What is the hardest part?

Is it the mourning for the dead, the prayers for the injured?

Is it the fright and terror for those who are missing?

What is the hardest part?

Is it watching the news footage from home and crying, shaking our heads?

Is it the disbelief, fractured yet again, that there are people in the world who would brazenly murder innocents, this time so close to home?

Is it the knowledge that because of this, we may never be able to look at the finish line of a marathon without an involuntary shudder? Is it the knowledge that there will never again be a day where something like this hasn’t happened yet?

What is the hardest part?

Is it looking at our phones, our computer screens, our televisions, and wondering how we are going to tell our children that there are people in the world like this — that there are people in the world who are broken themselves and therefore want to break the world around them?

What is the hardest part?

The hardest part is undoing what has been done.

Some would say it is impossible. And on one level, of course it is. The horror has been wrought.

But on another level, a more abstract level, it is not impossible. With every day that we decide to not only embrace life, but also to live it in a way that helps others, we work to undo the damage done.

We vow, in passionate fury and sadness, to do what must be done to make the world whole again.

We vow not to fear those who would destroy the world, but rather to align ourselves with every breath of our lives with those who would repair what is broken.

We vow not to lose sight of what matters, and to do everything we can to ensure that our view of human life as being worth something, as being sacred, is perpetuated, from generation to generation.

It is far easier to destroy than to build.

But goodness itself is a marathon – it is long, and hard, and grueling. It doesn’t show results right away. It is the cumulative sweat and work of day after day, and of the way we hope, and choose, to live our lives.

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: boston marathon, featured, terrorism

Tomorrow is Yom Ha’atzmaut, aka Israel Independence Day. It celebrates the anniversary of the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948 (or, according to the Jewish calendar, the 5th of Iyyar in 5708).

In Israel, it’s celebrated with fireworks, barbecues, and public concerts. In America, it’s celebrated with a manicure (or at least it can be…)

Yael Buechler, the fabulous rabbi behind Midrash Manicures, in which she creates nail art for each weekly Torah portion and holidays, has offered up this great tutorial for how to do your own Israeli flag nail art in celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut. It’s pretty simple and will look super cute on adult and kiddie nails alike. Here’s how it’s done. You can use a toothpick to do the finer details.

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• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, Israel, midrash manicures, nails, Yom Ha'Atzmaut

“I want to be a part of the sisterhood of women who use their breasts to give life. I want to redeem myself. I want to try again. I want to know that I am not broken.” Kim Simon’s story over at the Huffington Post yesterday brought me to my knees. But her planning and hope for a second chance made me want to stand up and change the way we talk to mothers about nursing.

Parts of her story were my story, the screaming, the hungry baby, the misinformation. The nurses and lactation consultants with blue gloves manipulating my sore breasts into my tiny son’s mouth muttering words like: jaundice. Failure to thrive. Dehydrated. I didn’t know what a “good latch” looked like and I couldn’t hear a soft “ka” swallowing sound amidst my crying or his crying or doctors or criticism. All those things swirling around in my head became the perfect storm when my own family told me that I was a horrible mother for trying relentlessly to nurse my son. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: breastfeeding, featured, guilt, la leche league

I had my oldest son a few months before I turned 30. Not young in the majority of the world. Not even particularly young in the United States. On the Upper West Side of New York, however, when I asked my doctor if, at 36, I was too old to think about having a third child, he told me, “Most of my patients your age are still thinking about thinking about having their first baby.”

The thing is, even though I gave birth to my first child in 1999, I’d already been raising one for about two decades prior to that. My brother. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: alloparenting, featured, immigration, siblings

We’re very excited to announce the next pick for the Kveller Book Club: The Mothers by Jennifer Gilmore. As if the title alone didn’t cue you in as to why we chose it, the subject matter of this brand new book is very close to Kveller’s heart. The novel centers around Jesse and Ramon, who, after years spent unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, turn to adoption.

What results is an honest and powerful portrayal of adoption, with all of its complexities and complications, from a woman who’s been through it herself. Inspired by her and her husband’s own long adoption process, Gilmore based a large part of The Mothers on her own experience. For a glimpse into Jennifer’s world, check out this piece by her that we published today, about what it was like to find out her sister was pregnant, amidst her own struggles.

We’ll be hosting a book discussion with the Kveller editors on the blog on Wednesday, May 8th, as well as an interview with Jennifer Gilmore. Purchase the book at Amazon and a portion of the proceeds will help support Kveller and the book club. We hope you can join us this month as we read this wonderful book!

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: book club, featured, the mothers

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For more on talking to your kids about the Holocaust, click here.

I was probably in the second or third grade when I asked my mother what a swastika looked like. We were sitting at the long wooden table in the kitchen at my grandmother’s house where we were living. Copper pots hung above our heads and a pot of freshly made tomato sauce was simmering on the stove.

My mother was clearly surprised by my question. She looked at me pensively for a minute or two, and then walked over to the small wooden box on the counter where my grandmother kept her pens and pencils. My mother inspected each pencil until she found the one she wanted. It was covered in deep, jagged scratches, as if someone had bitten into the wood over and over again. The small metal ring at the end was rusty and bent where the eraser had once been, meaning that anyone who tried to erase their words would end up tearing the paper.  Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, holocaust, Yom HaShoah

1. Children will do things you tell them not to do (2:17)

2. They will blame each other (3:12)

3. You will curse at them, or perhaps want to (3:17)

4. Not all siblings get along all that well (4:8)

5. Children babble and make a lot of noise (11:19)

6. Your children may have to go off on their own journeys (12:1)

7. You may love your children so much that you put yourself at risk (19:26)

8. Do not, under any circumstances, let your children get you drunk so they can have sex with you even if they think it is the end of the world (19:32) Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Bible, featured, tips

I was standing on my front step, shaking out the hallway rug as part of my Passover cleaning, when the thought suddenly appeared in my mind, in large bold letters that erased everything else I had been thinking about.

“I am so lucky to have my own home to clean.”

The intensity of my gratitude in that moment surprised me. I hadn’t been thinking about the many blessings of my life, as I try to do on a regular basis. Quite the opposite: I was silently bemoaning the challenges of the holiday, as I have done every year since we started observing Passover more seriously. The cleaning is laborious, the dietary restrictions increasingly challenging as my daughter’s range of acceptable foods becomes smaller and smaller. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure why I kept with it year after year–probably because it is important to my husband, and because I want our daughters to grow up in a home that is Jewish in more than name and mezuzah in the doorway.  Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, gay marriage, holocaust, Passover

“Dear God, how many hours until bedtime?” I mutter from my prone position on the playroom floor as Legos bounce off of my head.

And how long have I been doing this, anyway? I’m home with the kids today, and my husband left for work at 7:30, so it’s been eight hours (not all of them involved being pummeled by Legos, but still). Now the Legos are hitting me in the arm as my toddler flings them into the air, his giggles piercing the torpid afternoon. Let’s see…if there are no major meltdowns, I can reasonably expect to get both kids into bed by 8:30, so I’ve got five more hours to go. Five more hours is doable, right? Five is a lot less than eight, so clearly I’ve reached the downhill part of my day. No problem, I think. I’m golden. I’m coasting. I’m… oh, for crying out loud, can’t they make Legos out of something softer? Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, milestones, omer, Passover, Shavuot

Via BustedBinkyDesigns on Etsy

As you probably could have guessed we’re closing up shop here early today. In preparation for Passover I’m eating a giant bagel and trying to think of genius way to get my daughter to sit at the seder table for more than five minutes.

This morning my husband tried to go over a very G-rated version of the exodus story. When he explained that slaves “worked all day long” she turned to us and said, “like you?” And she wasn’t so into our rendition of “Let My People Go,” but preferred her own version, “Let My People Dance,” which I think has great potential for a viral YouTube video.

That is all to say that I’m not sure how meaningful the holiday will be for her beyond an understanding that there is this tradition where we eat crackers and all sit down for a fancy dinner. And Mama buys us weird kitchy things like matzah bibs (yep) and onesies and t-shirts for all the kids with their names on it next to a piece of embroidered matzah. (Is there a name for the mom that thinks she’s crafty because she buys cute, crafty stuff on Etsy for her kids that other moms have made? Anyhoo, that’s me.)

Because my daughter doesn’t attend a Jewish preschool, we feel an extra pressure to explain the holidays in a way that makes them sound accessible, fun, and not totally bonkers. We have our work cut out for us. (Check out this video if you’re looking for a kid friendly explanation of the Passover story.)

So, this is all to say that we’re wishing you and your families a meaningful and joyous Passover no matter how you celebrate it. And we’ll be back on Thursday to bitch and moan about not eating bread (while secretly hoping that the mini-Atkins diets helps melt away the baby weight).

Chag pesach sameach!

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, Passover