A day in the culinary life of the girls' diets

I thought I'd share a sample menu of a day in the girls' lives. This morning they woke up and Shawn gave them cereal (cornflakes with 1% milk, which comes enriched with vitamin D). Before they left for gan they had crackers (whole wheat extra bran crackers, the only ones we ever have just laying around) with peanut butter (unsweetened, again the only kind we usually have laying around the house these days).

At gan they got yet another breakfast which on Sundays is usually bread and spreads and fresh veggies. They had lunch there which on Sundays is usually vegetable stew with beans. At gan they also baked chocolate chip cookies for Rosh Chodesh so they each had one and they had cut apples as a snack near the end of the day.

After gan I gave them shoko (chocolate milk) and PB&J sandwiches (Barney's favorite food!) and later, for supper, they had yogurt (unsweetened 1.5%, the only kind we have at home) with raisins and later brown rice (with chicken and veggies, but they weren't interested in those) and melon balls.

So that's a sample menu. Pretty good I think. Of course, there are some days they don't eat much more than granola and pizza. Anybody who thinks I have any control over what my children eat obviously doesn't have kids themselves. But they're pretty good about making decent choices, especially since we don't keep junk at home. Even juice they have on average of maybe once every two or three weeks, if that. Shoko, on the other hand....

Another Bracha-ism

Bracha and I were playing catch today while Eliana was napping (what were we playing with, you ask? Why, a fake pomegranate hat is part of our sukkah decorations, of course!) Bracha missed a catch and it hit her nose (very gently) and she said, "Oh, on my nose!" (she was smiling). She missed another which accidentally landed on her forehead. Her response? "Oh, on my keppie!"

And yes, she was still smiling. And no, she was not the only one.

Way past midnight

I don't know what is going on with my girls but they simply won't stay asleep tonight! It's nearing 1 am and I am still awake because every ten minutes I have to go tend to one child or the other. It's driving me nuts!

But while I am already awake, let me share with you one of the funniest things they have ever said. This story starts off kinda sad, sorry.

There's been a dead butterfly in our stairwell for a while. On the third-to-bottom step. The girls don't get that it's dead or just don't care and look forward to seeing the butterfly every time they leave the apartment. Well, today we came home late and saw that someone must have stepped on it or nature just took it's course because while it was still there, it was no longer, how shall we say, whole.

How did the kids respond? "Ima, butterfly got broken!!"

One more quickie:

Thank goodness I have finally found a feature-length animated film the kids will happily sit through! They used to like Nemo and Madagascar, and for a while Cars, but then Eli started getting really scared of, well, pretty much anything. So we were limited to episodes of Barney and, now Angelina Ballerina. Not that they watch TV all that often but when they do it's usually because they're sick or I need them out of my hair long enough to cook, and having to reset an episode every 20 minutes just doesn't cut it.

But now they have a new love: Rio! Yay birds!

A few quick updates

Winter is finally coming! Well, autumn, at least. It's still warm enough to wear t-shirts during the day but it's getting chillier in the evenings and mornings. Last night we slept without the ceiling fans on and the windows partially closed so that gives some idea as to how it's changed in the last few weeks (just for frame of reference, about a week and a half ago there was one night we left our bedroom a/c on all night it was so hot). This morning the girls got up and got dressed in pants, shirts and sweaters.

I know, I know, a joke for all of you in North America.

I am constantly amazed at how grown my daughters are. Eliana regularly speaks 6 (or more!) word sentences and surprises me on a near daily basis with new words I didn't know she even knew (armpit, tripped, iPad, container). She doesn't just do things, she constantly makes commentary on them (while eating: "I like the rice! Oops, fell on my pants. Picked it up! It's cold! Very good!") Bracha talks too, of course, and she's enunciating more clearly with each passing day, but she is generally quieter. Well, let me clarify that point. She doesn't talk as much as Eli, but she's definitely not quieter. She can make quite a racket at times!

Thanks to blurb.com I am trying to write the girls a little book. I have been typing out stories I've been making up for them (about two princesses) and illustrating it with pictures of them. I've been telling them princess stories for over a year now so I can't remember them all but I am writing out the ones I do. I suppose, theoretically, I could draw real illustrations and make the book available for public purchase on the blurb bookstore. In any case, whenever I am done with this one I will let you know and anyone who would like a copy can probably order one. At the very least it will be a cute photo album of the girls.

My kids are walkers!!

As in, they walk well, not that old people stuck tennis balls on their legs and lean on them.

Today I wanted to take the girls to see the biggest sukkah in the world and I decided not to take the stroller. They don't like sitting in it in the bus anyways, plus it costs a whole extra adult fare for it if I leave it open, and if I close it I figured it's less of a hassle to just get the girls on instead of them and their closed stroller. So we headed out early in the morning so Shawn could spend most of the day studying and as we walked to the bus stop the girls were pointing out all the other sukkot we saw (Eli said: There's a sukkah! There's another sukkah! There's a baby sukkah! Woah, big sukkah! See lots of sukkahs today!)

The bus ride was easy and uneventful. We got off behind the municipality and walked through the grounds to their giant sukkah. But the girls seemed unimpressed. It was still early, and the sukkah was closed, so I think maybe they just didn't realize it really was a sukkah.

So we walked past it to Jaffo street then up towards Kikkar Zion (sorry if you're not familiar enough with the area to understand the local landmarks), stopping somewhere first to get a little breakfast to eat in a sukkah along the way (because Jaffo street was filled with them since just about every restaurant, bar, yogurt shop, and cafe had their own) then we walked through the midrachov. I bought the girls cheap little toy shofars (but made out of real horn!) which they were thrilled with! First they held them up to their lips and said, "TOOT!" before I showed them that, thanks to a little plastic tip in the end, they could really blow into the end and actually make noise.

Then we walked back down Jaffo towards the giant sukkah again, which was now open and elicited much greater excitement from the girls. We sat inside and had a little snack while enjoying the pictures of buses and trains on it (the sukkah's theme this year was transportation and in addition to the required tinsel decorations there were also inverted traffic cones decorating the whole ceiling). Afterwards we headed out to the train stop just outside the municipality and caught the light rail (which was running very efficiently today. While we had been walking through town we stopped and waved at every one that came by and there were a LOT!). A nice young man gave us his seat and we enjoyed the train ride all the way to Beit Hakerem.

After picking up some pizza then stopping at Saba and Savta's to collect the mail we walked to the bus stop where we caught another bus home. We got off it a little early so we could stop at a nearby fruit stand (they had real canteloupe!) we walked the rest of the way home then stopped in the playground downstairs for a bit before coming up.

All in all we were gone over four hours, almost five, and the kids walked the whole way, the whole time! I am awed and amazed and so incredibly proud of those two little troopers! They really did so wonderfully. I can't believe how big my kids are!

Reunited

This is not exactly about my family, but this post is about another family who is, just about at this very moment, holding their son for the first time in over five years.

Gilad Shalit, welcome home.