My friend Debbie (and her twins Josh and Sam) hosted a Passover-themed playdate for Rachel and her son Oliver and us. James and Julia munched on matzoh for the first time, sampled a little matzoh pizza and charoset, and searched for plush items from the Passover Seder plate.
James and Julia try their first matzoh.
Sam plays with plush items from the Seder plate.
"Mmmm... Kiddush cup."
And there was some unrelated-to-Passover playing too.:
“Moooo!”
“I said MOOOOOOO!”
Josh and Sam attack me.
I’ve been to three Seders now and each one has been wildly different. The first was hosted by my ex-boyfriend’s aunt and her partner (who happened to be Mary Travers’ sister), and their Haggadah spotlighted the accomplishments of women and gays throughout history. My next Seder was with my friend Lila’s family and since they are from Israel it was mostly in Hebrew and quite traditional. And then there was my most recent Seder which was the twins’ first.
My friend Stacy invited us over for a kids’ Seder, along with her husband Neil, her sons Asher and Ronan, her friend Cara, Cara’s daughter Sasha, and Cara’s brother Glenn, a bassoonist in the Buffalo symphony. (The cool thing about being a bassoonist is that people are not going to forget what you do for a living! Glenn and I also had an extended conversation about my passion, TV theme songs of the 70s and 80s.)
“I shall call him `Sir Moo.’”
Julia cracks herself up.
“Ronan’s Mommy, I have some bowls for the matzoh ball soup.”
Asher, me, James, Mark, Julia, Neil, Ronan, Cara, Glenn, and Sasha
And our host, Stacy
I made charoset (it’s from a great cookbook called Healthy Helpings from Bubby that I’ve made before) and apple apricot kugel (also from Healthy Helpings), and Mark made hardboiled eggs. I also brought Kosher wine but was told not to bring any with labels depicting places that are battlefields. (Apparently our hosts remember a particularly bad vintage emanating from a bottle from the Golan Heights Winery.)
James thinks it’s Easter again and decides to eat his feet.
We read the kid-friendly Sammy Spider’s First Haggadah. James loves his Dayenu book (courtesy of the PJ Library) so he was ready to sing. Julia happened to sit next to the big stack of matzoh so she was pretty happy about that, gnawing through piece after piece. James loved his charoset, salmon, and even his gefilte fish. Jewish grandmothers everywhere are proud of him.
Ronan has his daddy’s smile as well as a copy of Sammy Spider’s First Haggadah.
Julia and her precious matzoh.
"I'm going to count how many pieces of matzoh I have. One! I have one!"
“You’re SURE you want to try the gefilte fish, James?”
The twins tried to find the afikomen, but I don’t think they really knew what they were doing so it was really a contest between the older kids, Asher and Sasha. And Stacy presented nice gifts to all the kids afterwards. (Thanks to Stacy for many of the pictures... and the gifts!)
Big kids, Sasha and Asher, are pumped to search for the afikomen.
Julia searches the sofa cushions.
Asher finds it!
Sasha and Asher post-chocolate cake.
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