From the mouths of, &c.

1. On Thursday, I was feeling in a generous kind of mood and decided to bake cupcakes for No Reason At All. (Well, Yehudis's kids were coming over, so that was the excuse, but really it was because I was so relieved about Iyyar.) I had meant them to be for Shabbos too, but by the time Friday afternoon rolled around there were only 6 left and we were having lunch guests. This is how I found myself baking another batch of cupcakes at 5 PM on Friday with all of my children in eager attendance in the kitchen.

Iyyar dropped the paper liners into the pans for me and Barak was standing at the counter observing. I was using a mix, because of the time constraints, and thought I'd try to save a bit more time by pouring the batter directly from the bowl into the cupcake tins instead of spooning it in. Bad idea; predictably, I spilled it all over the place.

"Imma, you spilled!"

"I know, I know. " I got a paper napkin and wiped off the top of the pans.

"I don't think there's enough in there. Are those ones going to be filled?"

"When they're baked they'll be full. They rise in the oven. If you fill the cups up all the way with batter, they spill over the side."

"You spilled it over the side."

"I know, but that's because I was in a hurry and I wasn't being careful. I wasn't being careful and that's why I made a mess."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

2. Iyyar is still not feeling great, still kind of wobbly on his feet, and still not into stairs. If I try to get him to come up or go down, mostly he just cries and waits for me to carry him. Most of the day he's happy, but he definitely seems off to me. I guess I'll just bring him back for another checkup after Pesach if he's still out of sorts. In the meantime, he does seem to be growing. He's certainly eating enough. Yesterday I wanted to make some pre-Pesach pizza, which was a challenge because I had a) no tomato sauce and b) no parve cheese for Iyyar. So I made myself a pizza with regular cheese and Trader Joe's red pepper dip (adequate, but not really recommended) and made Iyyar a pizza with dough, olive oil, and a little sea salt, and a bowl of dip for, well, dipping purposes. His pizza was a good inch thick and filled a 9" pie pan. He ate the entire thing, singing the happy food song the whole time.

3. Iyyar's speech is really picking up, and I hear him also using some of Barak's turns of phrase. "I willn't" instead of "I won't," is a big one. He also gives great kisses. Sometimes I try to get one by pretending to cry. "Iyyar, I need a kiss!" [sob, sob]. He comes over and diligently gives me a kiss on the cheek, sometimes even two. This week, I asked for a kiss without first going through the crying routine. He promptly came over and gave me the requested peck on the cheek, then, eyebrows up, in a tone of voice that was sort of preemptively scolding: "No cry. Don't cry, Imma, kay? Don't cry."

4. Avtalyon likes to wave. He's been waving for months, but lately he's been getting more of a kick out of it, just as a way of sort of keeping the lines of communication open. Sometimes he even waves at me while nursing. Hi, Imma! It's me! It's me down here! He doesn't nurse that much during the day anymore--places to go, people to see, you know--but is back to waking up once or twice a night for a nice long nurse. I know it won't last long, so I don't mind much.

5. Barak is really, really excited about our upcoming Pesach travels. For days he's been asking me when it's going to be Tuesday, how many airplanes we're going to go on, when we're not going to be eating chametz anymore, etc. However, he seems to have a little bit of confusion over our actual destination and the cousins who await us there, and Israel and the cousins he knows there. The other day he let me know that really, he'd rather be going to Israel, and when are we going to be moving to Israel to live the whole day? I told him not for a while, but first we're going to go away for Pesach. And on the way, we will stop at the doughnut store. He seemed satisfied with that, for the time being anyway.