Quiet

Sorry for the infrequent and badly written posts. It's been busy around here.

Avtalyon is walking more and more; he can now lurch from couch #1 to couch #2 without face-planting. He likes playing peek-a-boo and Barak has fun playing it with him and making him laugh. Personally, I totally don't get why it's so funny, but it's cute, so who cares?

Iyyar still talks like Yoda, but surprises me more and more often with a fully formed offering like, "Imma, put that down!" when I've tipped the jogging stroller up to turn it. He also does an entertaining Hebrew-English patois, in which he demands "doobie one blankie" or "od doggie!"The constipation continues off and on; yesterday I broke out an intended Chanuka present (a Sesame Street sticker book with pictures of Grover) to distract him from his misery before he (finally) pooped. Good thing he likes prunes ("big raisins") or we'd really be in trouble. He no longer eats everything indiscriminately as he once did; he eats the knaidlach out of his chicken soup, leaves the rest untouched, and holds out the bowl demanding "More chichen soup!" That stuff in there? That's not soup. That's just, you know, soup waste. Carrots and whatever.

Barak is getting taller, and will loudly proclaim to everyone that this is because he is EATING HIS VEGETABLES. After said proclamation, he will consume one (1) noodle with one (1) shred of spinach attached. He still seems happy at school, though I have heard other rumblings that all might not be well. My friend up the street told me that her daughter told her that she'd been told by another child "Don't like Barak!" And today he was upset because another child tried to take his cookies and his morah had to intervene. Sigh. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not, because my own experience was anything but. When is it really appropriate to step in? I keep telling myself that as long as he's happy and loves school I am not going to worry about third party commentary, and will just check in with his morohs monthly or so. Not sure if this is the right thing to do.

For myself, I am very happy with the new wall unit thingie I have back here, bought off of craigslist from someone who had a Curves that went out of business. It's 5' high and 5' across, with 16 cubbies that are 15" deep. Lots of stash fits in there and it now looks like a yarn shop back here. In a good way, of course. I am finally knitting a second sweater for Abba, out of some White Buffalo Unspun I bought from elann some years ago. It's three strands of very fine roving, held together, and I am knitting it on 10s so it's going quite quickly. Of course, very fine totally unspun roving is also incredibly fragile to knit, and I am doing a lot of knitting in the eye of the storm that is three boys aged 4 and under. Oh well. It spit-splices very nicely, and it'll still be warm.