Blogger Blab Fest and Odds and Ends

The blogger do-dah last night, organized by A Mother in Israel and (Aardvark in the) Israeli Kitchen,  was a blast. It was wonderful to get to know the faces behind familiar blogs and meet new bloggers. Mimi was very generous to open her home and it would have been a perfect evening if only Petach Tikveh was slightly more accessible and/or the Israeli Transportation Authority was slightly more adept at highway signage. I drove myself there with impeccable directions from my navigator hubby, but still managed to get off at the wrong exit and get lost wandering around the dark streets of the Petach Tikveh Industrial Zone with not a clue as to where I was. I did finally find my way to Mimi's and was even able to give a ride to Isramom on the way back so she could get a bus back home.

I really enjoyed hearing about Baroness Tapuzina's background and how she got her food blog going, and how Robin from Around the Island got into photography. It was also good to hear about topics and issues that people struggle with in their blogging. I really hope you will write that haircovering post, One Tired Ema.

I look forward to future meetups.

Loose Ends:

*My 17 month old, E, is insanely picky with food. I'm trying to be nonchalant about it, but it gets difficult at times, (I think more for me than him). He will happily eat sweets morning, noon and night, but has yet to agree to eat a straight piece of chicken. So far, he will deign to dine on fish sticks, chummous or jelly sandwiches, yogurt pancakes, fruit yogurts or Daniella (air whipped yogurt/white cheese thing) carrot kugel and any cake, cookie or chocolate.

Even though this is kid number 3, when you'd think I'd already by experienced enough to handle this, but I'm open to any words of encouragement or advice.

*  Hubby M is going away next week, the third week away in the last 5 weeks. The near constant travelling that seems to be part of the "startup mentality" is getting old for me. I know it's part of the deal, as it were, and we should be used to it, but it's still hard for all of us, even after 3 years.

* My daughter has way too much homework for a first grader. It's a constant stress for me. I thought I finished school already! Not fairy! (A is constantly using this "fairy" word (instead of fair). In Hebrew it turns into "זה לא הוגני".)

Kiddie Cocktail Party at Neila

So, Yom Kippur for me was not as successful shul-wise as Rosh Hashana was, but, on the bright side, fasting is a breeze when you take away nursing and pregnancy conditions (like that story of the man who brings all his animals into the house to get quiet...).

But I did bring the kids into shul for Kol Nidre and Neilah. In both cases, I felt it was inappropriate to bring food into the shul. Normally, I will bring some quiet snacks so they can sit for at least 30 minutes (Bamba bags aren't quiet.) But I felt it wasn't appropriate when people are fasting, especially at the end. Other mothers felt otherwise- there was a gaggle of kids in the back of the shul munching away at an assortment of snacks and they weren't toddlers. I made my 6 and 4 year old suffer through an hour of shul without snacks. I made sure they ate at home beforehand, so I knew they weren't hungry. I'm sure it was just hard for them to see others snacking away with abandon.

Now, I tried to make sure E, 15 month old, was fed too. However, two minutes after he ate his yogurt and banana bread, he started coughing (he has a bit of a lingering chesty cold) and sure enough, threw up everything he just ate! Nothing like cleaning vomit on Yom Kippur! (not to be outdone by cleaning an entire jar of Vaseline that he smeared on the floor and mirror as a morning activity).

So, am I just a meanie? Is it ok to bring kid snacks into shul on Yom Kippur?

The Tefilla Shuffle

Davening on Yamim Noraim with small children is always a challenge, to put it mildly. There are many configurations and arrangements one can make to accomodate both parents. Growing up, my large suburban shul always employed non-Jewish babysitters for small children and they had "Junior Congregation" for older kids, although I just remember wandering around with my friends those long hours till I was old enough to get into davening. But babysitting was a lifesaver for parents, since children sitting quietly or davening were welcomed into the "sanctuary" (American shul terms are so funny), but noisy kids running in and out were not (there were actually ushers standing at the doors to keep order).

Here in Israel, such luxury does not exist. When I lived in Jerusalem, my neighbor and I shared a secular babysitter on the Yamim Noraim, which was nice, but I felt funny about employing a Jewish person on the holiest days of the year. Although we still go back to J-m for Rosh Hashana, I don't live near that neighbor anymore, and that babysitter has moved on anyway.

Another arrangement is tag-team davening. This is where one parent goes to a very early (vatikin) minyan and then takes care of the kids while the second parent goes to daven. I did this on Shabbat this year, although usually it's the husband who does this, and the wife goes late. I went to a five am minyan on Shabbat morning and left in the middle of musaf so my husband could make a 9 am minyan. Although I didn't get the entire davening in, I, at least, got some quiet, alone davening time to myself. And the early morning walk through the streets of Jerusalem was truly heavenly, in every sense of the word. The minyan took place in the Ramban shul in Katamon, where they have just finished a room downstairs, but had to leave half of it unfinished since they found Byzantine-era ruins as they were excavating.

The problem with the tag-team is that it's hard for kids to feel like it's chag- I didn't take them to shul at all later in the morning, since there was no shofar blowing. I took them to the park, they played and then we came home. The park was packed and there were many mothers wandering around with machzorim in their hands, trying to keep an eye out for falling kids and davening at the same time. Now that my girls are 4 and 6, I do want them to get used to being in shul, get a sense of what it's about and slowly learn to sit for longer periods of time. You have to start somewhere!

So the next day, I davened Shacharit at home and took the kids in time for shofar blowing and musaf. I wasn't worried about the girls going in and out, since they are pretty well behaved and after some shushing, my little one learned not to run into shul shouting about what she needed. My 15 month old was going to be the problem. He stayed pretty well in my arms for the silent Amidah and enjoyed clapping and singing along for the first part of chazarat h'shatz. But then he got antsy, so I took him out. He wanted to go into his stroller, so I put him in. I tried wheeling him into shul, since there was room, but he wasn't interested anymore. I rocked him back and forth outside, and just as I was about to give up and go home, he fell asleep. A really really sound sleep. Score! I was able to wheel him in next to me and he slept through the entire musaf and shofar blowing. Aside from some small issues with the girls, I was actually able to daven the whole time, which I was really excited about. And the girls stayed in with me for short periods of time.

This shul is a young families shul, so there were lots of kids, and they had a short children's service and some toys and mini mitkanim. I was very pleased with how it worked out.

Yom Kef Was Ke-ef

Yesterday we had a Yom Kef at work (Fun Day). I think American companies only do these types of things on Memorial Day, July 4 or Labor Day or any spring/summer Sunday. Since none of these holidays exist in Israel and there are no Sundays, per se, any day can be turned into Fun Day! (This one just happened to fall on Sunday, since, actually, our company is tied to schedule of US stock markets).

Last Yom Kef wasn't so kef for us. It involved a "Laughing Yoga" seminar. Now, I happen to love a good yoga class. This wasn't one of them. So many of us were a little wary of what was in store for us, since it was supposed to be a "surprise". Ug. I was dreading paintball. My heart sunk when we turned into our destination and the signed announced that this lovely activity was one of the place's offerings.

Turned out, no paintball. We were divided into teams (girls/boys/mixed) and sent on a kind of treasure hunt that involved completing Survivor-type challenges. You had to collect "diamonds" from each successfully performed challenge and the winner with the most diamonds got to open the "treasure chest" at the end of the 2 hours.

Since additional points were give for ruach, I broke out all my old nonsensical camp cheers ("Save your toilet paper cause we're gonna wipe you out!!!" ??) which put us over the top and clinched us the prize- chilled champagne, served with watermelon; NICE! We kindly shared with the losers.

Then we continued on to Binyamina winery for wine tasting, a tour and dinner. We all got nice and sloshed (a discussion of beet recipes at dinner turned into a giggle-fest) and the food was delish.

The best part of the day- this was my first afternoon off from the kids in a very very long time. Mazal, our trusty rent-a-Savta, picked them all up from gan and the bus stop, took them to the park, did homework, fed them dinner and put them to bed. I came home at 8:30 to a house of sleeping kids! It cost a pretty penny (it was seven hours of babysitting) but it was well worth it.

Much kef was had by all.

Say 'Bye Bye'

My 14 month old son, E, is soon finishing his time with his wonderful metapelet (caregiver), whom he's been with since he was 5 and 1/2 months old. She has truly been an extraordinary caretaker, constantly showering him with love and attention and generally "mothering" him, rather than just "babysitting" him. He smiles and gets excited when we approach her door and now he even smiles when we park the car near her house. M and I have remarked to each other numerous times about how happy we were to have found her.

I'm really going to be sad to finish with her at the end of the summer and I can tell she feels the same way. I've really appreciated the security of knowing I was bringing him each morning to someone who truly loved him in addition to simply having the mornings to do my work instead of smooshing it into naptime and bedtime. Basically, I loved being able to share my parenting duties with another mother.

I thought of this delicate and close relationship we have with the metapelet when I read this book review a few months back on Salon.com. The book is called Mothers and Others by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.

These paragraphs in particular resonated with me:

In the course of writing "Mother Nature," [previous book] I realized there was no way that mothers in the Pleistocene could have reared their young without alloparental assistance. At that point, I had been working on the demographic implications of shared care, and how it meant that mothers could breed after shorter intervals and produce more young that were likely to survive. So I concluded that humans must have evolved as cooperative breeders. Although people had been thinking about various permutations of this hypothesis for a while -- it started out as "mothers must have had help from their mates," and then in the '90s people started to say that it was help from siblings or grandmothers -- "Mother Nature" was really the first book to come out and say it: We could not have evolved except as cooperative breeders.

... What I'm saying is that human mothers are unusual in how much support they need. I'm also trying to expand the concept of what children need to include other people as well as mothers. Mothers need a lot of social support, and having more than one caretaker is very, very useful. When parents are getting divorced and the father and the mother are fighting over custody, that's so selfish. There's no way a child can really have too many allomothers. Even if the mother is mad at the father, she should want him involved. Children develop best in secure social environments, and security includes turning to lots of different people and knowing they are there for you. And since daycare is here to stay, we need to think a lot harder about how to make it better by incorporating attachment theory, making it small-scale and having consistent and responsive caretakers. But these aren't brilliant points. These are just obvious.

An "allomother" is basically a child's caretaker other than a mother.

My three children have all been in some type of childcare since very young ages and I think they have all thrived and benefitted from from their relationships with their allomothers. I agree with Hrdy that the key to excellent childcare is "consistent and responsive caretakers" and I've been lucky so far in finding these kinds of caregivers.