Meltdown Meltaways

Being on the go with a baby-in-tow was always something I was able to handle easily, thankfully. (I mean all this gossip about baby Aleph crying in a restaurant? He's a baby; you're a Mama. It happens!) With a newborn - you simply put them to the breast. With a baby - you break out a little squeaky toy, or a cookie and all tears have left the building. But a 3 and half year old? This takes some more-than-simple tactics, skillfully executed to specifically meet the needs of the child-in-tantrum.

For now, and I'm certain this will constantly need to be on rotation, we've found Tegu blocks - and they work their magic! We use them in doctor office waiting rooms, restaurants, Shul, dining at friends homes, long car rides, even! Her pout melts away and she happily sits and plays, building everything from dinosaurs to rainbows, and proudly showing her creations to anyone who will look her way. :)

I think the trick to toys-on-the-go that actually succeed in taking your child from meltdown to manageable is to never, ever let them play with these toys any other time, and especially not at home!

When I was growing up, my parents had some built-in storage installed in our basement playroom and had majority of our toys stashed inside them. We only got to play with toys on rotation - us kids would pick out new toys each month and the previous ones would go back into storage. It was like having a toy store in my basement!! I always felt like I was getting new toys, and it kept us busy since we never got tired out and "bored" of the same toys.

(Freida built a "bed". Not bad, little lady. Not bad at all. :)

I also discovered that bringing along tiny little versions of her favorite books seemed to be helpful as well. Firstly, she thought they were super cute little "baby books", and just loved looking through the itty-bitty familiar illustrations. But mostly, since I picked books she has heard thousands of times, she is able to "read" them aloud to her little sister - freeing up even more time for me to enjoy my fish & chips in peace! :)

What about you? What kind of tricks and tips do you have up your sleeve when it comes to dealing with preschoolers in public? Please share, as I'm sure mine will get old soon!!

The New American Haggadah

"The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. It doesn't merely tell a story, it demands a radical act of empathy -- I would argue the most profound demand made by any book of any kind." - Jonathan Safran Foer

I am totally stoked to get my hands on a copy of The New American Haggadah! When I first heard that one of my very favorite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Eating Animals) was writing a Haggadah I thought it would be somewhat a quirky side-line commentary on the classic... turns out I was supremely in the wrong. Word on the street was that Foer had actually thought to create a classic through the classic - a tool to accompany a common-folk seder.

"I didn’t know what I was originally imagining, something that felt more like an anthology, more like a reference tool than a primary Haggadah. But the more I worked on it, the more I became afraid of that. … What the world does not need is a Haggadah that pats itself on the back. It needs a Haggadah that gets out of the way, that starts a conversation and gets out of the way.” - Jonathan Safran Foer 

My curiosity about this new-aged Seder companion turned into sheer excitement when I heard that the famed Israeli typographer, Oded Ezer, would be doing the art!! I think the most amazing thing about this particular Haggadah is that the only art inside of it is typography - just the (far from simple!) hebrew letters from the ancient text itself!

“Jews have been designing Haggadahs for more than one hundred generations, deliberately, or not, these designs have inevitably reflected the time in which they were made. The notion behind the design of this book was to merge, visually, the history of the Jewish nation with the traditional text of the Haggadah. Toward that end, the letterforms on each page reflect those used in the period reflected in the timeline at the top of the page. In this way, the book is a graphic record of Jewish history.” - Oded Ezer

Just for fun, I  thought I'd share some more of Oded's awesomeness:

(I totally want this Helvetica print for above my desk!)

Also, his strips of black letters always make me think of Teffilin straps...

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/1070309]

You can read more about The New American Haggadah here.

P.S. I'm very much looking forward to getting a dose of commentary from Lemony Snicket! :)

Book of the Week: The Giving Tree

I've been a long-time fan of Shel Silverstein, but this book is one of his classics, and I'm glad my daughter loved it as much as I did. The Giving Tree is the age old story of what man takes from nature, and what nature happily gives to man. Of course you can take some serious "going green" junk away from it's storyline, but it is in fact a sweet story with the most charming of illustrations. I thought Tu B'Shvat was the perfect time to introduce her to Shel and his magical drawings...

Light Reading

I've been doing heaps of nighttime reading lately (mostly self-help baby books), and found myself wishing I had some sort of old-school reading light (remember those geekly little gadgets that would clip onto your book pages, hold your spot, and light up when you opened to that page??). Each night, after brushing my teeth, I head to bed with the intention of finishing another chapter in book #1 so that I can move onto book #2... but you know how it is - you say you'll be in bed reading by 10:30, but 11:15 rolls around and you're still in the living room? Anyways, I'm now at the point where I think I'm in the middle of about 5 different books! And since all are read primarily as I'm turning in for the night, I couldn't help but covet this insanely awesome bed lamp!! Not only can it shelve all 5 of my current reads, but it can hold the place in the one I fall asleep holding (my husband is rather good at removing forlorn books from sleeping clutches), and let there be (reading) light! Genius!!

This light would actually make for a creative and effective bed hack - imagine mounting these lamps to something as simple as the Ikea Malm headboards... Immediate custom made design-y beds! Pretty sweet for readers.

P.S. About those 5 books :)

A Labor of Love (I wrote about it once here.) The most perfect birthing book.

HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method (Thanks Rachey!!) Very helpful birthing techniques.

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (Which is what has me coveting a bedside reading lamp to begin with - Freida has been inhabiting our bedroom at night, and I need to nip this in the bud before baby!)

The Sleep Easy Solution Reading up a bit on sleep scheduling for newborns... after the first two weeks I hope to establish a bit of a eating/sleeping schedule. This book makes it easy as pie!

Eat, Sleep, Poop A common sense guide to your baby's first year - well-written facts of little lives.

Pregnancy Dreaming...

These images from Pregnant Chicken totally made me laugh out loud. (But none as much as Hugh Jackman's!)