Cheese doodles and immortal words

It was really hot today, but not as horrifically hot as it's been, so after Barak woke up from his nap I proposed that we go outside to sprinkle. He thought that this was a good idea, but first wanted cheese doodles. Fine, I said. Let's make cheese doodles.

Doodles, by the way, are noodles, but Hungarian noodles. For me, Hungarian noodles, paired preferably with finely grated cheese and, um, a very traditionally Hungarian Diet Coke, are the ultimate comfort food. Barak will probably feel the same way about them when he grows up (I hope minus the Diet Coke part). The formula is one cup of unbleached flour to one egg to one teaspoon of salt to 1/3 cup of milk; if you want to make them parve, use two eggs and enough water to make the dough soft. Then you put a noodlemaker, which is a sheet of metal with half-inch holes punched in it, over a pot of boiling water, and you use a bench knife to scrape the dough through the holes into the water. The result are soft, chewy noodles of many many shapes, Very Entrancing to small children (and to me).

So I made Barak his doodles, and informed him that he was about to have a Fine Restaurant Experience as I grated kashkaval (sharp goat's cheese) directly onto them. He thought that this rocked, and informed me periodically that his doodles were SO GOOD!

Once we were done, Barak got me his dinosaur hat and his shoes, and I put Iyyar in the sling, and we went out to, ahem, water the lawn. I let Barak water by spraying everywhere with the sprinkler; I stayed out of range. Iyyar fell asleep, Barak was having a riotously good time, and just as Iyyar started to feel a bit peckish, MHH came home. I unburdened him of his gemaras and went inside. About fifteen minutes later, I heard someone ring the back doorbell. It was Shimon, my friend and neighbor's second-oldest son. He's five, and was very, very wet. "Can I use your bathroom?" he asked. "Sure," I said, surmising, correctly, that he had happened upon the sprinkler festivities (they don't have a yard) and joined in. His mother, Chana, is my best friend in town, and Barak and I are over there a lot. Her kids like Barak and my husband, who, because he's a rebbe in one of the schools here, they call Rabbi H.

I decided I wanted to see this and put Iyyar back in the sling and got up to go out. "Should I go watch?" I asked, as he struggled to get his feet back into the sopping wet sneakers that he had (impressively) taken off on the porch without being asked to do so.

"Yeah!" he said enthusiastically. "Rabbi H is as wet as my pants!"