update

So, we are in our second week of having Barak at home with a babysitter and another little boy. I have to say it is going really well, and while he may have had more fun per minute while at day care, his sum amount of fun had per day is probably higher, because, you know, he's not screaming hysterically for 25 minutes each way on the bus, morning and afternoon. I really like his sitter, who was his teacher at daycare (and is now about to start classes for a nursing degree), and we are saving a little money over what we paid at daycare, and I am not facing another winter of pushing the jogging stroller through snowdrifts on my commute. All good, although of course the down side is another hour a day apart.

And although Imma does, admittedly, have a much easier time on the bus without him, it's a lot harder to leave the house with a little boy perched on a box looking out the living room window watching me sadly all the way down the street as I wave bye-bye while walking backwards. I know he likes his babysitter--he gives her a big grin when she comes, even if he would rather I didn't leave. He gets to draw and paint and blow bubbles and do all those fun things, and his buddy comes and hangs out and the two of them converse seriously and trade their snacks (which are, unlike the ones in daycare, all kosher). It's definitely a better arrangement, and I'm starting to feel better about it, even though, well, I miss him.

One of the nicer things about it, while I'm on the subject, is that since Barak doesn't already spend two hours a day trapped in the stroller before we even run an errand, I can take him out for walks and not feel mean about it. So today we went to the post office, where we mailed a thirteen-pound box containing four bottles of anti-itch Neutrogena, two huge bottles of heavy-duty moisturizer, two tubs of really heavy-duty moisturizer, three bags of cookies, four tins of sardines, a bottle of baby shampoo, a small stack of pictures, two packages of tuna and a recent example of Barak's artwork to my grandmother in Hungary. It will take four weeks to get there and cost twenty-seven dollars, which I think is a bargain of the highest order. My grandmother, as you may have guessed, has a nasty itchy skin problem and only daily head-to-toe slathering with moisturizer and hydrocortisone keeps her sanity. So we send a big box of it every four or five months, being sure to keep well ahead of the supplies so as to take advantage of the cheap surface mail rates. It's a good system.

And in the poetic justice category, the two rude Russians who cut ahead of me on the very long post office line got what they deserved. They were too scary-looking to take to task for their line-cutting, or to talk to generally, so I did not say a word to them about the yellow-and-brown package slips they were holding, and let them wait all the way to the front of the line until the postal clerk informed them that UPS and USPS are not the same thing. So there.

In other news, the house is nearly unpacked, with the only room still in a state of moderate chaos being the guest room. Since we are, naturally, about to have guests, this is going to have to change pretty soon. Probably just as well.

All right, time to go make some rice.