Taking a break from baking challah with Noa while Kevin is playing cars with Ezra and Shiri is making her own challah. Or, at least, making her own mess from the dough. :)
This whole thing with Jewish living is going easier than I expected. Actually, it went easier with P than I expected. Noa asks a lot about what we do, and where Jesus comes into the picture, and at first she seemed a little baffled at the idea that we don't believe Jesus was the son of G-d. He is pretty much at the point in her life when she has some ideas for herself, but she also takes guidance from authority figures easily. Not that she brought deep religious convictions from her previous family. It will make for some interesting conversations though.
We are actually on our second batch of challah now. The first batch I am sure we can reuse at our next BBQ... as charcoal. After all those years I had spent in the States, I could still not make a proper conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius in my head... So yes, there was great smoke and a smoke detector going off, much to the delight of Ezra. The US should really switch to metric. Imperial measurements are so out of date - besides, with Independence, shouldn't they have adopted SI? The only TWO other countries, who haven't adopted the SI measurements are Myanmar and Liberia... What does that tell you? That said, once I heard an (of course) American preacher say that the metric system was the mark of the beast. Oh well.
Ezra can be quite a handful. With orphanage living, one would think, comes routine. It seems, however, that Ezra has never experienced the concept of having routine. We are working hard on establishing a routine that is very much like the routine we have at home. Ezra will have none of it. Bedtime is usually a 30-minute screaming fest, and any activity involving slowing down for more than 2 minutes results in a melt down. Or rather... resulted. In the past 3 weeks we figured out that he reacts really well to soothing and happy sounds: certain songs, sounds of nature, etc. I have a nearly 20-year-old CD titled Guitar By The Sea. Ezra loves it! Depending on the tune he knows it's time for sleep, time for a nap, quiet time, story time etc. So bedtime is less of a struggle now. Unless, of course, it means being separated from his beloved TV.
Oh the TV! The twins love the TV! It's kind of odd for us, as we didn't watch TV at all till Justin and Matthew fell in love with books, and they still rarely watch anything on TV. Ezra and Shiri, on the other hand, just love watching... comercials. And Teleshop.
Hopefully it will be getting better when we finally get home.
Shabbat shalom, everyone!
