a quick passing thought

Something I noticed since Petra's first birthday party... I wasn't able to take much of any pictures during Petra's party, especially/including the Chinese coming-of-one-year-old ritual that Declan also enacted. This was because, unlike Declan's first birthday, I chose to cook a big meal for everyone, so the majority of the party time was spent prepping and cooking since I did not manage time very well the night before.

But that's not my main observation--which is that at various points, all the moms would come to the kitchen and ask if they could do anything/how they could help. I told them repeatedly to just relax, upon which one of the moms wrung her hands helplessly and said, "I don't know how." Another mom ended up making soup, after having rounded up all the objects for the Chinese ritual.

Cake from Shemo, my favorite Israeli bakery. I also cooked a gluten-free vegan lunch 

to accommodate several people who keep kosher, one person who's vegan, 

and one person who's gluten-intolerant 

Is it that certain personalities--take-charge, type-A personality, strong leadership--lend themselves to be impressive, "natural-born" mothers? Or did these women became that way as the intensity of motherhood, Marine Corps-like, broke them down and re-molded their character?

Since then, I've entertained and/or hosted meals for other people, and once again, the mothers did the bulk of the helping out (Daniel's mom would consistently, much to my Chinese-DIL chagrin, clean up after mealtimes), so there's definitely something about them....

Moms taking a rare break from training up civilized children :P

God bless mothers. And many thanks for surrounding me with so many great ones from whom to learn as a bumbling mom-apprentice (or so I still feel like a lot of times).

memories in present tense

Tonight, Daniel, Declan, Petra, and I tried out a faux pan-Asian restaurant that opened on Moriya Street to mark Petra's first birthday and the day that Declan became a big brother. Petra is currently under the haze of a low-grade fever (day two now) and ate 50% of the food I placed before her while chucking the other half to the restaurant floor. Declan was surprisingly receptive to the food, before being admonished by a waitstaff to stop abusing the bamboo displays.

Looking across Moriya Street from the window by our table, I saw the corner flower shop that I passed by almost every day when we first moved to Haifa. The outdoor flower displays lead to a side street upon which sits the small Supersal makolet that was our source of groceries for the first two months of our life in Israel. It turned out to be the most expensive place to shop for food, and I soon started relying on other places like the Talpiot shuk, the Mega by the Cinemathique, the larger Supersal near Gan HaEm, the yarkan at Paris Square, Nizat Haduvdevan, the pseudo-shuks at Romema and by the front entrance of Superpharm on Friday mornings, the home delivery system of an organic farm... and settling now, for the most part, on Eco Meshek, another organic farm which also does home deliveries--with greater freedom to select produce I would actually eat (no more fennel/anise, thanks).

I've seen Eco Meshek's label on goat milk yogurts at Nizat Haduvdevan (an organic produce/product store that I'd stared at unseeingly for a year, as I waited across the street at the Merkaz Ziv bus stop that served as my transfer point to the Technion...before I finally realized what the cherry sign was and got a membership). I didn't think to visit Eco Meshek's website--posted on all its dairy products--to understand its operations more fully; I'm glad I finally know about its produce side upon the recommendation of another mom. Thankfully she wasn't satisfied with the organic produce box I've been settling with, and kept looking until she tried out this farm.  I appreciated my old farm for several reasons, but this one is definitely even better.

Grocery shopping in Israel is such an exploration, with prices and quality that can vary spectacularly in range. After one and a half years, I finally feel somewhat satisfied with my degree of knowledge on the ins-and-outs of where to get the best price for the best quality of food items. And I also realized after perusing the receipt for this week's Eco Meshek delivery, that I could essentially read and understand the whole list written in Hebrew. What a psychological difference from when it used to take me 45 minutes of excruciating matching and careful notations to decipher every supermarket receipt in order to make sure all the charges were made correctly. It's kind of silly how accomplished I feel at so small an improvement.

Look, Ma -- No hands!

Then, while waiting at a stoplight on our walk home, a friend stuck his head out of his van as traffic flowed past us and yelled, "Hey!" We almost always bump into people we know when Daniel and I walk near our neighborhood with the kids nowadays. And I enjoyed seeing a common quality in Israel as we stopped by Gan Shmuel before returning all the way home--older kids taking great interest and delight in playing with Declan up and down the playground structures. They seemed very disappointed when I said we had to leave, and repeatedly waved goodbye to Declan who was equally sad to go.

All of these things, tonight, made me feel like this place is starting to be my home. These are the things I will remember with nostalgia when we must be uprooted and sent off to elsewhere again.

happy 2014

Daniel's mom and sister traveled from Chicago to visit the family a week ago. We drove south to Jerusalem and observed the crossing over from 2013 to 2014 there in an 800-year-old abode that was built shortly after the Crusaders left and is now a hostel, which I always accidentally type as "brothel" before I remember the two words signify establishments of completely different natures.

Like sleeping in a grotto

The visit to Jerusalem left me more confused than ever about religion and the role of faith, devotion, etc. All I can say with great conviction on the topic of this ancient, greatly contested-over city is: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Amen. My two favorite places to visit are still the Garden Tomb and Hezekial's Tunnel. I'd forgotten how painful the tunnel is to walk through via barefoot, and Daniel's mom jokingly said, mid-plod, "You owe me one, Amy!" Make that half-jokingly.

I felt really bad about the way the stairs bit deeply into her soles on the way in and out of the tunnel. Thankfully, it was all sensory pain and no physical damage. Daniel and I wore Declan and Petra respectively in their own Ergo carriers (The "Desert Bloom" Ergo organic I recently bought secondhand from another mother via the "Babywearing Israel" facebook group came in the mail a few days before our trip--yay!); Declan was initially frightened by the rushing spring at the beginning of the tunnel and cried to be let out, then settled quietly to looking around like during the aqueducts tour in Naples. Petra swiftly fell asleep for the entire duration of our time underground. (Her go-to coping mechanism?)

My thoughtful husband later bought two "I survived Hezekial's Tunnel" tshirts for his mom and sister. I hope they'll wear them often and always laugh a little when they're putting on the shirts.

One downside in staying at a place that is over 800 years old is that it's not exactly well-ventilated or well-heated. Now everybody is sick and coughing and Petra is back to newborn intensity in terms of need for attention and care.

Sigh. I guess it's a good thing to remember lest I start to forget how miserable being pregnant always was for me and becoming open to having child #3.