Kosherfest!
I know you're all on shpielkes over Kosherfest. It was awesome. So, let me deliver a narrative. I spoke with batya_d and she informed me that there were no strollers or even children allowed. I would not be deterred. I tossed Moo in the Ergo, put him to the Oobie, and it just so happened that we had a long way to walk from the subway to the Javitz Center and guess who shluffed out. Sooo, we get there, have our badges out, walk to the entrance and
BAM!
"No children allowed on the floor, ma'am. The child can not come on the floor."
"But he's asleep! And on me. And I can't exactly check him at the gate.
"No children on the floor."
So, I told Batya to go ahead, maybe after Moo woke up we would switch off. I tarried near the security guards.
The guard looked at my badge, "Is the baby's name D**?"
Me - "Hm? No, that's my" (really the person who gave me the badge, whatever) "last name."
Him - "Oh, I didn't know D** could be a last name." Really? WTF?
Me - "Yep"
Him - "It's my first name."
Me - "Hi D**, nice to meet you, I'm Yael."
Him - "Yow?"
Me - "Close enough. This is Menachem Mendel, he's asleep. It totally stinks that I can't bring him in."
Him - "Well, he just looks like a backpack...make sure he stays that way and go down those stairs over there."
So, basically, I smuggled my kid inside. He stayed asleep for like 1/2 and hour, then he woke up and everybody thought he was the cutest and I fed him tons of stuff and he was happy and didn't bother anybody.
Anyway! Kosherfest was so.AWESOME. First, we ruined a fake cupcake that was for display only, but looked so delicious that we had to try (there was no sign.) Then. There was cheese. So very much cheese. MMMMM. There was a table with just soft cheeses and the bleu was so silky I could eat it by the spoonful even though it was so strong. And they had olives to balance the cheeses and now I kind of wish we'd spent more time there but then we would have missed all the other cheese! And food. And fake cheese! We got samples of fancy fake cheese that was so delicious, you could never have told the difference. We liked it so much that they gave us each a package of it to take home. Estihana had a sushi bar and they couldn't churn it out fast enough. There were a million places with cookies and sweets and I had this fabulous allergy free apple-cinnamon cake. Then, Moo woke up right next to the Sushi cracker stand and was very happy about that. I just kept throwing food at him, he was happy. He had bread and a spinach latke and dried blueberries (i can't *wait* for that diaper) and parve ice cream...They even had kosher dog biscuits!!! Like really really kosher, fit for human consumption...though I didn't try them. We kept ourselves so busy, I didn't even make it to the fleishig stuff (and came home craving hot dogs) before another security guard spotted my contraband baby and sent us packin. It was fine, though, we were full!