Babycakes!

I've had this post of uploaded photos sitting in my dashboard for a good couple of months now... And the only reason why I even noticed it today is because I have Freida home from school (Veterans Day? Teachers in Service Day? Not really sure what's going down.) and she's been pining for a trip to Babycakes on her "day off". And of course now all I can think about is a Babycakes cookie sandwich...  Hmm.

Vegan, Gluten-free, and Pas Yisroel, we had originally gone to their flagship Larchmont location to sample (a slew of!) their sweet confections and to pick up a literal "baby cake" for baby Hudi's half birthday. But naturally, she slept through our post-lunch rendezvous for dessert in her honor, and we ended up celebrating her later at home.

As I said, we sampled a slew! Freida chose a salted-caramel whoopie pie, Manasseh went for a hot waffle with an icing shot and a blueberry donut, and I decided to try their famous red velvet cupcake and their cookie sandwich.#Yumminess :)

(She had way too much fun reenacting "then she licked the pink cupcake wrapper clean!". Pinkalicious, anyone?)

And, we are definitely going to be making another family trip there one Sunday morning to try this:

Sandy's Power

Talk of hurricane devastation can be heard at most every coffee shop, office water-cooler-conversation, and definitely each refreshed Facebook feed. And while relief funds are vital and imperative (please click here to help!), sometimes it's wondrous to stop and see what kind of human kindness and interdependency comes about through stormy destruction.I glimpsed this image, and immediately and unexpectedly teared up. Sometimes it's not the greif that shakes us most; but the love that wakes in the wake of disaster.

So, here's to the beautiful people of New York City! Sending you many warm wishes - stay forever dry, warm, and powerful!!

P.S. I recently read an article about children and storms, and how they don't wind up with memories of catastrophe, but rather memories of adventure and excitement. I found that to be personally true, and a lovely sentiment for parents struggling through the aftermath to think about...

Six Months!

Last month we celebrated little Hudi in the most delicious of ways! One morning I casually mentioned to Manasseh that it was Hudi's half-birthday, and when Freida heard that...! The half-birthday party planning ensued: she asked a million questions about "half-birthdays", months, years, old people etc.! :) And that was that. There was simply no getting around this one. Not without a cupcake, at the very least. So, we made a trip to Babycakes NYC in search of the perfect cupcake for our baby girl...

All I can think of when I look at these pictures is the quote "I love you more than a fat kid loves cake"!!

I definitely think this was the most fun she's had. Ever.

Thanks for idea, Freida! Best big-sister ever!

P.S. I can't believe she's halfway to year already!! Insane!

New School

Hi there Mamas! I hope you are mostly past the difficult new-school transitional stage...! Though it generally lasts about a month, some children seem to acclimate faster than others, and I hope yours was one of the latter! It's tough enough for moms to get back into the swing of things - with carpools and lunches and schedules, never mind if the kids are having a difficult time adjusting! Tough stuff. Freida started at The Chabad Garden School on Tuesday, and we've been having long tearful mornings, but wonderfully cheerful afternoons! To me, the way she comes home is really the tell-all; if she comes home cranky, naughty, and out-of-whack I know something is not working for her. But! When she comes home happy, well-behaved, and generally settled - I know she is well taken care of.

As you can see from these pictures, she was rather excited on the first day of school. :)

After that, things got a little more tricky. She realized that once I leave her on the playground with her teachers and friends in the morning she won't be seeing me again until 6 hours later... So, she whines a bit at night before going to bed, and she cries a little in the morning while we're getting dressed, and again a little more while we drive to school, but thankfully she is so verbally and emotionally expressive that I'm able to gage her "happy status" quite well.

For example, when she cries "Mommy I don't want to go to school", it's never followed with "I don't like school", but rather "It's so hard for me!". (I love that :) When I ask her what's so hard about it, it's not about anything specific going on in the classroom, but rather a clear expression of how hard it is for her to be without her mommy for so long.

Also, this was a huge sign for me: In general when I drop her off somewhere she doesn't want to go she grabs onto me while crying and needs to be physically peeled off of me. When I drop her off at the Garden School she starts to cry, but she sits down on the floor to cry instead of grabbing onto me - which shows me she really wants to stay. :)

In any case, I simply can't get over quite how big she is! I fully remember my first day of all-day school - in graphic detail! - and I can't believe my little baby is already at that stage in life!

Unfortunately, I'm weirdly marred from the concept of "school"; I think I had some of the worst school experiences, and they left me despising "systems" in general. I hated school each and every day - up until the 6th grade. Middle school brought with it a new set of rules (and a wonderful teacher!), and I think I was finally man enough to stand up for what I wanted without being scared of being shut-down. Anyways, it was very difficult for me to send Freida to school because of my feelings towards it... Truthfully, I'm so tainted by it that I secretly and desperately wish I could homeschool her through middle school, but I want to be bigger than my fears and do what's best for her - and right now she badly needs to develop her social skills more than anything else. And I suppose I can admit that though school crushed a young bright spirit inside of me, I really developed myself as a extrovert and I never would be the way I am if not for being in school working (and clashing) with people - contemporaries and authorities - each and every day. That builds character; not stay-at-home science lessons.

So I sent her on her way, off into the abyss of school systems (though one that I meticulously and happily chose for her!), and I'm happy and proud of myself for doing the right thing and helping her grow in the best way she can. Now, if only I could move past my nervous feelings of wishing there were a hidden camera in the classroom...!

Welcome to childhood, little lady!

P.S. Heaps of thanks to The Garden School team for making our first week of school so wonderful!!

Salting & Soaking

When I sat down to write this post, I was shocked to realize I had never posted anything about Freida's eczema on this blog. I guess because I never really had much to say on the matter. I grew up plagued with the skin disease, and while we tried at everything (from diets, to creams, to antihistamines) to obliterate it from my childhood - it never really stayed away, and I suffered years of its abuse (I'll never forget coming to school in the 2nd grade with a Dr's note that I may not be able to sit down that day due to the irritated scabbed skin behind my knees. I wasn't able to bend my legs!!)I finally grew out of it at about 18, and have only had few minor flare-ups since then. My younger brother had it even worse than I did - his entire body was covered in scaly skin and he suffered tremendously from the itching. My mother tried everything. And I mean everything! He was seen by all the big skin specialists, and they had cream imported monthly from Ireland! But it never said goodbye. It really is a plague. And it's insane that "they" still can't seem to find a cure!

Anyways, the only thing I remember praying for consistently since I was a child is that my children should never have to know of eczema. When I had Freida I was so excited that she displayed the cleanest smoothest baby skin on earth - I was just over the moon about being able to moisturize her yummy little baby bum without worrying about it irritating her... When she was about 7 months old, the first signs of eczema surfaced. (I have an entire guilt-based theory about how ferberizing her brought the eczema out of her system; how the anxiety of sleep-training induced the nervous system to lash out. But I know it's mostly bullocks.) I had to immediately switch up her bedtime routine to include oatmeal baths, heaps of aquaphore, and sporadic smears of steroid-laced cortozone creams. That mix of prevention seemed to keep things relatively under control, for the most part. Since she's always been a thumb-sucker (and she liked to alternate from one to the other) I was never really able to control what went down in that region - her thumbs and hands became a muck of dry cracked skin, and from time to time I'd have to cream them, sock them, and secure a rubber-band over them while she watched TV - it was torturous!

Now, we mostly survive off oatmeal baths (I'll definitely be blogging about how we do these!), a very good cortozone cream, and lots of aquaphore during the nights. But recently we've added something wonderful to our skin regimen: dead sea product. Salts in the bath, and mud beforehand. During our most recent trip to Scottsdale Arizona, my brother-in-law (thanks Yossi!!) took us to The Salt Chalet, owned by a friend of his. Apparently, "salt rooms" are the current health fad and are becoming increasingly popular due to the health benefits derived from this sort of "salt experience". You can watch the video about it here.

We took a slew of sand toys along (plus a cousin to play with) to keep Freida entertained for the 30 minute session. I stripped her down to shorts and simply let her sit and play in the dead sea salt (a hell of a lot easier than taking a trip to Israel!). We sat and lounge chairs in the salt room while the kids played on the floor, and we did some of the deep breathing Dr. Gershkovich showed us. It definitely felt like it opened up my airways, and since I have a bout of asthma - it felt fantastic. Aside from that, the whole thing was just so relaxing - kind of drug/trance-like. And I definitely noticed a difference of Freida's skin for at least a week afterwards...

We brought home some sea salts for the bath and a big pot of mud to try. The mud works so well on her eczema!! It took a little coaxing for me to convince her to let me smear mud on her :) but the results were amazing! I cover her problem areas with a coat or two of dead-sea-mud and wait for it to dry. Once it dries, we rinse it with warm water and put her in the bath. It seems to draw out and dry-up the real cracks and irritations, and then the oatmeal bath restores the moisture.

She's been getting a little weary of the mud recently, so we upped the fun-factor by letting her use a paint brush to paint it on her skin by herself... Now she loves mud time!

Obviously, for those of you without any skin ailments - this post was a bunch of boring rambling :)

But! If you or your children suffer from skin irritations, I'd really suggest looking into finding a quality dead sea mud like this one we've been using, and perhaps even hitting up a salt room (there is one in Encino). Plus, I'll be posting about how we do our oatmeal baths - that's really the only thing that seems to keep in under control. And the mud's been keeping her happy for now...!