More kinderlach chronicles

1. Barak and his abba have just left for the park, Barak wearing his recently purchased (by me) raincoat, which is about the cutest article of clothing imaginable on a two-year-old. It's a blue slicker with a pattern of raining frogs. Why don't they make things like that in adult sizes? I'd buy them.

2. Iyyar is asleep (plus see above--ergo I blog). He is so turning into his brother--he already looks just like him, and now he appears to be developing a similar sleep-resistant streak. As in, will not fall asleep without hysterical screaming, has ten-minute power naps, etc. Sigh. He is also far less portable than his big brother, who B"H was an excellent traveler from birth. He absolutely refuses to go in the stroller or carseat--he'll sit in the carseat at home, but once you start buckling him in he gets very very ticked off and starts to scream. The Snugli is fine, of course--until he gets hungry. And even in the Snugli he doesn't fall asleep without a fight. What is it with the hating to sleep business?! It has to be genetic, because all three males in the house are like that. Me, I love sleeping. Not that I get to do it or anything, but on principle I like it.

3. Yesterday Iyyar started giggling. Not just a little half-laugh with smile, but real, sociable giggling at Imma doing silly things. This is the point where, MHH says, babies start seeming "human" to him--I wouldn't go quite that far, but I see what he means. The level of interaction just ratchets way up.

4. Barak has dropped his "ees." He used to precede almost all of his sentences with "ee." As in, "Ee, yeah." or "Ee, granola please." I have no idea why--it was just how he talked. No more.

5. Barak's speech is starting to get a lot more comprehensible to strangers. Certain words are just beginning to be pronounced in a much more, shall we say, normative fashion. It's now more likely to be "thank you" than "ta dum," and "gadawa" is slowly becoming "granola." "Yogurt" and "kugel" no longer sound like the same word-- it's "yeegert" and "kugel," not "gagar" for both. "Challah" is no longer "acha," "truck" is no longer "chuck." Some signature Barakisms remain: "innair" for "in there"; "hepoo" for "help you," generically used for requests for help of any ilk; and his habit of using "it" for every possible pronoun, as in "No Imma nurse it baby!", "Barak hold it!" and "Barak break it!"

6. As I've mentioned, I've been doing a lot of pumping lately. On Shabbos, this habit presents a problem; you can pump on Shabbos, but only for the immediate consumption of a baby who can't take milk any other way. If you want to express milk because you're uncomfortable, you have to dump it, which kills me. So on Shabbos, I tend to nurse Iyyar as much as I possibly can, and obviously he gets just floods of milk all day because he is not in competition with the phantom orca in the freezer. Shabbos morning, we both woke up soaked, his diaper looked like it had been dipped in the bathtub, and I have never seen such a happy baby. (Note to those who don't understand how these things work: when you are nursing, your supply adjusts to demand. If I stopped pumping, I would lose all the "extra" milk in a few days. There is plenty of milk for Iyyar on weekdays too--I'm not depriving him by the amount I'm putting in the freezer, in fact it's the opposite.) Of course, when he realized I was getting out of bed he immediately protested that he was still hungry--this was patently absurd, but since I was still kind of full I picked him up and sat down to nurse him again anyway. And he looked right at me and not only giggled, but started smacking his lips. I have never felt so much like an all-night diner in my life.

7. The work-at-home thing is up for consideration again, this time as a "pilot project" involving me and some number of other employees whose work is totally measurable. I'm not sure how long it would be for, but my boss thinks at least six months to a year. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. But it would really really be nice to be able to take Barak to playgroup and pick him up myself... and give the pump a little bit of a rest.

8. The perk of working in the office(this is not really a kinderlach chronicles item, but whatever) is that I now have knitting time again. I knit while on the bus and while pumping. As a result, I just knit a sock in four days flat--the first top-down (as opposed to toe-up) sock I have knit in years. I was trying to knit it for Savta, but it's too small. Next one, I guess.

Coming next: more pictures.