Firsts

1. This is my first post with Blogger beta. I couldn't resist; I switched the language to Hungarian. All it seemed to affect was the dates, and since those are all Latinate cognates it shouldn't pose a problem for anyone.

2. Barak addressed me as "you" today for the first time. I'm always just Imma--he's not big on pronouns. "Imma came home?" "Imma go work?" "Imma go night night inna big bed?" etc. Today, my host family from England sent us a package--they know, logically, that we do not do Christmas but always send us an end-of-the-year parcel with general good wishes anyway, because they like us, I guess. I let Barak open it, of course, and explained to him that it was a present, etc. He had a hard time with the tape. "Hepoo please Imma! Hepoo open it present!" I helped, of course, and he got the present--a book and a memory card game--out. He played for a while and then, later in the afternoon, noticed the wrapping paper still on the kitchen table. "You openeda present?" I did, yes.

3. Iyyar is sitting up unassisted now, for quite a while. If he starts to topple, he doesn't just land on his face (usually); instead, he props himself up on his elbows. It's definitely time to move him out of the cosleeper, since the next step after sitting unassisted is getting into a sitting position unassisted, and I don't want to discover him pulling to standing in the cosleeper in the middle of the night.

4. Barak came home from gan without me yesterday--not by himself, but with his morah, who is a good friend of mine. Iyyar had had a rough morning and finally conked out a little while before it was time to go get Barak. I really, really didn't want to wake him so I called the gan and asked his morah if she'd mind walking him home (she lives across the street). She told me later that he laughed and grinned and giggled the whole way; he probably thought something exciting was afoot for the afternoon. Imagine the scene, then, when he got home. I opened the door to an ecstatic little boy.

"Hi Imma! Hi Imma! Imma came home! Imma..."

Half second pause, as cogs in brain churn and face falls. Home. Home after school. Home after school means--

"I don' wanna go night night."

5. Iyyar is (tfu tfu) on a pretty regular schedule now where he takes a moderate (30-50 minute) nap in the morning, two power naps (awake five minutes after hitting the crib) in the afternoon, and goes down for the night at around 6. Strangely, he doesn't seem to get too tired during the day--and B"H he has been sleeping at night in a manner we are not used to around here. Meaning, um, he sleeps without, uh, um (oh I am going to catch it for writing this--he'll wake up before I hit publish) ... meaning he sleeps without screaming. Most nights he'll wake up to nurse a couple times, going back to sleep on his own each time, and then wake up at around 5 or 6 am to come into bed with me and nurse. Sometimes he goes back to sleep again, until 8. Obviously I have no complaints about this, but it does mean that Abba almost never gets to see him during the week.

Last night, Iyyar woke up a lot after he went to bed. At around midnight, when he woke up for the fifth or sixth time, I decided he was probably cold. I was about to take a shower and go to bed, and asked MHH to put a second pair of pajamas on the baby and put him back down. He agreed. I got in the shower. When I came out, I heard the unmistakable sound of a baby giggling. What's this? This was MHH lying on his back on the bed, lifting Iyyar up into the air over his head, swinging him around, making faces at him and making him laugh. At midnight. Erm.

"He's supposed to be sleeping," I pointed out.

"I know," MHH said sheepishly. "But he's so cute. He'll go back to sleep when you nurse him, right?"

Nurse? No, we're not nursing! Nursing is what we do when we're going to sleep, and we're not sleeping anymore, right Imma? We're playing! We're having a midnight two-pairs-of-pajamas party! Whee!

And the thing is that even when you'd really like the baby to nurse and go to sleep, when he keeps pulling off to look up at you and grin and giggle, I defy any mother not to grin and giggle back. Just a little.

6. Yesterday, Barak saw me knitting a sock in the morning--I sat down to do a couple of rounds while he was eating breakfast.

"Imma make a sock?" he inquired.

"Yep, I'm knitting a sock," I agreed.

"Imma make a sock a Imma?"

"No, it's not for me. It's for Grandma."

"Imma make a sock for Grandma?"

"Right, it's for Grandma."

Pause while Barak considers this. "Wanna call Grandma! Wanna call Grandma onna phone!"

Now, who among us has not been subjected to a phone conversation with a child too small to talk on the phone? Lots of heavy breathing, long silence, occasional giggles. I didn't really want to do this to Grandma, since Barak had never yet actually talked on the phone. "Well, we're not going to call her now." I said. "I don't know if she's home now." Which was true--she could have been home, but I didn't know she was.

"Call Grandma onna phone later," Barak informed me.

"Okay," I said. "We'll call her later." I thought he'd forget. Yeah, right. He did not forget, and when he came home from school reminded me. "No night-night. Call Grandma onna phone please!" "After your nap, okay?"

After his nap I was busy with the baby, and then people called me, and then I don't remember what. Finally I was sitting nursing sometime late afternoon and Barak came up to me and handed me the cordless phone. "Call Grandma onna phone PLEASE!" Well, what could I say to that? I called Grandma onna phone. I explained the situation, and handed over the receiver. As per his usual practice, he grinned, giggled, breathed heavily and said nothing. And then he said,

"I played in the snow!"

First conversation onna phone!

7. This isn't really a first (the previous item, if you were wondering, was Iyyar's first father-son pajama party) but bears mentioning anyway. Barak has gotten to be something of a picky eater. My general philosophy about this is that as long as everything he eats is nutritious and he is getting enough calories it's probably okay; I don't force this food or that food, but I do make him leave even things he doesn't want on his tray and I don't take further requests if he's rejected something. If it gets to be bedtime and I don't think he's had enough to eat, I give him a bowl of fortified cereal--Chex or Cheerios or something--and milk. His new phrase, alas, is "something else," as in, "I don't want it. Want something else please!" Today, as he pondered the carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, cheese, rice crackers, cherry tomatoes and milk all temptingly arrayed in multicolored take and toss bowls--the better to please his toddler sensibilities--he decided that something was missing. But he wasn't sure what.

"Want something else please!"

"Barak, you have plenty of food there and those are all things you like. You don't need anything else."

"Want something else please?"

"You want something else also?"

"Yeah, something else also. Imma openna figerator please. Openna figerator something else!"

(I didn't, because I'm mean that way.)

8. This really is a first. First bracha! Sort of. I went to our local Russian produce store to buy some strange chocolate for a certain gimpy poet of my acquaintance. I also bought a bar of Camille Bloch, which unlike most of the Russian chocolate is kosher. I really wanted a piece when I got home from work today, but eating it in Barak's presence meant sharing. All right then--let it at least be instructive. I broke off two squares and handed him one. "Okay Barak, are you going to make a bracha?"

"Yeah! Make a loud and clear!" (Those of you who get this reference will be humming Oh My Darling Clementine for the rest of the evening.)

So we did. I started with "Ba-ruch, ah-ta" and he said it along with me, more or less--finishing with, "Bidvaru. I gotta chocolate!"