Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I will never get this right.

I think I have mentioned before that I am one of your less insular orthodox Jews. I've never gone to a Jewish school or worked in a Jewish place of employment; I also have a number of interests not common in ther yeshivishe veldt, like, er, blogging, and knitting and weaving and that kind of thing. As a result, I have a lot of non-Jewish friends.

When Barak was born, I sent out a mass email to our friends letting people know we'd had a kid. I tried hard to have it convey all pertinent information while still being comprehensible to everyone. I failed miserably. Among other things, I signed it Uberimma, MHH and Tinok ben MHH (with our real names, obviously). At least five emails came back saying, "Welcome Tinok!" and a few months later, I read in my alumni newsletter that I'd given birth to a baby boy named Tinok. (Tinok, by the way, means baby. Tinok ben Yosef means Yosef's baby boy--it's the equivalent of saying Baby Boy Smith).

This time, I was determined not to repeat my mistake. I read and reread my mazal tov email, which mentioned both the English day and the Hebrew date (gimel Iyyar) that I'd had the baby.

And got three emails back welcoming baby Iyyar.

Sigh.

Well, his bris was yesterday, and he has a real name now, but I think for purposes of this blog he might as well be baby Iyyar. Iyyar ben MHH, then, went to the pediatrician this morning, who pronounced him "doing great"--he is back up to his birth weight, at the 15th percentile for weight (which is really good considering he's not even due yet), and happily recovered from the jaundice.

Now we just need to work on that sleep thing.

Today's excitement: lag ba'omer. Barak's babysitter took him and his buddy to the party at MHH's school, where he got to go on a--wait for it--camel ride. Really. They had a camel. I can't wait to hear about it after he's done napping. And this afternoon, we should be getting our new stove, and I'm thinking about what to do with the box it's going to come in. Playhouse, anyone?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

:) so many things i want to say, i'll keep it short:

welcome baby iyyar and very happy to hear he's back at birth weight. :)

and for barak who rode a camel

Anonymous said...

so eager to keep it short i hit publish too quick:

and for barak who rode a camel! how he's grown up! such a big brother.

[i've never ridden a camel, and i have slightly similar but not quite background so i do understand the mis-understandings. when i use pesach and passover in teh same sentance one person keeps thinking i mean a seperate holiday. another also thinks shabbos is sundown friday until sundown sunday. as that's a work-person i'm not pushing clarifying. i'll get calls on sunday]

ok, wasn't i keeping this short?

Anonymous said...

I somehow missed that the first time around - I apparently have another birthday buddy. Cool!

Happy belated Birth Day baby Iyyar :) !! You picked a mighty fine day to be born :)

We just waited until after the bris to send out birth announcements.

Anonymous said...

Tee hee! I knew I should probably Google for "gimmel" and "Iyyar" but had no time online for anything, so I was one of the 3 e-mails, and I'll admit it!

I thought, well, maybe "gimmel" means "little" and "Iyyar" is the name (not being all that different from his brother's name, I will point out) and so it scanned fine, linguistically speaking...

And I sent off a card through the post office yesterday, welcoming little Iyyar! Hah. Maybe it'll make him laugh when he's all grown up and looking at his baby book.