assorted

But first, a public service announcement to a few people who annoyed me this morning.

a) If you expect me to address you as Rabbi Plony, please do not address me by my first name. If you want the kavod of your title, please give me mine. Thanks.

b) If you have a kindergarten-aged girl, please dress her accordingly. Do not dress her in knee-high black boots with inch-and-a-half platform heels. Especially not if you are Orthodox Jews.

c) If you have small children with you at a shul kiddush in honor of a bris, and if there is candy at said bris but not endless quantities of same, please do not allow your small children to fill styrofoam coffee cups to the brim with candy before kiddush has been said. This will mean that the small children whose mothers make them wait for kiddush, make them wait for the adults, and promise them two pieces of candy for their patience will get nothing but negative reinforcement for good behavior.

Thanks.

Now that that's out of the way...

1. Ada came over for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, to buy me a couple of hours of desperately needed writing time. She usually only comes on Wednesdays, which means she hasn't been around for a few weeks, and Iyyar, who adores her, had been asking for her for days. She is usually extremely punctual so about two minutes before she was scheduled to arrive, I told Iyyar she was coming. She must have hit traffic or something, because she was about 25 minutes late--25 long, long, looooong minutes during which Iyyar asked me, repeatedly and with ever-mounting alarm, "Where Ada go? Coming? Coming soon? Onna way?" He looked at the back door. He looked at the front door. He looked at the back door again. I had to check the mail, and when he saw me opening the front door thought that perhaps Ada might be down there, you know, hiding or something. He came down with me, and was standing behind my legs as I checked the mail, foot wedged in the door at the bottom of the stairs to keep it open.

"Ada? Ada come? Ada comin?"

"I don't think Ada's there, sweetie. She usually comes in the back. Come on, let's go check the back door [so I can get you back in the apartment]."

Then Iyyar started to giggle. Because guess what--she was on the other side of the door! He saw her, because he's three feet tall, but I didn't. He grinned up at me with total vindication and then flung his arms around Ada, content.

2. It had been a very busy Friday and between having Asnat here in the morning, rushing around like crazy for two hours at lunchtime, and having Ada here in the afternoon while I hid in my office and wrote as fast as possible, I, um, forgot to feed the baby. I know--it's pretty bad. I nursed him, so it's not like he was starving, but he didn't get any actual food, so he was getting pretty hungry, and I totally missed it even as he got more and more angry, annoyed, and finally frantic when I put him to bed without having given him dinner. He usually goes to sleep really easily at bedtime so the hysterical screams from the crib gave me pause. I stood in the kitchen listening and suddenly OH NO the lightbulb went on.

"Ada, did you give Avtalyon dinner?"

"No. I didn't know you wanted me to."

Oh. Oh dear. I went and retrieved the baby, put him in his high chair and started pushing fingerfuls of spanakopita in his mouth. Magically, the miserably wailing baby was transformed into happy, cooing, gurgling baby, who nevertheless directed a number of extremely dirty looks toward Ada ("See? See? I kept telling you I was HUNGRY but did you listen? No....") despite the fact that it was patently my fault he hadn't eaten.

He is a forgiving sort, however, and by the time Ada left they were friends again. So much so that when we accompanied Ada to the front door, he waved at her. And she waved back. And he waved again! And again! It was a hilarious sort of stiff-armed salute, part campaign for office, part royal wave, part 1939 Germany (only hilarious when rendered by a nine-month-old Jewish baby in 2008). And he was so pleased with himself, too--almost as pleased as I was.

3. All the yarn has been arriving. It's amazing. I got my Webs box yesterday (3 balls of purple and gray Kauni, 5 of purple-and-green Kureyon, and a sweater's worth of Kathmandu DK tweed) and it was all so lovely I actually gasped.

However, I have a problem. I can't find the pattern I wanted to use the Kureyon for. Does anyone remember seeing, in an old Knitter's or possibly IK (the more I think about it, the more I think it's IK), a pattern for a yoked sweater in royal blue with a yellow swirly motif around the yoke? The yarn was a mohair blend, and I think the model was African American and possibly riding a motorcycle. The picture was definitely on the right side of the page, pattern on the left; the gauge was 16 sts/4 in. I know, I know, all very helpful. I can't find it on ravelry and I can't take two years to hunt through all my back issues for it. Anyone? Anyone?

4. Adding to the fiber bonanza of recent weeks, Grandma E sent me a lovely box (is there any other kind?) full of spinning batts--a gorgeous red wool/black mohair blend--and a pair of socks! Handknit socks! Made from Socks That Rock! No one's ever knit me socks before! I wore them yesterday and had happy feet all day long. :)

5. Iyyar's speech is getting a lot clearer these days. He can really pronounce his own name now (he used to say it "Eddie" which I found hilarious) and is surprisingly good at pronouns, which Barak didn't have down until he was almost four.

His stock way of claiming something is saying, "Not yours!" Lately, this has morphed from being a circumlocution for the forbidden word "Mine!" into a commentary on ownership. As in, the other day we saw a tricycle on a lawn.

"Bikull!"

"Right, a tricycle!"

"Ride it!"

"No, we can't ride that."

"Not ours."

"Right. Not ours."

6. With the occasional exception, the boys have been really fun and funny lately. Barak and Iyyar have been playing together unusually well, with only the obligatory minimum of tears and screaming, and both of them have been treating Avtalyon like a celebrity. I love it. Yesterday Avtalyon, who is now pulling up and cruising on the furniture, fell over and bonked his head. Iyyar got there before I did, trying to pick him up while cooing comfortingly, "Baby hurt! Oh no! Avtalyon! Oh no Avtalyon! Iss okay! Okay baby!" And tonight, when Iyyar was wailing frantically from his crib for Abba, who had gone to shul ("ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU! ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU CHAIR!") and I was cruelly ignoring it (if I'd gone in, it would have lasted for hours, but ignoring it usually means he's asleep in five minutes) I heard Barak:

"Iyyar! Iyyar, look! Look at this!" [Sound of toy.] "Isn't that cool! Here! Have this toy! It's okay! You don't have to yell! Abba's going to be home soon." And so on.

Isn't that amazing? They like each other and want each other to be happy. How about that?

And more amazing still was Barak, in my lap tonight at bedtime, snuggled close and getting sleepy,

"Imma, I like you the best. I like you the best from everybody."

"I like you the best from everybody too. Also Iyyar and Avtalyon."

"Me too. I like you, and Abba, and Iyyar, and Avtalyon, and everybody in this house. I like you all a hundred thousand gotchion billion ten much."

"Wow, that's really a lot."

"Yeah. I like you a lot a lot much."

It just doesn't get better than that.