It’s Friday afternoon, and so we are making Challah. On the one hand, this is an easy process; I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m a well-oiled kitchen machine when I work by myself. However, I have kids, and they get snippy with me when I try to do things alone; they feel there’s a teaching opportunity here. The way they tell it, it’s my responsibility as a mother to include them in the ritual. They are probably right, so I don’t argue; I just sigh, and lay down some ground rules.

Rule number one: Only I touch the Kitchenaid, only I get to mix the initial ingredients. Nobody else. My son doesn’t mind; he only wants to play with the dough anyway. My daughter glares at me and at the Kitchenaid; it’s clear that she’s thinking my rules are very unreasonable. She imagines breaking eggs and dumping flour, as well as measuring oil and honey: all fantastic things she’s missing out on. I am a horrible mother for not allowing her to do any of these things.

Luckily, after the dough rises I let her re-knead, braid, spread with egg and throw spices at it. She’s not satisfied; in denying her the messier part of the process, I am not fulfilling my parental duty.

“If you think I am going to let you break eggs and measure flour, you’re mistaken,” I tell her. After all, I know how disorganized she can be, and I’m not about to be talked into letting her mess up my wonderful dough. When she is ready to finish her bread with the spices, I tell her to “spread the Zatar evenly, in a thin layer.” (Rule number two: follow instructions to the letter).
She dumps a whole spoonful in one spot, where it immediately sticks to the raw egg.
“And this is why,” I say, “I don’t let you do any of the other stuff. You don’t listen”.

She instantly has an answer: “If you don’t let me try, how am I ever going to learn?”

Well? Well. I don’t exactly have a good answer for that at this moment. When she makes mistakes on her homework, with her art, in her social interactions, I tell her mistakes are a necessary part of learning. I don’t expect her to always get everything right the first time, and I tell her so on a regular basis. I think kids should be allowed to mess up; it’s how they learn. So why do I have to be so bloody controlling in the kitchen? And why do I send her the message that she has to be perfect before I’ll hand over the reins? Isn’t that wildly hypocritical? Yes, it is.

I guess she could dump an eggshell or two in the dough, drop something on the floor, spill the flour and the honey and the oil, and so what? She’s right; she’s never going to learn unless I let her try. And besides, it looks like I have a lesson or two to learn myself. I make a solemn promise, right now, in writing: next week, she’s going to do it all by herself. I’ll stand at a safe distance, yelling instructions from afar. Oh, except for the hot oven: I have my limits.

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‘Please, unplug that toaster before you stick a fork in it,” I hear my husband say, and without looking, I know which child he is talking to.
“But the bagel is stuck,” she mutters, after which my husband patiently explains what can happen when you poke around the toaster with a metal utensil. Crisis averted, I think, and not for the first time.

Isabella is a brilliant, lovely, extremely creative, and wonderful child. All in all, she’s positively delightful; she is also one of the klutziest children who ever walked the earth. There is no table in the house she hasn’t bumped into, no dust bunny she hasn’t tripped over, no staircase she hasn’t fallen down from. Put it in her path, no matter how small, and she will bash into it with gusto.

I have a theory. Isabella likes to ponder a multitude of things; very often what she is thinking about has little in common with what she is doing at the moment. She likes to think about Big Things, and forgets about small, practical matters. “How do we save the polar bears” she wants to know, and subsequently forgets to wash her hands, brush her teeth, or flush the toilet. She can’t be bothered to clean her room, because she is “writing a poem right now.” She dreams away, visiting far-flung places, while her dinner gets cold in front of her. And who can worry about whether your shirt is clean, or your homework finished, if you’ve just discovered what a Haiku sounds like? Isabella is a dreamer, not a doer.

She is not allowed to navigate parking lots without one of us firmly holding her hand; she simply doesn’t see the cars driving towards her. Isabella knows about everyday reality, and has firmly rejected it. “Wouldn’t it be fun,” she says, “if everybody rode horses and carriages everywhere, and cars didn’t exist?” And: “Wouldn’t it be great, if there was no money, and everything was free?” She believes in elves, and unicorns, and leprechauns. She believes anything and everything is possible, if you just dream about it often enough.

I wonder what the world looks like, to an eight-year-old, whose dreams and fantasies have absolutely no limits. I’m thinking it’s a happy place; although I am afraid it is just as easy to be trampled by a unicorn as it is to get electrocuted by a toaster.
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If there’s one thing my kids are good at, it’s losing stuff. And when that happens, there’s only one solution: go ask mommy. Somewhere along the line, I’ve gotten the reputation of being able to find anything, anywhere, anytime.

This is a blatant lie. I am no better at discovering where Mendel’s toys disappear to, or where Isabella’s favorite skirt is hiding, than the kids themselves. I just have more common sense.

“When did you last have them?” I ask my daughter when she complains about having lost her silver shoes. Her answer is as annoying as it is predictable:
“I don’t know.”
Of course she doesn’t know; why do I even ask?
Impatiently, she hops from one foot to the other. I can see her thinking: hurry up already and tell me what I want to know.
“Did you wear them to school today?”
At this, her eyes glaze over. She knows better than to say ‘I don’t know’ again, so she pretends to think about it.
I, by the way, already know she wore them to school because I saw them at her feet when I picked her up. I decide to end her suffering, and point towards the bathroom.
“The first thing you did when you came home was pee. You always take your shoes off right away, and you always leave them right there. My guess is, they’re in the bathroom.”

I know; it would probably be much better to let her search the whole house. After all, they’re her shoes. Sometimes I do, but sometimes it’s just easier to tell her where things are. The parenting experts (=my mother) have been telling us for years that if you want to be a good parent, consistency is key. Yes is yes, no means no, but honestly, where’s the fun in that? What good is it to always follow the same exact rules, if you can never just break them?

Besides, it keeps them on their toes. Keep them guessing: maybe mommy will help me out; maybe I’m up that you-know-what creek without a paddle. You never know if a little uncertainty may not just cure them of always asking me to solve their mini-disasters.
You know what also works? Hiding their stuff on purpose if they repeatedly refuse to put it away, then feigning ignorance if they tear the house apart searching for Mermaid-Barbie.

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Poor, sad. little Mendel

You know it when the first brilliantly red (danger, danger!) note arrives from school, informing you that some school-age victims fell by the wayside. Strep throat, flue, swine-thingy; when a child gets sick, it is An Issue. Gone are the days when we just took getting sick during cold season for granted. Nowadays, we have to be warned about contagious situations, as if it’s any surprise that when you put sixty four-year olds in the same building, they’re going to infect each other with al kinds of things.
Having said all that, Mendel is home from school today. I don’t plan to make a habit out of it, but here’s the issue: every October, he gets a cold. You can set your watch by it, or your calendar, or whatever. The cold mixes with his seasonal allergies; toss in the fact that he absolutely refuses to blow his nose, and you end up with a child that lies awake half the night, hacking like an old man. It’s great fun, and we’re all enjoying ourselves immensely. Yes, I’m a bit tired myself; thanks for asking.

Mendel isn’t really sick, he’s fine: a little sleep deprived, but otherwise okay. He doesn’t have a temperature, he’s not throwing up; he just sounds like Doc Holliday, and that puts us in an awkward position. Try to take him out in public, and watch the people around you take a step back as soon as that hacking cough makes an appearance; you’d think the kid had the plague. And so, I keep him home, until we find a solution.

Mendel is having the time of his life; he gets to sleep in, hang round the house, playing all day; what’s not to like? He doesn’t really like school anyway, and if it was up to him, he’d spend the months from October through April safely at home, cocooning his way to spring. He would hibernate, if he could. As much as I am in favor of hibernation (why did this never catch on?) it’s not an option: he has to go to school and learn things.

So, tomorrow, we will go back to the doctor, and get a note, which I can shove in people’s faces when they ask about his cough. I plan to ask about homeopathic medicine. Something I can give my child every day, without turning him into a junkie. Something with herbs and honey, that will put an end to this all-night hacking fest once and for all. Hopefully we’ll find a cure that works, so he can get out of the house, and go back to school.
He’ll be so disappointed.

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Some days, being a parent feels like one long exercise in self-control. It’s like navigating a minefield, or walking In stilettos on a wet floor. Or wearing a big fluffy winter coat while shopping for porcelain figurines. You get my drift.

No better time to drive this point home than the High Holidays: we recently survived another Yom Kippur, and although Rabbis far and wide will disagree with me, I often think the holiday is designed to remind my children of how much fun bad behavior can be.

Case in point: doing something atrocious, just so you can show off your excellent apology skills, preferably with a holy smirk on your face. I fell for it again this year; multiple times, in fact. “Wait,” my daughter seems to tell herself, “Yom Kippur is tomorrow? I better squeeze in some rotten egg behavior before the deadline. After all, soon, all will be forgiven. Yom Kippur starts on Sunday night? That means a humongous fit needs to take place on Saturday; in a public place, if possible”.

You think I am too harsh. For that reason, I have included Isabella’s latest apology to her brother Mendel, carefully written out, and meant to convey her remorse for calling him stupid. I ask you, is it an actual apology, or is it an exercise in how many times you can write the word ‘stupid’ on a sheet of paper, and get away with it? I suspect the latter. Isabella is in love with the word ‘stupid’. She uses it for everything her brother does. His songs are stupid, his toys are stupid, his clothes, hair, favorite TV programs; he is undeniably, irrevocably, the stupidest kid that ever lived. Unlike Mendel, who pretends he doesn’t hear a thing, I can’t ignore it, and address it every time.

Why does she get so much juice from calling him ‘stupid’ anyway? It’s not as if he actually has any problems in that department. He doesn’t listen very well, and he likes to sing the same song over and over again; he often refuses to eat, he hides our things, and he attempts to drive the entire family mad by doing everything at a snail’s pace, but stupid? Not that I’ve noticed. Although, a friend recently explained to me that ‘stupid’ is actually code for “you’re not doing what I want,” so maybe this is a sign he’s finally standing up to her.
“What you call others says more about you,” I tell her. She doesn’t like that at all.
“I’m not stupid,” she says, insulted that I even bring it up.
A few days later, I realize I haven’t heard the word in a while; could it possibly be that she’s dropped it? Or is she getting her kicks by using it on someone else, at school perhaps? Maybe I better check with her teacher.

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Now you’re just showing off, I’ve heard enough, and Pet peeves

“They’re just making fun of us because we work hard.”

When I recently had the opportunity to interview Bob Holt and Mike Adair, the creators of hoops&yoyo, I also grabbed the chance to talk to hoops&yoyo themselves. After all, they are the stars. Since its 2001 inception, hoops&yoyo has grown to more than 200 online animations; www.hoops&yoyo.com generates over 250,000 visitors per month. Almost 50 million free e-cards have been sent since 2004; high time to get some questions answered by the characters themselves.

Not only did hoops&yoyo give their full cooperation; piddles (another Holt and Adair brainchild) was kind enough to conduct the interview for me. What follows is a fascinating transcript.

Q: You’ve developed quite a fan base (yes, you have).  How do you handle the fame?

Both: “Fame and fortune, fame and fortune (singing) we love our fans we do”.

H: “I think that answers it: we handle it with singing. You can handle anything with song”.

Y: Oh yes, we handle it with great humility, and patience, and lots of enjoyment”.

Hoops: “And care.”

Y: “And we try not to pick at, like monkeys, we try not to pick at their hair.

H: “yeah, like baboons.”

Q: Question number two: Pardon the expression, but you two work like dogs. Are you ever tempted to just walk away, and become someone’s house pet?

Both: “What?” (gasping in horror)

Y: “I don’t get the question. Why would we want to be somebody’s house pet?”

H: “Oh, they’re just making fun of us because we work hard.”

Y: “We don’t work that hard.”

H: “No. We like what we do!”

Y: “We’re barely hanging on to our jobs, really. If I had fingernails, I’d be hanging on by my fingernails.

H: “See, in these economical times, you should just be happy that you have a job, and not wish for other things. And besides, have you ever seen a dog work? Unless you’re a husky; or something that ferrets out weasels”.

Y: “Usually they’re just laying around. Barking. Dogs sleep like twenty hours a day. That’s working like a dog?”

H: I’ll take that job.”

H: (barks)

H: “In a heart beat”.

H: “That job would only last for seven years”.

Y: “Yeah, our career would be much shorter.”

H: “Seven dog years, I’d be retired. And on the Love Boat.” (makes boat noises)

Q: Does either of you think there’s a place for you in Hollywood?

H: “Yes!”

Both:  Break out in Hollywood song

Y: “I’m, sure there’s some cheap hotels we could stay.”

H: “Yeah, there will be a place for us. We’re small.”

Y:”Little.”

H: “Maybe in an alley somewhere.”

Y: “Hm hm.”

Q: Question number four: Are you ready?

H: “Yes.”

There were some nasty rumors in the tabloids about fleas; do you have any comment?

H: “I don’t think I saw that.”

Y: “I didn’t see that.”

H: “Were they like killer fleas from South America or something? They were swarming?”

Y: “Africanized fleas?”

H: “Wow, is this for some pet magazine? ’Cause I’m…there’s like a theme here. Dogs, fleas…”

Y: “I know; a lot of pet/dog stuff going on.”

H: “I don’t have fleas.”

Y: “We don’t have fleas because we bathe daily.”

H: “Yeah. And plus, there’s a little thing we go through to get to work every morning, that covers us with lice. I mean…”

Y: (laughs)

H: “Lime!! No, no…what is it? That they put you…they de-flea you…”

Y: “I have no idea. I’ve never been de-flead.”

H:” We don’t have fleas because we’re covered with lice!!”

Y: “There’s a battle going on on top of us! And the lice always win.”

H: “It’s a wild ride.”

Y: “They’re tenacious.”

H: “It’s fun. You dancing? No, it’s prime time for the lice and the fleas, they’re battling it out.”

Y: “We’re hoping for bed bugs later on.”

H: “Battle of the network pests. I’m the host.”

Q: Okay, you crazy kids; here’s number five:

H: “Hit it.”

Any advice for animated characters who haven’t made it to the big time yet?”

H: “Wow.”

H: “Are we animated characters?”

Y: “Yes”.

H. “Oh. Well, eh, keep your nose clean.”

Y: “Yeah.”

H: “Hang by your thumbs.”

Y: “Get a good producer.”

H: “Call your mom once a week.”

Y: “Yeah.”

H: “Eat well, live cleanly,”

Y: “And be careful who you hang out with. That can get you into a lot of trouble.”

H: “You want to be associated with good people, I guess.”

Y: “Yeah, bad people might use bad words. You really have to watch who you hang out with. Peer influence is a driving force when you’re going to the dark side.”

H: “Yeah, if we’ve learned anything from Star Wars…”

Y: “Yes.”

H: “…it’s who you hang out with is who you become. Because let’s say you hung out with Darth Vader every day, I mean, pretty soon you’ll be doing that thing where you’re choking people, just with your hand.”

Y: “Yeah.”

H: “It’d rub off on you. At least you’d have a bad breathing problem. In the first couple of weeks.”

Y: (laughs)

H: “I wonder how gradual it is. It starts with the breathing, it starts with the choking..”

Y: “Yeah…and then of course you get grumpy and you get the bad attitude. You start picking on people smaller than you.”

H: “You get a badditude.”

H: “And we don’t do that. We hang out with quality people. Good people.”

H: “Well…except Marshy.”

Y: “We feel sorry for Marshy.”

H: “I don’t.” (H snorts, everybody laughs)

Y: “Does that answer the question?”

I think so. And thank you for your cooperation!

Y: “And thank you for your interviewing technique. You’re like Connie Chung.”

H: “You’re a little bit bigger than her.”

Y: Wasn’t there a song about that? Wang Chung tonight?” (both start singing)

For more on hoops&yoyo, see my interview with co-creators Bob Holt and Mike Adair

Any parent knows: what’s funny to our kids isn’t always funny to us. Case in point: my 8-year-old daughter rolls on the floor when reading yet another Captain Underpants book, but when I turn the TV channel to Colbert, she regards me as if I’m a little bit brain dead. My 4-year-old son Mendel watches a documentary about wasps eating cockroaches, and thinks it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, while I retreat to a different room, gagging all the way, wondering: what’s so funny?
When it comes to humor, we don’t often see eye-to-eye.

Fortunately, we have found common ground in the wonderful animations of Bob Holt and Mike Adair. They are the creators of hoops&yoyo, two energetic characters who populate the Hallmark universe. If you regularly send Hallmark e-cards, you’ve most likely come into contact with hoops&yoyo at some point; if not, you don’t know (yet) what you’re missing.

Hoops&yoyo stands for hoops, a pink cat, and yoyo, a green bunny. They scream a lot, they are emotional, impulsive, and passionate; in fact, they’re not that different from my children. Like many famous characters, they go by their first name only; kind of like Prince, but without the capitalization. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview the creators, so according to my kids, I am now (temporarily) the coolest mom ever.

Bob Holt, who voices yoyo, and Mike Adair, the voice of hoops, had worked on a variety of animated characters when they realized the cat and bunny combo struck a chord with the public: “After hoops was introduced, as an e-card only in 2001, we started hearing from fans who told us how much they liked the character,” Holt says. “We were getting emails and started to notice the e-cards were getting a lot of attention. Soon after, we introduced hoops’ friend yoyo, and added voices to both characters. The rest is history!”
Mike Adair adds that people began sending gifts, like a box of BBQ from one Wisconsin teacher, and started writing regularly: “We’ve had a Russian pen pal for years who has sent us tea cakes. Eventually the characters started getting so much traffic, they were given their own website at Hallmark. It’s neat to hear the fans’ experiences with the characters, and which cards have become their favorites.”

Each creation is a team effort, according to Holt: “We really bounce off of each other’s personalities to make it work. In the beginning, I created a little green bunny at home, but wasn’t sure how I’d eventually use it. When Hallmark asked me to come up with an animation for a 4rth of July project, I brought the bunny out. It was transformed into a pink kitty with huge eyes, renamed hoops; when we later needed a friend for hoops, the green bunny re-emerged as yoyo”.
“Every Tuesday I record with Bob,” Adair says. “Sometimes the process is a simple matter of finding which recording session cracks us up the most; usually, that is a good sign there may be something there. Sometimes riffing on the same themes helps us uncover great material.”

However, what may be funny in private does not always translate to the public at large; what one thinks is funny, another thinks is in bad taste, or even boring. How do two obviously talented animators manage to tap into the public’s sense of humor on such a regular basis? Holt thinks their success is partially due to working within certain guidelines: “Hallmark keeps the likes and dislikes of consumers in mind for holidays, birthdays, and other days they know people will react positively to. Beyond that, they trust us to experiment, and deliver humor in non-controversial ways. They allow us to be as creative as we can be under the deadlines, and to improvise, which has proven to be very successful. We don’t plan to change that method.”
Mike Adair credits the inspiration they both get from everyday people: “Our slice of life humor is something we know others can relate to. Some themes emerge because of situations happening in our own lives, and much of what we do is stream of consciousness. Sometimes it’s just a matter of deciding which gag does the best job; we hear from fans all over the world on a daily basis, so we know what we’re doing is working.”

Nowadays, hoops&yoyo are more than e-cards; Holt and Adair have added a multitude of animated shorts to their repertoire, and are brimming with plans for more: “We just expanded into all K-Mart stores with hoops&yoyo pajamas, but I think hoops&yoyo could eventually rule the world. Why not? Maybe some day, you’ll wake up to breakfast with hoops&yoyo on your Saturday morning tube,” Holt says. “I’ve always wanted to see them as popsicles,” Adair adds, “but during the last few years my dreams have grown. I think they could star in their own movie someday, or be on TV in their own series, or holiday special.”

The hoops&yoyo website currently runs a series of manners videos, with topics such as ‘washing your hands after using the bathroom’ and ‘cell phone etiquette’. They are short, funny animations, that deliver necessary messages in a lighthearted way. And I have to add: they are remarkably un-annoying. You know that feeling you get after your child watches the same cartoon fifty times in a row, and you start thinking that maybe tossing the entire TV set into your backyard pond is a great idea? That never happens with hoops&yoyo; they are every bit as funny the tenth time as the first time. Whatever comes next, my kids and I will be watching. I hope you will do the same.
See also my interview with the hoops&yoyo characters, in which they explore the world of fame, fortune, and explain away those nasty flea-rumors.

Let me do it. You you you want to.

When my 8-year-old daughter wants to let me know she is angry, and pulls out all the stops, she calls me names. In her opinion, the worst insult is “bossy”.
Isabella doesn’t like bossy behavior. In other people, that is, since she herself has it down pat. Or maybe she’s just channeling me while she tries to keep her brother in line.

Bossy can mean a myriad of things. It’s thrown at me when I tell her to clean her room, set the table, or pick up her dirty underwear and throw it in the laundry basket (why is that so hard?). I -apparently- am bossy when I ask her to brush her teeth, wash her hair, keep her knees together when she sits down, chew with her mouth closed, and keep her elbows off the table.

It’s true, I tell her al these things, and if I would make a check mark everything I give her an instruction, I’d probably be surprised at the frequency. Being eight must be hard: too young to remember all those pesky little details that make up ‘good behavior’, old enough to realize you’re not in charge.

I’ve told her, on several occasions, that being bossy is my job; it’s what moms do best. What she doesn’t yet realize is that even I get sick of it. Sometimes I am so tired of hearing my own voice that I’m tempted just to let things go. The question is, does a child need to be good all day long? Does she need to be reminded every single time she does something not exactly right? I think not. Maybe, on certain occasions, it is okay to turn the tables and let her call the shots for a while. Maybe we should allow her a part-time seat in parliament.

I recently put Isabella in charge of menu planning. Once a week, she comes up with five meals, and we write a shopping list (Friday is Shabbos which is non-negotiable, Saturday is leftovers) for everything we need. To my great surprise, we do not eat Pasta every night, she’s only asked for fast food once, and it’s been weeks since she’s asked me to cook macaroni and cheese from a box. Instead, she has me making salads, cook fresh vegetables, and serve fruit and fish. Not fish sticks, actual fish. She regularly mixes in some Dutch recipes because she knows I get homesick from time to time.
Basically, I am cooking what I would be if it was me making that menu; imagine that.

Being in charge makes Isabella happy. So happy, she’s asked to be part of my cleaning routine. “Let me scrub the floor”, she tells me. “But I can do it better and faster,” I protest, to which she says: “But practice makes perfect. If you don’t let me practice, I’ll never learn.”

When did she become this smart? And why am I even arguing about this? Because I have a hard time letting go, and because I am, indeed, bossy. I think it’s time I work on that. And yes, she mostly displaces dirt when she “cleans the floor”, and I don’t care. If anybody comes to my house and comments on the counters not being entirely clean, or the kitchen a bit disorganized, I’ll just have to tell them: we’re under new management. With an overwhelming majority of votes, Isabella has been elected into office.