Never have I ever...Crashed a Wedding: No More

Excellent Photo Skills, Random Person at the Wedding. Thanks...

Last Tuesday my mom's first cousin's daughter Shiran got married. The wedding was in a wedding hall near Netanya that is not accessable by public transportation, so we decided to rent a car and make a day out of it. More pictures of the "day of it" later.

Now, my mom has a lot of cousins here, and most of them I wouldn't recognize. Shula, the mother of the bride however, is very close with my mom, and even came to America for my wedding. I definitely recognize her. And her three children, we used to spend a lot of time together in summers we spent in Israel. But that was 15 years ago.

So we started the day with myself, Ami, Eitan and Nina (still off from the Army on leave for her mystery rash) and we picked up Yosef (aka Uncle Boface) at the Netanya train station and headed for the wedding.

The wedding was here, beautiful outdoor gardens (with lots of enormous fans to keep everyone from melting) on Kibbutz Gaash. Before we left I had google mapped directions to Kibbutz Gaash, so we'd make sure not to get lost.

The wedding was was called for 7:30, but we were warned by another cousin that these things rarely start on time, and the Chuppah would be closer to 9pm. So we arrived, 3 Rozmaryns, 2 Kirschenbaums at around 8, while one more Kirschenbaum and a Kamin were still on their way from Tel Aviv.

We were enjoying ourselves, eating cocktail hour food, drinking, getting our pictures taken by the photographer ("we're the American cousins of the bride") when we get a call that the Kirschenbaum/Kamin duo had arrived. We told them that we were upstairs at the cocktail room, to which the response was, what are you talking about, there is no upstairs, it's a garden. Right, it IS a garden. How did we not realize we were indoors? I don't know.

Hmmmm...

After taking a minute to regroup, we realize we had to be at the wrong wedding. Yes, we didn't recognize anyone, but I didn't expect to other then the bride (in the white dress- giveaway) and her mom, who I figured was just busy with mother of the bridey stuff.

So we went to the front of the hall, talked to some security guys and learned that there are FOUR even facilities at Kibbutz Gaash, and gave us the two minute driving directions to where we really needed to go. Problem was Yosef already had dropped off the gift for the bride and groom in the safe. In Israel, there are no registries, and people just give cash. So yes, the wrong names of the Bride and Groom were on the front of the envelope that Yosef slipped in the safe, but still. The facilities coordinator was NOT into opening up a safe in the middle of the wedding so Yosef could rifle through envelopes to find his. They told him to come back at the end of the evening, but I've been too scared to find out what ended up happening.


So we finally arrived at the RIGHT wedding, in time for a second cocktail hour, and with plenty of time before the Chuppah, and with a fabulous story under our belts. And still didn't know anyone at the wedding aside from the Bride, Mother of the Bride but also two cousins who also are particularly close with my mom that have visited the US recently.

So that's the story of the first wedding we ever crashed. 

Coolest Mom Ever?

In a few years when Eitan's going through a terrible teenage rebellion, I am going to show him this post and remind him that one time I was an awesome mom.

It's summer in Jerusalem. It's hot. I am obsessed with ice. Ice coffee, Ice water, and now, Ice pops. I thought it would be fun to freeze yogurt in the popsicle molds I bought a bit ago and give them to Eitan as a treat (and for us to, obviously). He usually gets yogurt mixed with milk in his sippy cup as a lazy mom breakfast, but on this day, he got a yogurt ice pop.

Oh man was this baby excited! And also serious about it. You'll see. Ami tells me sometimes my posts have too many pictures of the same thing. But how can I pick? These are all a little different! And it was such a fun morning!

Fun on the Mirpeset and other Updates

I know, I've been a terrible blogger. Things last week were nuts.

Nina was in the hospital for a mystery rash and crazy bug bites from Shabbat until Wednesday, and we spent a lot of time back and forth to visit. On the plus side Hadassah Ein Kerem has a mall attached to it, so between twice daily IV drips of hard core medicine we were able to frolic in the mall, get coffees or lunch and even maybe break out for a sushi lunch in the center of town. Thankfully whatever they did worked, and she is off from the army home in Jerusalem this whole week making sure that everything continues and completes healing before heading back to her base in the middle of nowhere. So lots of sister fun times ahead.

And starting on Tuesday, Eitan got a nasty cold. Like really bad, cough, congestion, fever, boogers everywhere it was gross. He would alternate between being super sad and cuddly, and just miserable. I ended up taking him into the pediatrician on Friday because I was nervous it was maybe an ear infection. It wasn't, thankfully. But we didn't go home empty handed, we got medicine to put under his nose to ease the sore redness from all the wiping another medicine to help ease his cough.

Oh yeah, and there was a hard core heatwave, so being outside- or inside for that matter was total misery.

But to the fun. A huge part of our living room wall is glass doors that slide open really wide turning our apartment into an indoor/outdoor room. It's amazing. So amazing that it makes up for the fact that the terrace  itself is only about a foot wide. One of those miserable days that was too hot, and Eitan was too sick, I decided we were going to have some water fun. So I stripped him down and gave him a big bowl of cold water and chaos/fun ensued.

Is there anything better then baby feet? Especially baby feet with crazy stripe sandal tans? As you can imagine, it was not much longer before the bowl was flipped over and Eitan's diaper filled up like a balloon. And so off went the diaper leading to non-internet friendly pictures. But come over, we'll show them to you here.

Decisions, Decisions

When you are one year and eight months old life has some big decisions to offer you, such as:

Fashion Headwear; Mommy's scarf is cool, but potty hats are so awesome.

Drinks: Milk's the best, but sometimes some of Daddy's iced tea (wayyy watered down) really hits the spot. Obviously, there's only one choice here...

Storytime

Eitan gets into phases with books. Like he gets totally obsessed with one book for a couple weeks and NEEDS to hear it at minimum 15 times a day. He brings it to us while we're in bed in the morning, knocks on  the bathroom door calling us to read it, even if .we just finished it, he wants more.

And then after a week or two, it's onto the next one.

Right now, we're in a hard core Goodnight Moon phase. It took a while to get started, because he would ask for "animal duce" and we had no idea what he was talking about. As it turns out "animal duce" is Goodnight Moon, you'll see.

So one day, I had a stroke of brilliance or maybe awful parenting. I asked Ami to video me reading him the book so that if I needed to do something for a minute or I've read it 10 times in a row, I could have a break.

Without further ado, I present, "animal duce", enjoy:



Goodnight moon from mimi rozmaryn on Vimeo.

When Mommy's in charge of breakfast...

There is lots of picture taking and little mess interventions. Because it's fun to just let Eitan do what he wants and deal with the mess.

Thumbs up mom! I get to eat by myself!

Proving he can eat like a "big boy"

Found a more fun cereal delivery system

Two hands: Double the fun

Did you know milk is a very popular exfoliater?

Aaaand this is where Mommy put down the camera and drew the line!

Peekaboo!

Most mornings Ami gets up with Eitan and does all the "morning stuff" with him- first diaper change, brushing teeth, breakfast. I know, for anyone that knew Ami in high school or college (or grade school, middle school too, I imagine) it's absurd that he does, but because I'm working at night now, getting up with Eitan at 6 is just not going to happen.

This morning for some reason I wasn't so tired and got up with him. I let him out of his crib and gave him his milk, and then went to get a robe or flip flops or something. When I came into the living room, I heard him but I couldn't see him. And yes, I was wearing my glasses...and yes at 6:05 am it is already sunny in that side of the apartment.

And then I spotted him. Sitting behind the pink chair in the corner of the living room near the bookshelf, playing with his truck and very busy with my laptop. Obviously, I had to run get my camera.

Check it:

And then, he came out of isolation crawling under the chair:

He's been really into getting into small spaces lately, under the table, under chairs, in corners...a few minutes later I was at the table checking my email and this little head pops up from under the chair...the grey stripe on the left is the side if the chair (with me on it) and there the little face was just hanging out...by the time I tried a shot of his feet on the other side of the chair, he was gone. Shame.

Israel Museum Outing

Last Thursday, or maybe Wednesday (I can't remember, pathetic?) we finally loaded ourselves onto the number 14 bus and headed to the Israel Museum.


It's something we've wanted to go to see since, um, the day we got here, but I guess we're so spoiled by coming from the land of free museums in DC, that it seemed like going needed to be a big deal. Or that's what I've told myself. In actuality, it would have been great to go one of those million rainy days in the winter, but be that as it my, we went, and it was awesome.

The museum was somewhat recently redone and reorganized and it was great. Highlights were a lot of the video installations, which is a surprise because I usually hate them, classic works by the artists we've all heard of, and two synagogues that were somehow transported from their former homes straight to the Israel museum. Oh, and the clothes were amazing- old Jewish wedding dresses from all over the world and such. And there was a great display of menorahs from all over the world organized by country, also very cool.

Buster Bluth Hand Chairs!!!!

What I would look like if I had horns. Hilarity by Ami Rozmaryn.

So we had a good time. Except for when we stumbled into this exhibit called "Good night" which was really weird. I got excited for a minute because they had a room modeled after the room in Goodnight Moon, but I guess I've been reading it so much that I was very quickly about to see that the details were all wrong (there was no quiet old lady whispering hush, no kittens or mittens or mouse or toy house).

And, if you go, do yourself a favor and bring your own food or snacks. Although it's terribly convenient that the in-museum restaurants are kosher, the dairy one was really not good, and the meat one very expensive and fancy (ie does not work for an outing with a certain Eitan Rozmaryn).

View out of the museum onto the city.

Next time we go we're going to spend more time at the sculpture garden which features a Calder mobile and a Claus Oldenberg (he's way famous- name that movie...) apple core, among others. It had just gotten to be too long of a day. And what's cool is if you go again with in three months you only pay half admission. So we're there!