Pajama Party for Girl6

I know that I write a lot of posts about my daughter. She is great fodder for a mama-blogger.

Her birthday party? A class all of its own. 

For the last six months or so, Yael has been planning her birthday party. We decided early on that she would have a pajama party. Before you get all excited, note that I didn't say a "sleepover" or even an "undernighter." Yael's party was from 3:30-4:30pm, it was purely a party in which people wear pajamas. It was pajama-themed. 

That wasn't the part that Yael planned. The biggest deal for her was the guest list. In our house, you get to invite (approximately) the same number of guests as the years of your age. She had to narrow her list down to six friends. For weeks...nay, for months...she has been writing and re-writing the list. She takes the school Buzz Book and reads the names. She has spelled the names. She has decorated the names. 

When the time came to make the final list (that is, send out the evite), she was absolutely ready. In fact, I think everyone in the house could recite the list of guests!

Remarkably, all of her guests were available. I try so hard to convey to the other parents the full weight of this invitation from her. She chose so carefully! I so appreciate that the other parents "got it."

Yael wanted chocolate cupcakes.

Decorated with pink frosting.

And sprinkles.

"And everyone's initials on their cupcake, mom. Because I can tell you everyone's initials."

So often, parties are about the guest of honor. To Yael, it was very much about making all of her guests feel special and welcome and important. And that is one of the things that makes her so special. 

So we decorated them all with initials. 

The rest of the party went off as expected. There were our usual party games, like "pin the pillow on the bed" and relay races and hot potato (played with a bedroom slipper). There were bedtime stories, most of which were about...well...bedtime. The Abba Sababa led the group in some "bedtime calisthenics" which were hilarious as usual. And of course, we ate cupcakes and had general chaotic wonderful birthdayness. And even Michael and I wore our jammies!

It was fairly perfect in Yael's mind.

I think she's already planning for next year.

Now She Is Six

The boys all have their birthdays in November and December.
What am I saying? Everyone in our household has their birthday in November or December.

Except Yael.

She never fails to mention that her birthday is "last" - which makes sense if you live life by the Jewish calendar or in Yael's world, where all the birthdays come in rapid-fire succession. We've tried hard to explain and convince her that her birthday is actually first. Sigh.

Either way, my little girl is now six years old!

Six! That's a big number.
And of course, with two older brothers and a younger one, she is her own unique blend of awesome.
She is fun and funny, able to make up intense creative imaginings that keep her busy for hours.
Her emotions are loud and powerful, and she feels a need to make her presence known.
She is amazing with her little brother and totally worships her big brothers.
Except when they make her crazy and she heads into her "office" for a little alone time.

Happy birthday to my sweet girl....

Banana Oatmeal Muffins {Recipe}

also known as...The End of a Blender Era

Today happens to be my wedding anniversary. Thirteen years.

It seems like a long time, and then it feels very short....isn't that how time just goes?

I still have a few of my wedding presents, including my blender.

It was very nice.

I liked it a lot.

Tonight, I killed it.

Poor blender. RIP

While making these muffins.

Banana-Oatmeal Muffins (based on this recipe that I found on Pinterest)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Spray muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Into your blender, put:

1 cup Greek yogurt

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2-3 ripe bananas

1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

(optional: 1 tablespoon PB2 powder, if you happen to have it and like peanut butter as much as I do)

Blend them all together.

Then add 2 1/2 cups of old-fashioned oatmeal about 1/2 a cup at a time.

Pour it all into the muffin pan.

Bake about 15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Remove immediately from the pan and cool.

They are quite yummy.

Almost worth the new blender I'm going to have to get!

Nom nom nom....

My Journey to Cuba

I just returned from five days in Havana, Cuba.

You're thinking....Cuba!? How did *that* happen!?

Turns out, you can travel to Cuba legally from the United States, if you have a special humanitarian visa. (There are other ways, as well, but this is how we did it.) In fact, our congregation has been taking trips to Cuba for over 10 years, on this special visa that allows us to bring aid and comfort to the Jewish community.

There are Jews in Cuba!?

Of course, silly. There are Jews (almost) everywhere.

Actually, the Jewish community of Cuba was once thriving but is now a pretty small remnant. There are probably less Jews in Havana now than we have in one seating on the High Holy Days at our synagogue! For sure, there are more Jews in Highland Park, Illinois, than in Cuba.

You can read a little more about the Jews of Cuba here.

We were able to bring into the country a lot of medical and school supplies, things that are hard for them to come by, and we also brought cash donations to aid their programs, such as senior day care, youth learning, and ritual observances. We visited the two Jewish centers in Cuba - one is Ashkenazi and one Sephardi (but they work together a lot) and some of their projects. One of their main projects is a community pharmacy that helps to supplement the state-run pharmacies that provide medical care in Cuba.

Before we went, I read as much as I could about Cuba. This still left me completely unprepared for the sheer beauty and decay of the place, the happiness all around me, the total poverty that I could see in so many places, and the experiences of being a part of what was once a magnificent city. I know that most of what we saw is "touristy" - even though Americans can't travel as tourists to Cuba, many others certainly do! I met Canadians, Europeans, and South Americans who were all visiting Cuba purely as a tourist destination. It was warm and beautiful, with beaches and beautiful sites to see. The food was quite good, although we didn't drink the tap water, we didn't have any trouble finding places that our guide deemed "safe" for us to eat (and try the mojitos). Nearly every place we ate, there was live music and we also spent just a few minutes in the baseball stadium to get a feel for the Cuban national pastime.

At the end of the trip, we asked our participants (there were 36 of us in total) to offer 6-word summations of the trip. My favorite one was "Short flight. Landed fifty years ago." Only 45 minutes away from Miami is this country that truly feels like a trip to the past. The buildings, the cars, the mentality... even though modernity is slowly coming to Cuba, there is still an old-world feeling to this place.

Of course, I took a LOT of pictures (although there were many other shutterbugs on our trip, so I didn't take even close to the most pictures!) and here are some of my favorites....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

You might also like: 

I once reviewed a book about Cuba.

2 Bowls?!

I got a new mixer this year (long story) and I really love it. It's just a bigger version of my old one, but it's shiny and red.

For my birthday, two of my friends bought me a second bowl for the mixer.

My dad's comment? "If anyone needs two bowls for a mixer, it's you."

Truthfully, I wasn't totally sure that anyone needed two bowls. Then again....when you need 2, nothing else will do!

So I got my hands on the library's copy of the Smitten Kitchen cookbook (which I'm now planning to buy, by the way). It was beautiful. Even more beautiful than her blog, if that's possible. (My only complaint? Many of the recipes are on multiple pages -- this recipe that I'm about to talk about had the ingredients on one page and the instructions on the next, so I was constantly going back and forth. I *might* have made the library's copy a tiny bit sticky....)

Inside the cookbook was a recipe for Gooey Cinnamon Squares.

Put the word "gooey" and "cinnamon" together and I'm totally sold.

Once I read the somewhat fiddly recipe, I was less excited but I decided this was a perfect opportunity to try out my second bowl for the mixer.

They were delicious, although not as pretty as the ones in the cookbook.

Recipe, slightly adapted:

Cookie Base

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder (instead of the cream of tartar and soda)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup milk

 

Gooey Layer (it just *sounds* delicious)
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar (225g - this is a good place to use your kitchen scale)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Topping

2 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 F. Line the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch cake pan with parchment, allowing the ends to hang over at least 2 inches. Coat pan and parchment with cooking spray. Set aside.
2. Make the cookie base: Stir together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 2 min. Add the egg and milk and beat until combined. Stir in flour mixture until just incorporated. Spread dough into an even layer in the prepared pan; set aside. (This was tricky, I used my fingers)
3. Make the gooey layer: Whisk together the corn syrup, milk, and vanilla in a bowl and set aside. In an electric mixer (second bowl but you could probably just wipe out the first bowl) cream butter, 1 cup sugar and salt until fluffy. Add the egg and beat until combined. Add the flour and corn syrup mixture by thirds, mixing each time until all ingredients are incorporated. Dollop over the cookie base and spread into an even layer. (Less tricky than the first spread!)
4. Mix together 2 tbsp sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over the gooey layer. Bake until edges have set and center is still gooey, 35 min. Let cool completely, about 3 hr. Lift from pan using the parchment; cut into 1-inch squares. Can be kept covered at room temperature for 3 days...bwah ha ha. If they last that long. And just *TRY* not to eat them warm. I dare you.

Yum.

Do You Have a Favorite Tree?

The holiday of Tu BiShvat is coming, so obviously, I've got trees on the brain.

Today as I drove to work, the trees were coated in a gorgeous shiny shellacking of ice. It's almost as beautiful as a coating of snow. They glittered in the sunlight.

Yesterday, I was at a gathering in which I was asked for my favorite tree. Only one creative soul in the group had a favorite, and it was her NEW favorite. Meaning that she previously had an OLD favorite tree.

Both were pretty cool.

She likes this one (the OLD favorite)

Image from National Geographic

and this one (the NEW favorite):

Image from Wikipedia

I was impressed.
Do I have a favorite tree?

I like the trees in the fall when they change color. I love the different kinds of leaves and the way that they become different colors - some are supremely red, shockingly bright. Some have different colors as they blow in the wind, and they ripple with beauty. Some are silvery or purple-hued.

I love a good weeping willow - so grand and majestic, yet somehow sad because of their name.

I tell stories about apple trees a lot, it seems, and they are so friendly with their branches heavy with fruit. In the summer, I love to sit under any nice cool shady tree and peek at the blue sky above. I dream of perfect birch trees in which to perch my children and take their perfect photos.

But even though all sorts of trees are nice, I think it is in the darkest dark of coldest cold winter that I start to dream about this kind of tree:

Image from Wikipedia

Do you have a favorite tree?

2013: Opening Thoughts

Some updates, some thoughts, some future-thinking...

First things first:
Things are going well in Cancerland.
Sam rang the bell to signify the official "end of treatment" and we are breathing a little easier.

In other, unrelated news:

There's a new trend in "new year's resolutions" - choosing one word to inspire the upcoming year.

I like it. Because, like Calvin, I'm in no need of repair:

Ha.
Right.

So I've given this a lot of thought over the last few weeks. See how it's taken me until the 10th day of the year to even write the post?

I've decided that my One Word for 2013 is going to be COURAGE.

It's not that I want to banish fear from my life, since courage is often associated with fearlessness. On the contrary. I think that true courage is embracing the fear, holding on tightly to it, and running with it. The word courageous is bandied about to refer to people who do amazing things - but often even they themselves will say that they were filled with fear during those moments of courage.

But they kept going.

And since it seemed a little too complex to use "Not-Paralyzed-By-Fear-of-Unknown/Change/New/Different/Hard" - I figured I could shorten it up to COURAGE.

So what am I going to do with all that courage?
Hmm. That's a good question. I often feel that I get stuck in a routine, that I work on something that "works" and so I don't want to change it. I know that I look for new ideas, new plans, new projects ... but many of them get lost in words like busy, tired, overwhelmed....and I think that a lot of that is really just a list of secret names for fear. So I'm hoping to use my One Word to push back against those words that I use, and peel them back...and find some new courage.

There might be some new projects, and there might not. There might be some new ideas, and there might not. Maybe "new" is just a mask for fear of continuing with things the way they are. So maybe it works both ways.

Whatever it is - I'm hoping that this One Word will guide me. I might update you on what's going on with it. I might not. I'm still not sure how it will play out...and I think I'm okay with that uncertainty. I do tend to be fearful of not-knowing....so today's moment of courage is living in this uncertainty of what might be.

So as we jump into 2013 with both feet...what's your word?