Kappayim L'Ariella!

Next week, Yaakov is Yeled HaShavua. I'm sure you seasoned parents of school-age children have alarm bells going off in your heads right now, because whenever your child is "chosen" for something, this means you will have to "do work, probably involving glue and permanent markers." In this case, we need to create a poster with various pictures of Yaakov, complete with cute captions.


First came the pictures. This is not like the olden days when you would ransack your old photo albums, steal pictures you needed, and then forget to return them, so that years later, as you're nostalgically leafing through photo albums, you start wondering aloud why the only pictures of you as a baby are blurry or have a big thumb on them. No, no, we are technologically advanced. So of course it took two adults - one of whom is even more tech-savvy than Dadz - a solid hour to figure out how to print things on our specialized photo paper so that the kids weren't missing the tops of their heads.


We got the pictures, thanks to "crop." Now, ladies and gentlemen, we arrive at the hard part - writing the captions. Although I was a teacher in my former life, it is one of my greatest shortcomings that my handwriting is abysmal. I don't have that nice, loopy, handwriting you recall from teachers of your youth. And that's in English, the language I actually write in. This, naturally, has to be in Hebrew. Print Hebrew, if you please, because it looks much nicer. I think the last time I wrote in print Hebrew I was wearing a charm bracelet and watching Jem.


So we called in special ops - Ariella. After a few false starts, we got into a good rhythm: We spread out on the floor, I drew lines for her, wrote out the caption if necessary (in script, of course) on a piece of paper, and she wrote them in beautiful print on the poster. Yaakov helped by occasionally adding his two cents ("This one has to say Yom Huledet Sameach! I'm having a birthday!") - although if his ideas were too wordy, Ariella and I nixed them. He also climbed on me a lot, since Mommy on the floor = jungle gym.


But the final product is beautiful, if I do say so myself. And I do. It looks really nice, and Yaakov was kind enough to say afterwards, "Thank you Ariella for doing that for me."


Samples below: