My Kids’ Family

Keeping with my girl group theme, I decided to add a song that because a mega hit but unfortunately for the group, their only one. The group is the Weather Girls and the song is the amazing “dance anthem” “It’s Raining Men“. Yes I know this is a song loved by many women and by lot of gay men, but even though I am neither, it is a great dance song and a real kooky video.

Enjoy!

PS.  I am also including a newer version of the song by Geri Halliwell (of the mega mega girl group the Spice Girls).  I LOVE this video!  It is sort of a tribute to the movie and tv series Fame (which I loved) and the dance is quite good in the video.  So enjoy this too!

OK, I admit it. I have a thing for girl groups. Actually I love girl groups. And not just single female singers (although there are plenty I like) either. Give me a good girl group and I will always listen. Yesterday I picked a song from The Bangles, one of my favorites. Today I am choosing another of the 80’s girls groups, the Go-Go’s. The Go-Go’s were essentially a new wave group but they got some major play with their mega hits “Our Lips are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat.” They were a major force in new wave music and they were the first all women band to write their own music and play their own instruments while being on the top of the charts.

Enjoy!

Its been almost two weeks since my last full posting, and now I have so much to say, I have been putting it off because I just don’t know where to start. I think the easiest way is chronologically, so I will pick up where I left off and tell you about our Passover holiday.

Friday night the 18th we all went to one of the mom’s houses for Shabbat dinner. Dinner was to be at about 6:30 but for many reasons we did not actually eat until closer to 8:00. Dinner was fine but we needed to get a lot of the food back to our house for the rest of the holiday so a nice old-fashion wagon came in handy. We got home by 11 pm and thank God the kids went to sleep.

I think we made it to Synagogue just about when it ended. We went to the other mom’s house for lunch and that was actually kind of nice. It was a nice day so the kids played outside and we all got a chance to relax. One of the many kids was a bit sick but she just stayed asleep on a couch. By about 3:30 the moms moseyed back to our house to begin to get food in the oven and set the table for the Seder. I brought a few of the kids back at about 5, and helped to finish getting ready.

Normally dinner is during the Seder. On the other hand, the Seder cannot start until after sundown, so we would have to feed our kids very late if we did that (not to mention the hungry adults!) So we decided to have dinner first and then start the Seder on time. At the point where dinner would be we would have dessert.

I wont go into details of the Seder itself, except to say it was lively and I think everyone had a good time. Of course we did the whole thing over the 2nd day and I think everyone had fun then too.

Will we do this cooperative Seder again? I don’t know, but it did make for some fun times despite the difficulties of getting ready. Next year we may try again and we will have learned from our past mistakes.

After sagas of the past few weeks (to be written about here soon) I am going back to work again today and the only thing that came to mind was “Manic Monday” by The Bangles. Of course the song is about a woman wanting to be back with her man rather than going to work, but the sentiment of not wanting to be at work on Monday morning is totally the same.

In my case, I just want to be back at home with my son helping him to get through his days, but instead, I need to be at work. So in many ways my life parallels this song.

Here is a version from youtube that is called an acoustic version. It is only partially acoustic, as there is one electric guitar and a keyboard, but it is very nice nontheless.

Enjoy!

I’m back and it’s Friday, so it is time for some favorite lyrics.  I am going to be brief and next week hopefully I will be fully back in the blogging life.

Here are some of the most beautiful lyrics ever written.

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments,
With lovers and friends I still can recall,
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I’ve loved them all.
But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compared with you,
And these mem’ries lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more.
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more.
In my life I love you more.

Now that the seders are over, I can get back to writing more frequently. I will post about our seders tomorrow, but today I want to concentrate on Avi and ADHD.

School has been a nightmare.  He is basically doing nothing but coloring in his Hebrew class and in English he seems to stay with the class some of the time, but the rest he just tunes out.  It is likely that next year we will move him to our local public school rather than the Jewish Day school, but until then it will be a battle.

Avi had started on 10 mg of Focalin initially, and we he was quickly moved to 10 mg of Adderall. That seemed to work for a while, but he started to get worse. In the early part of the day he seems to be ok, but by afternoon forget it.

So we moved him to 20 mg of Adderall, and he stayed on that for a few weeks, but then we started to see different behavior. He became withdrawn and moody. We felt that the 20 mg was too much. So now he is taking 15 mg. Until we get the new perscription, I am actually opening up the capsules and “eyeballing” 3/4 and then putting that back in the capsule. It takes a few days until we see results and this is school vacation week, so we may not really get results until he is on this dosage for a few days.  We are hopeful.

One side effect has been loss of appetite, but hopefully with the lower dose, he will start eating more.  That is the problem with these medicines.  It is all trial and error.  The hope is that eventually you will fine the right dosage and that he will be able to function a bit better.

Thats all for now.  I hope to have better news to report as we move forward.