... kind of a loud off-beat primal rhythm. But a rhythm.
For all the people cooking and baking and cleaning the crap out of their houses right now... good on ya. I made some salt dough last week and I took that toaster waffle and apple core out for a picnic with the farm puppets last Monday. We're talking Food Network stuff here.
That's about as elaborate as I'm getting with our kitchen appliances these days. And cleaning? Well, technically Chaya helps with the laundry and the bathrooms and her room now, so... well... it's the thought that counts, mostly.
Preschool is set to pick up again from a distance this morning after "spring break" happened last week.
Distance learning: Between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. today, all preschool parents will caravan over to the preschool parking lot. Through the driver's side window we'll announce our child's name to a masked and appropriately distant teacher. We'll open our trunk (raising the pressing question: what bizarre things have I left in the trunk and forgotten about??). A masked preschool worker will plop a learning packet in our trunk for us to escort home, re-disinfect, and force on - er, share with - our children. Something like that.
I see this... creating mild distraction anyways. And some gnashing of teeth when Chaya really understands that we're going to preschool but not getting out or staying there. I've tried to explain that part but she hears what she hears.
We've already had a few email worksheets to hold us over on the pre-k activity front. Chaya colors on them for sure. But try explaining any grander intention.
Pattern recognition? Um, no the world is chaos and nobody NOBODY really knows what bug comes next in the sequence. Hume, mommy. Just because the sun has risen in the past, does NOT mean it will rise again. Duh! It could be anything. Our life is a series of random nothings pulled together into imagined cohesion by desperate brains afraid of the chaos. Behold, the chaos cherub!!
Paint by numbers? Surel you are joking. No. No the elephant is blue. All blue. Just stop crushing my vision, bourgeois cryptofacist smeghead .
Color in all the Es... um, ok do you not know what an E is at your age? What's wrong with you?
Our preschool's Facebook is peppered with pictures of little baby gunners who fill in all their art work to spec, write their names where they should, and then do several additional "darling" pinterest type crafts with crepe paper and toilet rolls (NOW I know why there's a run on toilet paper... the mom brigade needed them for crafting!!!). Smiling all stepford-style lovingly at their teachers that they probably never even have bitten for no discernible reason on their last days of school.
Displaying art with perfectly drawn in lines that - I'm sorry, but let's be honest - we all know their parents totally "helped" with. Then they add some pictures of the kids doing their wonderful zumba animals workout and a good long pledge drive of perfect unicycling around the block while playing the accordion. Just for good measure. Like, seriously, why did you even need preschool? Preschool was holding these super achievers back!
No, really. I'm so glad you spent all yesterday building a perfect replica of the Taj Mahal with repurposed toilet rolls and home dyed finger paints. How nice for you!
We... we were dogs and took walks around the house and then Chaya wanted to play fetch so I threw a ball for her for a while that she accurately returned in her mouth, and then we spent roughly ten hours pretending to be dogs pooping, peeing and sneezing. Dogs poop on the grass, you know. But we are responsible and flush the grass from time to time.
School of life, yo. Biology damnit!
Our big event of the "spring break" week was, of course, Passover. And, like most every other American Jewish family, on Wednesday we lit the candles and fired up the Zoom.
I'm not exactly a competent chef or any kind of Jew, so my preparatory efforts were not extraordinary.
I'll admit I got most of my guidance from borrowing Chaya's book: Sammy the Spider Celebrates Passover (kid-friendly for repurposing several children's songs with passover themes AND for conveniently skipping the majority of the really gruesome plagues in the telling of the Passover story).
Most years I make Matzoh Ball soup for actual dinner, but I just didn't have it in me (at least in my deliverey cart) this year, so Andrew had rice, and Chaya and I ate several thousand pounds of matzo, some charoset (nuts and fruit and honey and sweet wine, symbolizing mortar but tasting like free form apple pie), and some hardboiled eggs.
Still. I did well enough for us three. We had salt water for dipping the bitter herb in. We had wilted parsley (bought a little too early, but that's when we get our order.) We had a plate of matzo so we could break the middle one and hide the bigger half for Chaya to "find" and then "ranson" for M&Ms (and/or brussels sprouts dipped in vinegar which is now her favorite dessert, I kid you not).
Our Seder plate had only one dinosaur stamp-as-random-substitution: shank bones are not as easy to get from amazon or grocery deliverers. I made some stellar non-alcoholic charoset, hard boiled some eggs, and served sparkling grape juice that Andrew and I called "wine"because after reading about drinking wine in Sammy the Spider several times, Chaya was dead set on wine.
This clever relabeling resulted in Chaya repeatedly pounding her cup on the table and then yelling "WINE!!! MORE WINE!!!!" throughout the evening. This started well before the Seder began and went right up until she knocked her fifth cup of the evening against the wall and forever bade adieu to our damage deposit.
At any rate, it was really cool to connect with the 8 other households participating that evening. And Chaya's adorkable shenanigans were far less stressful due to our ability to (1) not be responsible for staining anyone else's table, clothing, wall, ceiling, (2) mute ourselves, so the Haggadah reading and subsequent conversation could continue unabated by shrieks of "MORE WINE" and various gutteral grunts and screams. Zoom is a great way for parents with young children to participate in ... anything involving adults who don't also have young children.
But we didn't stop there...
April is just Aprolling And Easter has also also occurred. Yep, Easter. You know, Chaya's favorite holiday. The one she's been waiting for since before Christmas and which was now happening in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Fortunately Chaya is an Easter bunny so this was all on her.
Well kind of.
I pulled through with the Easter basket consisting of a new book, matching bunny shirts and a bunch of leftovers from last Easter.
She added her own brand of gleeful "GAAAASP I FOUND AN EGG!" excitement. Every time she stumbled over the eggs I'd so carefully lain in tripping range, it was like winning the Chaya lottery.
To top it off, I hard boiled a few eggs to paint with Chaya's water color kit. Made a cool effect actually. Pretty much immediately ate them afterwards. Take whatever symbolism there you so desire.
Honestly, what with the plague going around, Passover feels more relevant just now. But let's hold on to life and rebirth and empty tombs. These will work. Also - candy, plastic eggs, very very easy egg hunts.
With that, we head onward into spring with a lot more candy. More open windows. Vague plans for "the big move" in about two months. A whole lot of open question marks on stacks of summer vacations and plans. Hopefully more groceries soon (I still can never order quite enough so this last day is full of "interesting" improvs and rationing)
Peaceful fun physically but not emotionally distant excursions to you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment