The kinderlach chronicles

1. Somewhat rashly, I decided to thumb my nose at the Stroller Curse. I bought a snap 'n' go, which, for the uninitiated, is a stroller frame meant to transport an infant car seat. I should have bought it a while ago--it makes it much easier to go somewhere when the baby's asleep without waking up the baby. I put it together yesterday and we all took a walk--Iyyar in the carseat, Barak holding the side, me pushing, MHH following along. With this arrangement, once we got to the grocery store, Barak found himself at unprecedented liberty--not in stroller OR top of shopping cart. Not surprisingly, he immediately scoped out the ice cream freezer, and with his sweetest, winningest smile, said, "Imma, Barak hold it ikeem, 'kay?" I don't want to eat the ice cream, no no, chas v'shalom. I just want to hold it. Really!

2. Saba and Savta left yesterday. My children are blessed and fortunate to have not one, but two sets of honorary grandparents; Saba and Savta means Grandpa and Grandma in Hebrew. When asked how many grandchildren they have, they count mine; pictures of my kids are on their fridge; when Barak was born, Savta was the one who sent me a whole baby layette priority mail. They rock. She and Saba drove 12 hours each way to visit us for Shabbos, and gave Barak and Iyyar the full grandparent treatment, including the aforementioned John Deere trucks, lots of attention, and lots of cuddles. After they left, Barak was, well, bereft. He kept peeking into their room, looking perturbed. He kept saying to himself, "Where Savta go? Find out?" and looking in the places where he himself had been hiding in recent games of "Where'd Barak go?" Finally he came up to me and said, "Where Saba Savta go?" I said, "They went home, sweetie." He looked sad. "Saba Savta home? Grandma home?" I know he doesn't really know that Saba Savta and Grandma actually live within walking distance of each other, but still...

3. Iyyar is starting to really really smile. He looks like a cross between a chubby toothless old man and a very happy garden gnome. Today, for the first time, he sat up just holding my fingers--he has the back strength and the balance now.

4. He still sleeps with me and nurses much of the night, but sleeps longer stretches, I think. Every so often, he will wake up, realize he's teetering on the brink of malnutrition, and wake me up by sort of scrabbling at me; if I don't wake up right away, he gets annoyed, starts to kick, and ends up pushing down on my stomach with his feet and rappelling up me until I get woken up by being nose-to-nose with a starving, enraged elf. This happens multiple times a night. It was a little unnerving until I got used to it.

5. B"H Barak has not been really jealous of Iyyar. He would like to get more attention than he gets, but he hasn't really been taking it out on the baby. The one thing he does do is get very angry if I sit down with the baby--because then I'm about to focus my attention on someone else. His usual response is, "No Imma sit! No Imma nursing baby!" Sometimes, in an effort to be polite, he will come up to me, attempt to haul me bodily out of the chair (fat chance--I have twenty pounds to go) and say, "Imma up! Imma 'cuse me PEESS!" I've been trying to explain to him that you don't go around telling other people to get up out of their chairs because you don't want them to sit, and even saying please does not make this behavior polite.

6. A few weeks ago, for the first time, Barak started with some really calculated misbehavior. It was just at a different level from previous experimentation--it was, hmm, what will Imma do if I totally defy her? So we started with timeouts. A typical exchange will go like this:

Me: Barak, come here please.

(No response)

Me: Barak, come here please. I said come here.

(No response)

Me: Barak, I said come here. Do you want me to count?

Barak: No Imma count!

Me: So come here, please.

(No response.)

Me. One. (Pause.) Come here, please. Two. (Pause). Barak, I said come here. Do you want to go into your crib? (Pause. Sigh.) Three. Okay, in your crib, two minutes.

Barak: NOOOOOOOOOOO! No night-night! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I deposit a howling Barak into his crib and close the door. Wails of misery issue forth. Two minutes later, I go get him, give him a kiss, explain to him that when Imma says come, he does what? Barak says, "Please!" and comes out. The next few times I ask him to come, he comes. Or not. And then we do it all again.

7. There isn't any number 7. But I'm done pumping for the evening, and I can only justify blogging while attached to my Medela, so I'm putting the milk in the fridge, cleaning up the kitchen, and going to bed.