Addicted to war...

or rather , I'm addicted to war coverage. I pretty much spend all day online flipping between some news sites and blogs reading the latest happenings. I'm pretty sure it;s unhealthy, but it's become a war pattern for me. I spent 9/11 and the days following that watching non-stop news. Two years ago during the Lebanon war I was glued to the all news networks for a few weeks. That actually had a lot to do with my decision to move here. Nowadays I don't understand the TV news so I pretty much do all following on the web.

Just to let everyone know, we are not in the south or within range of the rockets. Despite being on the "other" side of the "green line" I feel very safe and secure here. My daily life hasn't changed..of course my daily routine is mostly me sitting at home trying to figure out what to do.

May G-d watch over us and the brave soldiers of the IDF (Israel Defense Force)

What Christmas

So here we are on December 24th, Nat and I take the kids to mall and there isn't of Christmas anywhere. Instead there were Dreidels hanging from the ceilings, menorahs and candles being sold in lots of stores.
It is really cool to live here

A chanukah miracle?

It is pouring tonight, I guess that's part one of the miracle.
About 20 minutes after I got into bed, the storm was raging, I could hear the wind smacking into my building, and then I heard a loud and long crack of thunder. My first thought was " Crap, that'll wake up at least kid." It didn't, but for some reason, it got me out of bed. I enjoy watching a nice rain storm as much as the next guy, I couldn't see how hard the rain was from my room, so I figured I would go to the porch.
The lights were all out, and I stepped in a big puddle of water next to the couch. I assumed I left a cup on the floor and it must have gotten knocked over, then I saw that there was a huge puddle, and it was coming from my porch.
The drain on the porch must have gotten backed up, and the water was coming in through the door. There was a lot of it, and this had started within the past 15 minutes. I started squee-G-ing out the floor as fast as I could, I put towels in front of teh door to slow down teh water and I jammed a stick in teh drain to try and unblock it...I was succesful, it is now nicely drained.
Baruch Hashem I gor out of bed to see the storm, or who knows if I would have had to swim to the front door when I woke up.

Sammy

I don;t know what is wrong with Sammy lately, but I'm pretty sure he is crazy.
Last night he woke around 2 in the morning, and he stayed up until almost 5!! Some of the time he played in his room by himself, most of teh time he needed to be held or cried. Around 4 I put on the TV the kids channel had some shows looping, he was very entertained by this..Finally his eyes started to glaze over, and I was turned off the TV and took him to bed. He moaned TV, TV a few times and finally fell asleep. I watched the first half of the Packers - Bears game, Sammy fell asleep at the 2 minute warning.

He woke up around 8:30, I took him to day care, when I picked him up, they said he didn't nap all day. So he was pretty exhausted all afternoon. Nats Grandma, aunt and some cousins were supposed to come over in teh evening for some latkes and to visit. The idea was to get Sammy asleep before they came.

Unfortantley that didn't happen, and he was up for their whole visit. and then he cried for many hours, and I think Nat finally got him to sleep after 11:00...We have no idea what to do with him, all he wants is to eat Cheerios and have someone, he prefers Nat, hold him.

May G-d have mercy on our soul

A deep conversation with a 4 year old

I was reading Jonah a bedtime story, a dinosaur book, and Jonah interrupts me and asks how Hashem remembers to make it night day all the time. I explained to him the the Hashem set the earth to go around the sun. I used a soccer ball to demonstrate. (thank goodness for that orbit book at mom and dads.)

He was happy with my answer and then said, so Hashem is up in space?
Hashem is everywhere I said, and I went through the hashem is here, there song. Next he asked what Hashem looked like. I told him that Hashem doesn't look like anything.
He thought for a second and then said, I know about dinosaurs because i read lots of dinosaur books, are there any books about Hashem?
I told him there is it's called the Torah.

Then he asked if it says how hashem made the world.
I told him that it does, it says that Hashem made the sky and the ground and light and dark.
Then he asked, was Hashem there before then.
I said he was and then he asked how...and I decided it was time close the discussion and I went back to reading the book.

UPDATED

I forgot about part of the discussion.
Jonah asked me why Hashem made the bad king.
I asked which king
He said you know the one that was mean to the Jews.
Paroh, I guessed.
Yea, Paroh, why did hashem make him if he was mean to the Jews.
I explained that just like I have tp put him in timeout when he doesn't listen, Hashem also has to punish the Jews when they don't listen, so he made Paroh to punish the Jews.

He was OK with that, then he asked. Why did Hashem kill all the dinosaurs.
I told him I had no idea.
He thought and then said, maybe it's so we can live here.
I told him that made a lot of sense.

Sand sand everywhere...

......and not a beach nearby

the playground of both Jonah and Sammy's gan is all sand, what's weird is they also have a sandbox in the yard, so they, mainly Jonah, is always sandy.

On the way home from Gan we pass a bench, I take off Jonah's shoes and shake them out, smack them on the ground, bang them together. It is incredible how much sand comes out of those shoes. It's accumulating on the manhole cover next to the bench. Next I take off his socks and get rid of all the sand that made its way inside and brush off his feet.

Amazingly, when he gets home and takes off his shoes, there is still more sand, that makes it way everywhere, all over the floor, on the couches, on toys, it's really gross and I can't firgure out how to fix it.

One thought is to place a water basin outside the door, like our forefathers did and have him rinse off his feet before entering the apartment. Short of that I can't think of anything else :(