When we were down in New York this week with Alastair's family, his mother (a.k.a. Jaycee) threw a lovely, abbreviated Passover seder for Elsa and Clio's benefit. It ran about fifteen minutes, total, which is about as long as the girls can manage sitting at a table these days, even when mass quantities of mac and cheese are present.
Highlights were hand-washing, the parts where they get to eat matzoh, the parts where they got to drink wine, the part where they got to stick their fingers in the wine and dab it on their plates (something they might have come up with on their own), and, in Elsa's case, haroset. The herbs dipped in salt water didn't go over so well, and we didn't even bother trying to get them to eat the horseradish. I think the finer points of the story were lost on them, but they enjoyed finding the matzoh. And eating it --- lots of it. They were also not slouches when it came to the wine. After the first couple of sips of that oh-so-fruity Manischewitz, they were calling for "More wine! More wine!" They would have downed Elijah's whole glass too, given the opportunity.
I had to hold Elsa's wine cup to keep her from drinking from it. Note how she is, therefore, pulling on my hand.
"So many plagues? Oy!"
So, that was our nod to the girls' Jewish heritage. Today, my mother asked me if we were going to be doing anything for Easter. Not in a putting-pressure-on-us kind of way (my parents are not very religious these days). More out of curiosity, I think. The answer is: we may go to (Unitarian) church on Sunday, where there will surely be some mention of Easter, along with various pagan rites of spring. I'll probably pick up some foil-wrapped eggs and we'll do a scaled-down egg-hunt in the backyard, which the girls will love. But we're holding off on introducing the whole Easter Bunny mythology. I figure they'll probably get exposure to that next year, when they're in preschool, and we can hoppity hop hop across that bridge when we come to it.
And then, in the middle of writing this post, in fact, our neighbor across the street -- a very kind, lonely widow in her seventies who likes to bring the girls presents from time to time -- came by with an Easter gift for them: a Teddy Bear that, when you hold its hands, recites the Lord's Prayer. We want to introduce the girls to both Judaism and Christianity, and I've always liked the Lord's prayer, and think they should be familiar with it -- so why is it that I feel weird about having this teddy bear in the house? I guess I've never really been a fan of mixing toys and religion. It seems slightly unfair -- like you're trying to sneak the religion part in, disguised as fun. Not that religion can't be fun. But...oh, I don't know. This may be my own highly ridiculous hangup.
In other news: I'm happy to report that the word of the week in the Baby Squared household is "OK." As in (though not in these exact words) "OK, mommy, I'll come and sit down so you can put my shoes on" and "OK, mommy, I'll eat veggie burgers for dinner instead of continually, loudly demanding yogurt," and even "OK, I'll stop hitting Clio on the head with this Mega Lego, even though it's so much fun." Of course, "No," still reigns as the most popular word by far, but the growing frequency of OK is encouraging.
Happy [insert early spring holiday of your choice here], everyone.
