Birthday Picnic

Amalia turned 3, unbelievable as it may seem to us and to anyone that knows her.

We organized a little picnic for our friends in an oak forest nearby. Simple and quickly made food (humous, pitas and some salads along with nuts, crackers, strawberries and a chocolate cake) and very few plans - I thought of a treasure hunt for the kids, where the treasure would be a big bag of papers, scissors, paint and glue, but eventually it wasn't necessary. they ran up and down the hills and into the "flour cave" which was a soft limestone wall where they could get really dirty, put on the costumes I brought with us, and finally did get into some origami and paper cut outs, making airplanes and flying them. I love watching a group of children play, when they all get along and just so creatively and freely dive in and out of games. I love it when there are smaller and bigger kids and still they manage to play together. I love how they exist in their world, right next to us yet so far away in their stories.

*they're all somehow taken from the back... I'm so aware of some friends not wanting their children to appear on the internet, that I got used to taking pictures from behind.

Amalia is the one wearing the white princess costume. The monkey is Hilel.

(winter) desert vacation

My friend Y. came from Paris to start making her film about a place called Neot Hakikar, at the very southern end of the dead sea, where the biblical Sodom used to be. She and her partner and her cameraman spent 4 days there, and we joined them as babysitters for their 2 year old daughter. The weather was disastrous, we managed to arrive at the 5 yearly or so rain and storm weekend. In the desert rain might mean inundation - which nobody knows if or where might occur, so all the touristic spots were shut, just in case. so the first day and most of the second were spent indoors. Towards the second afternoon the kids were getting irritable and bored and so were we. We got in the car and drove to see the dead sea, worrying about floods and will we be able to get back. but everything was alright.

The dead sea is so beautiful and unworldly. But around it it's dirty and ugly. It seams there's nothing left untouched: electricity lines, building leftovers, pipes sticking out of the ground, and just standard human garbage such as nylon bags and plastic bottles.

The kids however didn't mind any of this and quickly got into stone-searching and mud-sinking mode.

Little E was sleeping in the car, and they could be just brother and sister again, that probably also served to calm them down a bit. 

Here they are checking out the salt:

and a second after this shot was taken they both jumped into mud, a lot of mud, with their fairly new shoes.

The next day we decided not to let the weather and outside circumstances ruin that last chance at a desert experience for us (well, for this visit at least), and went out, simply out near where we were staying, no big endeavor, no far reaching plans.

Hilel was really into climbing those soft rock mountains, the ground was much fun to walk on after the rain, it was soft like a mattress. 

 

The girls and I made a circle of stones together, in which many stories (by Amalia) came to life.

Later, at another spot, Hilel was very busy breaking off pieces of dried cracked mud and throwing them to see them shutter to dust.

Playing hide and seek, we found two circles of stones with some dry branches in them, someone made this in the middle of this nowhere. isn't it wonderful to find such things?

The highlight of the day for Hilel was climbing the mountain side and sliding down.

By the end of this day the girls became best mates at last, after 2 days of E. doing as she pleases and generally being two years old, and Amalia going nuts over it and not allowing her any of her stuff and saying over and over that she's "little". (Amalia will be three in April.. I guess for her scale E. is indeed so much younger, a year is a third of her life)

 

And here's Hilel discovering the Boom, on the way back to our normal, greener civilization.

landscape to play with

I started making this landscape play-mat over a year ago, it was supposed to be a birthday present for my son who was about to be 4 (he's now 5 years and 2 months old and I finally almost finished...). I got the idea as I watched him play with an ugly road carpet over at a friend's house. This sort of play mats or carpets can be a great platform for inventions for children, but the way they are often done is somehow closed, there are too many details that have to do with a lifestyle that is not ours (ice cream and pizza parlors around every corner, not that we avoid pizzas and ice creams but I don't think they should make up the only cultural reference for kids). So I thought of making an open landscape with roads, and when playing the children can place different objects or dolls or whatever they feel like to make a story up. There's a mountain and a sea-shore, a lake, fields and meadows. in my kids' room there are baskets with stones they collected, shells, little animals and trees that I made or that somehow made their way over to us. it's fun to see how different bits and pieces finally find a place together in a game. It's still not finished, I'm planning to frame it with some other fabric. but I'm not sure if it would make it all too bound or limited. maybe when he's 6 I'll have the answer..

*the mess at the background of that top picture is an example of the embarrassing truth of our house.

top view with a zip line who's purpose remained a mystery. the red car did some dangerous driving on it:

waves and sea foam:

I used paper clips to help the trees stand upright:

To characterize a field, I created little pockets to place the vegetables in them: