We have finally exited Heathen Mode and joined a temple, which means Jake & Danny are now in Sunday School. They started three weeks ago, and were a bit nervous about it. But their first morning, we were talking with the school's director in her office, when who walked in but our former next-door neighbors with their girls the same ages as our boys. Jacob and Olivia were pretty well inseparable from 9 months to four years old, and Danny and Katie, who are only three weeks apart, were just the most adorable things together. They went to preschool together, shared childcare, and went through the bumps and bruises of infancy and toddlerhood together until our friends left the city for Evanston.

So guess who was joining the temple at the same (belated) date as we were? The boys were SO excited. Jake and Olivia got to sit next to each other in their classroom. Unfortunately, Katie missed the cutoff for kindergarten by the aforementioned three weeks, so she's not in Danny's class. However, he has friends from elementary school so everyone is happy.

Yesterday, we attended our first family program with the rest of the kindergarten families. They provided childcare, so we dropped all three kids off in their respective classrooms and trudged upstairs to meet with the rabbi. Apparently there had been two previous sessions where everyone had talked about Shabbat and why it's observed. At this third and last meeting, the rabbi talked about blessings. Why do we give blessings? Well, it's to say thanks, naturally. But she raised a side benefit -- in saying thanks, we're reminded to be grateful (another way of saying 'count your blessings,' I guess).

The point of this discussion (besides the obvious) was to instruct us in writing our own blessings for our children. There are traditional blessings given by parents to their children on Shabbat, wishing for boys that they be like Joseph's sons, and for girls that they be like the Biblical matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel & Leah). But, as the rabbi pointed out, we want our children to be uniquely themselves -- why wish that they are like other people? She went on to discuss how these blessings are not that literal -- that they be examined as comments in context. It's not that we wish our boys to be like Joseph's sons. We wish that our sons be treated like Joseph's sons (who Jacob greeted as equals, not as superior and inferior by dint of birth order).

I really dug this discussion, though I have essentially no training in discussing theology or the practice of any religion (including my own). After being away from my family for four, brain-cleansing yet& nbsp;exhausting days, I missed the essence of each of my kids. Being removed from the day-to-day drudgery of motherhood (because, let's face it, much of it is akin to slavery), I could appreciate from my distance how special each child was.

On Friday, I was stuck in the Orlando airport when the whole airport was grounded due to some electrical problem at air traffic control (take your time & fix it right, guys!). DH sent me an email apologizing that when I got home I would likely find a mess in our bedroom (very much par for the course, and at least half my fault). But after that, he told me two incredibly funny stories about Jake and Danny, which literally made me laugh out loud. And they were SO MUCH Jake and Danny.

I said in the Sunday School discussion how I liked the idea of creating a blessing for each child to wish them to be their own selves, and how in doing so I was also being grateful for all of the things that do make them their own selves. Jacob is so funny and smart and calculating and full of theories; he wants to figure out the whole world, and then draw and write it down. Danny is such an exhuberant kid who's finding his way in his little world. DH said last night how he will just pop these huge and complicated words into his everyday conversation, and right now he wants to know everything about everything. I remember when he was three or so and told me how he liked something "because it was colorful," and how kind of shocked I was by his use of the word "colorful." Oh, and Benjamin -- such a naughty, delightful, impish little package of adorableness.

Of course, they have all the habits and traits that take me to the limit of pharmaceutical assistance, but in being reminded to be grateful for their wonderful traits, I am also reminded to concentrate on the good more and the difficult, less.

And as long as I'm being grateful, a funny tidbit: Saturday night, DH is curled up in our bed with Danny and Benjamin, reading from Nick Jr. magazine with Danny and having him fill in the 'blanks.' The topic was classic fairy tales, so DH would read the first part and guide Danny into completing the sentence. He got to "Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell..."

And Danny promptly said .... "Awful."