Hanukkah Fun with the Mispucha

For the first night of Hanukkah, I wanted to make sure that Sean had an adequate experience for the Jewish half of his heritage. I am Jewish, therefore, Sean is Jewish in the Jewish religion, and his father is Catholic. He gets the best of both worlds. It’s a lot of fun for him.
In the morning, I prepped the Japanese sweet potatoes, which are like baseballs. They were the biggest, sweet potatoes, I have ever seen, Japanese or not. I heated them up in the microwave oven so they were soft enough to cut, and then I quartered them. They were eight pieces in total. I put them in a plastic bag and stuck them in the refrigerator until Sean came home from school.

He was very happy to create a controlled chaos. Inside a food processor, shredding up the heck out of the sweet potatoes. I looked up a Food Network recipe and had all the ingredients ready to mix together in a bowl. I bake them because I just didn’t want the oil. I know that Hanukkah is a celebration of the oil that lasted for eight days, but I just don’t really Enjoy it nor does my stomach.

My mom had got a box of Streitz matzoh meal mix in a box, that my grandmother had used. I remember it well, and made that as well, she fried that in oil, and then drained it on paper towels as she grew up with. So we had two types of sweet potatoes, did not have any sour cream, but had a whole lot of applesauce. We all were very happy with the way the latkes turned out, and it made it a special festive occasion.

In the morning, I worked with Sean to create a hot wheels themed menorah. At first, it was a car wash that the hot wheels were drive-through, but it started to get complicated. I ended up making parking bees, none of them. Then we constructed it to have a tall enough back wall to place the candles, the battery operated electric ones, no fire in my house. We let the first tee light and it was a lot of fun at night.

In the afternoon, I took Sean and my mom to a Hanukkah party that the Wayne Y WCA was hosting. They had fantastic goodie bags with Hanukkah themed goodies, games, and a bouncy house.

I made sure to get there early enough so that Sean can investigate the space without a lot of unfamiliar children that he gets on comfortable with being around. Once he warms up, he’s fine, but there’s no sense to bring on anxiety for such a happy Hanukkah occasion.

I knew that he would try the potato sack eventually and hop around in it, I just had to be patient. I think my mom was pretty sad that he was not going to try it and that we should just go onto the next thing. But I never give up on Sean, and there was no way that I was putting him in any danger. Sure enough, he decided to stick his feet in the bag and hop and count while he was doing it. he had a great time. When the races started with other kids, where he would have to compete with them, he slipped a bag off of his feet, and we went on to another area. This did not surprise me, but I wanted him to at least be familiar and experience. What being in a potato sack was like. I was even joking around with him that I was going to get into another potato sack. But to crutches and a bomb leg, that would’ve been pretty funny.

There was a Hanukkah themed puppet show with an investigator who is looking for missing latkes, and a jelly doughnut. It was really cute and Sean was comfortable watching the show and eating a bag of popcorn. They also had jelly donuts as noshes that are pretty common for Hanukkah, but we just decided against it because we really don’t eat them.

The first night of Hanukkah was a success, even the daytime, and Sean will always remember that he has a Jewish side to him too. Don’t let the siculiano name fool you! This kid has a Hebrew name, too: Melech, which means king of the house. And that he is. Happy Hanukkah!