I feel like I’ve already written about Passover too much but I’ve got the Super Jews in the house and they were VERY excited for the holiday this year.
Instead of recounting the entire thing, I’m just going to tell you the important bits.
1) Mazzy and Harlow downed grape juice like it was their JOB. Harlow drank her first cup so fast that when she opened her mouth to sing the four questions, a huge belch came out.
It was so perfect, I can’t blame you for thinking I am making this up, but every adult at that table (doctors, lawyers and rabbis among them) will all attest to this fact.
2) Harlow did indeed sing the the four questions in Hebrew (or at least the two questions that she knows) at both my cousin Elyssa’s seder on Friday night and Grammy and Sammy’s seder on Saturday night. It was a very proud moment for me.
3) At Grammy’s seder, Harlow also insisted on reading the story of Passover which was clearly only entertaining to me. Have you ever had one of those moments when you think your kid is doing something really amazing but everybody else is like, “Okay, great! Let’s move on!” and you’re like “MY KID IS NOT FINISHED.” That was Harlow reading from her handmade Haggadah, very quietly and slowly, to a roomful of 15 hungry adults. I was such a MOM in that moment but I didn’t care— this was the moment Harlow had been waiting for! I showered her with enough praise for everybody.
4) The plagues have gone crazy. At Elyssa’s seder, we threw sticky frogs at the ceiling, tossed cotton balls for hail and wore sunglasses for darkness. At Grammy’s seder, the kids wore lice and cattle plague masks, whistled into frog straws and played with dead baby puppets like they were Sesame Street characters. I loved every second of it.
5) Speaking of plagues, the day after the Seder, my mother group texted my sister and me about the puppets at about 8am the next morning.
MOM: I think the kids took the plague puppets home. I’ll need them back for next year.
MY SISTER: Ok. Jack took the darkness puppet.
I didn’t see the texts until around noon.
ME: We have lice.
MY SISTER: WHAT?!! OH NO!!! Where and when do you think you got it??
Translation: Did your kids give lice to my kids?????????
I kept silent and waited for her to figure it out.
MY SISTER: Oh. Just realized what you meant.
6) The kids were very excited about the afikomen which is a piece of matzah hidden at the beginning of the seder that the kids have to find at the end. Whoever finds it gets a prize. At both Seders, there was enough matzah for everyone to find a piece which I definitely don’t remember as a kid. Let someone cry because they are the loser for god sakes!
At Elyssa’s, Mazzy and Harlow both walked away with a dollar. At Grammy’s, every kid took home a princess doll, a book and a Paw Patrol figurine. This is not what our Jewish ancestors intended.
7) One of the great things about the two Seders (one with Mike’s side of the family and one with mine) is the difference in the ages of the kids present. At Mike’s family Seder, with the exception of Elyssa’s newborn Ava, Mazzy and Harlow are by far the youngest.
The next oldest is Gabriel who is 11 years old and then Aaron who is 16. All the other kids are in college. It is awesome to see Mazzy and Harlow really start to look up to their older cousins. They want to play with them SO BADLY. After the Seder, we got Gabriel and Aaron to play hide and seek with the girls in teams for at least an hour. It was glorious to sip wine and eat dessert with just the adults.
At Grammy’s, Mazzy and Harlow are the oldest. They’ve got their cousins Jack (almost 3), Genevieve (almost 2) and Neve (6 months). At this seder, Mazzy and Harlow were the ones singing the songs the loudest and leading the show.
8) I ate way too much at both Seders. Passover food is some of the densest most binding food imaginable. I should expect to digest it all at some point in June.
9) Elyssa lives in Pennsylvania so we stayed at a roadside hotel on Friday night so we wouldn’t have to drive home afterwards. We woke up in the morning and Mike surprised the kids with bathing suits. “THERE’S A POOL???!!” they screamed.
I had forgotten how magical a tiny indoor hotel pool can seem to two little kids.
10) On Sunday morning, after both Seders were over, Mike woke up super early. “I’m going out to get coffee and bagels” he said while I was still half asleep. “Okay” I grumbled and then drifted off again.
Later, I came downstairs to find him eating matzah with butter across from the girls chowing down on Sesame and Everything.
“It’s the second morning of Passover and you bought bagels for breakfast?!” (For those who don’t know, you are not supposed to eat leavened bread for the full week of Passover.)
“I know. I forgot until it was too late.”
I turned to Mazzy and Harlow. “You know, guys. You aren’t supposed to eat bread on Passover.”
“But we like bagels!!!!” Harlow laughed while taking a big ass bite.
I guess we now know where the Super Jew draws her religious line in the sand and that is at the denial of bread.
Harlow has the perfect come back for everything!
This is great! This is the first year my 4 yr old understood Passover. I even bought a kids friendly haggadah. She was the only one searching for the afikomen and her prize was 2 packs of glitter tattoos. She broke down and told me she “thought” her prize would be a stuffed animal inside a new purse. She said she would feel better about it all if I let her blow out the Shabbat candles (which we always let burn down) so I gave in to that. A good Passover over all!
Over the last few years we’ve had a couple of supposedly kid-friendly seders that lasted far too long for our (now) 3 year old. On his behalf, I think it’s totally fair that the grownups had to wait for Harlow for once.
I love Harlow! But the thing I most want to know is where in Pennsylvania Elyssa lives because that is where I am from!!
Dead baby puppets?????
Oh Harlow! 🙂 I would have quietly listened to her read the story of Passover; even if it took awhile.