Fun With Play-Dough

You never know what ticks small children off. One minute you’re happily going through your day, the next you are faced with an angry, screaming child who claims it’s all your fault. Girls can get mad over anything, ranging from their clothes (“I didn’t want the white tights, I wanted the off-white tights!”) to being asked to do something unreasonable, like setting the table.

When boys get mad, it usually involves food. Needless to say, Passover hasn’t been easy on my son Mendel. We’re on day number seven, and he’s counting the minutes until tomorrow night, when he can be reunited with his beloved donuts. That’s okay; when you’re not yet four years old, you are allowed to love donuts more than religion.

Mendel’s current enemy is the Matzo. Imagine his glee when we ran out prematurely, went shopping, and found the entire city was without Matzos. Sold out, all over Omaha, except for one last box of chocolate covered egg Matzos, which, of course, we bought. Not that it counts; it’s about as close to the real thing as fruit loops are to a healthy breakfast. Luckily we ran into somebody smart enough to have ordered enough, and were offered a box full of real, handmade Matzos. Mendel was, of course, unimpressed, we could see it on his face: Darn it! Back to square one!

Holidays shouldn’t make you mad; it’s a lesson he will have an easier time learning during Hanukkah, when donuts are plenty and nothing is off limits. However, Passover is more important and longer, so there’s that. At some point in their young lives, children have to transition from viewing a holiday as an obnoxious obligation, to something that they can truly celebrate. How they make that transition, I’m not sure. My daughter did it almost without us noticing; it seemed that one day she woke up and got it. I’d like to take credit, but I’m not sure that’s appropriate; it’s probably her teachers that did most of the work.

Still, it’s not all bad; my son has given up asking for cookies every five minutes and has even started eating again. All it took was three overpriced packets of Lox and unlimited yoghurt tubes. That’s right, he’s lived off fish and yoghurt this week, and he survived. Whether Passover next year will be about more than merely ‘surviving’, we’ll have to wait and see. Regardless, the boy has eleven months and three weeks of pure bliss waiting for him in the bread aisle.

Now that Passover is in full swing, I am slowly coming to the realization that my son Mendel isn’t eating. Sure, if I smear chocolate paste on a matzo, he will lick it off, but that’s not eating, that’s manipulating.

Even foods that he normally likes get the cold shoulder; apparently he is seriously upset that there are no cookies or crackers in the house. For dinner tonight he eats half a dish of applesauce and two bites of chocolate pudding. I don’t even offer him the broccoli; what’s the use? He asks: “Why don’t I get broccoli?”

“Did you want some?” I ask him.

“No.” Then he throws an evil glance at his potatoes, and walks away.

I imagine that eventually he will get hungry, but, as a parent, I know better. Children can go extremely long without eating, especially if they have something to prove. Mendel’s points of protest: “I want cookies” and “Mommy sucks for not giving them to me.”

Our household does rely heavily on food with leavening in it, that much becomes obvious when I look at my fridge; it only has a third of the stuff it normally holds. While I am neurotically happy with such empty shelves, and come up with creative, Passover-friendly meals, my son isn’t having it. He wants his damn bagel and he wants it now. And by the way, where are the crackers? The Oreos? The donuts? And while we’re at it, why are there no cheerios, where is the old stand-by, the peanut butter sandwich?

My daughter Isabella meanwhile is flying through the holidays as if it’s a breeze. She knows what she can and cannot have, and doesn’t ask for forbidden food. She doesn’t complain, and she doesn’t act difficult; why can’t some of it rub off on him?

Of course, it is hard to be three and suddenly be denied your favorite snacks and meals. Besides, all the other holidays are easy; you’re too young to fast, and most holidays add foods instead of taking them away. And why is it that the cruelest of holidays has to be eight days long?

When I look at it like that, I suddenly feel very, very sorry for him. Maybe it’s time to go to the store and buy some of those ridiculously overpriced chocolate-covered matzos after all. If they haven’t been sold out by now to parents of angry Boychiks everywhere.

Now that all the Chametz is gone, and we made it through a five-hour Seder last night, there are new problems on the horizon. I made an exception to my usual frugality when shopping, and bought my children some special, Passover approved, cereal. A friend was nice enough to deliver a second one, which I was grateful for, considering the small size of these boxes. Daughter Isabella has been staring at it all week, only to be told: “You can’t have this until after the Seder. You have to wait.”

Waiting is, of course, one of the nastiest concepts in any six-year-old’s existence; imagine the relief when Sunday morning finally arrived.

Except, it didn’t taste good. In fact, it tasted downright nasty, like milk-soaked cardboard with a side of sand. I convinced her to eat it anyway, by dumping a scoop of sugar on top, but I won’t be able to pull that off a second time. My guess is she’ll be avoiding the stuff as if it’s the eleventh plague.

It forces me to ask myself: why, when we can’t have something, so we insist on imitating it? Do Hindus eat fake cows? If I normally avoid imitation bacon like it’s laced with cyanide, because “fake bacon is still bacon”, then what’s with all the imitation Chametz-that’s-not-really-Chametz? As if we can’t survive eight days by eating yoghurt and vegetables and fruit and fish and all the millions of other things we can still have.

Of course, they’ll eat the cereal eventually, after I melt some chocolate over it. My children will learn two important lessons: First, when you can’t have the real thing, don’t bother with the replacement, and second, everything tastes good when covered in chocolate.

My husband, on average, drinks two beers a week. Our recycle people don’t pick up glass (don’t ask…) so we save it; twice a year he drives to the collection site and drops off the empty beer bottles, wine bottles, pickle jars, and light bulbs.  Saving your glass that long means that right now, I feel like a lush; even at the pathetic rate at which we drink, the evidence grows to mythological proportions.

However, I can’t have empty beer bottles during Passover, so this morning I collected four large bags and two boxes worth of glass, which my husband is now driving to the recycle place. I also (yes, yes) sorted through all my children’s toys, and I am happy to say that so far all I found was a handful of stale popcorn that my son was apparently saving for later.

While we save bottles, he saves Chametz: unless you see him eating it, you can never be sure whether the cookie you gave him ended up in his stomach, or is hiding somewhere in a drawer. I guess he wants to make sure I really pay attention while I clean.

Before I start cleaning the fridge, I’ll have to check my list. Every year, there are things I need to be reminded of; usually, when I’m in doubt, the answer is no. Every once in a while, I’m pleasantly surprised. I get to keep my mustard in the fridge, because it’s Kitnyot: you can’t eat it during Passover, because it looks too much like Chametz, so you could get confused; however, you can still have it in your possession. That’s good, because the cabinets where I’m locking things up are getting too full. All the Chametz that’s left needs to be eaten or given away. Luckily, there’s not much.

I leave the dining room for last, so the kids have at least one spot in the house where they can eat without me watching them like I’m the Passover police.

That, of course, is the big danger during these last hectic days, and I have to ask myself: am I making this punitive by whining so much about all the cleaning? Am I making too many jokes about wanting to get out of Egypt? What message am I sending my children; that Passover is a pain in the neck and we are crazy for following all these rules? How can I make this more rewarding for myself, and more fun for my children?  Maybe my lesson this year is that I need to watch my tongue, because my kids are young enough that every word out of my mouth has an impact. So, before they get home from school today, I’m going to pump myself up and pretend that I’m having the time of my life getting this house into shape. Yay.

Even though I don’t think I’ll really feel the joy of Passover until, Saturday night, I’ll be reclining at the Seder, safe in the knowledge everything is done. Still, my children don’t need to know everything.

There are three days left ‘til Passover, and I haven’t accomplished anything today. For weeks, I have been anxiously watching the calendar, making lists in my head of what I need to do.  Now it is almost here, and I haven’t made much progress. I have to be honest; I’m not fond of all this preparation. Cleaning my house from top to bottom, getting every single breadcrumb out of every corner? Cleaning behind the couch? I feel like playing dark, Gothic music in the background. I despise cleaning!

Still, what has to be done, has to be done.

I take a deep breath and make up the balance. So far, I have located and set aside all the Chametz in my kitchen. With the crackers, pasta, granola bars and the like sitting on my kitchen counter, I have a visual reminder of what I want to get rid off. My kids don’t complain even though they’ve eaten macaroni and cheese three nights out of the past five. They know what’s coming; my six-year-old can identify every item in our house that contains Chametz. She even includes the chocolate syrup in her list. Good girl.

I have located the tape with which I will close the cabinets that we shouldn’t have access to, and reminded my husband he needs to finish eating his tortilla wraps.  The form to sell the remaining Chametz, as well as my dishes has been filled out and turned in, and I’ve meticulously scrubbed my Kitchenaid stand mixer before putting it away.

Tomorrow, I plan to tackle the fridge. I will take everything out, scrub until my hands are red, and cover the shelves with aluminum foil.

I don’t really mind cleaning out my kitchen; it means I can temporarily stop thinking about the fact that I still have to do my living room. For some really strange reason, I allow my children to eat dinner in there. In addition, my son eats his breakfast cereal in front of Sesame Street every morning. This means that, in spite of much vacuuming, there are crumbs everywhere; I’ll have to sort through all the toys, and move all the furniture.  Sorting through the toys is my Achilles heel. Toy boxes are strange things. Over the years they get filled with what I have come to think of as “plastic trash”. Little pieces of toys that have broken, Barbie limbs, little balls from who-knows-where, broken crayons, stuff that is unidentifiable, yet will nonetheless be missed by my children if I throw it away. It is simpler to just dump it back into the box, until you really have to clean it out. That moment, I’m sad to say, is now.

Tomorrow morning, my son and daughter are both in school, and thus it’s the perfect time to tackle this particular task.

But I don’t want to.

Which is probably why I’m planning to clean out my fridge.