Kitchen Bikes

That Time We Took Ballet

I signed Roan up for quite a few classes at our YMCA last year.  He's hit the age where most of the classes are drop off, so I can drop him off at art or soccer or whatever for 45 minutes and hang out with Ilan.  Over the summer I wanted something to do on Wednesdays.  There were, I'm not kidding, about 18 ballet classes offered, and nothing else.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but as the mother of two boys, I have to admit to some frustration.  Our local YMCA offers more ballet classes than *any other class.*  For example, there are more ballet classes than art, soccer, track, theater, and creative movement combined.  This seems particularly unfair, since ballet is mainly for girls.  We live in Brooklyn, where everything is overcrowded, and you've got all these kids who want to take classes, and so you offer tons and tons of the one class that's geared towards only one gender?

Naturally I've complained about this to other moms, who all encouraged me to put Roan in ballet. They all know or have heard of boys who took ballet, and if they had boys themselves, or a Y membership, or whatever, they wouldn't hesitate for one single second to sign their son right up.  Some moms are more aggressively liberal - what's my problem, they want to know?  This is Brooklyn!  Aren't we all above gender norms here?!  It's not like he'd be the only boy in class, they say.

So I signed Roan up for ballet. There were 7 other kids in his class.  All of them were girls.  Girly girls, who showed up every week in pink and purple tights, leotards, and tutus.  There wasn't a single tomboy or gender neutrally dressed girl in his class.

I bought Roan a wife beater and dressed him in his tightest shortest shorts, because it just seemed wrong, in the face of all that skin tight gear, to have him show up in cut offs and a baggy shirt.  I honestly thought he would enjoy ballet, the structure of it, being told what to do.  We'd tried those free form run-around-like-a-crazy-person classes, and Roan was not on board.  But he didn't take to ballet.  He spent his time huffing around the perimeter of the room, pretending to be a train, and when the teach gave him a choice between participating and watching quietly from the wall he chose to watch.

After a few classes we stopped going.  Roan could take it or leave it, but I began to feel like we were crashing a party.  There was a real sense of camaraderie among those girls, all dressed up like princesses and excited to prance around.  I think it spoiled the atmosphere to have a boy running around on a track no one else could see, hooting and hollaring and screaming "ALL ABOARD THE POLAR EXPRESS!"  Or sitting in the corner, like a delinquent, watching.

I guess I have a new appreciation for these sort of gender segregated classes.  It's nice for girls to be girly with other girls, and if my son isn't asking me for a tutu and ballet flats there's no reason I need to put him in that environment.  We are still baffled by the sheer number of ballet classes and still waiting for the Y to offer a class called "Pretend to be a Train."  Until then, we'll stick with art.

A Few of My Favorite Things

My baby on tippy toes

His floppy ears

This moose face he makes all the time

Roan in his wetsuit

When Roan tells me the moral of a story.  The other day he said, "do you know what the point of WALL-E is?  It's that we need to take out the trash."

Today he summarized the Purim story.  "It's just about a bunch of Jews.  There are a bunch of Jews, and a king."

And when Roan tries to teach something to Ilan.  Roan spent much of Wednesday trying to teach Ilan to have rhythm.  "When you hear music, you clap the beat like this.  The beat is the rhythm.  No Ilan, that is not right.  Okay Ilan, good clapping, you are a clever baby, but you have to clap when I clap, like this."  And on and on and on.

Small Sailors

Family Photos

It's that time of year when other people's holiday cards inspire me to take some family photos.  I dug out the remote control that came with my camera so I could torture my family cozy up with my family in our backyard, like ya do in the dead of winter.  Don't we look natural?

Then, when we were in California, Maria took some shots of us walking down the street I grew up on, where my parents still live.  This was exciting because all of us know how to walk!

Moose turns 1

Dear Ilan,

You turned one today, and more and more I find myself thinking of all the things I'd done for Roan by this age that I've never done for you.  Like mommy-and-me swim lessons.  Certainly those are a total waste of money and time spent in a bathing suit, but still, you would love them.  I've never made you a smoothie.  Not a single one.  I've never finger painted with you, or taken your handprints.  You've never been to the zoo, or the children's museum.

I've had exactly one playdate for you.  It was with two other babies in the neighborhood, the moms were both first time mothers.  I had a hard time relating to them.  All the things they talked about were things I didn't spend any time on, though I could remember overthinking all those same issues with Roan.  We had an extended conversation about weaning.  "How did it go?  Which feedings did you cut first? How did he react?  How did you feel?"  The questions seemed earnest and absurd.  I just stopped breast feeding you, and that was that.

Sometimes I get caught up on all the experiences I haven't given you, all the places I haven't taken you.  But you have Roan.

We turn boxes into trains and you sit inside them and Roan pulls you around the house until the boxes break, picking up toys and distributing them everywhere you go.  You "push" Roan around in your walker. You two play in the bath for what feels like hours, complicated splashing games that I don't understand.  You have huge matching dump trucks that you race around the room and bash into each other and and the walls and laugh and laugh.  At mealtimes you take turns putting your feet on the table, waiting for me to notice and scold.

There is a game you both love that I call The Wheelbarrow - Roan grabs your foot and drags you around the room backwards, you slide along your belly and sometimes on your face.  Occasionally he slingshots you across the room.  I hate this game and always put a stop to it, and when I do, both you and Roan give me identical guilty looks.  You both know The Wheelbarrow is forbidden.  It usually ends with you getting hurt. Yet I've seen you scooting backwards on your belly, offering Roan your foot, instigating.

I've realized: I may not be the same person for you as I am for Roan.  My parenting strategy has shifted.  I remember with Roan rushing from one activity to the next, not even taking time to clean up the messes we made because isn't it amazing how much fun Ro is having and yes let's totally switch gears from spin art to playdough, never mind that there are flecks of paint drying all over the chairs, who has time to clean?

I don't feel that way anymore.  I've made a rule that we have to clean up one activity before starting another one, and by the time we're done cleaning, you guys have usually forgotten about the new activity and wandered off to play the Wheelbarrow game on the sly.

Today, on your birthday, you refused to take your morning nap.  You were in good spirits, and we shopped for ingredients to make your birthday cake.  The plan was for you to nap in the afternoon and Ro and I would make the cake.  But you didn't take that nap either, so I put you in the Ergo so you could help.  Eli, one of Roan's friends, came over to help too.  With all this help, the cake took forever to make.

When it was finally done, we had a vanilla cake with raspberry, green creme cheese frosting, and raspberry and sprinkle toppings.  It actually tasted pretty good.  I made everyone smoothies, and then, after two more friends arrived, we lit the candle and sang happy birthday.  Roan opened your presents for you, and played with them for you too.  You were too delighted with the cake to care.

Sad face - I scooted the cake away from you

Eating a raspberry off your thumb

The Last Night of Channukah

Saturday night was the last night of Hannukah.  There's something very comforting about eating dinner with so many candles burning, and leaving them to burn down late into the night.  Each year that Hannukah ends I promise myself that I will do this more often, light lots of candles, when it's cold outside and I'm cranky, or when I just want to give myself a treat.  But I've tried, and lighting menorahs in February just isn't the same.  There's a certain magic and charm in knowing that people all over the world are lighting candles and spending time together on these nights, and have been doing so for thousands of years.

This was the first year that Hannukah and Christmas really sunk in for Roan.  We've been seeing Christmas trees and decor for weeks now, and eventually I felt it was time to explain to him that we are Jews, and Christmas is not for us.  I probably did this all wrong - I should have got some advice before launching into this conversation which I was completely unprepared for - because how do you break this kind of news, that sorry kid, all this widespread commercialized happiness is not for you.  Instead you get candles and latkes and eight nights of presents.  Roan thought it over for a few days.  Then he announced that he didn't want to be Jewish anymore.  When I asked why he said, "because Christmas is better than Hannukah, just a little bit."

We spent this Hannukah talking about all the beautiful and unique aspects of Judaism.  It was a shorter conversation than you might think, given my limited knowledge.  I also realized: maybe I don't care whether Roan chooses a Jewish life for himself.  I'm giving him a Jewish upbringing and education, and he can do what he wants with it.  Except, he wasn't allowed to discard it as a 4-years-old because of Christmas envy.  Thankfully, at the end of eight nights of presents and lots of stories, Roan seems more amenable to being Jewish.

We lit two menorahs this year, one that Roan made at school, and the bicycle menorah.  Roan's menorah was made from nine shot glasses with photos of him wrapped around the glass, and tea lights inside. Adorable as it is, the design is terrible.  A tea light shamash is useless, and on the last night I went through about 15 matches trying to get all the candles lit.  Since we won't be using this menorah again, here are some photos so we can always remember it:

Happy Holidays.