Moadim L'Simcha - Enjoying Sukkot!

For Noam, Sukkot thus far is the holiday of cousins (its also the holiday of dirt, but more on that later). On Shabbat, Adina Wolkenfeld and her friend stayed over. Needless to say, Noam enjoyed the extra attention, though he did want to make sure that Eema wasn't going to run off and leave him with these girls. On Sunday, we drove to Moshav Massuot Yitzchak, to visit with a whole bunch of the Lauenger cousins - Moshe, Devorah, their daughters-in-law and grandchildren, their son Ophir, and Henry's daughter Yael and her family.

Noam's first act upon encountering his Israeli cousins was to eat an entire bag of Bamba...



while Eema and Daddy looked on in shock and horror. For the unititiated, Bamba is a singularly Israeli form of junk food. Picture cheese puffs, but instead of being coated with cheese dust, these are covered in powdered peanut butter. Israelis love 'em. We cannot figure it out, but Noam took the bag Devorah offered him and toddled off with it, cramming them into his mouth just as fast as he could.

When the rest of the cousins arrived (the children ranged in age from four months to around ten or so) Noam was briefly overwhelmed, but pretty soon he got into the swing of things. He took off down the path, determined to explore the rest of the moshav (he was pretty angry when we didn't let him go visit the neighbors). He played with the hose (and got a little wet) rolled in the garden (and got muddy) and crawled around the floor of the sukkah (hence the holiday of dirt).





Here he is with his (third) cousin Uri...



...and with Ophir...



and the rest of the gang!



The great thing about Sukkot, if you're Noam, is that you're basically always eating outside. And outside, there is dirt. And rocks. And sometimes old crumbs on the ground. Some of his clothing may never recover from this holiday.

On the plus side, Noam does like to sit in the Sukkah and eat granola with his Daddy. Conveniently, we keep both stools and chairs in the Sukkah, for Noam's climbing convenience....







He also got to eat some ice cream in our neighbors' sukkah, where we celebrated Ariel's first birthday. Quite unlike Noam, Ariel ate loads of cake and enjoyed every minute of it. Noam seemed to like watching Ariel eat cake, and he did go for the ice cream. He also helped Ariel play with some of his new toys!




~ THANKS BUBBE!

Noam got his new hat today in the mail. After we woke him from his two and a half hour nap (yeah, we really don't know what was up with that, or how to get him to do it again!) he tried it on for a while. For those who want to keep up to date on his achievements, his walking gets stronger every day (as do his temper tantrums...)!