Happy Purim

Purim, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story in the Book of Esther (Megillat Ester). See a summary of the story here.

Tomorrow night, we will go to shul and celebrate in rowdy style. David will take the kids to the main sanctuary for the Family Service, which is generally VERY loud and may or may not include a full Hebrew reading. I'll be upstairs in the Adult Service, because I am one of the readers (Chapter 6). It's much more traditional, but still fun.

The kids (and many adults) dress in costume, and we use noise makers (to blot out Haman's name), so it's a loud and boisterous evening.

Tuesday morning, the boys have Megillah reading at school, and I have been asked to help the teachers with the Purim songs (it's traditional to sing funny parodies). Apparently, I'm some sort of "unpaid adjunct faculty" at this point...

And today was the Purim carnival - temple youth groups across the land run fund-raising carnivals to entertain the kids. I was brave/stupid enough to bring all three of my kiddos by myself. The boys are fine; Micah finds his friends, Sam finds things he likes to do. Sofia, on the other hand, is a pain in the neck to chase after. She has no patience for standing in line and waiting her turn, and she is only interested in things until something else catches her eye - usually on the opposite side of the social hall.

But I think they all had fun. Sofia really liked the bean-bag-toss and basketball-toss (although she drove the poor teenagers running these games crazy by not listening to the rules - "4 tries per ticket" means nothing to her!) Micah and his buddies lined up at the Playstation booth - I'm not sure he even saw the rest of the room (oh, that's right, I did see him in "jail" with the rabbi for a moment, and he was tossing wet sponges at some teenager, too).

David was (of course) at work all day, and he's really a mess from the stress. Too many jobs, too many clients, too many people to deal with, too much work. I know, there are so many people out there with NO work, so we should consider ourselves lucky (I do!) but he's overloaded and has no idea how to delegate. So he gets upset and sad and morose and exhausted instead.

He missed a lovely day, though. After the carnival, I took the kids to the playground at Sofia's school. Micah and Sofia had a great time; Sam wasn't feeling well, so he sat on the ground exploring the recycled tires. After the playground and a potty stop at home, we took a bit of a drive around, to get Sofia to relax. She was very tired, but never actually slept.

Oh, I guess I should back up a few days: I was really beat on Thursday, and Friday I tried to take it easy. Sofia was still sick - fever and coughing again overnight - so I did not get much sleep. She missed a whole week of school.

When I picked up the boys at school, she slept in the stroller in the hallway, which was good. After school, she had her 4 year check-up. She really wasn't feeling well, and was groggy from her nap, too. So this time (what's that, the 4th doctor visit in a week?) the doc finally dug some wax out of her ear and decided she could actually see that it was too red.

Finally, some antibiotics! (Oh, and for those keeping track, my princess is still only 30lbs, but that puts her at 75% on the DS chart).

David picked up Micah while we were at the doc, and on the way to the drugstore, I met up with E so she could take Sam for some tutoring.

We had dinner at my friend C's house - her boys are friends with mine, and she is one of my dearest friends for the past 19 years. It was a lot of fun. She has a series of drums she has made (she does clay-work), and she, Sofia and I had a grand time making a lot of noise! She also played flute, which had Sofia completely enthralled.

Saturday we went to shul, and then drove down to CT for David's grandmother's 98th birthday! Dinner at the same restaurant we go to every year. It was nice to see David's sister and cousin and their families. Kids were a little crazy. Sofia was sooo excited to see Lilie, except when Lilie was sitting in MY lap.

Got home after 11pm, and David and I stayed up too late watching "Across The Universe". GORGEOUS movie. I'm so glad we saw it. Now I have Beatles songs stuck in my head.

So today's time-change really messed me up, and Sofia would NOT let me sleep this morning. I should probably go to sleep now. I just spent the evening prepping for my neighbor's Bar Mitzvah (it's in June, but I'm completely running everything, so I want to make sure I have it all; I met with the mom tonight to go over details.

Will post pics from the party when I get around to downloading them...

Happy Purim!