Rosh HaShanah 2008

This was the first Rosh HaShanah, or Yom Teruah, that I tried to do something with Teeny Tiny and our little family. Nothing worked the way I hoped. Nothing ever does, so I'm not sure why I was so surprised. But there were some fun moments too, not to get too Eeyore about it.

The day before our Trumpet festival I set up our new learning poster (more later) with its new theme: Rosh Hashana! The letter of the week was R, the shape an apple, the color gold, the foreign word shofar. I had fun coloring the R and the apple gold, hehehe. The little pleasures in life. Anyway, Teeny Tiny thought it was fun enough. Shofar comes out sounding like "so-far" which is pretty darling.

As far as activities, we tried reading the two books I found our library had, but they were just a bit too old for her. Then I saw this cool idea to use an apple as a stamp for Rosh Hashana cards. Cool for someone older then 2. I had thought it would be fun to give to our home group family. She thought it was fun to dip the apple in paint and use it as a paint brush though, so really it was a hit, just not what I expected.I had hoped My Favorite would be able to take the day off as a sabbath, but having just been gone for 3 days the week before (1 for work) and leaving for a conference this coming week, that wasn't possible. So that left me looking at driving 1/2 hour by myself on little sleep with a 2 year old and a 7 week old. A bit daunting, but I so wanted to go! I hadn't ever been.

The day of, a Tuesday, I set my mind that not only did I want to go, I needed to take me and my oldest daughter. In case nothing else happened related to Rosh HaShanah, and because holding a holy convocation is part of keeping HaShem's festival. So we went, and it was a success. Without the help of almost everyone at the service, it would have been a disaster. What a wonderful group! But when they brought out the "so-fars" Teeny Tiny looked at me all excited and whispered "So-far! In my room!" (the poster had a pic of a shofar). Hey, we learned something! I totally didn't get to concentrate on the liturgy at all, but my little girl connected on some level. And I ate two plates full of food at Oneg, plus dessert. Nursing makes me HUNGRY!

I also had it in my head to make this apple cake that I'd run across. We weren't able to have the festival dinner as a family that I hoped, but Teeny and I did make the cake together. Which almost made us late to the house we had dinner at. But it turned out pretty good. We just finished it up for Shabbat breakfast this morning *grin*