One of the benefits of having Kourtney at home (since she works in theatre and they are not starting back up anytime soon) is that she has been baking constantly. Last week she made apple pie, blueberry cheesecake, and puff pastry with strawberries. This week we’ve been eating strawberry shortcake, broccoli and cheddar pasties. But my favorite new tradition is the challah she makes every Friday, from scratch.

Kourtney is not Jewish, but she loves me, and loves creating new traditions for our daughter, so she has really jumped into weekly challah baking. And beyond that, she’s been helping me build out our weekly Shabbat traditions with Aminah. It’s been really gratifying to now see our daughter get excited as the sun goes down on Friday night, because she knows that it’s time for challah!

I am still nervous/learning all the prayers for Shabbat, and so far we haven’t said all of them in their entirety (the Kiddush is so much longer than I thought, and I just don’t know how to get Aminah to sit for longer than a minute before she tries to grab the challah– should I just let her do it??). Despite this, I’m happy with what we’re able to do. I’m still learning, but every week I get a little more and more from our Shabbat rituals, and I’m adding more Jewishness to my life and my home. It has taken me so long to get to this place, and it feels like there’s so much more to do but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how far I’ve come, and recognize that I’m a little more ready to claim Judaism than I was before, and that this is happening exactly when it should.