We're baaaack.

And really, it wasn't bad. It was at a Jewish summer camp/resort kind of place, off an unmarked dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Inside, it was a cross between a dorm and a hotel (the kids' rooms were much more dormy), but we, and the other teachers, had a nice room with our own bathroom, two more beds than we needed, and a pack and play already set up for Barak.

So that was Shabbos--me, MHH, Barak, five or six other staff families and one hundred and fifty teenage boys.

Barak, of course, had a blast. He was an excellent traveler both ways, with minimal kvetching--the only real hysterical wailing coming when mean old Imma took away the crayon he was trying to draw on the car door with. Considering it was three and a half hours each way, and the way up was in the middle of the day, I think that's pretty good (and devoutly hope that this bodes well for next week's much more major excursion).

But oh, the amount of sugar he consumed while we were there... urgh. There was just nothing I could do to keep him away from it, and I've never seen him so hyped up. The worst was when, Shabbos morning before lunch, he found a full, unopened can of cherry Coke on a table and picked it up. It looked unopened, anyway, and felt full, and I knew he couldn't open an unopened can, so I let him play with it. He picked it up and pretended he was drinking it. Fine. Then I realized he was pretending a little too authentically, walking around with it held tight in both hands, completely upended over his mouth, head tipped all the way back. He looked, frankly, just a little too happy with the whole situation. I grabbed the can, and realized that it was, in fact, just slightly cracked open, so he was getting a perfect little trickle of flat cherry Coke and had drunk a good half the can. (I think what must have happened was that someone put it outside to get it cold, left it too long, it froze, and they brought it in to thaw--at which point the tab had come just slightly open.)

Great. Not only has he drunk half a can of sugary carbonated water, he's drunk half a can of sugary carbonated water WITH CAFFEINE. (Don't tell Zayde!) On top of all the cookies the kids handed him all morning, and the stuff he picked up from the floor in the dining hall, etc. He is a lot closer to the floor than I am, and sometimes I just can't grab things out of his hands fast enough.

Oh, and the Froot Loops. I don't consider myself a health nut, and yes, we do have sugar in the house, and yes, I do let Barak have cookies at kiddush and other reasonably special occasions, and I give him (diluted) orange juice and Yobabies and that kind of thing, but I definitely don't believe in gratuitously adding refined sugar in quantity to the diet of anyone not yet old enough to brush his own teeth. And so when the Froot Loops were put out at breakfast, I drew the line. You are getting Cheerios and cantaloupe, little boy, and you will like it.

And oh my, you would have thought I'd taken his blanket, his pacifier, and all of his toys, and thrown them out the window into the frozen lake beyond. I was the MEANEST IMMA EVER EVER EVER and Barak threw himself down on the floor and screamed himself purple to aid me in realizing this. Imma, however, continued to be mean, did not recognize that he was truly in desperate need of said Froot Loops, and not only wouldn't give them this essential breakfast product but kept pulling them out of his hands ever time he found one more tempting blue morsel stuck to the floor. Yecch.

So, along comes naptime. Now, we all know that Barak has a nap-resistant streak. But usually he registers his protest by, you know, protesting--crying, or complaining, or something, um, negative. Not this time. I put him in his crib, lay down on the bed, and listened while he sang, chatted, danced, and literally bounced himself off the sides of his crib for Two. Solid. Hours. He sang the ABC song ("A, B, B, B, B! A, B, B, B, B! Emanemobeee! Emanemobee!") pointed out things in the ether ("Diss! Diss! Diss!") and imitated animals ("Ruff! Ruff! Da ga! Daga! Baby!") Every so often, I'd look to see what he was doing, and see him standing up looking at me and waving happily.

Needless to say, today he didn't get so much as a Yobaby--there were a lot of vegetables and whole wheat products in his diet. He didn't actually seem to mind.