holiday gifts and find an out-of-the-home job, and I am golden.

Mini-Dance Party

Well, I'm trying anyway.

Last week there weren't a lot of dance parties.  Instead, we had near constant new toy shenanigans.  Hard to get the kids excited for the dance parties when you COULD be playing with all those new birthday presents.  Or making the big castle for their birthday party.  Or building (and tearing down) a sukkah.  And, of course, there were the two days I was supposed to "take it easy" because of giving blood.  They give weird guidelines for what to do with yourself- don't exercise for two days, but just make sure you eat before you drink?  I'll never understand.

Also, SI was under the weather and didn't want to dance, RH hit another weird growth spurt...

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Long week, anyway.

This week will be better.  We'll see about meeting all those expectations we all have of these dance party videos.

But I promised a dance party every week, and so... here you go.  In honor of the coming end of the High Holy Days.




And yes, I will be writing about the girls' third birthday.

I have an awful lot to say about it.  I just want to wait until I've recovered from my cake coma.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

My big, amazing, three year olds.  I love them so.

Today is my twins' third birthday.  Which is stunning, and impossible.

No freakin' way have I been a mom for three years.  Not possible.  Ridiculous to even think it- just yesterday I was dealing with SI's eyebrow cradle cap, and DD's horking up milk through her nose in her sleep.

This was a regular sight first thing in the morning when DD was RH's age.

And yet, here we are.  But I'm not going to write about that right now.  Right now, I'm going to write about a little promise that I made to you, my lovely readers.

Remember how I posted a few videos of me and my kids dancing?

Remember how I said I'd do that every week, and that if you'd send me suggestions for songs I would use them?

Now, I know I don't often explicitly invite comments.  It's not that I don't love them- I do.  And I know I'm DREADFUL at responding to them.  But I LOVE comments!  I just don't respond to ANYBODY!  Not phone calls, not emails, nothing.  I'm practically a hermit.  (Granny- I love you and I'll get back to your email about the girls' birthday soon!!!!)

But I read them.  And I heed them.

Which is why, when via facebook, email, and comments, 90% of you made the exact same request...

Well...

What else could I possibly do?

(If you don't want to be subjected to my ranting, just skip to the bottom of the post now.)

Because, you see, I love you.  I adore you.  I am constantly humbled by your kind words, by your thoughtful responses, and by knowing that you just stopped by this little blog for a bit.  Here- let me show you something...

For those of you unfamiliar with the Blogger interface, that's a graph showing how many hits my blog has gotten.  Ever.

There's one gigantic spike- that's from June of last year, when my post about the first Chicago Slutwalk was picked up by Shakespeare Sister and a few other sites.  I was flabbergasted, and shocked, and so honored.  And for some reason, since then, more and more people keep stopping by.  They keep subscribing.  Keep dropping a line here and there.  And this month, something very strange happened.  For the first time, I've gotten more hits than I got when Shakespeare Sister was referring people over.  There were more than 10,000 views on my blog in September.

Of course, I know that most of those aren't people who are dropping by to read.  Most people find this blog by googling things like "abortion pictures" and "fat Jewish girl boobs."  Really.  (BTW- thanks, Google.  You are DEFINITELY helping with my self esteem issues.)  I'd say that two thirds of the people who stop in this blog are sorely disappointed by what they find- no pictures of abortions (ick) and no pictures of fat Jewish girl boobs.  Well... I hope, anyway.

But that means that about a third of those hits are people actually reading this absurd thing I've created.

...that's more than three thousand hits.

That's about 100 hits a day.

That's dozens of individual people, mostly strangers, who are connected to me somehow through this amazing technology.  Who I am connected to.  Who say sweet, thoughtful things, and laugh at our hijinks and cry at our sorrows.

And that?  That's amazing.  There are no words... I just can't believe that you all care what's happening to me and my family, that you all take time out of your days to find out what's happening in mine.

I feel such a sense of community, and so loved...

And as I've been dealing with some pretty aggressive PPD (yes I know, I've been keeping secrets from you.  An explanation is forthcoming), each day that I log on and find out that another stranger is finding some kind of joy or solidarity in my words...

It's made my days immeasurably brighter.  Thank you so much.

Which brings me back to: this.

I love you guys.  I do.

And that is why I shall now utterly humiliate myself for you.

Enjoy, and again... thank you.  <3>

New Feature: The Monday Morning Post-Breakfast Dance Party

We're all mad here...

Do you remember about a week ago, when I said I was determined to lose the baby weight?

When I came up with a fabulous idea to help me do that?

Allow me to refresh your memory.

Most days, we have a dance party.  This is now an intentional decision, aimed at making me a happier, healthier individual.  That and embarrassing myself in front of a camera...

So you can reap the benefits!

Each Monday morning, computer memory willing, I'll be posting a video of our weekly danciness.

I might not put as much work into all of the videos as I did this time... I suppose that with time I'll get better, but right now?  This is a lot of work!  I suddenly have so much respect for people who spend their lives making silly internet videos.  Not the simplest task in the world.  Kudos to you, Drunk History guys.


(Quite possibly my favorite thing ever to happen on the internet, by the way.  If you haven't seen them, they are WORTH IT.)

I also anticipate finding a way to film our post cleaning dance parties in the other rooms in the house that they're possible- RH's room, the hallway, and SI and DD's room.  Eventually I think I'll find a way for us to have dance parties in the foyer, but the bathrooms and kitchen just seem... dangerous.  Dance parties can get rowdy, you know?

At any rate, I put a great many minutes of ignoring my children at my own peril into piecing together this wonderful little gem- a view of my life, if you will.

Yeah, I look like a complete and total crazy person.  As if there was ever any doubt.

Enjoy!







Also- I'll be taking soundtracking requests.  I'm pretty sure the "Bumblebee Tuna" is on the shortlist of things you might be subjected to in the near future.

Why Underdog May Be the Best Thing In the Universe

By the time I got back from putting DD and SI in bed, RH was also totally asleep.

Underdog, you are my hero.

Literally Dancing My Tukhus Off

A joyful 5773, from my family to yours!

L'shana tova, my lovely readers!

Yes, once again it is Rosh Hashanah.  The Jewish New Year.

It's a sensical time for a new year.  School is starting, life is gaining a new rhythm, and I'm ready to begin making resolutions about how to improve my life.

Of course, that's not exactly what the Jewish New Year is about.  It's about reflecting on the sweetness of life.  The resolution and self improvement is supposed to come in ten days- on Yom Kippur.  But that doesn't mean that I can't get started a little bit early.

I have a confession, lovely readers.

I've been fairly miserable with myself.

I've been tired, I've felt depressed, and I've been wallowing in quite a bit of self pity.

But I've decided that I'm going to stop all of that.

How?

With a few new routines.  I'm thinking about therapy, I'm thinking about a new three-post-a-week (plus) plan that includes one post per week about each of the kids, and I'm thinking about losing the damned baby weight.

That baby weight...

It's not about how much of it there is, is about where it is.  It's about how my body just looks and feels so entirely different.  Never, not once in my adolescence, did I hate my body the way that I do now.  It is ravaged by babies. I don't use the word "hate" lightly in this context- I really really mean it.  It's like my body has become my mortal enemy.  I've forgotten how to find any kind of joy in it at all.  It sucks.

Actually, this feels pretty accurate.

I try to think of it as a magical thing- a wonderful vessel that created life and now nourishes life.  But I fail at that.  The same way I always failed at thinking the same sort of things about my menstrual cycle.  Instead, I look at my body and think about a gigantic, half-microwaved marshmallow squished onto a tinker-toy frame.  And then I cover it in baby puke.  It's a charming way to view yourself, really.

Is it accurate?  No.  I am totally aware of that.  I am totally cognizant of the fact that I do NOT in fact look like the Staypuft Marshmallow Man after being blasted by four proton pack particle streams.  I just can't help but think of it, or something equally disheartening, every time I am reminded that I reside inside of my body.

But again, all that is changing.

A little attitude adjustment, a plan to make it better...

First, back to eating healthy.  Now that my gall bladder is all happy and not pregnant, I've been catching up on eating all the junk I couldn't while I was pregnant.  So that's going to help.  No more nightly Ben and Jerry's, no more replacing meals with fistful of "neminems."  From now on I'm halving my monthly allowance of sour cream.

Second, getting some exercise.  Not just chasing kids, but actual cardio.  Actually intentionally getting my heart rate up while moving my limbs and probably lifting things that weigh more than a fat baby.  (Let's face it though, her fat is seriously cute.)

And third, laughing at myself.  Constantly.  In a nice way.

And it is with those last two in mind, that I bring you the fruits of my labor.  The apple and honey of my new year's resolution for Rosh Hashanah.

Exercise?  Check.  Laughing at myself?  You be the judge.

That was an excerpt from our now fairly routine dance party mornings.  We clean the room until the floor is totally clear of toys and debris- and then we dance until we need a break... and then we move on to the next room.

Usually, it's swing music.  Sometimes, it's Bela Fleck.  When we're cleaning in the living room, SI insists on Bjork.  (I love that kid.  Thank God she's mostly over her obsession with Mephiskaphales "Bumblebee Tuna" cover.  Her Bjork fixation couldn't make me prouder.)

This results in
a) a clean house,
b) exhausted kids who are too tired to mess it up again, and
c) a mommy who has gotten about ninety minutes of a pretty intense workout.

The biggest drawback is that my dance partners as so freakin' short.

To constantly remind myself of how much fun I can have while I sweat into a more human shape, I've made this little gem to keep on my desktop all the time:

Even RH enjoys getting in on the action.

If I can get to a point where I'm doing yoga in the mornings again... well... I'll probably feel better about pretty much everything in my life.  :)

Here's to a sweet and wonderful new year, better than the last and any before it.

May you and yours be written in God's book of life for another year.

L'shana tova!

Old MacDonald- Radio Edit Required

This has been going on for about a year.  A whole year.

And in the course of that year, I have attempted time and time again to get a good video for you.

Yes, I've spent that year trying to help her out with her pronunciation.

But that doesn't change the fact that I, and all the other adults in her life, find this utterly hysterical.

So I pull out the camera to immortalize the moment, and she gets all shy.  She only mutters.  You can't be sure what you're hearing.

Finally, success.

Fear not, gentle readers, she is not angry or upset.  She is not injured or insulted or even stunned.

She is merely a duck.

 

I sincerely hope you all enjoyed that as much as I do.

We frequently find ourselves in public, and for some reason or other my lovely and usually cherubic daughter will begin impersonating the local wildlife.  Particularly the fowl.  And I always feel the angry glares of the churchgoing public.  After all, there's only one place my daughter could have picked up that kind of language.

Still, I imagine that sweet, angelic little face.  The eyes twinkling, curls bouncing, and radiant smile, whenever I do find myself in the need for a choice four letter word.

If I could say that to our Toyota dealership with the kind of sweetness and confidence of my daughter, I'm sure they could make our car run a little more smoothly.

As for DD... well...

I'll be sure to warn all of her preschool teachers about "Old MacDonald" before her school year begins.

Our last attempt at Ask A Toddler

I'm sorry to say, there will be no more "Ask a Toddler" posts.  Well, maybe someday when RH is a toddler.  First of all because my toddlers are about to be pre-schoolers.  But secondly, because we just can't sit down for an interview anymore.

It goes something like this:


And then, like this:


See?

This is why I can't do funny things for you.  But I try.

We'll see if we can make this happen again in a fifteen months or so.  But keep your eyes open for our new, upcoming series, "What Did You Do In Preschool Today?"

I anticipate it being informative.  :)

Future Blackmail Material

Once in a while, your kid does or says something, and other people laugh.

And once in a while, they are laughing at you.

It's nothing personal, really, it's just that... well...

You have been made ridiculous.  And it is your child who, in the course of making themselves ridiculous, made you ridiculous as well.

But once in a while, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, revenge can be yours.

Once in a while, you manage to get that moment where all the other parents are laughing at you on video.

Once in a while, you find yourself in possession of THE THING that will humiliate your child for the rest of her natural life.  That thing that you can pull out at her wedding, or her bat mitzvah, or for the first boy she brings home to meet the folks.  Once in a while you get leverage over your future sort-of-grown child.

And then you can laugh at yourself along with those other parents.  You laugh, because while you might be ridiculous now, marching through the crowd of parents giggling at your misfortune, some day...

Oh someday...

How sweet the revenge will be.

 

Thank you, Lincoln Park Zoo, for giving me this moment.

I will cherish it always, just before flinching as I remember cleaning off the poo from my ecstatic (and sopping wet) toddler's butt.

Two Months

My girls

Today, my little RH is two months old.

Two months ago, my family grew.  I became a mother of three, and a mother again.

Two months ago, my little girls became big sisters.

Meeting the new baby

Two months ago, my heart opened wide and I learned how much more I could love the children I already had, and how much love I still had left to give to a new little soul.

Two months ago, I fell head over heels with a tiny person who looked remarkably like my grandmother, who stared into my eyes as though they were the abyss into which all unanswered questions fall.

This is not the most exhausted I would be

Two months ago, I had no idea how utterly exhausted I would be.  I had forgotten everything about the kind of fatigue that comes from nursing a newborn, from simply being around a newborn.

Two months ago my family became a new family.  A family of five.

My family

I love my family.  I love my RH.  I love that she can spend all morning just watching her sisters bounce around, that she lets them play doll with her with an air of perplexed indifference.  I love that she smiles when she's falling asleep.  I love that as she grows she just seems to get snugglier.  I love that she looks like both DD and like SI, reminding me of all sorts of little miracles of their infancy that I seem to have forgotten.

One of these things is not like the others...

I love how much her sisters love her.  I love that on a daily basis, when I go to put her in her crib, or change her, or put her in her car seat, one of her sisters has already gone to do the same for their dolls.  I love that, whenever she's out of sight for a moment, they want to know where she is.  I even love that when DD and SI run from the room, out of nowhere I hear RH start to whine- missing the constant entertainment of her big sisters.

They insist on putting imaginary diapers in the real diaper bin.
And apparently, a diaper changer is best with company.

I love this baby.

I love my family.



I love my life.

Downtown Sound at Millennium Park

Cloudgate

In the hopes that if I keep coming up with fun stuff to do I'll have to miss something because I'll be having a baby, we took the girls to Downtown Sound.

...that's a series of free concerts in Millennium Park.

Millennium Park has a really wonderful outdoor amphitheater, and it was perfect early summer weather.  Mid seventies, sunny, just a little breezy...

We packed sandwiches and snacks and drinks and headed off to enjoy the live music.

So. much. fun!

Last night the free concert was Jonathan Richman.  If you're not familiar with him...



You also might recognize him as the troubadour in "There's Something About Mary."

He's pretty much my mother's favorite person in the universe.

At any rate, it was a thrilling evening of picnicking, dancing, attacking Daddy, and adventure.

Actually, we lost SI for one horrifying moment.  I had sat down on the ground to comfort her after she took a spill, and thanks to my gigantic pregnant belly, I couldn't get up.  By the time I got off the ground, she was gone.  Thankfully, a policeman found her about twenty feet away, lost in the crowd.  It was utterly terrifying for both of us.

And now?  The picture spam!

A beautiful day for a concert in the park!

SI, Grandmommy, and DD at Cloudgate- or as we locals call it, the Big Bean.

...shiny!

Chasing pigeons!

Chasing pigeons!

Thanks to SI, there are probably no pigeons left in Millennium Park.

Dancing!

Dancing!

Dancing!

Hug break!

Mommy's hat!

Watching Jonathan take the stage.

This photo makes me laugh so hard.  Sorry, Grandmommy.

Daddy's hat!

Attacking Daddy

Also super fun- Jonathan ended the evening by playing one of my favorites of his tunes:

A wonderful evening.  Now, if we can't just become a family of five already... I think we'll all be even happier.  Right?

Grandmommy Films Yo Gabba Gabba

The girls have been under the weather, so Grandmommy is letting them watch all sorts of TV while they convalesce.  However,  some TV shows are less restful than others.

...this is apparently episode #3.  SI pooped out after two.

There's Room for One More

I apologize that the video embedded in this post automatically plays.  I have no idea how to make it stop.  Just know that the noise you're hearing is a video that is automatically playing at the end of this post- so go and pause or stop accordingly.  And again, I'm sorry.

Not from this year, but to give you an idea of what a seder at Casa SuperMommy can look like...

You might not be aware of this, but condos in Chicago are not known for their spacious nature.

Listings are, to say the least, deceptive.  There was one very spacious place that fit the description to a T.  High ceilings, lots of storage space, nice kitchen... but that was only the top floor.  All the bedrooms were in the garden level.  And those bedrooms... well...

This was the Master Suite.  And that's my husband with his head in a convenient hole in the ceiling.  Convenient because otherwise, he couldn't stand up in that room.  Or the bathroom.  Or any other bedroom, for that matter.

Then there's our condo.  We lucked out with this place.  We managed to snap up a place with probably 1500 square feet, with two bathrooms, and with a very useful three season porch.

All of this is relevant information when you find yourself hosting a seder for 27 people.

Allow me to introduce you to my dining room.  When we moved in, it looked like this:

It always looks worse before you unpack.

You wouldn't know it, but this dining room has space for my dining room table to fully expand- which it does spectacularly.

Just how spectacularly?  Enough so that I genuinely believed that I could squeeze the bulk of 27 people around it comfortably to celebrate Passover.

When I announced this guest count to Grandmommy and Aunt Genocide, they were... skeptical.  After all, they've been in my house.  They know exactly how much space I have.  Me?  I have a can-do attitude and an encyclopedic knowledge of the furniture in my house.

I was determined that I could make it work.

Ordinarily, my dining room looks something like this:

...littered with toy food, crayons, bibs, and other assorted grubling related garbage, of course.

Now, the big bookcases and the desk certainly couldn't go anywhere, but I figured we could relocate the unneeded furniture into our guest room/sewing room/soon-to-be-nursery for the time being and make a little more space.  Aunt Genocide offered to bring some folding tables that she *said* were 3'x5', and so I made a seating chart.

Not included- the seating arrangements.  More heavily planned than my wedding.

The explodey looking thing denotes the seat where Moses* (in this case Aunt Genocide) would sit.  Seats with stars (there will be more later) are high chairs.  The bench is the sewing bench from my sewing table, and I knew I could use an old couch cushion from the chaise lounge we got rid of a few years ago as its back (I keep it as a back support for times, like now, that I'm working from bed).  That whole wall, essentially, is windowed, so the window frame would serve to hold up the cushion just fine.

Yes, there would be no circling the table.  But at least there was a bathroom in either direction, so anybody *could* get up and use it if need be.

It's not just a matter of squeezing people in though.  There's also the seating arrangements to take into account.  There's family tradition to uphold.  The most important of these is that children and those who have never been to a seder ought to be as close to Moses as possible.  The next most important seating tradition is that husbands and wives do not sit together.  This applies to other coupled couples as well.  You have to enjoy your freedom by meeting new people, not by giggling under your breath about the unintentional sexual innuendo in our family haggadahs.

I put a lot of work into that seating chart.  I agonized over it.  I made sure the skinniest people were squeezed into the back, farthest from Moses.  I figured out which children would sit where, which parents were required to attend their children, which children could be counted upon to share the bench without complaint.  I mentally measured each of my guests to determine which of my largest attendees should sit where in order to get the most room in the cramped quarters.

But oh, the hubris of planning a dinner party.

On the day of the seder, when we were setting up for the first time, it became clear that this simply wouldn't work.  Why?  You can only fit five chairs along each side of my fully extended table.  That, and Aunt Genocide's folding tables are actually more like 2'x4".  Good thing she brought three.  What we actually had looked like this.

This meant moving Moses.

If you count the chairs, you'll find that we're at least four seats short.  Four.  That's a problem.

We squeezed.  We argued a little.  We scratched our heads.  I came up with a brilliant idea.  Every single piece of furniture needed to be moved- except the immobile desk and bookshelves, of course.  During naptime.  Mere hours before the seder.

This fits everybody!

It didn't work.  There was absolutely no way that people were squeezing into ANY of the chairs on the ends- including Moses.  We'd have to try again.

We added Aunt Genocide's last folding table to the mix, brought the side table back into the dining room, and tried again.  This time, we got a little more creative.

Start counting those chairs...

That's right.  We only managed to add two seats.  Just two.  We were still two short, but at least the people who *could* sit down were going to be marginally more comfortable.  At this point, my children were awake.  The seder was to begin in less than three hours.

This is when Aunt K, I believe, came up with the genius addition of our TV trays.  M and I happen to have a set of four, and this is where it all came together.  How can a TV tray make such a huge difference, you ask?

Boo-yah.  27 seats.

That's how.  Now, the TV trays are about four inches shorter than the tables, which posed its own problem.  But with the OED Concise Edition (two volumes) across one, my 1987 World Atlas on the other, and both protected under the table cloth by the girls' place mats... it actually worked.  The two TV trays in the middle just had to be recessed.  Which didn't make too much difference, since the side table is four inches TALLER than the other tables anyway.  In any case, it would work.

I started the seating chart over again from scratch.  I squeezed children into the end with Moses, which was good because not only do they take up less space than adults, they can't be counted on to stay seated through our family's typical 3-4 hour seder.  I removed and then put back my father's spot over and over again, unsure as whether he would make it (Poppa had spent the whole day at the hospital- nothing serious, but we had no clue when he'd return).

That was when people started cancelling.  From the time we finally had the tables set up until they were all set, we first lost one guest, then gained another, then lost another two, and then lost another one.  By the time we were counting out plates for the four courses (and one for everybody already on the table), our final count would actually be 24.  It was a huge relief.  I wrote and rewrote and rewrote the seating arrangement, desperately trying to maintain all the family traditions.  I almost succeeded.  And this is what it looked like:

Those blue shapes represent ceremonial objects.  Sadly, I didn't manage to squeeze in a real chair for Elijah.  He got his plate, though.  So if he had showed up, he could have eaten.

The rectangles are our family haggadahs.  Yes, they are that big.  The blue shapes are seder plates.  The squares are matzah plates.  I'm pretty sure I missed one or two on this diagram.

I managed to get most of our largest guests on the hallway side- good, because getting around them from the kitchen with hot food was going to be impossible.  My great-aunt Judy, a tiny woman, was squeezed between the two largest people there.  I'm sure by the end of the night she had a crick in her neck.

But of course, that's not all that went on the table.  By the time it was set, it looked a lot more like this:

The ovals are place settings (minus the wine and water glasses), the red clusters are charoseth, parsley, and salt water, the ovals are relish dishes, the tiny circles are bowls of nuts, and the larger circles are bottles of wine.  Which yes, we ran out of.

And if that doesn't seem crowded enough, keep in mind that there are 23 sets of elbows on this table, that there are pitchers of water, an additional three sets of candlesticks, that there are two ADULTS sitting on that sewing bench, and that the chairs all take up more space than usual because they all have pillows on them.  The seder requires that you recline- and that means pillows.  And that means chairs take up more space.  Or that people pull their pillows off their chairs, thus cluttering the area around the table further.

Then there's the food.

We served the first course- a hard boiled egg in salt water- in tea cups.  We had plenty of those.

Then there was the matzah ball soup.

Then there was the main course- black currant lamb (or not lamb for me and the other vegetarians), brown rice pilaf with cranberries, a green salad, Greek lemon potatoes, and roasted asparagus, onions, and sweet potatoes.

And then there was dessert- plates of candies, plates of Aunt Genocide's ingberlech, a tray of my friend Chris's amazing macaroons, my grandmother's pecan cake, fruit salad...

And then there was tea and coffee.

Everybody was stuffed.  And most were more than a little drunk- after all, the seder requires that you drink at least four glasses of wine.  At least.

It was chaos.

It was fun.

And now, thank God, it's over.

Coming up- recipes for a few of those amazing foods I just mentioned!

Today, here.  Next year... anywhere but my house.  :)



*Some say that the leader of the seder is acting as Moses- teaching the assembled people and leading them out of Egypt.  I like this idea.

It's My Pregnancy And I'll Cry If I Want To

Foreshadowing

While getting pregnant might be the most fun that two people can have without breaking the law (well, in most states), being pregnant is no party.

I suck at being pregnant.  I would never wish it upon anyone who didn't actively wish it upon themselves.  And even then, I still feel bad for them.

But without a doubt, one of the most frustrating things about pregnancy is also one of the most frustrating things about being a fourteen year old girl.  You can't look at your reflection, or a picture of yourself, or even your shadow, without being critical.

And I'm not saying, "Oh, we're on day four without a shower are we?" critical, I'm talking full blown paranoia critical.  Like, "MY BODY HATES ME AND WANTS ME TO LOOK BAD SO NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE ME!" critical.

What- never been a teenage girl?  Never parented one?

Well if you, like most of my readers, have daughters, you have this to look forward to!  (Or back on, if you're a woman.)

Here's what I mean about that whole fourteen years old and self loathing thing... fourteen year old girls, on top of hating themselves, are crazy.

Take this photograph, for example:

15 years old

That's me and my little sister's best friend.  We were all playing dress up.  Because that pretty much never gets old, no matter how old you are.  And in this case, we are thirteen and fifteen, I think.

I have this photo on facebook, in an album dedicated to old pictures of me and my friends from our high school-ish days.  There are three comments on it.

B: "You're just so cute!"
Me: "I was just so THIN!"
B: "You'll notice I used the present tense."

Now, I have put on a bit of weight since then.  Probably forty pounds.  And at the time, I did think that I was fat.  Why?

Because teenage girls are paranoid psychotics!  That's why!

What did my ridiculously attractive (by my today-me standard) think of that photograph?

Allow me to recap all of those criticisms for you...

Hair- too frizzy.
Face- weird.  (I don't know how, it just always looked weird.  Makeup just made it worse.  If you've never experienced this phenomena, ask a teenage girl if she thinks she looks weird today.  Then watch her develop an eating disorder.)
Boobs- absurdly large at a DDD (HA!).  Sometimes, I was okay with this.  (Not when standing next to girls with small boobs.)
Stomach- fat.

...

And that, my friends, is insane.

I think about the Sunscreen Song (if you're of my generation, you know exactly what I'm talking about), and it has that line in it...  "You are not as fat as you think you are."  At the time, I thought that was dumb.  With better than ten years of hindsight... that actually was pretty deep.

Now, there is one distinction I feel I must make.  Those crazy self loathing hormones only generally apply to the self.  I didn't look at that picture and think that my sister's friend looked bad at all.  She looked the way she looked, and there was no problem with that.  It's the distinction between a fourteen year old girl, and a mean fourteen year old girl.

Mean girls pick on the flaws of others, which is an incredibly effective way to make yourself not think that you suck so badly.  Most girls just pick on themselves.  Because there is nobody you spend as much time with as you, and when you're constantly around somebody that you despise, you can't help yourself but to finally snap and start being mean to them.

Just imagine being stuck on a boat with Carrot Top for a two week voyage down the Amazon.  Now tell yourself you wouldn't throw one of you into the piranha infested waters.

Which brings us to... pregnancy.

Now, pregnancy and adolescence share a lot in common.  Most sinister of these commonalities is... the hormones.  Crazy hormones.  Hormones that don't make sense.  Hormones that makes your body do weird things.

But sadly, it's not just your body.  It's also your brain.  Your suddenly deranged, adolescent mind begins to do what overly hormonal female minds do best.

It hates the body it is trapped in.  Oh, how it hates.

It hates like a supervillain who has been foiled once again in its schemes for world domination.  It is disgusted by every single element of human life into which it is being initiated.

It does this to itself, consantly:


That, when applied to every move a fourteen year old girl makes, coming from inside her own head, is why teenage girls are mostly evil and insane.

And it is impossible to stop it.

M, bless his heart, knows that this isn't intentional.  It's not just my mind whirring around, and therefore looking for some kind of validation by asking over and over and over again, "Do I look really bad today?"  He knows I'm restraining myself.  Because what I really want to ask is, "Will you please put this bag over my head, so that I can walk through the streets without shame?"

And he is grateful that I don't ask him to do that.  So he kindly tells me day after day that I am sexy and beautiful and that no, my face doesn't look weird.  It looks pretty, he says.

Does this help?  No.  No, it does not.

28 weeks pregnant with Baby X

Take this image, for example.  This is a lovely picture.  There's the early morning light, the gentle corona of my hair, and my beautiful children, watching from the breakfast table. So idyllic.  And that dress is definitely my color.

Unless the person looking at this picture is its paranoid psychotic pregnant subject.  Because I have matured to the point where, for short bursts, I can ignore my hormonal brain and think with the animal part of my brain that does not contain the incredibly human capacity for self loathing, I am able to recognize this.

But I can only be rational in short bursts.  What I see is...

I have a chorus of teenagers in my head.  And they're all mean girls.

Hair- hasn't been cut in ten months
Eyes- giant circles underneath them from sleeping badly due to occupier in uterus, leg cramps, back pain, etc.
Chin- stray hairs.  They make me want to annihilate my face.
Arms- flabby.  Somebody hasn't been to the gym (or even done yoga- YOU try it with your hips dislocating) in almost as long as they haven't had a haircut.
Scar- only bad on some days.  These days are unpredictable.
Boobs- completely overwhelm the pre-pregnancy bras, resulting in both the oh-so-attractive quad-boob effect, and also in just sort of making me look lumpy all over.  Also, the very large lumpy shelf of breast tissue camouflages my stomach, making it look smaller.  I am actually only about an inch and a half smaller than I was with twins.  Not very significant.
Belly- extra lumpy, thanks to a belly button that doesn't pop when I'm pregnant (never did with the girls, either) and the addition of the lumpy lower belly pouch that was left after my c-section.
Butt- where is it?  No really... where is it?  And how can it manage to take up so much more space?

On top of that, my skirt has a giant hole in it, my children are actually covered in maple syrup, and my house is a mess.

If I shut down all that criticism, I can see that in the picture I am practically glowing.  I am glowing like a pregnant lady is supposed to glow.  I am awash in maternal glory.  I am a goddess, creating life.  I am Gaia, I am Aphrodite, I am Venus.


...I am a gigantic lump of worthlessness.

I am, however, better off than a teenage girl.  I know that this ends.  I know that in the near future, I will stop being hormonally driven to loathe everything about myself.  My pregnancy hormones will give way to a weirder wave of post partum hormones, and then from there I can revert to my former, mostly-happy-with-myself-actually personality.

It's just that it's going to suck until then.

To all the people of the earth who ever must interact with a pregnant lady, I urge you... follow my rule number one of dealing with pregnant ladies.

And never, EVER, tell a hormonally charged female person that their face is weird.

Because, ew.  Seriously?  That is so gross.

Soundtrack of our Love

Our friends, toasting our happiness

Everyone danced their butts off

When M and I got married, we tried really hard to keep things in our budget while still keeping it personal and meaningful.  It seems that a lot of the time, the more meaningful your little touches, the more the price goes up.  Or, possibly worse, the more time you have to put into every single detail.

A perfect example of that is our solution for place cards.

We only did a small amount of arrangement when it came to seating charts.  We designated tables, but let everyone choose their own seats at their table.  To tell them what their tables were, we made them CDs with personalized labels.  The labels had their name, their table name (our tables were named after our favorite local restaurants), and of course the track list.

A portrait of us I made for the reception

It was a CD of "our" songs.  And a pretty awesome one at that.

We included songs that reminded us of each other...
"The Man I Love," as sung by Sarah Vaughan and "The Girl I Love (She Got Long Black Wavy Hair)" by Led Zeppelin

At Cape Reinga in New Zealand

Songs that played a role throughout the history of our romance...
"Can't Keep My Eyes Off Of You" by Frankie Valli, "Beautiful Freak" by Eels



Songs that were about the wedding and the honeymoon itself .
"My Kind of Town" by Frank Sinatra, "Island in the Sun" by Weezer

Kissing on the rooftop

Songs that described our plans for the future...
"Come Rain or Come Shine" by Billie Holiday, "In My Life" by The Beatles



Songs that described our love...
"Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe" by Barry White, "Asleep and Dreaming" by The Magnetic Fields




Songs we loved to sing to each other...
"Such Great Heights" by Iron and Wine, "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys



And songs that played a role in the wedding itself...
"When A Man Loves A Woman" by Percy Sledge, "Wild Horses" by The Rolling Stones

There will never be enough ways to say "I love you."

I love my husband.

He is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.

And each time I hear a track of the twenty or so songs we gave to each and every one of our wedding guests, I am reminded of the happiest day of my life.



...and I hope they all hear those songs, and think of the day with even a fraction of the love and joy that went into it.

Happy Valentine's Day.  May your lives be filled with love.

...and may you dance until you're pretty sure your legs are going to fall off.