Posts from — February 2009

This weekend, I followed a flock of turkeys over the snow and into a random person’s backyard.

And that’s where they met up with a family of deer.

What perfect moment did you notice this week? See what other people have noticed over at Lori’s.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

A few weeks ago, I went to the ChickieNob and Wolvog’s school to talk about candy-making and allow the kids to make royal icing alphabet letters. I brought in one of my travel boxes of equipment and spoke about sugar art and showed them some of my tools as well as some burn marks on the back of my hand from a recent lollipop incident. I felt like a freakin’ Willy Wonka. One child begged if she could just sit on my lap to be close to me and another told me that he really really really liked the ChickieNob and Wolvog so was he invited to their birthday party this year?

Truly, I wanted to tell the kids that this should be a lesson in life: treat everyone as if their mother could be Willy Wonka because you just don’t know if they’re an ordinary person or the source of extraordinary candy.

I especially loved the part in each session (I did the same activity twice) where the kids shouted out things and asked if I could make it out of sugar or icing or cake. And then the asker would fall over screaming in ecstasy when I’d reply, “yes, I can truly make anything out of sugar.” A firetruck? Yes, I can truly make anything out of sugar. My teddy bear? Yes, I can make it out of sugar. A sleek, 29-gauge Follistim pen? Yes, I can make it out of sugar.

Now, when I walk down the hall to drop them off at school, it’s like the kids are seeing a rock star. “That’s her,” I heard a girl murmur to her mother as I helped the ChickieNob with her coat. “That’s the lady with all the candy.”

You would think that my kids would get more sugar, but alas, they just get better sugar in the same small amount as everyone else.

I made a few sample flowers to pass around the room along with lollipops and caramels. Here’s how they looked before they were crushed in a preschooler’s death grip when he refused to relinquish their sweet goodness to the next child in the circle.

A bag of sugar flowers, by the way, will be included in our Purim baskets this year as part of our overall theme of rebirth-renewal-reflection. Think of it like party-in-a-bag.

And yes, I will soon do my Purim giveaway. I am just getting some pictures together this week as I do a few early baskets.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Here is your task; answer this two part question:

There is a knock on the door. Someone with the initials B.K. is on the other side of the door. Do you let them in? Why or why not?

You may define the initials any way you wish–it could be a name, a title, or even a secret disguise for a person who really has very different initials. In other words, who do you imagine on the other side of the door? What are your reasons for inviting them in? What are your reasons for keeping them out?

Leave your answer in the comment section. This game will make sense early next week.

I leave you with this video just because. Because it’s necessary?

Wow…if I thought Aliza Shvarts was insensitive last year, I think I’ve found my new all-time favourite post to make my blood boil. If we could just round up some Holocaust deniers and people who are pro-genocide in Darfur, I could hit my trifecta of People Who Say Things to Emotionally Push Buttons Because They Don’t Know How to Communicate in Another Manner.

MomLogic encourages readers to voice their opinion if they “have a strong reaction to the sentiments expressed below” so here are my thoughts, Gina.

I think you truly don’t understand loss–either abortion or miscarriage–on anything but a surface level. And you don’t truly understand the distinction that being pro-choice doesn’t mean that you are pro-abortion. That these are two different concepts; two separate distinctions. That being pro-choice is about giving the control and choice to the individual rather than having it controlled by government. And that makes no commentary on abortion itself.

I am assuming based on your callousness that you’ve never experienced a loss and have such a small reserve of empathy that you can’t even imagine what a person–male or female–experiences when they lose a child that was either deeply wanted or even ambivalently unwanted. I am actually wondering, based on your callousness, if you are actually my college boyfriend parading as Gina on MomLogic since he too could not separate out real people and real emotions from his political beliefs. It is a sign of maturity–after all, most angry young men grow up to be understanding old men when they see how their words and actions affect another person. Hopefully you will grow up soon.

I know the point of this article was to get people angry and that I’m simply playing into the idiocy created by people like Gina or Aliza Shvarts. I really debated writing anything at all. But the fact is I’m not really sure I agree with the disclaimer posted by MomLogic that says they allow all women to voice their opinion. Where is the line between opinion and vitriol? If my opinion is that MomLogic is the worst site on the Internet, are they going to allow me to become one of their guest bloggers and post that? Will they really put their money where there mouth is? Allow me to write that post, MomLogic, and I will go back to patroning your site.

But the part that worries me the most, frankly, is that I am assuming based on the name of the site that Gina, the author, is a mother. And what is she teaching her children?

Dear Heart:

About nine years ago, at this time of year, you brought me together with Josh. I always get very sentimental in February–I love my husband. I wanted to write you, my heart, a love letter. After all, if you didn’t beat so intensely in my chest, goading me to keep trying for the things you promise me that I want, I wouldn’t have achieved everything I’ve achieved in the last ten years. So how can I not be thankful to you? It feels very ungrateful to write this–I worry that I will sound depressed when I’m not–but hopefully you and Josh will both see the love letter below the surface.

There have been very few moments in my life where I haven’t known what I’ve wanted. It seems that once I reach one goal, you turn around and set up another thing to want. And this is only problematic because it feels like there is never a pause. And without that pause, it sometimes feels like you are rushing me through the enjoyment of the moment. But at the same time, you have always clearly shown me what I wanted and I have gone through life always comfortably knowing the next step. You know that I don’t like unknowns.

Of course, there have been too many times that you have convinced me that I want something that isn’t attainable–at least not initially or easily. You set yourself on a college that I wasn’t granted entrance, you set yourself on people who didn’t love me back, you picked a career that was slow-going with so many more doors closed tightly than even slightly ajar. And, of course, you told me that I wanted to be a mother. And this was the cruelest and kindest thing you ever did to me.

It is hard to reread the diary I kept beginning a few months before we started actually trying to build our family. You made me so hopeful. You made me giddy and excited. You made me purchase way too many books, more than I could possibly need and those were the books that haunted me for two years. I never ended up reading them. After all, what could Dr. Sears tell me with his big happy family on the back cover?

You made me want parenthood so badly. I was really on the fence about how far I was willing to take things; just how badly I wanted to experience pregnancy. But you kept brushing aside all of the rational conversations I had with Josh back when we were first dating. For whatever reason, you kept pushing me to try the next thing and the next thing and am I thankful for the end result? Of course. But could it have been otherwise? Where was the stopping point? It is terrifying to go through treatments without knowing how you’ll stop; at what point does the head get to wrest back control from the heart?

The twins have recently become obsessed with watching a video Josh and I made in Disney World about six years ago. It was a few months into fertility treatments. There is a scene where we are at the California Grill, celebrating my birthday with a dinner and I am blowing out a candle on top of a cake. You can see my lips moving, and I am wishing for what you told me to wish for. After the candle is extinguished, I look directly at the camera and blow an apologetic kiss to Josh. I am obviously crying and then the scene switches to the fireworks happening outside the window over the Magic Kingdom.

It is hard to see myself over and over again every night as they watch the tape and remember the anguish I felt in that moment. The deep deep sadness that felt like it was insurmountable. I know that was actually one of my better moments, that there were much darker times where I considered removing you. Where I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t want to love, I didn’t want to want anymore.

I love them so intensely. I love listening to them through the baby monitor and hearing their conversations. They pretend they are parents to their stuffed animals and it makes me wonder what their own hearts are telling them. I can’t imagine a world without them and it terrifies me to think about all the times I wanted to stop. Entirely stop. And it terrifies me to think about that space and know all I would have missed without them.

You have brought the best times–the double shnuzzles in the rocking chair and the hand stroking my cheek and the small inquisitive faces inches from my own–but you have also brought the worst of times.

And that is why this can’t just be a love letter.

Even though you have never made me want something that I didn’t turn out to love once I held it in my hands.

–Melissa