Oh, Summertime...

How quintessential.

The face of summer. :D

The boys get different flavors and then share. :)

This might be my new favorite photo of Adi. Yes, with the vanilla beard and all. That's just so her. But she looks so sweet, and the lighting in this ice cream shop was great! 

They also share with their dinos. 

How sweet!

Summer Vacation, Week 2

Second week of July:

On Sunday we were home, bored. Thinking about that day's plans. Then Hila messaged me asking about indoor parks, and a few minutes later we had a date at the BP Kids' Gym!

The Kids' Gym is an old favorite of ours. You'll find it in many, many summer posts over the last three years. We used to live around the corner from it, but now we are a mile away. Also, Zusha officially aged out, having turned 7. But we did get him in that day.

I'm sure there were other 7 year olds there, too. Zusha is just tall for his age, making him conspicuous enough to be questioned.

Friends make everything more fun!

Adi on an elliptical. Last year, I tried to put her on a kiddie treadmill and she could barely keep her weight up holding onto the bar. She was holding tighter and tighter until her knuckles turned white, whimpering all the while, ignoring my encouragements to just calm down and take steps.
Now she didn't have to do any of that... she just got off by herself! Ha.

Would've been cool if we all of the seats were taken by our kids, but it's nearly impossible to herd so many of them together at once. :) (The boy in the white shirt is the one that's not part of our gang.)

Monday:
On Monday we went to the program at the library... as usual.
The night before I scrubbed the kitchen, so I thought I'd take photos to look back on and reminisce the cleanliness of the kitchen  when it will be restored to its usual old self.

Looking into the kitchen from the entrance area:

 Now I'm standing by the sinks, looking out. Under the window are kids' hooks (for coats, backpacks, and now bathing suits and robes.)

Taking a break from lunch to sing "Twinkle." :)

Tuesday Poolday:

After swimming we went inside and made chocolates.

I put out bowls of white and dark chocolate chips, raisins, almond slivers, and tangerine peels.

The boys filled cupcake pans with the chocolates and fillings.

Then we baked them!

They didn't come out that well, but the boys enjoyed!

We ended the day with strawberry milk. I defrosted some frozen strawberries in a bowl, took the juice that ran off and mixed it with milk.  Then I took some marshmallows, poured hot water over them to partially melt them, and added them to the strawberry milk. YUM!

On Wednesday we went to the bay...

I'll make a separate post about that.

On Thursday we went out for pizza and ice cream... made a sun catcher... and just relaxed after the previous day's trip.

I have a Google Sky Map app on my phone. You hold the phone up to the sky and you see stars and planets that overlay the actual ones. The little light behind Gedalya is the moon. If he'd point the phone to it, the moon would appear on the screen. Here Gedalya is pointing the phone down and showing me that Mars is on the other side of the Earth.

So that's Week Two wrapped up!

I Asked for This

I started this post back in November. I put a lot of heart into it. I really searched my brain for words that can convey what I am feeling. I'm not a very expressive person, so I just gave up. It was eating up too much emotional energy. But now I decided to finish what I started.

November 2010:

"Focus on Special Needs!"
"Guest speaker in the auditorium today during lunch will talk about special needs. Anyone who is interested is invited!"

That is what I read on the signs hanging in the hallways and in my eleventh grade classroom. Each month, our school had a different "Focus" on an aspect of chesed such as kiruv, chesed at home, and special needs. There were projects done, articles and poems handed out, goals set and met, speakers invited... all part of the experience.

 {June 2011}

I was pretty interested in special needs. Our school had regular visits from schools like Otsar, HASC and Beis Ezra. We did fun activities together- about 10 - 15 girls were signed up to participate, and I was one of them.

So on that afternoon, I gathered my sandwich and headed off to the auditorium. This was a topic that I liked, and I was looking forward.
I don't remember most of the speech, but one part I will never forget. The speaker quoted a statistic of how many children are born with genetic or chromosomal disorders. And then she translated it into practical terms.

"Ten of you girls sitting in this room will likely have a child with special needs." I don't remember how many girls there were, and I don't remember the number she quoted. But what I do remember is feeling:
How many of these girls would really accept a child who is different? 
And how many would accept this child happily? 
Who here will be devastated with the news? 
And who will give their child up for adoption? That's not likely, is it? Especially since they are all interested enough in this topic to come to this speech. 
What kind of start will these children have if they are born to someone who needs time to come to terms with the child's condition?

 {June 2011}

That's when I thought to myself... if there are ten neshamos waiting to be distributed among ten choice girls in this room, I'd like to be chosen. I know I will accept the baby. I know I will love unconditionally. Hashem, I think I am up to the task of raising a special needs child. Let me be one of the ten.

So yes, I did ask for it.

{June 2011}

All throughout high school I worked with individuals with special needs. Not just kids, but adults, too. (So I wasn't just enamored with all the cute kids running around being funny, adorable kids. I knew kids with SN would grow up to be adults with SN.) All the people who visited our school were medium to high functioning. And that's all I knew about. I didn't know there were other people that were affected much more severely by their condition.

{June 2011}

So I guess I did get what I am able to handle.

What helps me understand my role in mothering a special needs daughter is to first realize that I didn't lose anything. I didn't lose a typical daughter, a daughter for whom I bought shoes she isn't able to wear, a daughter whose wedding I was planning... I didn't lose it.

What my daughter has isn't a cold or a stomach upset or even a heart defect. It's not something which you can take away and be left with a healthy child. My daughter, like any of your kids, IS whole. It's in her genes, and she is presenting exactly what her genes are coding. Which is pretty cool! ;)

 {June 2011}

But truly, if G-d wouldn't have given my daughter to me, or yours to you, they would have been born to a different family. That's the way I choose to understand it. The choices aren't: a)get baby girl with syndrome b)get baby girl without syndrome. They are a)get baby girl with syndrome b)someone else gets this baby girl with syndrome.

{June 2011}

To me it's not even a question! I'm glad my daughter was born into our family.
It is what I asked for, after all. :)

{June 2011}

Botanical Gardens

I still haven't posted about our unplanned trip to Botanical Gardens, though I did mention it a few posts back.

We were wandering around Crown Heights, waiting for Adi to wake up so we could go home on the bus. But she slept on, and we walked on. Soon enough we reached Prospect Park, but not any old part of it...

It was more wonderful than you can imagine. I mean, fish? Turtles? The boys are never leaving this place!

There were wondrous photo opportunities for me. That made me almost as happy as the turtles made the kids!

Next time we go I hope to be able to take better photos. I was so tired and not in the mood of getting it *just* right. The kids were tired and not in the mood of anything but running in circles and trying to climb over the fence and into the pond.

So these are mostly just snapshots, but they are good memories of that day!

And while the kids didn't succeed in climbing over the fence and into the pond, they did get that longing satisfied with a perfectly splashable stream!

I look at this picture and I feel so sad that my kids have to grow up in the city. Visiting this picturesque spot is nice and all, but how sublime would it be to have it all surrounding you every day!

Extra points for making it over the stream in just one step!

But on Adi's scoreboard, the more water your  body comes in contact with, the more you win. :)

Gedalya is a natural at lovely poses. He's always been.

A feast for my eyes... all you mothers who have kids close in age will know what I mean. :)

Oh yeah, the plants. With my two ounces of strength I did take some photos of *plants*. It is Botanical Gardens, and it would be treacherous to go out without a photo of flowers.

I can't believe I never thought of taking the kids there before. I guess I didn't realize how much they'd love it. We'll be back, for sure!