Can I just say one thing? Ben & Jerry's Light Phish Food.
OK, one other thing. Chocolate Light Ice Cream, Gooey Marshmallow, a Caramel Swirl & Fudge Fish. (I'm reading the description right off the carton, which is close to empty.)
Now that I've talked a little about how much I've been enjoying Israel, let me just say it's missing something really really important: B&J's Light Phish Food. And now that we're in Chicago, my ice cream muse and I have been reunited.
I realize that Israel is a sort of serious place in the eyes of the world, and tends to be a lightning rod for a million controversial issues. We're not going there right now. We're keeping it shallow, like most of us are in our daily lives. Sorry, no offense. I include myself. You and I both probably care about a few shallow things every day. And day after day, there's no Phish Food in Israel.
Now, there ARE lots and lots of other extremely yummy things to eat. In every supermarket there are about 400 kinds of cheese. Some kinds are even broken down into cow, sheep and goat's milk versions. Also, hummus is not a "dip" sold in little lunch-size containers, it's a staple and you can buy it by the half-gallon. Pita is real pita. Not the sad, flat flying saucers you get in stores here. The produce is fabulous. Great domestic wines. On and on.
But there are no graham crackers. No canned pumpkin. No Cool Whip. No Wheat Chex, or 400 other kinds of cereal that have been invented in recent years by American chemists. A lot of the processed foods that have made America great just haven't made it to Israel yet. Importing is expensive and maybe not every Israeli loves these things as much as they should.
Nadav's mom has told me about when they first arrived in the mid-'80s and the supermarket situation was bleak. For Americans, anyway. They had something called American Day once a year at the store. Then, you could buy peanut butter, marshmallow fluff and other exotic delights. Most of the time, though, you had better learn to like lentils.
On that note, I'd like to commend Israeli supermarkets for now carrying a bazillion items they didn't used to, like Heinz ketchup (without which Nadav cannot eat a hamburger), Oreos, Post Bran Flakes and even caffeine-free diet Coke. If we had moved here 25 years ago, I wouldn't be writing a post on a blog about it, I'd be tied up somewhere in a padded room overcoming the symptoms of food detox. (Yes, I know...25 years ago there were no blogs either...OK.)
I'm only slightly embarrassed to tell you that when we moved here, or I should say when John Deere moved us here, we brought a nice little stash of supplies that cushioned our landing. Brownie mix, Trader Joe's Light Vanilla & Almond granola, canned pumpkin (for Thanksgiving pies, for crying out loud, even if there's no Thanksgiving), molasses and other stuff that would keep on a shelf for a while and stave off homesickness.
I was also slightly embarrassed to open our pantry door when company came over, but it did make me very warm and happy inside to know it was there.
Since then, my dear husband has hauled I don't even want to think of how many pounds of powdered, boxed, canned happiness during his/our various trips back from the Shopping Capital of the World to keep me from getting sad or bitchy. I am not quite sad or bitchy enough to suggest bringing Phish Food on dry ice.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ready for takeoff
No deep thoughts today. It's almost packin' time.
Assuming the Iceland volcano doesn't decide to mess up our travel plans, we'll be on the plane in three days, headed to Chicago. Usually we stop over somewhere in Europe. That would have been bad for this trip. Luckily this time it's straight to Toronto, then O'Hare. So, we have a decent chance of getting there.
We've got our "Buy in Amrika" list made out. Mac & cheese, Dry Idea, the girls' favorite bath paints. I used to "like" Target. Now it's a pilgrimage site.
The post-it notes are also written, so the critical stuff doesn't get left behind--passports, immunization records, flight info, stroller.
We've certainly spent a lot of time whining about these trips over the past 3-1/2 years and approximately 150,000 miles. No doubt, going trans-Atlantic with small kids isn't anyone's idea of enjoyable. We've done the infant-won't-stop-screaming thing, the projectile-puking-infant thing, the we-can't-find-your-daughter's-reservation thing, the terrified-of-airplane-lavatories thing and the subsequent wet-seat thing. Kids jet-lagged for days or weeks, in both directions. It's all a barrel of fun.
We've made deals with the devil over kids sleeping on airplanes, which usually (as most deals with Satan do) backfire. You arrive bone-tired, finally all go to sleep for the first time in 36 hours, and 3 hours later, after your offspring have had refreshing naps, it's play time!
So, we try really hard not to think about these trips until the last possible second. There's no point. Que sera, sera.
Actually there's an exception to this rule, which is planning the Activity Bag. It reminds me of a class assignment I had once, to take a pepper can and fit into it everything you'd need to survive in the desert for several days. It requires a careful cost-benefit analysis of an object's relative value versus its size, collapsibility, and weight. Same idea.
The bag used to be a knapsack crammed with toys and books. Now, every trip, it gets smaller. It's not that they won't play with all the stuff you bring. They'll play with some of it for 10 minutes, most things for 10 seconds, then will spend an hour and a half carefully and deliberately shredding your InFlight magazine or playing with a plastic straw.
So you might as well save your back and bring less. You (and by "you" I mean your husband) still have to carry enough other crap. Even though you swore you wouldn't become the people who carry a lot of crap. Either you carry it, or somebody starves or screams or wears vomit-scented clothes for 20 hours.
I'll spare you the diatribe on airport security, except to say that we watched "Up in the Air" and laughed. I mean, I love George Clooney. (Who doesn't want to watch him do anything, including go through a TSA scanner?) But is it really all that impressive to watch a grown man snap his luggage open and closed and put his baggie of liquids on the moving belt when no one is hanging on his leg, crying for juice, while he simultaneously takes off two other people's shoes (who hate having their shoes taken off), collapses a stroller and convinces a toddler who slept 4 hours last night to be held by a stranger wearing rubber gloves?
Like I said, we whine a lot. It's not like we planned to have families on two continents. Well, OK, actually, we did sort of choose to marry each other. That was an excellent decision on a human level and a lousy one, logistically. But no take-backsies. So I guess I'll go pack. It totally beats going by covered wagon.
Assuming the Iceland volcano doesn't decide to mess up our travel plans, we'll be on the plane in three days, headed to Chicago. Usually we stop over somewhere in Europe. That would have been bad for this trip. Luckily this time it's straight to Toronto, then O'Hare. So, we have a decent chance of getting there.
We've got our "Buy in Amrika" list made out. Mac & cheese, Dry Idea, the girls' favorite bath paints. I used to "like" Target. Now it's a pilgrimage site.
The post-it notes are also written, so the critical stuff doesn't get left behind--passports, immunization records, flight info, stroller.
We've certainly spent a lot of time whining about these trips over the past 3-1/2 years and approximately 150,000 miles. No doubt, going trans-Atlantic with small kids isn't anyone's idea of enjoyable. We've done the infant-won't-stop-screaming thing, the projectile-puking-infant thing, the we-can't-find-your-daughter's-reservation thing, the terrified-of-airplane-lavatories thing and the subsequent wet-seat thing. Kids jet-lagged for days or weeks, in both directions. It's all a barrel of fun.
We've made deals with the devil over kids sleeping on airplanes, which usually (as most deals with Satan do) backfire. You arrive bone-tired, finally all go to sleep for the first time in 36 hours, and 3 hours later, after your offspring have had refreshing naps, it's play time!
So, we try really hard not to think about these trips until the last possible second. There's no point. Que sera, sera.
Actually there's an exception to this rule, which is planning the Activity Bag. It reminds me of a class assignment I had once, to take a pepper can and fit into it everything you'd need to survive in the desert for several days. It requires a careful cost-benefit analysis of an object's relative value versus its size, collapsibility, and weight. Same idea.
The bag used to be a knapsack crammed with toys and books. Now, every trip, it gets smaller. It's not that they won't play with all the stuff you bring. They'll play with some of it for 10 minutes, most things for 10 seconds, then will spend an hour and a half carefully and deliberately shredding your InFlight magazine or playing with a plastic straw.
So you might as well save your back and bring less. You (and by "you" I mean your husband) still have to carry enough other crap. Even though you swore you wouldn't become the people who carry a lot of crap. Either you carry it, or somebody starves or screams or wears vomit-scented clothes for 20 hours.
I'll spare you the diatribe on airport security, except to say that we watched "Up in the Air" and laughed. I mean, I love George Clooney. (Who doesn't want to watch him do anything, including go through a TSA scanner?) But is it really all that impressive to watch a grown man snap his luggage open and closed and put his baggie of liquids on the moving belt when no one is hanging on his leg, crying for juice, while he simultaneously takes off two other people's shoes (who hate having their shoes taken off), collapses a stroller and convinces a toddler who slept 4 hours last night to be held by a stranger wearing rubber gloves?
Like I said, we whine a lot. It's not like we planned to have families on two continents. Well, OK, actually, we did sort of choose to marry each other. That was an excellent decision on a human level and a lousy one, logistically. But no take-backsies. So I guess I'll go pack. It totally beats going by covered wagon.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Desert brain
This week we drove out of our green valley and took the girls on a little overnight to the Negev, the desert that makes up much of the lower half of Israel. After blowing two years in this country "nesting" with a toddler and new baby, time is running out, and we're ticking through our Israel bucket list.
We also wanted to fit this trip in before summer arrives and standing in the sun for half an hour, let alone going to a desert, is a foolish, self-punishing activity. My people are from Ireland. I do not love summers here.
So in three hours we were in Mitzpeh Ramon, a dusty little town that has two things going for it: several surrounding military bases and a ginormous crater 40 kilometers long.
The view of the crater was definitely stunning. Nadav and I took turns admiring it from the lookout point, 1,500 feet above the desert floor, while the other herded the girls away from the edge. When both you and your spouse are terrified of heights, you can do this for only a few minutes. So that was the crater.
(A little embarrassing: we spent the entire visit thinking the crater was made by a meteor, like, 40 billion years ago, and only after returning home bothered to Google it and learned it was carved out by water, like the Grand Canyon. Obviously, we didn't go through the Visitor's Center museum. Things were going too well outside, playing with rocks. One thing we really like about having small kids is that we finally have an excuse for being lazy, uninformed tourists.)
Anyway, Nadav had found one other cool thing for toddlers to do in Mitzpeh Ramon, which was to stay overnight on an alpaca farm. It was a little compound tucked inside some dry, rocky hills. Not green enough to be an oasis, but with a few pockets of trees and flowers. Four hundred alpacas, plus a large number of llamas, some donkeys, horses and a lone camel were the main attraction, milling around in a series of barnyards.
If you've never seen an alpaca face to face, they look like the relative of the llama that couldn't afford braces. Neither are particularly friendly animals. But alpacas chew funny and have a kind of demented look in their eyes and make a weird whining sound, thus are good entertainment if you're 3 or 1, or if your standards have sunk really low due to having had almost no adult nightlife for years.
It's not every morning you get to open your curtains and have a camel looking in. Or have your breakfast delivered in a giant cooler to your doorstep. Or watch your 1-year-old discover chocolate milk.
I sort of love that with these kids, any agenda we have can evaporate. You can't afford to take your own ambitions too seriously, because at this age playing on the previously mentioned rocks is truly more fun than anything else. By 9 a.m. the girls had, as the Hebrew expression goes, "juiced" the alpaca farm--were tired of having us prod them toward animals that didn't have much personality. They let us put the helmets on them but refused to ride the llama. So we played in the hammock on our porch for a while, let them have their wrestling match on the bed, then packed up and left.
Some days it's a little distressing, all the neurons that apparently withered in my brain due to sleep deprivation and the fact that "Boo-bee-BAH!" now passes as a brilliant joke in our house. Most days, though, the feeling of liberation, strangely, unexpectedly, wins. Maybe I'll think about it again the next time I go to the desert.
We also wanted to fit this trip in before summer arrives and standing in the sun for half an hour, let alone going to a desert, is a foolish, self-punishing activity. My people are from Ireland. I do not love summers here.
So in three hours we were in Mitzpeh Ramon, a dusty little town that has two things going for it: several surrounding military bases and a ginormous crater 40 kilometers long.
The view of the crater was definitely stunning. Nadav and I took turns admiring it from the lookout point, 1,500 feet above the desert floor, while the other herded the girls away from the edge. When both you and your spouse are terrified of heights, you can do this for only a few minutes. So that was the crater.
(A little embarrassing: we spent the entire visit thinking the crater was made by a meteor, like, 40 billion years ago, and only after returning home bothered to Google it and learned it was carved out by water, like the Grand Canyon. Obviously, we didn't go through the Visitor's Center museum. Things were going too well outside, playing with rocks. One thing we really like about having small kids is that we finally have an excuse for being lazy, uninformed tourists.)
Anyway, Nadav had found one other cool thing for toddlers to do in Mitzpeh Ramon, which was to stay overnight on an alpaca farm. It was a little compound tucked inside some dry, rocky hills. Not green enough to be an oasis, but with a few pockets of trees and flowers. Four hundred alpacas, plus a large number of llamas, some donkeys, horses and a lone camel were the main attraction, milling around in a series of barnyards.
If you've never seen an alpaca face to face, they look like the relative of the llama that couldn't afford braces. Neither are particularly friendly animals. But alpacas chew funny and have a kind of demented look in their eyes and make a weird whining sound, thus are good entertainment if you're 3 or 1, or if your standards have sunk really low due to having had almost no adult nightlife for years.
***
Later that night, while I was lying awake, trying to sleep in what should have been empty silence but for the congested snoring of our daughter, I was thinking about the last time I spent the night in a little compound in the middle of a desert. It was in a monastery on a backpacking trip many years ago. I'd gone because I had always found monasteries intriguing, the promise of serenity derived from a life of repetitive work, humility, reflection. I'd wondered how long it would take to get into the groove. How long before the mind quieted down? Before the traffic of one's thoughts was reduced to a dull hum of memory and eventually, with great discipline, muted so that a greater presence could exist within?
(Answer: more than two days.)
It was into this little reverie that an image appeared of myself back home, cleaning the same high-chair tray and the floor around it six to eight times a day. Wax on, wax off. After you've changed several thousand diapers, you can do it in the pitch-black. Wash, rinse, repeat. It struck me that although being a full-time parent is a lot noisier and chaotic than being a monk, there are some similarities. In both scenarios, you're up at 4 a.m. (however, monks probably sleep through the night). Ultimately, nature--or you could call it God, or the laws of physics--is forcing you, through endless, exhausting repetition and work that constantly undoes itself, to tune out a lot of the stuff you used to think was highly important. Are you being worn down into a washer-woman? Or mentally liberated? Eventually, I guess I fell asleep.
Later that night, while I was lying awake, trying to sleep in what should have been empty silence but for the congested snoring of our daughter, I was thinking about the last time I spent the night in a little compound in the middle of a desert. It was in a monastery on a backpacking trip many years ago. I'd gone because I had always found monasteries intriguing, the promise of serenity derived from a life of repetitive work, humility, reflection. I'd wondered how long it would take to get into the groove. How long before the mind quieted down? Before the traffic of one's thoughts was reduced to a dull hum of memory and eventually, with great discipline, muted so that a greater presence could exist within?
(Answer: more than two days.)
It was into this little reverie that an image appeared of myself back home, cleaning the same high-chair tray and the floor around it six to eight times a day. Wax on, wax off. After you've changed several thousand diapers, you can do it in the pitch-black. Wash, rinse, repeat. It struck me that although being a full-time parent is a lot noisier and chaotic than being a monk, there are some similarities. In both scenarios, you're up at 4 a.m. (however, monks probably sleep through the night). Ultimately, nature--or you could call it God, or the laws of physics--is forcing you, through endless, exhausting repetition and work that constantly undoes itself, to tune out a lot of the stuff you used to think was highly important. Are you being worn down into a washer-woman? Or mentally liberated? Eventually, I guess I fell asleep.
***
It's not every morning you get to open your curtains and have a camel looking in. Or have your breakfast delivered in a giant cooler to your doorstep. Or watch your 1-year-old discover chocolate milk.
I sort of love that with these kids, any agenda we have can evaporate. You can't afford to take your own ambitions too seriously, because at this age playing on the previously mentioned rocks is truly more fun than anything else. By 9 a.m. the girls had, as the Hebrew expression goes, "juiced" the alpaca farm--were tired of having us prod them toward animals that didn't have much personality. They let us put the helmets on them but refused to ride the llama. So we played in the hammock on our porch for a while, let them have their wrestling match on the bed, then packed up and left.
Some days it's a little distressing, all the neurons that apparently withered in my brain due to sleep deprivation and the fact that "Boo-bee-BAH!" now passes as a brilliant joke in our house. Most days, though, the feeling of liberation, strangely, unexpectedly, wins. Maybe I'll think about it again the next time I go to the desert.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Down and dirty
I've been spending hours online lately looking at preschools 8,000 miles away. And I have to admit, I'm freaking out.
It's not just that sending your young child to a 2-hour "program" three days a week can cost the same as buying a decent, brand new car once a year. It's not just that 2 hours is long enough to drive back home, write a to-do list, do maybe one thing and drive to pick your kid up again. And forget about the fact that this meticulously designed program, balanced between "stimulating creativity, modeling problem-solving and teaching a sense of social connection and responsibility" is for a person who acts, much of the time, like an escapee from a mental institution and might play with poo if you let her.
(No, I do not let either of my daughters play with poo.)
What's kind of freaking me out is that apparently my tastes have changed since we've lived abroad. Either that, or they were always a bit scruffy and low-maintenance and I just didn't know it. I see what we're headed for when we move back to Americana, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it.
I mean, I work in marketing. I realize that modern-day yuppie nursery school web sites must offer a fabulous product. They have mission statements. They talk about sensory development, interpersonal skills and other critical items in your child's bag of tricks.
However, I'm watching my girls develop without the five-star childhood education and they are doing just fine.
Yesterday afternoon, we popped them in the double-wide and walked 6 minutes down the road to the fields. They got out and ran down a path to say hi to the cows, picked up rocks, pulled some grass, and (miraculously) held hands halfway back. We found snails to pick up and look at, and a single ladybug was entertainment for quite a while.
Of course, country life isn't the only way to achieve sensory development when you're 1 or 3. It just makes it ridiculously easy (and scenic) for us.
After Noa was born, Talia spent a year in a full-day "gan" (nursery school) in our tiny town. It wouldn't have won any awards for aesthetics. In fact, the outdoor play yard kind of looked like crap. It was full of broken strollers, armless dolls, sand buckets, some creaky swings, a couple of little playhouses. I'll admit it, the first time I saw it, my inner yuppie was a little turned off.
The kids loved the crappy toy yard, of course. What did they care? Human children throughout history have gone through the critical stages of development with much less. They did all the usual preschool stuff--music, art, puzzles, books, blocks, dancing, holidays. Every day after lunch and before naptime, the children got a full bath and shampoo in a sink that was probably designed for washing dishes in a restaurant. Forget to bring a second set of clothes for your kid? It's OK, we slapped someone else's extra shirt on her.
Talia arrived home every day rested, excited and happy. She made a dozen friends there and it's basically where she learned to speak Hebrew. Enriching as hell.
My only point is, I'm going to miss the low-key thing we've experienced here in the Israeli countryside. I know there have to be plenty of folks in the Chicago area who like seeing their kids learn through sheer grimy joy. After we move, I'm going to try really hard to find them.
It's not just that sending your young child to a 2-hour "program" three days a week can cost the same as buying a decent, brand new car once a year. It's not just that 2 hours is long enough to drive back home, write a to-do list, do maybe one thing and drive to pick your kid up again. And forget about the fact that this meticulously designed program, balanced between "stimulating creativity, modeling problem-solving and teaching a sense of social connection and responsibility" is for a person who acts, much of the time, like an escapee from a mental institution and might play with poo if you let her.
(No, I do not let either of my daughters play with poo.)
What's kind of freaking me out is that apparently my tastes have changed since we've lived abroad. Either that, or they were always a bit scruffy and low-maintenance and I just didn't know it. I see what we're headed for when we move back to Americana, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it.
I mean, I work in marketing. I realize that modern-day yuppie nursery school web sites must offer a fabulous product. They have mission statements. They talk about sensory development, interpersonal skills and other critical items in your child's bag of tricks.
However, I'm watching my girls develop without the five-star childhood education and they are doing just fine.
Yesterday afternoon, we popped them in the double-wide and walked 6 minutes down the road to the fields. They got out and ran down a path to say hi to the cows, picked up rocks, pulled some grass, and (miraculously) held hands halfway back. We found snails to pick up and look at, and a single ladybug was entertainment for quite a while.
Of course, country life isn't the only way to achieve sensory development when you're 1 or 3. It just makes it ridiculously easy (and scenic) for us.
After Noa was born, Talia spent a year in a full-day "gan" (nursery school) in our tiny town. It wouldn't have won any awards for aesthetics. In fact, the outdoor play yard kind of looked like crap. It was full of broken strollers, armless dolls, sand buckets, some creaky swings, a couple of little playhouses. I'll admit it, the first time I saw it, my inner yuppie was a little turned off.
The kids loved the crappy toy yard, of course. What did they care? Human children throughout history have gone through the critical stages of development with much less. They did all the usual preschool stuff--music, art, puzzles, books, blocks, dancing, holidays. Every day after lunch and before naptime, the children got a full bath and shampoo in a sink that was probably designed for washing dishes in a restaurant. Forget to bring a second set of clothes for your kid? It's OK, we slapped someone else's extra shirt on her.
Talia arrived home every day rested, excited and happy. She made a dozen friends there and it's basically where she learned to speak Hebrew. Enriching as hell.
My only point is, I'm going to miss the low-key thing we've experienced here in the Israeli countryside. I know there have to be plenty of folks in the Chicago area who like seeing their kids learn through sheer grimy joy. After we move, I'm going to try really hard to find them.
Friday, April 2, 2010
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
So, not even a month ago, I was making fun of bloggers. Particularly, blogs with titles like "Mobile Mama." It was after I read some article in the New York Times about the industry of blogging moms, which is now so big that you can attend conferences on the topic and compete for national acclaim. I was kind of horrified, I suppose in the same way my conservative grandparents used to be horrified that I watched racy, soul-rotting TV shows like "Laverne & Shirley." That's when I realized I was going to be fighting a long, lonely mental battle against the forces of society if I didn't give bloggers their due.
Of course, you know what came next. The trip from sarcastic outsider to wannabe didn't take long. "Hmm, maybe I could have my own blog..." And in fact, it suddenly seemed like a great idea. A low-key way to finally write somewhere besides in my journal or at work, perhaps. So welcome to mom blog #32,784 (approximately).
Caveat to non-parents and other not-easily-amused types: If you're not into stories about children's misbehavior in public restrooms or fascinating recipes involving spinach and cookie cutters, please don't run away screaming. I'm not really into those stories, either. You have to be quite a literary genius to make that kind of material universally enjoyable to read, and I'm not up to that kind of pressure.
The reason for the title, "Mobile Mama," is because, well, when you have to boil yourself down to two or three words for a blog, that's about the best I could come up with. (And my first five ideas were already taken.) As someone who's always been a bit of a nomad, married to another sort-of nomad, who travels with our two human carry-ons quite frequently between our families on two continents, that seemed to fit. Our older daughter could recite the anatomy of an airplane before she could say her own last name. And even when we stop moving households and "settle down," which may happen soon, being mobile is (maybe forever?) in our blood.
Of course, you know what came next. The trip from sarcastic outsider to wannabe didn't take long. "Hmm, maybe I could have my own blog..." And in fact, it suddenly seemed like a great idea. A low-key way to finally write somewhere besides in my journal or at work, perhaps. So welcome to mom blog #32,784 (approximately).
Caveat to non-parents and other not-easily-amused types: If you're not into stories about children's misbehavior in public restrooms or fascinating recipes involving spinach and cookie cutters, please don't run away screaming. I'm not really into those stories, either. You have to be quite a literary genius to make that kind of material universally enjoyable to read, and I'm not up to that kind of pressure.
The reason for the title, "Mobile Mama," is because, well, when you have to boil yourself down to two or three words for a blog, that's about the best I could come up with. (And my first five ideas were already taken.) As someone who's always been a bit of a nomad, married to another sort-of nomad, who travels with our two human carry-ons quite frequently between our families on two continents, that seemed to fit. Our older daughter could recite the anatomy of an airplane before she could say her own last name. And even when we stop moving households and "settle down," which may happen soon, being mobile is (maybe forever?) in our blood.
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