Love and Marriage

Mordechai: When people kiss on the lips in a movie, do they have fake lips? Or, no. Are they husband and wife? (pause) Yeah, they're probably just husband and wife.

Sari to Daddy: Why don't you call me honey like you call Mommy?

Trip to the ER

Sari nearly sliced her thumb off this evening while trying to cut a slice of challah for herself. I heard a cry of surprise from her and one of admonition from Mordechai. I saw her race past me on her way upstairs and I asked Mordechai what happened. He told me she had cut herself so I called to her to ask her where she was going. She said she was going to get a bandage. By the time she came downstairs with a bandage her hand was dripping with blood and she was looking pretty shaken. I couldn't even tell where the cut was because the blood was all over so I took her to wash the blood off. I could see that she had cut her thumb pretty deep so I (calmly) called Dovid to check it out and he agreed with me that it needed medical attention. Sari wanted Daddy to take her to the ER (I'm trying not to be offended) so I wrapped her finger in a gauze pad. I was afraid a bandage would be a bad idea because taking it off would mean pulling the pieces apart. ***shudder***

I thought I'd go crazy when I called Dovid's cell and heard it ringing in the living room! How could he forget his cell at home when he takes one of MY kids to the ER?! A friend of ours called a little while later and suggested I call the ER and ask for him. How like me is that? To forget that there was life before cell phones? Duh. The receptionist was happy to transfer me to bed #22. Sari was fine and was getting her wound taped rather than stitched which is certainly a lot less traumatic and will hopefully prove to be equally effective.

A little while later I called again to find out that they'd been discharged. Mordechai had been practically pacing the whole time since they had left but he seemed to be somewhat relieved to hear the news that they were on their way home. He turned to me and asked if I thought he should give Sari all his stickers. I was quite taken by surprise and didn't really have a chance to answer before he decided for himself that he would do just that. When she got home he handed her his whole sticker album. Now, granted he's not really all that into stickers for quite some time now, but, how sweet is that?

Purim 2009!

From Rochelle and Mordechai's wedding

Adina, this one's for you

Dovid offered to brush Ada's hair for her after the bath because she was complaining that it was getting in her eyes.

Dovid: Okay. I'll do it very gently.

Ada: Good. 'Cuz Mommy does it very hurty.

Breaking news!

Dovid, after a grueling 7 hour oral exam, has passed and gotten his smicha. We're very proud to have a bona fide rabbi in the family!


These were given to me in lieu of a Yerushalayim shel zahav (Jerusalem of gold). Cheapo ;)

Just a sampling

Mordechai's rebbe talks the yeshiva talk with the kids which they love. They feel like they're in really serious shiur. Mordechai tries to insert these "learning" phrases into his vocabulary whenever appropriate and it's adorable. At one se'udah on Shavuot, we had the whole Queens branch of the May Fam over. There was some lively conversation going on and I was agreeing with my bro-in-law, Yoni, about something or other, and said, "That's exactly what I always say!" Mordechai made a mock show of being very impressed and said, "Ooooh. Yoni was m'chaven to Mommy!"

For the last se'udah we ate out (after three meals hosting numerous guests, baruch Hashem). After the meal, the kids were all enjoying way too much candy while I was lounging in the other room flipping through books. I called out to the kids that that was enough junk food for the day. Just a few minutes later, Dovid found Sari and her friend Shayna, sitting hidden away at the bottom of the backyard stairs. He asked her why she was hiding there and she replied with a twinkle in her eye and her irrepressible smile, "I'm hiding from Mommy because I got another taffy!"

Ada has a wonderful method of self praise. As she's cleaning up a game, she sings, "I like the way Ada's cleaning..." Today she requested some participation from me. She turned to me and said, "You say 'Nice job Ada'."

Oh, brother!

Mordechai was wondering about Mothers' Day and about how the whole thing got started. I explained to him the whole Hallmark thing. He then asked, "Why don't they have Brothers' Day?"

"Well, um, I don't really know," I replied.

Mordechai shrugged and said, "It doesn't matter anyway because one day I'll be a father."

UPDATE: I was telling the story over to Dovid when Sari piped up to say, quite matter-of-factly, "On Mothers' Day all the non-Jewish fathers take the mothers to a fancy restaurant."

Got that Dovid?

BIG NEWS

Ada has been walking around telling everyone she meets that she's going to "Acamy Palm Beach" and she's getting a "napsap" in which she'll put her "shtraw cup with milk" and a notebook. For those of you who haven't yet heard the BIG news, here it is:

We're moving to Palm Beach!

You heard right. We're headed down to sunny Florida, to the island of the palm trees. Dovid has been appointed by the Judy Steinberg Hebrew Academy of Palm Beach as head of school. (That is the "acamy" to which Ada refers.) There is currently a preschool and we plan to open Kindergarten and Grade 1 for the coming school year. And so, a new Jewish day school is born in an area that has the fourth-largest Jewish population in the U.S.! Sadly, only about 32 percent of the county's Jews are affiliated with a synagogue. And with the number of Jewish children there having increased over 60 percent in the past ten years, we have our work cut out for us. I will be Director of Curriculum Development and will be splitting my time by teaching our first grade class.

So how do I feel? Thrilled and excited about this wonderful opportunity and the purpose we aim to fulfill. Happy for my family to be living in a place that is more laid back. Sad for my family to be living so far away from our family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) in New York and Pennsylvania. Proud that my family will become a living kiddush Hashem, with His help. Nervous about adjusting to living on my own without the huge support system I currently enjoy and about managing the logisitics of a long-distance move almost single-handedly (Dovid is going into seclusion as soon as yeshiva lets out in June to cram for his semicha test this summer.)!

Thankfully, with all these powerful emotions threatening to turn me into a pile of useless overwrought nerves, I have very little time to feel or even think too much. I have been so insanely busy working for the Hebrew Academy, I have little time for anything!

One thing I do know: The Hebrew Academy of Palm Beach will be the most awesome school in the county. We're aiming for - and will stop at nothing less than - academic excellence and character-building. We care about each individual child and working with families as partners in each child's Jewish and secular education. I am quite confident that our children will love to learn and learn to love their rich Jewish heritage.

I'm off to Palm Beach next week for a few days. Don't miss me too much while I'm there. Ha! As if! ;)

Quotes

Sari and Ada went down the hall to visit Penina. Apparently she wasn't home because no one answered their knocks. Sari came back to the door and was holding it open, urging Ada to come back home while Ada was stubbornly holding her ground. After a moment or two of this, Sari called out:

Mom, I need some assistance.

Me (surprised to hear her use that word): Assistance, eh? Where did you hear that? Who says that?

Sari (with a mischievous twinkle in her eye): Daddy says that to you.

Me: He does? When?

Sari: When I'm not going to bed!

Update.

It is rather gratifying to know that some people have actually missed me. I'm not sure what exactly precipitated my blogging slump. Things were hectic and stressful around chez May for a while. In fact, they still are, pretty much. :)

As far as the kids go, they're as adorable as ever. Ada just blows us away with her total cuteness. She is convinced that she is in charge and everyone should bend to her will. She is at her cutest when she's in the midst of some pretend play.

Sari is so sunnily cheerful that she is truly a pleasure. Her teachers absolutely adore her. They say she's the model student: follows directions, gets along with everyone, sings by circle time, cleans up by clean-up time, participates in every activity with genuine eagerness. And, when she comes home, she unfailingly bounds in with a huge smile and begins to rattle off all the exciting things she learned that day! Her retention and recall of the material is amazing, too.

Mordechai is so grown up, it's crazy. He had a mesibat chumash (celebration upon the occasion of beginning to study the text of the Torah) a few weeks ago. Of course, I cried. Am I a weirdo, or what? He's doing well, b"H. His strongest area is still math. He just gets it. Really gets it. He adds and subtracts multiple digit numbers in his head. He has been dabbling in multiplication. (I was doing a puzzle a few weeks ago when he asked me if 15 times 20 is 300. I was totally shocked and then he explained how he knew that. He had counted the pieces along the width and length of the puzzle and realized that by multiplying those numbers he would get the amount of pieces in the puzzle. Then he just had to look at the puzzle box for the answer!) He can calculate the price of several items, decide what to give to pay for them, and calculate the change he gets. He also knows how to exchange money. I'll challenge him by, say, telling him I have no dimes or no nickels or that I'd rather save my quarters for the meters and have him work around that. He's been telling time for at least two years. By telling time, I mean he can read a standard face clock, with or without numbers, to the minute. He can also tell you how long it will take to reach a specified time. This becomes very useful when he's counting down the minutes till Dad comes home.

Mordechai has taken up keyboard lessons, sponsored by his Savta (my mom). He really likes it. However, he does not like to practice what he's supposed to, ie. what is assigned by his teacher. He basically likes to play the songs he knows well over and over. I think it's the perfectionist in him (genetic, you think?). I actually discovered that he does practice new things in the morning when he wakes up before I do. I have been making a huge effort to restrain myself from reminding him to practice, practice, practice. After all, this is supposed to be about fun and enjoyment, not about pressure and tension. Also, it's the classic case of trying to make up for your failings by living through your kid. I was actually pretty good at the piano (which, when I think back, my parents must have scraped to afford just so they could provide me with the opportunity) but I quit after a year or two of lessons because I was "too busy." Mmhmmm, too busy. Right.

A couple weeks ago, Dovid and I took a huge step and went away for a weekend for the first time without the kids. It actually was more of a business trip than a pleasure trip. I was so nervous about leaving the kids. Turns out, they were just fine. Mordechai had one rough breakout on Friday night when he started flipping out that Ada was gonna cry and scream when Savta would put her to bed and Savta wouldn't know what to do, etc.. It took a little while (and a bribe) to get him to relax. He didn't truly relax, though, until after Ada was sound asleep. By some miracle, Ada actually went to sleep without so much as a whimper, which is rather uncharacteristic as of late. Only then did he allow himself to joke and enjoy his time. My brother and sister-in-law were so thoughtful and came over to my mom for Shabbat so that my mother would have extra hands and the kids would entertain each other. Sari and her cousin Devorah (will be 3 in the spring) were inseparable. They had a perfect relationship going. Sari basically directed and Devorah readily complied (I'm the mommy, you're the sister and so on). Ada, who was my biggest concern, was actually quite manageable. No major tantrums or meltdowns to speak of. Of course, my mom insists she ate nothing all weekend but Mom is not so reliable when reporting about that department. I've seen her feed kids two servings of chicken, half a sweet potato, and a half cup of blueberries and then shake her head in despair that the child didn't taste a morsel of food all day. I kid you not. As far as Dovid and me, we missed the kids more than they missed us. Friday night kiddush was the worst. I actually had tears in my eyes when it came time to bless the kiddies. It took a while for the lump in my throat to subside, too. On Sunday, at the end of our weekend, we couldn't wait to get home to the kids.

Celebrity sightings

PsychoToddler's experience last week reminded me of a story that happened to Dovid a while back when he was still driving his '88 Chevy Celebrity. (It was a little tricky to drive that car. The gas pedal would sorta stick and had to be played with before it worked. The driver's side door deteriorated in a slow progression: first the inside door handle broke off so that you had to roll down the window to stick your hand out and use the outer handle. Then the outer handle would jam and could only be opened from the outside with a special upward-jerk trick, so you had to get out through the passenger side. Eventually the upward-jerk trick broke the outer handle off completely and you had to get in through the passenger side, too. The front bumper fell off and was tied on with a rope. The trunk didn't close so that too was tied with a rope. The antenna had long been gone and was replaced with a twisted wire coat hanger. Oh, and the clincher, you didn't need the key to turn on the ignition. The car was quite the beloved car in yeshiva and guys borrowed it all the time. For dates, though, they borrowed our Camry. I wonder why?) Back to the story. One Sunday morning, my husband came down ready to go to yeshiva. He noticed that the gym bag he usually kept in the back was on the front seat. Thinking that was odd, he glanced into the back window. There, stretched out on the back seat, was a man lying on a pillow my father-in-law happened to have left in the car a while earlier. His shoes were off and he was covered with a coat serving as a blanket. Apparently he was very comfortable because he was sleeping soundly and snoring loudly. Not sure what to do, he considered calling the cops. He changed his mind when he realized it would take them too long to get there and he had to get moving. So he knocked on the window gently and said, "Uh, excuse me?" The guy looked up with sleepy eyes and said, "Oh, sorry, man. Is this your car? I was jus' walkin' aroun' last night an' I was so tired an' the cops told me jus' find a car an' go to sleep. Sorry, sir." With that, he gathered up his things and went on his way.

Such memories. It was tough parting with that Celebrity. Finally, we had no choice when we got a minivan and couldn't afford three cars on insurance (especially since we have only two drivers in the family!) One thing's for sure, no car of ours ever had more character than that Celebrity!

Introducing Yoni and Tziporah May!

Wednesday night was some party at the Razag Ballroom! For those of you who couldn't make it, here's a sampling of pics. Granted, these photos are mostly of my kids, but, hey, it's my blog and I can do whatever I want.

Ada was in a fantastic mood all night. I was so pleased! The moment she got her dress on, she was positively giddy. In this shot, I asked her to show me her pretty dress:


Sari was absolutely glowingly gorgeous:


Mordechai was Mr. Cool. On Tuesday he had had a temperature of 103 degrees and was diagnosed with bronchitis. So he was still a bit subdued. Besides, he tends to enjoy observing at weddings rather than actually dancing and partying.


With his cousin, Yosef:


With cousins, Miriam and Goldie:




Daddy's girls:


Ima (Dovid's mom, left) and Mom (mine, right):


Tzipora (seated, in white ;)) with Ima and Grandma:



Yosef working to convince Yehuda Leib to walk down the aisle, with Mordechai anxiously looking on:


The only shot I managed:


The Godfather ;)


Under the wedding canopy:

Don't they make a beautiful couple? We love you and wish you more happiness than you could imagine!

Date night

Dovid and I went out tonight to see Bodies: the Exhibition in South Street Seaport. It was absolutely amazing. Completely fascinating. Check it out if you can. It's not at all gross and it really is a must-see. Schedule at least two hours for viewing. And call me 'cuz I can't wait to go again.

Afikoman gameplans

The kids are planning their seder night afikoman strategies.
Sari's plan: I'll steal the afikoman and then I'll say I want a bike.
Mordechai's plan: I'll steal the afikoman and hide it under the couch.

Unfortunately, his plan was a bit foiled by Sari who told Dovid that Mordechai was gonna put the afikoman under the couch.
Mordechai censured Sari for telling: It's supposed to be a secret!
Sari: Oh. (turning to Dovid) Daddy, don't tell anyone, k?

All the Daddies out there may need some help with their gameplans. Know how frustrating it is getting that matza to split neatly when Yachatz rolls around? Here's a great tip I found at the Muqata:

Crazy weekend

Perhaps crazy is an understatement? I dislocated Ada's elbow on Friday. She was screaming. The pain must have been awful. An hour before Shabbat the doctor gave me instructions on how to pop it back in but I wasn't sure I got it. Shabbat morning, after a long, sleepless night, we were pretty sure it wasn't in so Dovid took her to a P.A. in the neighborhood and he twisted her arm every which way in an effort to get it back in. According to Dovid's report, Ada was totally hysterical. The P.A. wasn't totally sure he got it but he said if we see her put her arm over her head, we'd know she was okay. She was in a horrible mood all afternoon and wouldn't put any weight on her arm. She even figured out how to scoot on her bottom without using her arm ("Look, Ma. No hands!")! Finally, late afternoon we observed her reaching her arm up to help push the toy stroller which is too high for her to reach normally. She's so short! So we knew she was okay. She still wasn't bearing any weight on her arm and was too afraid to walk lest she fall on and have to use her arm to catch herself. But we knew it was just a matter of time for the trauma to wear off so she would start to use her arm again. Sunday she was already using her arm though she was still really cranky for some reason. But she's okay, thank G-d.
Not to worry, Sunday brought it's own share of adventure as our Camry got mangled when Dovid lost control of the car. According to the cops who came to the scene, it seems the tire blew out causing him to veer into the parked cars. Thank G-d, he was in the service road and not the main road where most of the traffic is because that could have caused a serious accident. He was okay - a little backache - but the car is unbelievably messed up. The wheel is twisted up in the most bizarre way. I hope it doen't cost a fortune because we don't have one! Anyone looking to contribute to the Camry fund (or future home downpayment fund or yeshiva tuition fund or early retirement fund, et al) should drop me a line. Operators will be standing by to take your calls.

Daddies go to Jupiter...

Dovid: So do most kids in your class talk about their Moms more or their Dads?

(Mordechai shrugs)

Dovid: Well, who do you think most kids like more?

Mordechai: Well... Daddies give more treats.

Dovid: Why do you think that is?

Mordechai: Because Mommies are smarter and they know it's not really good for you.

Kindergarten politics

Mordechai was talking to Dovid and giving him the rundown of how things stand at school (names were changed to protect classmates' anonymity):

Reuven is leader of the bad guys. He gets in trouble all the time. I'm the leader of the good guys. Shimon thinks he's the leader of the good guys but he's not. He walks around and shows off about how many stars he has and the other boys don't like that because he's trying to make them jealous. And Levi thinks he's so cool because he has gedolah* [sic] cards.

* Gedolim cards are collectible cards featuring Jewish religious leaders, past and present.

Tonight we celebrated Dovid's Big 30 at HaPisgah. Thanks Ima and Abba for the treat! Dovid - have a happy birthday, year, and many more!

Princess Sari at Ari and Rivky's wedding