Hallie's first Passover/Easter: Our Little Sitting Bunny

On Saturday night, Hallie experienced her very first Passover Seder. In Hebrew, seder means "order" and the whole meal is ordered around a huge number of rituals and readings that help retell the history of the Exodus from Egypt. It's one of our most important holidays, particularly since I have a lot of fond childhood associations, and even more graduate school associations, with Passover. There's a lot of singing (including a really heartfelt rendition of the story of the four children set to the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine!" that kids and adults both seem to love), tons of good food, and a bunch of opportunities for revisionist approaches to historical narrative. Needless to say, I was thrilled that we could begin to share this wilth Hallie. Hallie, of course, had a great time, and showed it by eating her fist (which is, after all, kosher for Passover):



Anyway, we had a great time celebrating with Grammy, Aunts Renee and Kim, and the extended Queen Street Commune (aka the Chan clan (Auntie Vanessa, Karina, Virgil and Wan-Za--- I hope I got the spelling right!--and Josh, Nancie, and Ethan). All the kids loved it and hopefully next year they can steal the afikoman and collect a huge ransom.

Today, we had a very nice Easter day. This is especially because our little bunny decided that it was time to be risen...into the unassisted sitting position:



Maybe it was Grammy's gentle-but-firm support; maybe it was the fact that she was wearing the shirt Aunt Ellen got her and wanted to show it off to the world, maybe it's because she finally realized that it's a whole hell of a lot easier to play with drums, stackers, blocks, and pretty much everything else that way, but whatever it was it finally clicked. Maybe, just maybe, she realized that this was what the other big kids (Karina and Ethan) were doing and she wanted to do it, too....




...though not necessarily "with" her friend Ethan in any conventional sense of the word "with":



And if sitting were not enough on its own, Hallie realized that this gives her the opportunity to become even more mobile:



We are so very, very proud of our little bunny, who is quickly becoming a toddler.

Tomorrow, I'll try to post pictures about when the Easter Bunny (who is apparently Jewish) came to town and delivered all sorts of goodies to Hallie.

Happy Passover and Easter, everyone!