Category: koala update
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To my bat mitzvah.
I could choose to roll my eyes at having to come up with another dvar torah related to one of my kids’ various Vayikra parshas – just a year later – but instead, I’ll leave the korbanot and the cohanim behind. Really, we have one word to focus on – look no further than the […]
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On to the next stage of modern teenage development: Looking over your shoulder.
Two days ago was Yom Yerushalayim, or Jerusalem Day – the celebration of the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, where Jews were finally allowed to roam freely in the Old City due to their own sovereignty. It’s a day I really only tend to think about in the context of traffic to my former Jerusalem […]
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To my bar mitzvah.
I’m in awe of Torah reading… getting up close to it… having a physical connection with the parchment… It’s not something I had access to from behind the kind of barrier they called a mechitza where I grew up. (I just realized this week I never even saw tefillin up close until now.) Watching you […]
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Koala update: thirteen years
Onward teenager! It’s a bizarre time… Gone (temporarily, I promise) are the days of babbling and bright eyes and demanding of the world. In: hooded sweatshirts, always up. Sorting through developing dark humor. Navigating new friends at new school, which involves a fair share of fast food, Marvel movies and midweek sleepovers. It feels like […]
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Zooey update: six years
I’ve spent six years looking at your pretty face, and marveling that there is nothing at all physically resembling mine – you’re a carbon copy, visually, of your dad. Well, there’s one thing – your freckles. We share that. But what I’ve spent the last year realizing is you have something else we share. Or […]
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Bebe update: eleven years
Been trying to remember what it was like being 11. It definitely wasn’t like how you do even 10, to be honest. So mature, so ahead of your time, and still so fun-loving and free and not bothered by what other people think. Let’s start with sister – man I wish I had an older […]
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Nettles update: eight years
You were born a bullet train, and eight years later, this is still an express line. If I hem and haw on a decision, you take it into your own hands (and footstool, and cellotape, and whatever you need to get it done when my back’s turned). You’ll get it done, if you want it […]
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Let’s have a wordle
I introduced my 12-year-old son to Wordle. At the same time, I introduced him to וורדעל. I love that both prospects are exciting, and we’re chatting with each other throughout the day about it (I still shudder at the fact he has a smartphone even if whatsapping together is a huge comms improvement). You know […]
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Fellow working moms – it gets better.
I came home from the office one day last week and had this realization. It’s gotten better. Or… it becomes *different* as the kids get older, and so much becomes more tolerable, doable, and you know what? Also better. Do my pre-teens still mime at me from behind my laptop while I’m on a Zoom, thinking I can […]
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Koala update: twelve years
To the boy who is ~5 inches from towering over me, It’s getting real. Twelve years of you, of figuring all this out, it’s always been real, yes, but now it’s puberty real. It’s preteen real. It’s who is this giant boy in my house real. So we’re both navigating it. You have questions, and […]
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Zooey update: five years
My youngest turns five today. Zooey, we’re full-on into that tug-o-war over getting bigger and staying baby… It’s not even day on, day off; it’s sometimes in five minute intervals. But I don’t begrudge you that; it’s been a year of fading boundaries, loose definitions, lost assumptions. Out of everyone, this year might have done […]
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Bebe update: ten years
I’d say that over the last decade, this feeling I’m about to describe has always been present in amounts, more often taken for granted – the swath of peace that came with you as a newborn, the displays of empathy that radiated from you as a toddler, the abundance of friendliness you have displayed as […]