Summer Days!

Our summer has officially begun!
Adina's round robin play group is over, and I get the kiddos to myself all day every day!
Thank G-d, we are really getting into a good routine with it all and it is going well.  The timing of things was really on my side, because just about three weeks ago Ze'ev decided to drop his second nap for good!  He now naps on the exact same schedule as Adina.  Not only does that mean I get a break of a couple hours right in the middle of my day, but it also means that we can actually leave the house for two extended periods of time!  It used to be that Ze'ev would nap 9:30-11, Adina 12-2:30, and then Ze'ev again from 3-4:30.  This made for a very housebound day (Yes, I am one of those Moms who is pretty adamant on routine and being in a quiet crib environment for nap time).

Now, with Ze'ev napping the same time as Adina we have the whole morning together and then again in the afternoon we have a few hours to do an activity before dinner time.  I am trying to create as much of a routine as is possible for our days while also allowing for fun activities and excursions.  Adina is taking summer gymnastics classes one day a week, we are attending a couple different library story times and becoming frequenters to some of the best parks.

I think in many ways it is very good for both me and the kids to have so much time together.  Adina especially receives a lot of security from spending a lot of time with Mommy.  The more time she spends with me, the more she feels comfortable venturing out.  It's the whole concept of a "secure base."

Anyway, wish me luck as I juggle two toddlers this summer, and if all goes well I am looking forward to keeping both of them home with me all next year as well! :)

Retrospective

I am not sure if "retrospective" is actually a word, but if it isn't, it should be.  It so perfectly describes the perspective of looking at things in retrospect.

I often think about how much more I would have gotten out of experiences in the past had I been able to experience them with the head I now have on my shoulders.  With age comes maturation and a whole new kind of perspective.  I look at mine and Yoni's time of engagement and the beginning of our marriage.  In some ways, I have few memories of this time.  This fog could possibly be a result of the two children I have had in close succession between then and now, but sometimes I think the past seems so foggy because my brain is now in such a completely different place.  At that time, I was really just starting off on my whole internal spiritual journey.  My understanding of my internal purpose in life barely existed, and was for sure not what it is today (and I still have plenty of room to grow!).  Sometimes, I wonder whether I would have had more perspective at that time if I had been "observant" for a longer period of time prior to becoming engaged/married.

This weekend, we were honored to celebrate with a newly engaged couple (Mazal tov again! :) ).  Both the chatan (groom) and kallah (bride) were raised living a religious lifestyle.  They both have a firm grasp on their faith.  Yet I saw in their eyes the very same bewilderment that I felt a mere 4 1/2 years ago - Completely unaware of what the future will bring - emotionally, physically, intellectually.  No matter what your background or where you are in life, the time of engagement and "newlywed-hood" is a time of a whirlwind which will scarcely be remembered in detail as life evolves and the couple grows both as individuals and together as a cohesive unit.

It was so refreshing for me to see that I was not unique in my bewilderment.  I shouldn't feel regret at not having enjoyed it enough because it was not paired with the perspective I now bring to life.  At that stage in my life, I experienced it the best way that I knew how.

Now, this naturally brings me to think toward the future.  Ten years from now, Twenty years from now, G-d willing fifty or sixty years from now, what new perspective will I have?  What will I wish I had thought about when I was a young Mom?  How will I wish I had enjoyed certain moments for their intricate deeper meaning which right now is completely lost to me?

If you are blessed to have had more life experience than me, please share your pearls of wisdom that you feel upon looking back to your twenties...

Warning! Politics below...

Don't worry, I am not writing anything about United States politics...
This is a little venture from my usual parenting blog entries, but it has been on my mind a lot recently, so I wanted to write about it.
The topic is shul politics.  Unfortunately there has been a lot of damaging and incredibly disturbing politicking going on at our shul the past couple months.  It is not appropriate to go into the details here, but I will go into my thoughts about this whole concept and the reaction I have had.

What is the point of a shul?
A communal opportunity to connect with G-d.  That is it.  That is why the shul exists.  If it were not for G-d, there would not be a shul.  According to the Torah, if it were not for G-d, there would not be anything at all, but that is besides the point...
So how can people allow the shul to become a tool used for such a disruptive battleground, tearing Jews apart rather than bringing them together?

I wrote this poem a couple weeks back, when things were at their worst...

A penny has two sides,
A square has four.
A dodecagon has
so many more.

Amidst the stories,
from all the sides,
Deeply embedded,
a pure truth hides.

An honesty
of heart and soul;
Where judicious peace
is the ultimate goal.

It will never surface
with egos involved,
So the labyrinth
will never be solved.

If people could shed
hatred and vanity,
Then we could find a solution
and stop this insanity.

That pretty much sums it up, but for those of you knowledgeable in the Torah, take a look at this week's Torah portion.  Korach.  What was his biggest flaw?  Why did he desire power?  What happened to him...?

How I appreciated the smallest ounce of Rachamim (G-d's mercy)...

Today has been one of those days.
Ze'ev woke up early (5:30 early...).  This was not happening for me, so I took him in bed with me and just as he settled back asleep, he got woken and that was it.  5:45 our day began.  I am not going to go into all of the details between then and now, because it's probably not so necessary, but I'll give the highlights - Libby rolled in poop, needing an emergency bath.  Our freezer (full of food) is malfunctioning and they can't come fix it until Monday.  Then, I got Ze'ev to sleep, was making progress in my to-do list for the day, and a handyman showed up an hour and a half late when I wasn't expecting him so Libby barked and woke Ze'ev up very prematurely and now he's cranky... and I am all the while trying to cook for Shabbat and clean the house.
Awesome!
Yoni got quite a few calls throughout this process which sounded kind of like this, "I know you're working, but I just need to complain for a minute so I can continue doing what I need to do."  He tried offering solutions, and I reiterated, "I don't think there's anything you can do.  I just needed to vent.  Thank you for listening, I love you. :)"
I was starting to wonder, "Why all at once?  What else will happen on this oh-so-interesting day?"

And then, as I stood up in the bathroom, both the baby video monitor and my cell phone fell out of my pocket.  I watched in slow motion as they fell toward the toilet bowl.  And with a centimeter to spare, they missed falling into the water and being destroyed.  They clattered on the floor and I felt the biggest wave of relief.  For any of you who think G-d doesn't watch out for us in the bathroom, I think you just might be wrong.  Because He knew my limits and knew I would not have been able to handle losing my phone and the baby monitor on this kind of day!  Thanks for the Rachamim. :)

Now I am hoping that I got all the frustrating, difficult moments out of the way, all in one morning, so that we can enjoy a nice, relaxing weekend!

Things don't always go as planned... or do they?

So in my last post, I was so excited because not only was I getting sleep, but life was returning to routine and I was able to delve into creativity.  Well, since then, in the past month or so, I have had maybe 1 hour of normal routine.  Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but things have truly been abnormally unusual.  I just wrote a journal entry in my personal journal and it took me about a page to spell out all of the unusual circumstances of the past month, but suffice it to say that between sickness and other medical issues and even poor Libby got a UTI, at least one or two things have occurred every week.

So then this weekend, we were supposed to escape it all.  My parents were going to come for the long weekend.  We would have a nice relaxing Shabbat with them, and then Saturday night, on our anniversary, Yoni and I would go downtown and have a whole day kid-free to be tourists in the city where we have lived a year and have yet to explore.

Then Wednesday, I got a call from Dad that Mom woke up with a frozen knee and needed to have surgery on Friday (Thank G-d, surgery went well and she's currently recovering).  Obviously that meant that they could not fly here on Thursday for the weekend.  Ok, so Yoni and I would just have a quiet, relaxing anniversary at home.

Then Thursday Yoni called around 9:30.  "I have good news and bad news.  Which do you want first?"  "Bad news," I said.  He continued, "Bad news is I have to leave tomorrow morning at 3 AM for a trip.  Good news is I get to come home today right after lunch."

At this point, I was so used to things going contrary to my plans that I really didn't even blink an eye.  "Ok," I said, "Let me know what time you'll be home.  I love you, I'll see you soon."

This wasn't quite my plan of how I thought the weekend would go.  But obviously it was the way things had been Planned all along.  I saw that even more clearly Friday afternoon when I started getting a cold.  I realized that after these crazy few weeks, my body is run down.  My immune system is shot and what I really needed was some good R and R.  So instead of a full house, Hashem arranged for me to have a quiet, stress-free, people free Shabbat.  I was in bed at 9 Friday night and got nine whole hours of sleep (for the first time in at least three weeks)!  Saturday morning, I still wasn't feeling great, so I napped when the kids napped in the afternoon.  I was starting to feel better so we went to the park in the afternoon, and then I got in bed early again on Saturday night.  Now, thank G-d, I am feeling like a new person!  Even if we have more curveballs thrown at us from Above this week, I am rested and refreshed and I can handle them now. :)

P. S.  On a lighter note, I have been having so much fun with Adina the past few days.  Her favorite word is "Already" and she uses it in almost every sentence.  Sometimes it makes a lot of sense, like, "I put on my shoes already."  Sometimes it makes absolutely no sense but sounds so cute and makes me crack up, like, "My underwear is dry already,"  or "Ze'ev woke up and we're dancing already."