Adventures in Mama-Land

I’ve been SO good.  So very, very good about not acquiring any new carriages.  But sometimes, it’s just stroller karma, and I can’t help it. When you get rid of five carriages you don’t want (old Pliko, missing fabric; Bertini frame, broken brake; Bertini frame & seat, bent axle; huge pink double jogger, too heavy & skunk-smelly), it’s just bashert (foreordained) that a new one will find you… Out walking on Glen Cedar today (with the pretty-good navy BabyTrend side-by-side double my mother found at the curb for me!), I found an older-model Peg Perego Tender Twin front-to-back double.  The problem:  how to schlep the HUGE Peg Perego home with us?  No problem!  It folded pretty smoothly and I stashed it on top of the hood of the BabyTrend to bring it home and test it out.  We were an extra-wide load,  however, and I didn’t even bother trying to wheel the wide double with the wider folded double into either of the stores we visited...

We’re out for supper at Mommy’s, then out for lunch at our neighbours. (And hey, these are my REAL daffodils.  I love them!!!  Don’t you?) As I sat down to post this, I noticed that another Jewish homeschooler / blogger, Al Pi Darko Mama , is also officially NOT making Shabbos this week .  However, being the uber-mama that she is – as opposed to the slovenly “Yay an extra day to play Farmville!” mama I am – she used the opportunity to clean up her house and prepare a sushi platter to bring to her hosts.  Figures. Okay, we did clean up a bit.  And no, I didn’t really play Farmville all day.  But I did get outside and finish my garden-edging project.  Yay!  Wish I’d taken “before” pictures, but please believe me:  this is a heck of a lot more tame than it was when I started.  At least now you can see where the grass ends and the garden starts… kinda. For those reading this blog who come from warm places (ie anywhere but he...

Two posts with recipes from the same blog – one I’ve never seen before.  ( Treppenwitz – the wisdom of the stairs ; no idea what that means) One offers a recipe for a homemade vanilla extract , apparently an important thing in Israel, where real vanilla extract is hard to come by.  We have been using artificial for years because of the price, and it’s not too bad.  If it is this cheap and easy, however, we may switch to homemade vanilla.  I’ve also been meaning to make vanilla sugar for a while – an easy way of getting a natural vanilla flavour into recipes… maybe now I will. The second is a recipe for homemade Kahlua .  I don’t know if this actually is something I’d like to try because of the easy availability of Godiva coffee liqueur.  I’m sure the “ersatz” version costs much less… but is it equally smooth and palatable?  I guess for the cost of a couple of cups of vodka, it might be worth a try.  (or, if you substitute rum, apparently...

After last week’s tomato-planting spree , I was all geared up for the First Tomato to Sprout 2010 and was planning an exultatory post lauding the victor.  So it was kind of anticlimactic when, on Tuesday afternoon (I checked in the morning!) they all sprouted, basically at once.  Here they are at 2 days of age; yeah, it took me two days to get around to taking a picture. A couple of varieties are more sparsely reresented:  Ildi has only a couple of seedlings; they were old seeds and I wasn’t expecting much, but we loved these yellow tomatoes so much last year, I wanted to use up the dregs of the packet.  100s and 1000s, however, was a brand-new packet, as were the “Red Currant” tomatoes at the other end… yet  very few of each have sprouted so far.  So I’m a bit disappointed, but basically, this is a great showing. The huge “forests” of tomato seedlings are caused by my own poor seed-saving strategies.  When the seeds are completely dry, they te...

Came into the kitchen a couple of evenings after Pesach to find Ted sitting on the floor, all contemplative.  He was putting back the fridge magnets (yes, we put away our fridge magnets for Pesach; there is NO WAY we could get them all clean!), and was apparently  scheming about how to lay out the alphabet letters. Here’s what he came up with:

I don’t usually post responses here to other blog posts, but I was intrigued by Hadassah Sabo Milner’s guest post on DovBear’s blog, entitled Mikvah Rules .  She writes about a mikvah with a policy not to admit anyone who is a non-Orthodox convert. Because I had a similar experience (kinda), I thought I would post it in the comments there – and also here, because I have been neglecting this blog lately.  Life has been sucking.  But it’s nice to get the brain in gear a bit. Here’s what I wrote. “Long LONG ago (during my first marriage), the first time I went to an Orthodox mikveh, and I mentioned that it was my first time, they asked about my husband's conversion, our marriage, etc. Probably bc I was a total newbie, even after a few times of going to the "liberal" mikveh.  After I told her what was up, the mikveh lady said, "I could let you toivel (dunk), but you'd only be going home to your Christian boyfriend."  The words so...

Here is the email message I am sending around... feel free to read it and donate whatever you want - or join us walking! Hi, everybody! This is a "mass" email, but I am sending it to one person at a time because I want to make sure you know that a) I would never just spam everybody in my address book, and b) this is a cause that means a lot to me personally. We are walking in memory of Elisheva's grandmother (GAAH - I accidentally said GRANDMOTHER but it was her great-grandmother and her GRANDMOTHER was the one who caught it and I am so embarrassed!!!), who had ALS, as well as in honour of our friend Arlene, who is currently living with the effects of the disease. Other than the Zareinu Moveathon, this is the only fundraiser our family is planning this year, so I hope you will click the link below, read a bit of the background information there, and consider sponsoring us in this fun and meaningful walk. Thank you! Jennifer & Elisheva p.s. ...