40 things about Barak

1. Instead of "won't," Barak says "willn't."
2. He likes to stash sippy cups of water on the top of the window, where he can reach them but Iyyar can't. Sometimes he's got two or three of them up there at once.
3. Before he goes to bed, he piles all his toys and blankets, except for the purple comforter he sleeps under, on the top of his train bed. He doesn't want me to put them away in drawers--they need to be on top of the train bed.
4. If he is saying that someone forgot something, he says "he got forgot."
5. He takes a very, very long time in the morning to make a bathroom trip and put on underwear.
6. He usually forgets to put his mitzva notes in the yellow pushka at school, and ends up with a stash of them in his backpack.
7. He can get himself completely dressed, with the exception of shoes and socks. He can get the socks on, but they're usually upside down.
8. If he's wearing pajamas with a snap tab on top of the zipper, he comes and asks me to button his snap for him.
9. He likes to come downstairs to check the mail with me.
10. He hasn't had wet underwear since September--K"AH. But he still sleeps in a pullup, and they're usually soaked in the morning.
11. He can brush his own teeth.
12. He can recognize about half of the aleph-beis, even though I really haven't been working on him with it at all lately. I don't think he knows any English letters.
13. If you tell him a number, he will try to show you the correct number of fingers and ask, "This many?" Any number larger than ten usually becomes "a hundred."
14. The past, for Barak, is divided into "esterday" and "esterday, a long time ago." Sometimes things that actually did happen yesterday are categorized as happening "esterday, a long time ago." I'm not quite sure why.
15. Whenever Barak is going somewhere in his car, or is flying a plane somewhere, or driving a train somewhere, it is almost invariably going to California.
16. He still, every so often, tells me that he wants to go to Morah Chana's school (where he went last year.)
17. He still drinks out of sippy cups or covered cups with straws. Sometimes I give him cups without tops, and they almost invariably spill.
18. He likes to sweep. If he sees me sweeping, he wants to help, and sometimes actually does. But I can no longer get away with sweeping myself and then handing me the broom, because he will complain that there is "no more schmutz" on the floor.
19. The only kind of meat Barak will eat is bologna and salami. Most kinds of fake soy meat are fine too.
20. Barak no longer insists on only wearing shirts with trucks or scary animals on them. The one he picks most often is a striped long-sleeved t-shirt from LL Bean.
21. He can make a bracha on his tzitzis by himself, and on most foods. Anything yummy, however, defaults to being a mezonos, even if it's not--I guess he has that established in his mind as the treat bracha.
22. He is convinced that the baby is a girl baby.
23. He likes wearing a tie on Shabbos.
24. His favorite cereal is Puffins either cinnamon or peanut butter. He gets a few in the morning if he gets himself dressed with reasonable speed.
25. Whenever I make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which is every morning he has school) he asks me to remove the peel (crust). If I just take a knife and remove the outer 1/16 of an inch, he is satisfied with this.
26. Barak doesn't sleep with his special monkey in his bed anymore, but likes to know where he is at night.
27. He also often spirits Iyyar's special puppydog (which Iyyar couldn't care less about these days) on top of his train bed at night. I think he's much more attached to it than Iyyar is.
28. I've noticed him diapering the Cabbage Patch Kid we inherited from a friend quite a lot lately.
29. He is convinced that when I go to the hospital to have a new baby, there will be trains for him to play with.
30. He is starting to get the concept of taking turns and considers this a fair way to resolve some toy conflicts. Unfortunately, Iyyar doesn't, so it doesn't help a whole lot most of the time.
31. He remembers every home we've ever been a guest in by which toys they had for him to play with. "They had dinosaurs for me to play with."
32. He loves being allowed to open and close the refrigerator by himself. He usually remembers to ask first.
33. He's better than he has been about tantrums, but still sometimes explodes for no obvious reason.
34. Logic is sometimes a little shaky too. If I tell him that I can't do something, his response is often "but I want!" or "but I need!"
35. He's been spending a lot of time singing about makkos lately (last week's parsha and all). We've been hearing snatches of "avadim hayyinu" and "no no no, I will not let you go!" Of course, I hear "I will not let you go!" and my 80s upbringing wants to sing back a la Queen, "Let me go!"
36. If you ask him about the makkos that Hashem sent the mitzrim, he tells you about the frogs first. "Where were the frogs, Barak?" "Jumping on Paroh's bed and on his head!" "Did he like that?" "No!" Pause. "But I like it." He probably would--briefly anyway. He also likes the wild beasts one, and the idea that the beasts were coming in the windows. Very scary, etc.
37. He actually has some idea of where matzo comes from, because he knows that when I make pizza dough or challah dough we have to let it rise. If it doesn't rise, it doesn't get nice and fluffy, and instead it's all flat. I'm thinking we might do a rise-no rise comparison on Sunday.
38. When he comes home from school with pekelach from birthday parties (FULL of candy, you would not believe what people send home with three-year-olds!) he will cooperatively, if not enthusiastically, hand them over unopened to be returned on Shabbos. If I'm lucky, he forgets about them and has Bamba or strawberry yogurt for a Shabbos treat. Even when he remembers, he has not yet registered that there is never as much candy in the bag as there once was, and some raisins and whole-wheat pretzels are there that weren't before.
39. When Barak was a baby, and when Iyyar was smaller, I used to sing them mizmor l'David (also known as the 23rd psalm) at bedtime. Lately, Barak has taken to asking me to sing it to him again, with him in the rocking chair, the way I did two years ago. He says, "Imma, I want you to rock me and sing me the baby song." Who could say no?
40. Lately, Barak has been all-Imma, all the time. If Abba goes to him in the night, and I stay in bed, I hear a sad wail, "I need IIIIMMMMMAAAAA!" In ten years, he probably won't, so I'll just enjoy it now.