Days spent at museums, at music and light shows and evenings sharing a delicious chocolate babka are how we filled our week thus far. And now to continue the tradition (previous thanks here and here), I’d like to share what I am most thankful for this year.
5. Family. Ours is warm, close, supportive and finally nearby.
4. For new family members. My sister-in-law got married this year and her new husband has received the ultimate seal of approval — Sophia’s.
3. Living in the city, at least for now, that we love so much.
2. My sister and brother-in-law who are hosting Thanksgiving and have opened their home to not just my side of the family, but also Evan’s. Thankfully, everyone is brining a dish to help make such a big gathering manageable.
1. My amazing husband who is a true partner in every sense of the word and two beautiful little girls who give me a reason to smile every single waking hour.
Quite an eventful weekend around here. In addition to some great quality time with our nephew, we treated Eliza to a glamor shoot in honor of her recently passed 5th month birthday and spent some time outdoors. We took advantage of a mild Sunday to walk to Head House Square and peruse a Farmer’s Market. Turnips, berries, apples, pears, local cheeses, breads and even mmmm… chocolates were all on display looking vibrant and keeping the usually more subdued, at least on a Sunday, square quite lively. Later that evening, we walked to Franklin Square and enjoyed a light and music show which Sophia absolutely loved. And even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, it is hard not to get into the spirit of the season when everything is lit up and looks so festive.
Eliza napped through the festivities which was just as well. We were able to focus on Sophia and enjoy her excitement.
Having been quite absent from the kitchen the last two days, I decided to warm up our kitchen and home by making the dough for a chocolate babka. The recipe isn’t particularly difficult, but it does present one challenge for me personally—having to wait overnight for the dough to rise. If you know me at all, you will know that I am not patient in general and even less so when it comes to desserts and chocolate in particular. Patience I lack but not will power and so Sophia and I collaborated on the dough and waited for it to rise overnight. We made the filling and baked them off on Monday evening. The result is … well, judge for yourself.
There are some days that you look forward to with great anticipation—the kind of days that you plan well in advance. My nephew Alex turned eleven this past October and Evan and I decided that he was old enough to be treated to an experience as his birthday gift. You see, we both believe that experiences can be the best gifts. We hadn’t had as much time to spend with Alex since we became parents and this was the perfect opportunity to remedy that and so we offered him a day with us in the city doing something fun.
As it turns out, carving out a day without our own children took a little bit of planning and in the end, my parents helped with Eliza and Sophia so we could spend time with Alex. The particulars of our day included a walk through Old City and a brief stop at Elfreth’s Alley, old-fashioned sodas at the Franklin Fountain, fried chicken and donuts at Federal Donuts followed by a thorough exploration of the Franklin Institute and their Body Worlds: Animals Inside and Out exhibit finishing with dinner in Old City.
I could regale you further with details about each of those places and while they were fun in their own right, the real delight was seeing Alex experience everything and in the conversations we had. I heard about his Science Olympiad and how his class is learning about Native Americans by experiencing various aspects of their life such as building teepees, hand dyeing clothes and making bison stew and Indian fry bread.
There is a saying “I would like to travel world with you twice. Once, to see the world. Twice, to see the world the way you see the world.” That is exactly what I wanted to do, to see and share in Alex’s experience, to be a part of his life for a day and to hear his perspectives on things and understand what matters to him. Our day together brought me pure and utter joy.
T-t-t-urtle. What? You’ve never heard of turtle bread before? In fact, I hear that there is an entire children’s baking book with recipes for every letter of the alphabet. Sophia made this turtle last week.
Her culinary learnings didn’t just end with kneading and shaping. Sophia helped peel eggs for a salad, too.
Fall is really here to stay and we’re trying to think of exciting things to do given the rainy/windy weather. On the upside, Franklin Square has been decorated for the holidays complete with a Christmas market, food trucks and a craft show. The lights are twinkling everywhere as the sun sets and the city is ready for the season.
We’ve been back in Philadelphia a little over a month now. While I didn’t expect this—we’re still adjusting and unpacking and, from the looks of the boxes all over the place, we will be for a long while. I shouldn’t be surprised as I don’t make any Herculean effort to unload the boxes what with, together with Evan, cleaning, cooking, feeding, and playing with the girls. I just rewrote that sentence from “having to cook, clean” to what it is. In reality, I don’t have to cook or clean or even play with the girls. All of that can be bought. You can have someone clean your house and you can order take-out or bring your family to a restaurant and even hire a sitter to spend time with your kids. The one thing you can’t (or maybe I wouldn’t) do is offload taking care of sick kids. That’s something that I would never do unless I absolutely had to. I want to cook and clean and play with Sophia and Eliza because I LOVE doing it. But I digress. The point is that after having been in Philadelphia for a month, we have no regrets about making the big and rather expensive move.
I was thinking about our lives now and thinking back to what they used to be like the last time we lived in Philadelphia. Back then, it was just the two of us. I was already working and Evan was finishing up his Ph.D. We lived in the same place and yet it felt infinitely larger and almost always immaculate. I felt like we were both incredibly busy with work and school but in reality, that busyness is nothing compared to the new normal, the new busy. Our home is busting at the seams with all things toys and kid-gear. We are “on” which means up, functioning, ticking things off the to-do lists from 6 AM until 9 PM at which point even TV watching can at times seem like an exhausting and daunting task. What’s more, my life, much like is the case for all the other parents, is a series of lists—groceries, to-dos, work things, and planning/packing lists. The latter has been banished to the furthest corner of the universe since we no longer have to stay overnight when visiting our family. Amen.
During our previous tenure in the city, I also didn’t have this blog and that is something I regret. I very much enjoy the outlet that this space provides me and in turn reward the readers with stories of our life, our everydayness. One day, many years from now, my kids will hopefully read or at least page through the blog and see what I was like when I was younger or even their age. Perhaps they will find the that me (the now me) is someone they can relate to or understand. If anything, they’ll see what their lives were when they were little and the choices we made to ensure that they grew up in a home filled with love, with great food, with family close by and surrounded by their cousins and grandparents.
Looking at the mirror, I see a much different me. I look older. I no longer have to squint to see some fine lines and even wrinkles. I am thankfully not graying but look tamed and steadier none-the-less. The last few years have made me realize that life has a way of teaching us that we’re none-the-wiser, that we don’t know what is yet to come and that we shouldn’t judge or say “when I am [in the same place you’re in…]”.
And so we have come full circle, we are in the same place—literally—where we were living 4 years ago and our life couldn’t be more different. Not just different, but better because of the choices we have made, to embrace and enjoy the chaos of the every day.
We had such an eventful weekend that it has taken all of Monday to recover. My nephew turned 11 last week and our family celebrated his milestone in our usual style with good food and even better company. I was supposed to make cake pops but had to back out after Sophia came down with a cold. I did however manage late-breaking brownies which were quite good.
Evan and I enjoyed some down time with my in-laws on Sunday along with Princess Sophia
and Eliza.
I must admit that the move hasn’t been flawless or very easy. We still have boxes in our new place and our house isn’t sold. This state of limbo can be quite tough but it is absolutely worth it to have this:
Cooking, feeding and introducing our little eaters to a variety of foods is a topic that is close to our hearts. Our culinary chronicles and the recipes that I post attest to our ardent desire to raise children who are enthusiastic eaters with a large palate and willingness to try just about anything. I was reminded about children’s finicky eating habits at the weekend celebration when a family member was very surprised to see Sophia eating a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Why wouldn’t Sophia be eating a bagel with lox? Lox is salted fish and I know for a fact that our families grew up eating smoked and pickled fish since early childhood.
Sophia is not a huge eater, her slim build attests to that, but she has a huge range of foods that she eats including smoked and salted fish. I shouldn’t sound smug and know-it-all about introducing kids to new foods since we have yet to see if Eliza will be as big of a culinary enthusiast. And so I can only share my philosophy on raising a savvy eater. Both Evan and I are adventurous eaters though at least in his case, that was not always true. He has over the last twelve years significantly expanded his palate and now even I strive to keep up with his adventurous nature (trying pickled pork ear is not always an easy feat for a very pregnant woman but I’ve done it and it was quite good).
We both believe that attitude plays a huge role in any undertaking and that includes cooking and eating. We love to cook and almost never look at it as a chore instead choosing to welcome ingredients and new recipes into our kitchen involving Sophia to partake in prep. work and cooking. We try, even though she is still very young, to have conversations during dinner asking each other about our days and what we are going to do the next day or over the weekend. I won’t lie and say that cartoons have made a permanent exit from our dinner table but they are not as significant of a presence at every meal as they used to be.
We started involving Sophia into our cooking about a year ago and before that, we involved her in menu planning and growing our ingredients in our little garden in Maryland. Nowadays, Sophia readily offers to help us cook and routinely tries the things we chop and dice while watching pasta boil or meat brown on the stove. I try to talk to her about what happens when we are cooking. Yesterday we talked about our eyes watering when we cut onions. Evan didn’t simplify the answer much chiming in with “a sulfuric compound escapes the onion when its cut into and makes our eyes watery”.
Our cooking approach extends to our eating approach whereby we don’t make a huge deal out of new foods and I will often offer her something new without announcing it and sometimes more or less incognito. We also do not subscribe to the “diner” philosophy and try to cook dishes we can all eat as a family instead of succumbing to making several dishes to please every family member. But after all is said and done, Sophia is still a child and she does have her own preferences. She doesn’t like melted cheese and would gladly eat dark chocolate at every meal as her main course. She likes pomegranates and all things sour and tangy. Sophia will usually choose a salty pretzel over ice cream. Her favorite condiment is furikake (shaved bonito fish flakes, seaweed, and sesame seeds). We like to ensure she eats a healthy serving of fruits and vegetables often resorting to the first this and then chocolate tactic which has so far worked.
Having moved back to Philadelphia will hopefully have a more positive impact on our cooking and eating bringing our friends and family to our dinner table more often. We are starting a new tradition of enjoying Sunday Dinners with anyone and everyone who wishes to participate. The only requirement is that anyone who joins in must host a sunday dinner of their own. Our first such dinner was fittingly, last Sunday after enjoying Old City Fest with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew. I served homey chicken stew with root vegetables and peas.
A dear friend of my in-laws gifted the girls these Big Sister/Little Sister shirts. We thought we’d get back into taking more pictures of the girls at various ages starting with this.
We recently celebrated Sophia’s 3rd birthday and Eliza’s Brit Bat. This evening I sit back with a warm cup of tea looking at life I chose almost 4 years ago. A warmth spreads in my heart knowing that I couldn’t have been more fortunate in welcoming our not-so-little, little girl named Sophia. She’s our bashert. I am awestruck by how mother nature works to make a beautiful little person from two people and how every time I look into her eyes I see my husbands looks and my own mischievous nature gleaming back at me. And just when I couldn’t imagine making space in my life and heart for anyone else, along came Eliza. She’s so different from Sophia and yet she too, is our bashert.
Every time I try to think of what it is I wish for the girls besides rainbows, balloons and cake, I find myself at a loss for words. I wish for them to be surrounded by as many family and friends as we were on this joyous occasion, to be loved and to find love, to know that life’s riches are what you find within your heart.
And now the details about the party. We decided to celebrate Sophia’s 3rd birthday together with Eliza’s naming. Sophia didn’t and Eliza hadn’t expressed any negative thoughts about the matter, so why not? Our family has three kids’ birthdays in October so we have to share our weekends with our cousins’ celebrations. The party had a Curious George theme because Sophia absolutely loves that show and this is probably the last year I could have had such a theme before embarking on years of birthdays with princess themes. My in-laws hosted the event and Evan and I contributed the cake and cupcakes. The party was called for 10 am and we served traditional brunch affair (bagels, lox, whitefish, kugel, etc.,). My sister made a delicious kugel and my mom made her famous potato salad which I swore off at parties.
The cake and cupcakes were made by Sweet Elizabeth’s Elizabeth’s Cakes in Manayunk. The cake, a two tiered confection, had a chocolate cake on the bottom and a chocolate chip cake on the top. Curious George, The Man in the Yellow Hat, Hundley and Gnocchi are featured on the cake in fitting with the theme. The cupcakes were chocolate with peanut butter and Oreo buttercream, red velvet, and chocolate chip with salted caramel buttercream decorated with sprinkles and glitter.
The real starts of the party were not the desserts but the family and friends who came out to celebrate. The house was filled with children of all ages making new friends and playing. We couldn’t have asked for a better celebration.
Anyone who has visited this space regularly will know that we are fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing family (here, here, here, here and here) who go out of their way to help. I have however, until this very day, held back one amazing post. Not because it was not deserved but rather because I was afraid that if I had shared, she and the magic she wields would somehow disappear. But I cannot any longer and in good conscience be quiet about the amazing grace of my mother-in-law. In all our adventures as parents and even before then, my mother-in-law has lent a helping hand. She has been instrumental in this move, both in instigating and making it come to fruition, by helping to sort, pack, take care of the kids and generally offer support.
Tiara and magic wand courtesy of Grammie
Judi came into the city to lend a helping hand with Sophia and Eliza yesterday since Evan was on a long day trip. Sophia was already asking if Grammie is coming back again this evening. That is the ultimate validation. Through the years (the many, many years) that we have known each other, I have time and again witnessed the amazing grace of my mother-in-law and it is time I shouted from my rooftop just how grateful I am for her.
