Kol simcha

I tried to post this morning but Blogger wouldn't let me sign in, and now I'm tired and can't quite remember all the things I wanted to post. Oh well.

In short: I took Barak to his first chasuna last week. It was hilarious. We went shopping that morning, initially just to find a white shirt free of grape juice, blueberry yogurt or chocolate stains, but ended up buying an actual suit: Target had little boys' polyester suits in navy blue for what I would consider a reasonable price, so I bought a jacket and two pairs of pants. It was worth it just for the look on Barak's face, of barely suppressed glee at this unexpected initiation into the world of adulthood. A suit! An actual suit! (He thought it was black, like Abba's, but I couldn't quite go that far. He's four and a half; he gets navy blue.) I also bought him shiny new black Shabbos shoes, which he was in line for anyway; his current pair have an actual hole.

I had to hem the pants, but the jacket was fine, fortunately. He was incredibly excited, totally dressed and ready to go an hour early, and standing by the window asking every minute WHEN exactly our ride was arriving. WHEN? In five minutes? Two? Maybe she came already, and we missed her? He looked positively chassidish, with the white short, dark suit, no tie and payos. Hesat beautifully through the whole chuppah, stood up when everyone else did, and was completely entranced by the dancing. I couldn't get him to dance with me at all--he just spent the whole time staring at the men. When dinnertime came along, he was unimpressed.

"What's that?"

"That's chicken."

"It's chicken?"

"M-hm."

Pause. Then, with unconcealed disgust,

"Is it dead?"

"Yes, it is dead."

"I don't want to eat that."

"Okay, you don't have to. But enough with the commentary please."

"Okay. Are we going to have dessert?"

"Yes."

"Can I have it even if I don't eat the dead part?"

"Yes!"

"Okay."

I should point out here that after our Target trip, we'd stopped at the grocery store, where they have a fish case, which was full of whole dead fish, which Barak had asked about. So... yeah. Dead food was a topic of interest.

I should have taken pictures, but didn't. Alas. He'll be wearing the suit again soon enough, but it'll be yom tov when he does.

Oh, and there are plans afoot to toilet-train Iyyar. Stay tuned. I did buy him, on the ill-fated Walmart expedition, two packages of Sesame Street underwear that included two with Super Grover, if you can believe that. He loves them and carries them around by the handful, but does not seem to have connected the underwear with the act of potty-using. We'll have to work on that one.