Posts from — December 2009

I’m not a big fan of Chanukkah.  And by “not a big fan” I mean that I like it about as much as I like Valentine’s Day.  Which is not at all unless you count the candy and then it’s like a 2 on a scale of 1–10.

Here’s the fact about Chanukkah–it’s sort of the religious equivalent to Veterans Day (in fact, it is a war memorial holiday) and it has been elevated to the level of Christmas by both the retail industry and well-meaning people who feel badly that Jews don’t really have a cool holiday like Christmas in the winter.

I don’t feel badly about that fact at all.  I love Christmas and I don’t mind if Christmas has a monopoly on winter.  Purim–in my world–has a monopoly on the dreary post-winter/pre-spring season and I would be all kinds of cranky if people started elevating some random Catholic feast day to the level of Purim and telling me that it was sort of the same thing.

There are Jewish holidays that I love.  Purim is and will always be #1 in my heart.  Succot and Pesach tie for a close second.  Rosh HaShanah and Simchat Torah tied for third.  But Chanukkah is sort of right below Yom Kippur.  I get more out of atoning for my sins (of which there are many) than lighting the chanukkiah.  I am just not a fan of fried foods–either eating them or smelling them.  The only way they could make this holiday worse for me is if they added mayonnaise and crickets to the mix.

BUT.

Last night, we had over my parents and Lindsay and her family and we got to witness V light the chanukkiah for the first time.  He looked slightly confused and distracted between all of the adults cooing at him and snapping pictures while we sang in a weird language and held lit candles near him.  And he cracked us all up with his tricks with the stuffing over blessing the grape juice during Shabbat.  But getting that time with friends and family, everyone hanging out and eating and talking, getting to witness a little boy taking in a ritual that spans backs centuries and centuries–that melted my little Chanukkah Grinch heart.

The ChickieNob and Wolvog started the melting process on us years ago when we got to witness their first reaction to lighting the chanukkiah and V chipped off the ice a little deeper.  Give me a few more years of good friends and family hanging out in our kitchen and you may one day read a post about how Chanukkah has jumped up in popularity to occupy the third tier of my heart.

Today, I got to meet Addition Problems and Cali.  Look at us–I am seriously the height of a Smurf.  I got to start feeding W a bottle and Lindsay got to finish.

So that was all kinds of magical as well to finally get to meet Cali and hold W–who have been on the other end of a telephone line or computer screen for the last three+ years.

Tomorrow, I will be at Leah’s, eating cookies and downing Ruby Sippers.  I’ll do the dirty work for all of us and beat her senseless for not posting since September.  A large chunk of the DC IF blogging contingency will be there and I will be live blogging it at this space starting around noon.

People who will most likely be there: Blogless Paz, Hoping for Another Lovebug, Chez Perky, Two Hot Mamas (later in the party maybe), Tales from My Dusty Ovaries, Our Family Beginnings, Body Diaries by Lucy, A Little Sweetness, Sell Crazy Someplace Else, Sunny with a Chance of Hope, and Me.

I will have email access while I’m there so if you want me to ask anyone a question, turn the video camera on them (as long as they are willing), or get a photo with them, send me an email between noon and 3ish with “party” in the subject line so I open it immediately.  Party posts will appear sometimes over here and sometimes right here on Stirrup Queens.

Happy Chanukkah if you’re eating latkes tonight.

I finally tackled the paper pile in the living room so I could get to the glass cabinet where we store serving pieces.  The pile had bills going back to 1997.  It also had photos and old letters and magazine clippings.  I found dozens of birthday cards sent from my grandma.  Sorting through bills was a bit mind-numbing, but I got to relive old favourites such as multiple bills from the Philadelphia hospital for a miscarriage, requests for payment on unsuccessful cycles, and a prescription receipt for zofran.

I unearthed old theater tickets and notes from Josh.  An essay about my great-grandmother written by one of my great-aunts.  Agency agreements, old lesson plans, feeding specialist instructions.  This is why I love cleaning.  It’s not just the sense of peace you feel afterward when you look in the corner of the room and find order.  It’s the peeling back of time.

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The Weekly What If: what if you could find one piece of paper from your past–a lost story you wrote, a letter, a report card, a picture you remember drawing–in a pile while cleaning up.  What would it be?  It doesn’t need to be specific; it could also simply be a birthday card from your grandmother or one of many random notes passed back and forth in high school with a friend.

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It was the 500th issue of the LFCA this week.  In order to keep the LFCA trucking for many more years to come, I wrote about the changes that have taken place over the years, why the LFCA is as it is, and how people can help use the space in the future.  I’d love it if you dropped by and caught up on how the space continues to evolve.  Give your thoughts and ways the LFCA has helped you over the years.  Those stories help me to make smart tweaks in the future.

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It’s getting towards the first cut-off for the Creme de la Creme.  It’s not that you don’t have plenty of time to get on the list (after all, it doesn’t truly close for good until March 1, 2010), but if you want to be guaranteed that you’ll be on the list when it goes up January 1st, you need to have submitted your choice by December 15th. Which is next Tuesday. If you fill out the form after December 15th, you will go up as I keep adding to the list, but you probably won’t be up there when the first wave of people start reading on January 1st. So if you’ve been dragging your heels on picking a post, I’d get on it this weekend.

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Tonight is the first night of Chanukkah which is sort of one of my unfavourite-ish Jewish holidays.  But we’re having over family and friends for latkes and we’ve dragged out chanukkiah and decorations.  Equally as exciting is the DC IF bloggers (otherwise known as TOOTPU or The Order of the Plastic Uterus) cookie exchange on Sunday which I will be live blogging on my on the road blog just to be more annoying that usual.  Look there Sunday starting around noon EST for pictures, video, and quotes from the DC bloggers.  You’ll practically be able to taste the brownies I’m bringing.

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And now, the blogs…

Still Passing Open Windows has a gorgeous post about the benefits and drawbacks of home.  It is about reflecting backwards and looking at the possibilities that come with an open door.  It is about loss and the unknown.  It is wistful and quiet and the entire post reads like a sigh.

Out, Damned Egg!  Out I Say has a post that will make you smile.  It begins with her anniversary; how this year is different from all other years and then moves into a happy announcement for a fellow blogger.  It is about the bonds we make with others along the same journey.

The Girl Who Wants to be Anywhere but Where She Is has a post asking where her friends are when she needs them.  It’s a simple cry, a straightforward stating of need.  And it’s just beautiful in its honesty.

And lastly, Frustrated Musings of a Seemingly Calm Gal has a post about waiting.  She wonders if her difficulty with waiting is tied to being an only child, or if it is merely the fact that when you are waiting, you are still being confronted daily with your infertility.  The post meanders into appointment news and other musings, and truly, it is the fact that this post is a little slice of the infertility blogosphere–as accessible as apple pie–that made me bookmark it as I read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Clutter gone.  Answer the Weekly What If.  It was the 500th issue of the LFCA.  Get in your Creme de la Creme submission by Tuesday if you want a guarantee to be on the list when it first posts.  Join the TOOTPU cookie exchange via live blogging.  And lots of great posts to read.

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.

This is how I won an Olympic gold medal.

I was really sad watching the 2002 winter Olympics, so I went to school and told my students about how I could never reconcile the fact that I had no chance of winning an Olympic medal.  I’d forever think about it with each Olympics, and I asked them if they would help me achieve this dream by holding our own Olympics at the school with events within my capabilities such as holding very still or standing on one foot for a long period of time.

Over 100 students agreed, and the principal allowed me to organize it and run it during a series of lunch times and recesses.  We kicked off the opening ceremony with the running of a paper torch during a school assembly.  People came to cheer on each other during events or participated in the “sports.”  I won a gold medal for synchronized eating (a group of four–me and three students–had to choreograph a routine to music and we made smores in unison and consumed them while dancing.  And yes, I made Josh miss work to come video tape us performing.  We would have won the silver, but the gold team was eliminated by using inappropriate music).

The principal knew how much it meant to me, so during the next school assembly, she called all the winners on stage and gave us gold, silver, and bronze medals that she had purchased.  Another teacher got up on a ladder and held the flag over my head and the entire school rose and sang the national anthem.  And I bawled.

Years later, when I was leaving the school to stay at home with the twins, the new prinicipal threw a chaotic pizza party at lunch time in my honour.  It was a new management team who didn’t know me at all and couldn’t tell that pizza was a terrible idea to “honour” my many years with the school.  One of my synchronized-eating teammates was in the upper school and she told my students about the Olympics from years earlier.

Near the last day of school, a student asked me to come out into the Commons to help with something and when I walked out, a group of about 50 students–current ones and old ones who came down from the upper school–stood up and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” for me.  And yes, I bawled again because the kids got what the adults couldn’t.

And yes, I cried again writing this.

I’m going to wear my medal to watch the Olympics this winter.

What are you showing today?

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

And that is probably not how you say “blog post” in French except my French studies ended in 1992 when I passed my exam at college and I haven’t used French on any real basis since 1999.  And apparently, people didn’t talk about blogs back then so it never came up as a vocabulary word so…at a loss on that front.

But today is lovingly known as Xpol, the brain-child of Mission: Impossible.  People sign up, are matched with another blogger, you both post each other’s blog posts on a given date, and readers need to try to guess the original writer of the piece.  Get it?  So my post for today is free-floating somewhere around the lovely Internets and you need to guess who has it (that person would be the author of the blog post below).

So read this post.  BEFORE you even hover anywhere close to that hyperlink answer at the bottom, leave your guess in the comment section.  Did you hear that?  Before your mouse gets anywhere close to that hyperlink.  Then click over to read my thoughts that I posted over there.

Let’s begin…

Bonding

When I first was told that I’d be having twins, I have to admit I fantasized about the relationship the two of them would have. I envisioned two little toddlers who’d want to spend every waking moment together. They’d play together and get along famously. Boy, was I sorely mistaken. For whatever reason, S and J have acted less like the way I expected twins to behave and more like competitive, out-for-blood brothers.

While they were babies, I told myself that their lack of closeness was because they had spent so much of their early months apart. I overlooked the fact that each saw the other as nothing more than an obstacle to climb over or from which to take a coveted toy. The screaming fits and crying jags that erupted in this house over the simplest of things were enough to make your ears bleed on a regular basis. What one had, the other wanted. If one was in my lap, the other literally tried to rip the first out it in order to take his place. It was never ending.

I tried to tell myself, the bond was there. I just needed to be patient. But, I have to admit that it was getting harder and harder to hold on to the hope.

Occasionally I saw glimmers of the possibilities. There were the times that S was so sick in the hospital. J was never quite himself until the moment S started to feel the tiniest bit better. As S improved, J seemed to snap out of his own funk at exactly the same time. And, there was also their annoying habit of tag teaming their over tired parents at bed/nap time. One would fuss for what seemed like forever. When he would finally quiet and go to sleep, his brother would take the reins and start fussing in his place. Back and forth they’d go until they had driven us both crazy with frustration. Something was happening between the two of them. So what if their desire to drive us mad was the glue that stuck them together, right? At least it was something.

S and J have just turned two, and the bond I’ve dreamt about is finally emerging. One is no longer always the rival of the other. Dare I say it? Playing together has actually been seen around this place as of late.

Now, instead of stealing a toy from his brother, J will offer S a replacement so they can trade. S is honing his comedic abilities and tries as hard as he can to get a good laugh from J. Little examples of how much they love each other are witnessed all the time now.

It makes my heart sing to see the two of them together enjoying each other’s company.

This weekend, the boys were in their cribs in their bedroom. S was frustrated and wanted to get out of bed. It was still a little early, so I ignored him and tried to get a little more sleep instead. (A girl’s got to dream!).  Over the monitor I could hear the two of them talking. J tried to comfort S and told him several times “no cry.” S calmed down some. Soon after, I heard the first “Boo!” For the next seven minutes they played peek-a-boo. They laughed and giggled as they took turns scaring the other. It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen and heard.

All was right in the world.

It took that moment before it hit me. S and J are close. There is a strong bond between them. I need to stop worrying about their relationship resembling something from my head and let them figure out how it will look.

You know what?

It now looks like they are doing a fine job all on their own. 🙂

Okay, so now you need to guess the author–who wrote the piece above and what are your thoughts on it?  Once you’ve guessed by leaving a comment in the comment box, click on this link to go to Mel’s post from today and find out if you guessed correctly.

Directions: answer the question in the comment section.  Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc).  The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments gets…screwed.  My answer is below the picture.

Interpret this question broadly–trophy can be any type of award from a Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize to an Olympic gold medal.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: WHAT KIND OF TROPHY WOULD YOU LIKE TO WIN.

I have always wanted to win an Olympic gold medal and stand on the podium and have them lower the American flag over my head and have everyone sing the National Anthem.  During the 2002 Olympics, I was so sad watching the athletes and knowing I would never achieve this.  But I won’t be sad this year when the Olympics roll around again.  The reason will be this week’s Show and Tell.