This Close This Thanksgiving

We trade off spending Thanksgiving with our two sets of parents every other year.  Two years ago we were at my Mother-In-Law's for my favorite feast.  Perhaps it was the result of one too many glasses of wine, but Mom 2 promised me that the next time she hosted us she would get me a Turducken.  (I have been obsessed with Turducken for many years, much to the horror of WonderWife™ and the rest of my family.) 

However earlier this year, Mom 2 decided that she wanted to forgo hosting Thanksgiving in order to take us to Disney World.*  While this is incredibly generous of my in-laws, I can't help but think that this is a pretty extravagant way to get out of eating Turducken.


*We haven't told the kids yet, so "shhh"!

The Wit and Wisdom of the Bean: Holiday Edition

Like everyone else, there’s been a lot of talk about the holidays around my house lately. But seeing as Hanukkah has been done and gone for a few weeks just as things are gearing up for Christmas. Naturally, the Bean has been trying to make sense of all of this…

“Only Hanukkah people can look at Christmas lights. Christmas people aren’t allowed to go see Christmas lights because they have their own.”

"Hanukkah wins the Piston Cup because it has 8 nights and Christmas has 1 and 8 is more than 1."

"It’s better that we have Hanukkah to you don’t have to go to sleep to open presents."

Watching the Grinch for the first time: “I’m really glad he didn’t steal Hanukkah”.

WonderWife™, after her second attempt at homemade egg nog: “It’s just right and filled with noggy goodness.”
The Bean: "Ewww!"


Happy holidays everyone!

Happy New Birthday!

Today, most of you will be out there celebrating New Year's Eve. So will we, but we also have the added bonus of celebrating the Bean's birthday. Yup, today the little man is turning the big 0-4. (Insert usual parental remark about how fast time flies here.)

Happy birthday buddy boy. I love you and I love the person you are becoming. And keep up the antics. I have a blog to write here.

To the rest of you, have an awesome Happy New Year!

I Made It Out of Clay

The Bean had a whole mess of dreidels when I got home. Earlier that day WonderWife™ had opened the "Hanukkah box", which contained our menorah, the greatest Hanukkah book ever written, and a few dreidels. These were added to the two he got at pre-school bringing the grand total to...a whole mess of them.

I sat down next to the Bean and began to spin them all at once. When they stopped, he asked me to do it again.

"How about I teach you how to spin it yourself?" I asked him.

"Um...I think I'd just like you to do it," he replied.

I knew this behavior. The Bean doesn't like to try to do anything at which he thinks he might fail. This is something I am patiently trying to work on. Plus, I had a vision of a future that consisted of nothing else but me spinning dreidels for the kids for the next week. I told the Bean that I thought he should give it a try.

"I tried today at school and it didn't work," he told me.

"Well, that's because you were taught by an expert dreidel spinner like me," I said.

Interest piqued, he scooted closer to me and I showed him how to spin it. On his first try, it wobbled a bit, but moved in a somewhat circular motion that definitely counted as a spin. I cheered, which gave him enough encouragement to try it again. And again.



Happy Hanukkah everyone!

Happy Turkey Eating Day

We are making our annual pilgrimage east for the holiday, so it's going to be quiet around here this week. Will this be the year I finally get to eat a Turducken? Odds say no, but a guy can dream, can't he?

No matter what you cram in your faces this week, I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving. Spend it with people you love.

Ghost Story

It's Halloween week over at the Venus vs. Mars blog and I'm there today to share a story. Here's a peek:

To this day I can’t explain what actually happened that night, but not a Halloween has gone by since that I haven’t thought about it.

Click over there to check it out. Happy (early) Halloween.

Halloween Comes Early

“Look a ghost!” said the Bean.

It was the first of October and the Bean had seen his first Halloween decoration, a small ghost on the front of a house in our neighborhood.

“Daddy, we need to put our ghost in front of the garage,” the Bean said later that day. “The one that says ‘woooo’.”

I was kind of impressed that a year later, the Bean had remembered that decoration. It was one of those $19.99 specials they sell at Target that makes a "spooky" howl through a tinny speaker. Last Halloween, it completely captivated the Bean. It looked like this year was to be no exception.

Last year was the year that Halloween really clicked for the Bean. He picked out what he wanted to be (a cat) and was exciting to wear his costume. He also fully understood the glory that is trick-or-treating, and ventured up to doorways alone, while I watched from the sidewalk.

So even though Halloween was four weeks away, and even though it was 85 degrees outside (stupid global warming), the Bean and I went outside to the shed, dug out the box of decorations and set up the house. Well in a more accurate way, I decorated while he watched, the whole time asking me dozens of questions that I could not answer. (“Why does the skeleton have green eyes? Why is that [severed] foot all red? Where did the guy with the red foot's body go?”) Afterward, the Bean inspected my work and deemed it spooky enough. He especially liked the ghost that went “woooo”.

We are now officially the first house on the street, probably in the whole neighborhood, to have our decorations up. It’s as if my front yard is a giant neon sign that says a little boy lives here and he is very excited about Halloween.

5th Grade Valentine

It was the fifth grade and I was “going with” a girl named Amy. My pre-teen gawkiness was at its peak that year because my old elementary school had merged with a new one. The transition to new surroundings, combined with my awkward insecurities, made for a rough time. We now had two of everything—double the number of popular kids, jocks, troublemakers and of course, nerds. I had been hovering near the bottom of my old school’s social hierarchy and was finding myself slipping even lower in this new one.

Despite my social stature, I had managed to meet a girl. At the tender age of 10, Amy was cunning enough to know that she had me wrapped around her finger, and she seemed to relish wielding her power over me. Amy would agree to go with me only to unceremoniously dump me a few days later. The next day she would take me back and the cycle continued. One night we would spend the evening talking on the phone (which was probably only about 15 minutes, but at the time it seemed like the whole night), and the next day she would totally ignore me. Of course, this only made me crazier about her. I had already made a habit of crushing on girls who were completely uninterested in me. Amy was the first girl to like me back, even though for the most part she didn’t treat me very well.

Valentine’s Day was approaching and Amy and I were in a good place. We had been together for almost two weeks without her breaking up with me, so I was feeling really good about our relationship. Notes were passed. Stickers were traded. Hands were tentatively held for brief, but shining moments. Based on our tenuous past, I knew that I had to make a big splash for Valentine’s Day. I bought her a card that was sweet, but didn’t scream “desperate”, and a box of colored pencils.

That afternoon the phone rang. Before the words were even spoken, I could tell it was coming. I had learned to recognize the tone on her voice. She broke up with me…again. But this time it was permanent.

I went through what I would later learn was the normal range of emotions after a painful dumping. I was hurt, but I was also angry. I mean, come on, couldn't she have waited just one more day? If she had only seen the effort I put into her Valentine's Day gift, she might have changed her mind. I spent the rest of the day wallowing in the "what ifs".

There were no great lessons to be learned from this, except for the obvious fact that heartbreak hurts. It hurts even more on Valentine’s Day. It would be a long time before I realized that bad times make the good times better—sweet doesn’t exist without sour. Every so often on Valentine’s Day, as WonderWife™ and I uphold our tradition of eating fried chicken with a really good bottle of wine, I think about how Amy broke my heart so long ago, and I wonder if today is just a little bit better because of that.

The Purple Balloon

Of the myriad number of gifts that the Bean received during the one-two punch of 8 nights of Hanukkah immediately followed by his third birthday, without a doubt the greatest one, the one that gave him the most enjoyment and occupied him for the longest, came squished inside a greeting card.

The card in question was sent by one of the Bean’s peers, whom I’m guessing had an assist from a parental unit, and contained one deflated purple balloon. As far as I could tell, it was your standard issue round balloon. Nothing special, nothing fancy.

“What’s this?” The Bean asked holding the flaccid balloon up for me to inspect.

“I’ll show you,” I said taking it from him.

I blew it up and held it aloft, pinching the neck so no air would escape. I looked him directly in the eyes and let go of the balloon. It whooshed around the ceiling, dive bombed the carpet and bounced back into the air before landing in a crumpled heap next to the Bean.

His eyes were large.

“Do that again,” he said.

It's Be-Yootiful!

As is the custom of my people, I'm going to be spending Christmas eating Chinese food and watching movies. The joy of which will be multiplied this year, thanks to the new HD TV that now resides in my living room.

With that in mind, I hope that all of your holiday wishes come true.

Happy Holidays everyone.

New Traditions

WonderWife’s™ family and mine had very different approaches when it came to doling out Hanukkah gifts. When she was very young, WW™ would be visited by the "Hanukkah Fairy", a magical unseen creature who hides a present somewhere in the house each night. My parents took a different tact, forgoing the creation of a new Hanukkah mythology in favor of a more direct approach. Each morning, my mom would place that night’s present on the kitchen counter, next to the menorah, leaving ample time for my sister and me to work ourselves up into a lather all day wondering what was in those boxes.

Approximately ten minutes before we were going to light the first of this year’s Hanukkah candles, it dawned on us that we should establish what our pattern of gift giving was going to be—the Fairy or the table? WW™ was pushing hard for the Hanukkah Fairy and was really excited about starting a new tradition with our family. It was decided.

After we lit the menorah, we told the Bean that the Hanukkah fairy had hidden a present somewhere in the house. WW™ smiled as I attempted to guide him via the “warmer/colder” game, which I quickly found out is an incredibly ineffective way to coach a toddler. Thankfully, it didn’t take long before the Bean found the gift. Paper was shredded and each of our kids had a shiny new toy.

The next morning, WW™ rehashed the evening’s events with the Bean. “So the Hanukkah Fairy visited you last night?” WW™ asked.

“Oh mommy,” he said. “That’s just pretend.”

So much for new traditions.

Rock On WonderWife™

Despite all of her feelings about the Wii, having mostly ignored the video game console that resides in our house and constantly mocked me for playing said game, WonderWife™ scored big points when she gave me Shaun White Snowboarding for Hanukkah.

She totally rocks.

There Is a Santa

Christmas spirit is in full effect at my house. But DGB aren't you Jewish, you ask? Yes. Yes I am. But honestly, what little kid can resist the twinkly allure of Christmas? And who are we to keep it from him?

So coming on the heels of the Bean asking if he could give Santa a hug, WW™ took him to the mall today to meet Santa.

"Did you meet anyone special today?" I asked the Bean as soon as I got home.

"The real Santa," he said excitedly. "The extra-real Santa."

Blue and White in a Red and Green World

Over the weekend, I braved the chaos of the mall so I could get WonderWife™ her Hanukkah gift. Looking for a card, I went to the aisle in Target to find only about an eighth of their holiday card section devoted to Hanukkah. The card choices at Target are limited on a good day, and most of the Hanukkah cards had already been picked through, so I went to Hallmark. But it wasn’t much better there either. Although the Hanukkah section was more than twice the size of Target’s, half of those racks were for Bar and Bat Mitzvah cards. The choices were pretty limited for the Hanukkah cards they did have. I couldn’t even find one from a child to a parent. I picked out a fairly generic Hanukkah card and as I moved through the store towards the register, I took in all of the red and green, the mistletoe, all of the Santas, reindeer and candy canes that filled the store and I suddenly felt left out.

The divide between Hanukkah and Christmas wasn’t apparent to me as a kid. I grew up in a predominately Jewish neighborhood, and I can only recall one close friend who celebrated Christmas. Each morning after Hanukkah, my friends and I would talk at school about what we got the night before and what we thought we were going to get that night. Christmas decorations still dominated the landscape, but I never felt excluded. Christmas was something that some people celebrated, but my world consisted of Hanukkah. And it was exciting.

This year, I am struggling with being Jewish around the holidays for the first time in my life. That trip to the mall has triggered feelings in me that I wasn’t aware even existed. I think that it’s largely due to the fact that at 2 years old, the Bean is becoming more conscious of the world around him. As the houses in our neighborhood have begun to put up Christmas lights, the Bean has taken notice and become fascinated. “It’s bee-yoo-ti-ful,” he says standing in awe of the blinking colors. And WW™ and I are encouraging this excitement by driving him to other houses to see more displays. We’re even planning on braving the traffic and taking him to see the light display at Griffith Park. I spent the morning singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” to him and last night we Tivo’d “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Yet, it’s been harder to tell him about Hanukkah. We have some Hanukkah books and the dreidel song, but nothing as visceral or as pervasive as the Christmas stuff.

For the Bean right now, Christmas is all about shiny things—the lights and the colors and a few songs. But I know that next year, there will be questions. Questions like, why don’t we have a tree or why can’t we put up lights on our house? How do you tell a kid that putting up lights on our house isn’t what we do because we celebrate a different holiday than most everyone else? How does a story about oil lasting for 8 nights compete with a supernatural guy in a red suit coming down a chimney to leave presents?

The real problem with being Jewish around this time is the lack of symbols to celebrate. Yes, most malls have a menorah among the Christmas displays. But let’s be honest, their simple menorahs are too easy to ignore next to the ornate Christmas tree. It’s difficult to instill a sense of pride and excitement about our holiday when compared to Christmas, it seems so drab. NPR reporter Amy Klein recently said this about being Jewish around Christmas, “Okay, so it's not really the shopping that bothers me, but the sensation that there's a giant party to which everyone but me is invited.” This is pretty much how I’ve been feeling this year. I’m jealous at my friend, who is spending his first Christmas with a house, gets to put lights up in the trees in his yard. I long for a ritual akin to trimming a Christmas tree. But for the sake of my son, I need to deal with these feelings invisibly. I’ve told the Bean that celebrating Hanukkah is special and not everyone gets to do it. Only time will tell if this message penetrates.

Since my family is new, we need to figure out our own ways to celebrate and our own traditions to uphold. I want nothing more than for the Bean to rush into school the day after Hanukkah and tell his friends about what he got, even if his friends all celebrate Christmas. I want him to be proud of his heritage and I want him to be as excited about the holidays as I was growing up.

So to everyone lighting candles tonight, I wish you a very happy Hanukkah.