The Man in the Yellow Hat

When I was growing up, my parents asked a friend of my family named Harold to play the role of bedtime police one night. He came in and told me and my brothers that he's the policeman that parents call when their kids don't go to bed.

Over the years, Harold has been many different personas to us. One time during a Pesach Seder he went outside without us knowing and my father passed the Kos Eliyahu out of the window to him. It took us years to believe that Eliyahu Hanavi didn't actually drink that cup of grape juice. Another time he "lost" his name somewhere in my house. My brothers and I spent hours trying to find it until we decided he must be called No-Name. That name has stuck throughout the years.

Today, he took on yet another persona. Yaeli and I were trying to think of people to call and wish a Happy Chanukah. She kept naming people we had already called and then, finally, said she wanted to talk to the Man in the Yellow Hat (as in, the character from Curious George). I immediately thought of calling No-Name to play this character.

Unfortunately, Yaeli didn't take the bait. At first she thought it was her uncle Yossi. Then she decided it was her Zeighdee. Throughout the whole phone call she kept saying it was all a big mistake. There's no fooling her. So I introduced her to No-Name and she finally stopped mocking me for trying to pull a fast one on her.

She's good.

Happy Chanukah and Thanksgiving everyone!

The Craftiness Is Back!

My dear wife Rivkah has always been a very artsy and crafty person. You should see the scarves she crocheted for my family and the berets she crocheted for herself. Her projects are always pretty cool. Unfortunately, new motherhood and new mother-of-two-hood has pretty much trumped her time over much of the last 3 years.

Not anymore!

With the cold weather coming on, Rivkah decided she was sick of cramming the kids into their carseats with big poofy winter coats. We'd also read that big poofy coats makes carseats a bit less safe.

So...she went online and found a blog post by someone who made fleece ponchos for her kids. You buckle the kids underneath the poncho and they stay warm. See below for the amazing results!

I'm so glad Crafty Rivkah is back.

Where There's a Will...

...there's a relative. Or so my father always says.

This week, Rivkah and I are finalizing the process to have our Wills written and notarized as well as our Financial and Medical Powers of Attorney. This has been a project I've had on my to-do list since Yaeli was born and now, three years later, we have finally almost completed it.

The whole process has been pretty difficult. Writing a Will comes with a lot of difficult questions and discussions. You have to face your own mortality right in the face and think about what you would want to happen when you die. Coupled with what's been going on recently and it's made for a pretty depressing two weeks in the Miller household.

However, now that we've had those discussions and now that this process is almost done, I feel very calm. I feel like I can package up these documents and put them away and if, chas veshalom, something happens, at least Rivkah and the kids are taken care of.

I hope I just threw away all that money.