In Praise of Peeps...

No, not these Peeps...

But don't they look like they're saying: "Go ahead and eat us, sucker. We will wreak havoc on your insides with our...well, whatever the hell our ingredients are."

Although, let's be honest: they are little sugar-coated marshmallows directly from Heaven. I can't eat a whole one without my teeth hurting and my stomach feeling leaden, but that's probably my fault, because they are only out once a year and I don't get enough practice ingesting foods that have so little, well, food, in them. It's not them, it's me. If they were available year-round, I'm sure I would have built up a tolerance to their particular level of processed-ness and I'd be able to eat them by the fistful. Mmmmm, Peeps.

Peeps Show. Yeah, those are Peeps wearing pasties. Oh my.

You know, on second thought, let's just be grateful that by tomorrow they'll all be off the shelves until next March. Because clearly this kind of brazen sugar consumption just leads to debauchery.

So, not those peeps. I'm talking about mah friends. First of all, those of you who commented on my previous post (either as a first time commenter, or as someone who's followed our quest-for-baby journey these past 2+ years); thank you so much for your kind words and your encouragement that Ethan is not, in fact, doomed to a life of loneliness and gloom because my uterus is defunct. I have so romanticized the idea of the sibling relationship that it eases my mind to hear that it's not the end all be all of a happy childhood. Adoption is something we have talked about; I think I need more time to grieve the end of this particular road before I begin considering starting down a new road, but it is not out of the question. And being closer to the family we do have so that Ethan will have that sense of connection? That's something we have to work on--because our family is fairly small and what those who work do is fairly location specific, it makes the decision of what to do difficult. But still, sometimes throwing my irrational angst out into the blogosphere is the best thing I can do for myself; more often than not, you will give me something to think about that quiets the angst and taps me back into my zen. So thank you for that.

Also helping me tap into my zen? Having such wonderful friends surrounding me in my daily life. We are so fortunate that a couple of our best friends from the DC area now live 40 short minutes from us outside of the city. They invited us up to their home earlier this week to share a seder dinner with them for Passover.

traditional Seder plate

Seder table frogs; because, you know, the plagues. I do like a whimsical Seder.

And some musical accompaniment, courtesy of E and his spoons.

Ethan looks lively in that picture, but about an hour later he was curled up on the couch, fast asleep and drooling. There is little more satisfying in life than sitting around a table with friends, talking for hours, while your little one snoozes peacefully in the next room.

Unless it's sitting around the table with friends, talking for hours, while your little one runs around like a whirling dervish with a bunch of his friends. Which is what happened today.

Easter has, sorry to say, always been one of my least favorite days of the year. Growing up Jewish, I generally found myself alone this particular Sunday every year, with every possible distraction in town closed for the day. Today, though, friends of ours invited us to a brunch and treat hunt. Yay! Other people! On Easter!

Ethan was equally thrilled:

I did, for a moment, find myself fretfully wondering, "What would my grandfather say?!" (think Tevya, people) as Ethan ran around my friend's house looking for chocolate bunnies and stashes of stickers. But you know what? I want to invite his friends who aren't Jewish to bake Hamantashen with us for Purim, and over to Seder dinners, or to light the Channukah candles with us. And I won't expect them to suddenly be Jewish, right? So why can't my kid spend one day of the year hunting for little plastic eggs filled with chocolate and jellybeans with his friends? Especially, people, when it means I get to sneak some of that chocolate. Or a Peep.