Various

1. Iyyar has moved from being obsessed with balls to being obsessed with the cat. Whenever he sees her, he points at her, looks at me, and crows, "Cah! Cah!" Then he points again and looks at me again, meaningfully, to check that I got it. The cat is pretty predictable in her habits and is usually to be found sitting on Abba's side of the bed. This morning, she wasn't, and when Iyyar came looking for her (direct from crib release) he was perturbed. And started picking up the blankets to peek under them, in case she was hiding in there.

2. Barak does things with toys that I can't even pretend to understand. Yesterday, he had all the Little People animals carefully arranged on the xylophone, which was attached to a dump truck by the xylophone's mallet. The dump truck had a few dinosaurs in it. When it was time to clean up, he carefully brought the entire apparatus back to the toy boxes, and explained to me, "Dey can come off now because dey went to da hospital and dey got medicine and now baruch hashem dey feel better." Okay then. Baruch Hashem.

3. The house is still moderately clean. I'm trying really hard not to let it slide, because it's just so nice like this. My favorite part: the nakedly exposed top surface of the triple dresser, on which I can now fold laundry.

4. I washed sweaters last night. I do this in the washing machine, but stopping and starting the cycle by hand (the reason why I bought a top-loader). My original intention was also to wash the fabulous maternity-sized Rogue my friend Cecilia made me. Then I realized that it would in fact require a load all of its own. Even though we have an extra-large-capacity washer.

5. I would just like to announce to the whole world that my husband rocks. Yesterday he put back two light fixtures and assembled Iyyar's new stroller (our seventh, if anyone's still counting). This from a person whose un-handiness was once legendary, and who still deeply resents the need for anything to be fixed, assembled, reassembled or otherwise, you know, dealt with on a physical plane. But he does it. Last night I told his father that he (my husband) had caulked the bathtub. There was a short pause of disbelief. "Caulked the bathtub?" Another pause. "Are you sure?"

6. Last night I took a foray into amateur shoemakerhood and fixed MHH's broken Crocs with a tapestry needle and about ten inches of silk noil. It worked, and hardly even shows. More reasons to knit, or at least to marry someone who knits.

7. The LL Bean sale page is up, which is usually the mainstay of my year's clothing shopping. Not much appealing this year though, at least to me--no women's skirts (!) and no heavyweight fleece pajamas in toddler sizes (although they did have boys' small, which I got for Barak).

Back to work. I think the whole office has taken this week off--it's the middle of the morning and I still haven't had a single call or email, which must be a first.