Love is all you need

The day of atonement saw us returning to the children's service at a local shul. It was a brisk 30-minute affair, and Z had to go potty as soon as we got there -- so for him and me, more like 20 minutes. Still, it was great to see O and he singing the songs (even later on during the day), and Z continued to do a solid job of sounding out words and phrases in the mahzor. The rabbi's sermon (well, more of a story for the kids) was ironically one that I'd just read in my own prayer book at home, though he modernized it to include some silly contemporary references (including a reminder of the high demand for a certain product I'm working on -- does that mean he would condone me getting back to work during the holiday? :)

Today we all went to Seattle's Greek Festival, where we met up with several friends and actually ran into a few other friends and coworkers as well, many of whom were using this as their super early Seahawks tailgate party. It was a loud and hectic affair, but the boys had a fabulous time. There were some Greek musicians (at one point Z pointed over to them and said "It's mommy's music", clearly identifying some musical parallels to Meh's Balkan choir) and of course a coin-operated car that the boys clung to for a few minutes before getting down to serious lunchtime. O was a particular fan of the small circular waffle French fries -- covered in feta, though he shook the cheese off and preferred the fries straight up. They also had a baklava ice cream sundae concoction that he gobbled up.

Lately O has been increasingly frequent in demonstrating his solid passive aggressive skills -- specifically, if you do something that displeases him (translation: suggest he's not making a good choice or, heaven forbid, actually discipline him), he *won't* say he hates you. He'll just talk about how he loves everyone but you. "I just love mommy, and Z, and mima, and papa, and Lola, and grandma, and J, and of the people in the whole world, but not you, daddy." It would perhaps break my heart a bit if he wasn't doing this every 5-10 minutes with either or both of us -- though interestingly he rarely applies this tactic to Z.