Happy Birthday

Shabbos is my son's birthday.

He will be ONE. I can't believe it is a year!

One year old.

Adorable.

The baby of the family.

A year ago Thursday, I signed away my life by signing my closing documents on my house. My oldest and longest friend went to her fathers levaya while I was having contractions (I still think the news of his passing put me into labor, along with me bending and packing, and being 1 1/2 weeks late). Friday I had a baby boy. Sunday I came home from the hospital to pack. Monday, I went to the lawyers office with my husband for him to sign away his life, we finished packing. Tuesday, we moved into the house on Tuesday. Wednesday the kids came home and went to daycamp. Thursday was the vach nach, and Friday was the Bris. I can say that was one hectic week.


My kids are growing nicely, BH. My baby is one! We, actually, I am planning a birthday party for him this coming Sunday. You know, I came to the conclusion that you can never get everyone to coordinate their schedule. At least one brother will be here. Will try to get the other one here eventually. Now I just need to figure out how many kids will be here and how many party bags to prepare. I would rather have just enough than too much. But will take more prepared party bags than not enough bags. Now, how does one prepare to plan a party for a One year old who will have no idea that it is his birthday, and that all the kids are there for him? Do I need to have him in mind when I prepare the activities? Or just use his birthday as an excuse to get the people here?!


One year later, he is standing by himself. Crawling upstairs. Laughing. Makes himself understood when he is hurt or upset. Claps his hands. And really understands you when you tell him something. Will "say" yes or no with his head. And when told to say bye-bye, he waves. So, he might not talk but he fully understands what you are telling him. Maybe he will realize there is a party because of him. Smart little fellow.


A year has gone by. A year since I had my last baby. I year since I bought my house. Will always use his birthday as a milestone and date to know when we purchased the house (go figure). I am getting over the year part. Will let you know how his party went, after we have it.


Mazel Tov.

Stuff

Went to Baltimore yesterday for an afternoon wedding.
About thirty minutes into the trip, I realized that I left my shaitel at home.
There was no way possible to turn back, as we were already late.

When we hit Baltimore area, we went to Towson Mall, and went shopping.
For a hat.
The Rack didn’t have any white hats. The line was huge.
Nordstrom had one hat, but it wasn’t doable with my outfit.

Off to the mall we went. To Hechts.
Found this huge black hat.
I call it my church hat.
I bought it.

My cousin, who was so nice to watch two of my kids, lent me her hat-fall so that I didn’t have to go with just this huge hat.
I cannot believe I went out in public with such a hat.
It was fun to an extent.
I now have a church hat that I don’t know when I will wear it again.

As I mentioned before, my cousin watched the older kids for us while we went to the wedding. She has three of her own (twin boys and an older daughter) and I forgot when I asked, she is due in a month or so. She was fine with it. My kids were great (yay). She had two of the boys stuff, as the twins are boys. She had a small bike that my son was riding, the very bike I was looking to purchase. She offered it to us. She has been trying to get rid of it for a long time. Finally. She got rid of it. We were the happy takers. It is just his size. He loved it. He still loves riding it today. “Mommy, I told all my Moros about the new bike.”

We got a new swing set (incase I forgot to update you). We bought a used one, on Ebay. Go figure. Good deal. The kids love it. They spent the entire yomtov outside. They go out daily. They love it. Which means we love it as well. I want to fix it up and add to it, but will wait a little. It is a great toy for the kids. They will definitely play with this for a long long time.

Today

Company for almost all the Yom Tov meals.

Impressed.

A lot of cooking.

No room in the fridge.

Need FOUR menues.

Make sure it is all Cholov Yisroel for the company.

Make sure the company will like it.

Make sure I will like it.

Make sure I do all the muksah cooking today.

Figure out where to put all the food.

Figure out why I decided that this past Shabbos was a good Shabbos to go away.

Thank my husband for taking two of the three kids away for the day so I can spend all day cooking.

Figure out how to get cool air into the kitchen.

Hope that the food comes out good.

Have a good Yom Tov my dear readers.

Friends

Same debate.

Different person.

Who is right?

Who is wrong?

Stay-at-home Moms vs Working Moms.

I hate discussing it.

We each do what we feel is right.

You do things your way.

I will do things my way.

We can agree to disagree and agree to be friends.

Friends respect one another.

Friends don't always have to agree with one another in order to remain friends.

Friends are there for one another.

Friends understand one another, or say they do, even if they do not always.




*for my working friends, my stay at home friends, and everyone else.

Friends

Same debate.

Different person.

Who is right?

Who is wrong?

Stay-at-home Moms vs Working Moms.

I hate discussing it.

We each do what we feel is right.

You do things your way.

I will do things my way.

We can agree to disagree and agree to be friends.

Friends respect one another.

Friends don't always have to agree with one another in order to remain friends.

Friends are there for one another.

Friends understand one another, or say they do, even if they do not always.




*for my working friends, my stay at home friends, and everyone else.

We Got IT

Remember the post where I talked about a swing-set. Well, we bought one!

Actually my husband bought one. I was at the Zoo with my children and their cousins and aunt. My husband went with a dear friend who came to NJ to help him take it apart. The next day, he went by himself to pick up the pieces and to take it apart even more, because now he had a min-van instead of the rental truck that they were hoping for. Today is Thursday, and it is up and running. He fixed many things himself, and definitely put it together himself. Hurray. The kids are so very excited about it.

Over the past few weeks, my lovely daughter kept asking us to get a swing-set. I am not sure if she thought of this on her own, or because she kept on hearing our conversation on this topic, and we showed her brochures and catalogs from different companies. Nonetheless, we have a very nice sized swing-set in our backyard and we will not even be home for Shabbos this week for them to enjoy. But, we will be home for Shavuos and that is TWO days (plus erev). I really hope they enjoy it and play with it.

Rant

I went to the infamous tznius shiur this past week. I wanted to go because I knew personally one of the speakers and was curious what she had to say. I didn’t realize until right when I go there that the video presentation was on tznius. Had I knows, I am not so sure I would have gone. Probably to hear the one speaker, but I guess it is a good thing that I went.

I am not going to give over the shiur and the musser we received. But I have a valid complaint. One of the people talking brought up fashion. They referred to the designers as the low life designer in Paris or on Madison Avenue. I have big issues with that. Is it really necessary to put someone else down in order to make ourselves better? Is it really part of our masorah that in order to stress how better and how we should be above everyone else that we need to put them down and mock fun at them and call them names? How hypocritical it is to do such things. We don’t allow our kids to bad mouth other children. We teach them that we should find the good in others, and yet here we are, doing the opposite.

Remember when we want to make a point and to point things out, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. I don’t care what, there is no valid reason to put others down to make yourself look better. Especially those whom we use! We use those fashion designers to design our clothing. If not their clothing them a knock-off. And please, when was the last time a heimishe person designed clothing or other things we wear. We just do not do that. So why do we have to lower ourselves and to stoop to their level by calling them “low-lifes” and other not so nice words.

Sorry for ranting, but it does bother me. I have some other issues, but just not for now.