Apologies about the delay in postings…

The Hearshens are in a place of transition at this time.  And transitions are tough, they are really tough.  Well, here goes nothing:

We learn in the מכילתא that “כל התחלות קשות, All Beginnings are Tough.” This is a puzzling statement and one that we all can relate to. Beginnings are tough, but doesn’t this statement stink of pessimism? The מהר''ל מפראג shined some light on this by explaining that “All beginnings are tough and that is because they are a change.”  So now for my rabbinic insight… Can I flip the meaning?  All changes are tough because they are beginnings??? The transition that we are embarking on is very tough but on the good side, it is a new beginning.  We are now starting over.  We do not know where, and we do not know when, but we will be starting afresh somewhere else.  I think that it is safe to say that all changes are tough, but all changes are beginnings, and so we should begin to look at this change not as the end of something, but the beginning of something new.

 

Ayelet update time:  She walks, she feeds herself, and yes she has a molar growing in.  She is 14 months old at this time.  She began to walk 2 weeks ago, and it is quite different.  Everyday she improves.  At this point in time Ayelet has been on the following plane trips:

2/2009 – SEA to JFK

2/2009 JFK to Tel Aviv

2/2009 Tel Aviv to Newark

2/2009 Newark to SEA

5/2009 SEA to LAX

5/2009 LAX to SEA

7/2009 SEA to Dallas

7/2009 Dallas to Detroit

7/2009  Detroit to Dallas

7/2009 Dallas to SEA

12/2009 SEA to LAX

1/2010 LAX to SEA

1/2010 SEA to LAX

2/2010 LAX to SEA

And this weekend will be another two planes, which brings her total to 16, and she can’t get miles for them.

Here is a picture of her on a Horizon airlines plane down to LAX this past December:

 

 

 

But I know most of you are more excited about the whole walking thing and so with out further ado…

 

We’ll try to be better next time…

נס גדול

Miracles… That is what we are about to celebrate.  Tonight is the 24th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, which means that tomorrow night will not only be Shabbat, but also the beginning of the holiday of חנכה.  I recently wrote an article about this holiday and feel free to read it.  Let me know what you think.

Anyways, at this time of the year we are thinking about the idea of miracles.  On our dreidles we find the letters נ, ס, ג, ש and these correspond to the Hebrew phrase: נס גדול היה שם, a great miracle happened there.  In Israel the dreidles do not use the letter ש, for the word שם (there), they use the letter פ, for the word פה (here), because that is where the miracle happened.  But I think we would be doing this holiday a little disservice if we did not try to find the miracle here as well.  We all observe miracles everyday, but for one reason or another we opt to ignore them.  For the holiday of חנכה lets choose to not ignore them.  Lets choose to see them and embrace them.  Every breath we take is a miracle and every thing we do is a miracle.  When we see things in this way we find that we must be thankful for all of these miracles.  I know that I am immensely thankful for all of the miracles in my life, and I hope that more of us can be as well.

Happy second חנכה to the greatest miracle of them all: our daughter Ayelet.

 

חג אורים שמח

The Hearshens

 

Enjoy some videos from Ayelet’s trip to the Museum

Here they are… Ayelet’s month pictures for this year…

Birth

1 Month

2 Month

3 Month

4 Month

5 Month

6 Month

7 Month

8 Month

9 Month

10 Month

11 Month

12 Month/1 Year

 

And for those of you who were not able to make it to the party… Here are some pics:

View Full Album

 

Now for the important request… We have created Ayelet’s memory book, and people who were at the party wrote her some messages.  Please contribute through writing your message as a comment to this post on the blog.  Thanks…

Almost A Year… Almost…

Well friends the time has passed and we are not so clear as to where it went.  I feel a little Teveyesque right now.  Sing with me “Is this the little girl I carried…” Are you crying yet?  Are you?  This morning my mother-in-law, Ayelet’s Safta, and I drove over to the JCC to celebrate Ayelet’s birthday.  We were joined by Ayelet’s papa, my father-in-law/Carrie’s dad, and Ayelet’s great grandma gigi, Carrie’s grandmother.  Carrie is a teacher there, so she was already there.  Regardless, there we were with blueberry muffins and a birthday party to celebrate.  It was incredible. She is a year… Almost.  I cannot believe that a year has passed us by.  But now that a year has indeed passed us, I can say without a doubt that our lives are better because she is part of our world.  The joy and understanding that she has given us is a gift we will never be able to repay to her.  She is showing us a whole new world and helping us to be better people.  Life here in our house is never simple, we tend to make things complicated, but Ayelet is anything but complicated.  She is simply warm and delicious. 

At a moment like this I am left grasping for the right words to say.  At a moment like this I am left wondering what words of wisdom will be worth Ayelet’s time in her future to reflect on.  The words I think I like are as follows:

Blessing… Ayelet, always remember that you are blessed with people who love and adore you and are there for you.  Always know that we are blessed because you are part of our world.  Always know that this world is a blessing and we need to be respectful of that. Never let somebody tell you otherwise, blessings are not minor things, they are what allow for us to look beyond ourselves, and you my dear are the greatest blessing of all because you have made us see something outside ourselves.

Happiness… Ayelet, we will wish you a happy birthday tomorrow, and we will be filled with joy when we do it.  Happiness is not a simple thing to attain.  It is something that you will find only when you are willing to allow yourself to find it.  We will help you and will guide you, but you will discover it.  Happiness is about being content, and happiness is about making others happy.  You will be a very happy person because you have brought so much happiness to our lives already and will continue to in the future.

Security… Ayelet, we want you to feel safe in our home.  We want you to feel warmth and nothing but assurance that יהיה טוב, it will be okay.  As your parents that is our chief responsibility, and we take that very seriously.  We must assure your security.  There are many people in this world who do not have that, and so we appreciate the gift that security is.  May you always feel safe when you are with or without us.  May you always know that we are here to protect and keep you safe.  May you never forget that we will always, no matter what, do our job to keep you safe.

 

I am placing here our video of today’s party in her class….

 

Enjoy:

 

Our Family of three has completed our first cycle of Jewish Festivals

Since her birth in November, Ayelet has now celebrated all of the Jewish holidays of the year.  Her first was חנכה, and she was not so impressed by it. 

While we were in ישראל we celebrated ט’’ו בשבט with Carrie’s family near אילת, and she was sick at the time and so she did not seem to enjoy that so much either.

Then we returned home and she found that she loved to celebrate one of our favorite holiday’s פורים…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that great holiday what more could she want?  She got to celebrate פסח with her Bubby and Zayde, and she got to enjoy bedikat chametz with us as well.

I think she enjoyed פסח:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So then came שבועות… She enjoyed it.  We had a delicious dinner at the shul and she had just recently begun her swimming lessons.  Also, she had just recently seen her Safta and her Papa, and she had traveled to LA and met all of our family and friends there.

Then came ראש השנה… And there are some great pictures of her at school and playing with the שופר.  And here are three of them:

I enjoyed sounding the שופר each morning leading up to the holiday and having her get excited for it.  During my sermon on the first day she managed to bump her head and began to cry and so Carrie rushed her out of the room so I could keep my focus.

יום כיפור was uneventful aside from her making a new friend, Shaynabella, at break fast.

And then came סוכות and I think she liked this one a lot.  She loved eating Lirit Maslan’s cooking from Purple Beet Catering, in our synagogue’s סוכה, and she enjoyed shaking her lulav and etrog in our סוכה.  Here is the album.

View Full Album

Okay so I included some pictures of her “behind bars” at the top of our stairs being kept safe by her gate.

So a year has gone by with her experiencing our traditions and I have two words of wisdom:

The first is that she has made our traditions more meaningful and better.  Seeing our religion and our world through her curious eyes is simply incredible.  Bring able to bless her at the the beginning of each holiday seems to give the holiday more meaning.  I look forward to a lifetime of these celebrations. 

The second is that I hope that Ayelet finds her home in the Jewish people that we have found.  I hope that the traditions and observances are not empty and that she grows in them as we have.  We are trying to lay the foundation, and hope to do a good job.

Oh and now for some updates:

She has more teeth coming in. 

Carrie and I are exhausted.

She is pulling herself to a standing position.

Carrie and I are wiped out.

She has boundless amounts of energy.

We do not.

 

That’s it for now…

Testing out Youtube for Ayelet Videos

Just a random blog for all of you today.  I do not think that we are trying to blog on a schedule, but we are aiming to do it with some regularity.  Nothing is really new here right now, just that Ayelet is teething like a madwoman and she is taking it in stride. She is having some tough moments in bed at night… But she really is being as good as she can be about it.  Speaking of her bed… The other morning we went in to get her when she woke up and there she was sitting up looking at us… And I had been wondering how much longer it would be until I had to lower the bed to its lowest setting.  Then she put her arms up and pulled herself up with the rail… The bed was lowered that afternoon.

I do not have a long time right now to go on and on.  Being a parent is an incredible journey and I hope everybody in this world who wishes to be one is able to have the wish realized.  The video that is below is sort of random.  It was in the morning and it was my day off (I do not take days off during HHDays period).  Ayelet and I had just finished davening together and she was still in her pajamas.  I grabbed the flip video and recorded her playing around on the floor.

I believe that this video was taken on the morning of the crawling video from the previous post…

I was thinking about pajamas.  Don’t pajamas with feet represent our childhood?  When we see these types of pajamas aren’t we brought back to that happy time?  There is something reassuring and serene about having our whole body covered and snuggled.  There are adult sizes of these types of pajamas but I have never owned a pair… I guess I am part of the old people in the world now, and I cannot build that time machine to be a child again… But I guess it would be nice to be that child wearing those pajamas just for a moment again.  Well that’s life, there is only one alternative to age, and I see no pleasure in that.  Age is part of life… It is the progression down which we all travel.  And it is one that more of us should embrace with a smile.  I only wonder what it would be kike to be in pajamas with feet for one more moment in time…

 

This Little One Never Ceases to Amaze Us…

We have just finished ראש השנה and now we are about to embark on the holiest of days of the year: יום כיפור.  Last year at this time I was getting ready to paint  Ayelet’s room.  We chose yellow because we did not know her gender.  This year at this time Ayelet is learning to play in her room and on the floor.  It is incredible when you are a parent, just how amazed you are about the simplest of things.  Take the following video for example:

That was such a basic thing.  Ayelet was crawling down the hallway… But it meant so much more.  It meant that Ayelet now was traveling around without us.  She was able to choose where to go, not us choosing for her.  Ayelet was exploring, and she will now begin to explore even more.  It is so awesome, and just to imagine that a year ago I was writing about her future karate her drumming career, now we are learning her personality on a daily basis. 

I guess this is just a tired Abba, husband and rabbis babbling… But it is incredible to be experiencing all of this.

 

Crawling down the hall she goes

 

Here is another example of really cool Ayelet stuff that might seem minor to some, but to us it is spectacular:

View Full Album

 

So those are the updates.  ראש השנה was great and Ayelet got to participate a little at dinner.  She sat on the floor during the services and bumped her head during my big sermon.  And now we are all getting geared up for יום כיפור.  I wish you all a meaningful and reflective day, צום קל/an easy fast, and a גמר חתימה טובה, and a good sealing.

 

Josh AKA Abba