Things I keep meaning to blog about

1. This morning (well, this isn't something I've been meaning to blog about for long, obviously) Barak was walking around the house holding his blue wooden toolbox, full of Lego. He offered me one.

"Want one? Iss food candy."

"Really? Ooh! Thank you."

I asked him what bracha it was. He considered. "Iss baruch." Well, that's multi-purpose. He wanted to take it to camp with him and I suggested this was not the best idea.

"Barak, if you take all that Lego to school with you, what's going to happen? Are the other kinderlach going to want to play with your Lego?"

"No! Iss not Lego. Iss food candy. Kinderlach gonna say, ooh! Iss food candy!"

I thought about it later and I realized why it's food candy. In our house edible items come in two categories: "food" and "nosh," the equivalent of Sesame Street's "anytime food" and "sometime food." I guess food candy is candy you can eat whenever you want. Makes sense.

2. More on food: Barak has been campaigning to do a lot of baking lately. Since it is, ah, rather warm around here now, I haven't been so into that idea. Today he's been asking to make banana bread. MHH, who is on vacation till tomorrow, made a face. "I'm not so into that."

"Why not? You like banana bread."

"I don't like the leaving the bananas around till they're mushy."

"You don't have to. You can buy them from the half-price rack at the back of the store."

"Oh. That's okay."

MHH has a thing about "slimy" food. Tomatoes are slimy. Mayonnaise is terminally slimy, polluting everything it touches with its slime. Cucumbers are slimy, while macaroni and cheese, inexplicably, is not. So two of the four vegetables Barak will eat, Abba won't touch--go figure. Iyyar will still eat anything; Barak has lately become a fan of bologna; there are currently no vegetables acceptable to everyone in the household except spinach.

3. Iyyar has started saying "hi." It's very cute. He also says "Barak," but that's pretty much it. And he's getting more interested in walking--he won't have anything to do with it if you encourage him, but if you leave him alone you can see him thinking, hmm, I could get from point A to point B a lot faster if... I have a feeling, and so does his babysitter, that one day he'll wake up walking and talking. We'll see.

UPDATE: After dinner tonight, Iyyar said "all done!" It sounded a lot like his usual "ah da!" but different enough, and in context enough, that I think he really meant it.