What a difference four months make

The fabulous Israeli friend with whom I share babysitting commented to me a few weeks ago that it seems that I am always holding the baby. "Every time I see you, you are holding him! Why don't you put him down some of the time?" I said, knowing exactly how it was going to sound to her, "If I put him down, he cries." She rolled her eyes. "You need to teach him that he has to go down some of the time!" I was spoiling him, he was bossing me around, I was being manipulated. And so on.

A week or so later, the same friend gave us a ride home from the Yom ha-Atzmaut barbecue that will go down on record as the Coldest Yom ha-Atzmaut Barbecue Ever. Avtalyon, being in a moving vehicle and all, was in his car seat and oh, my goodness, he did not like that. At all. He objected. He objected most strongly, with his usual force, vigor, pathos, and volume. And my friend, my tough Israeli friend was, within two blocks of our departure, casting anxious glances into the rear-view mirror, asking if he was okay, or sick, or hungry, or... or... or... should she pull over so that I could hold him? I said that no, it wouldn't help, because he'd start crying again the second I put him back in and I wouldn't drive without him buckled into the car seat. He wailed the whole way home. Piteously. Miserably. Heart-rendingly. Loudly. And by the time we got home, tough Israeli friend, clearly on the point of nervous collapse, said, "Now I understand why you hold him."

Anyway, in this video you can see Avtalyon, begging, no, pleading to be picked up, while his mother heartlessly records it all on camera. You'd pick him up too, wouldn't you?