Listless

Just kidding. Here's a list.

1. I bribed the kids with Twizzlers to get them to behave on Yom Kippur. I'm not saying I'm proud of this, but it's true. And it worked really well.

2. Avtalyon's current preoccupation is with putting on clothes--any clothes that belong to someone older and bigger than him. Last week he struggled mightily to get on a pair of Barak's polarfleece pants; a few days ago, he spent half an hour trying to get two pairs of Iyyar's underpants on (one on each leg). He'd get them on, crow with delight, stand up, and look dismayed when they slid back off. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3. The other thing Avtalyon is very into these days are the matchbox cars (aka Columbus trucks) that live in a box in the bathroom. The original reason they took up residence there, lo a couple of years or so, was so that when Barak was engaged in one of his endless potty trips, he'd have a reason to stay in there. There they remained, since the bathroom, as an off-limits-to-babies locale, is a relatively good place to keep a choking-hazard toy. These days, however, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to hustle in there and rummage through the box, exclaiming, "Wooooow!" Then he'll plop down on the tile and drive them around, with the accompanying "vrroooooms" and "beep beeps!"

4. So far, Barak loves school. I think the long day is hard on him--he melts down pretty frequently after he gets home--but he gets on the bus without a backward glance and off the bus with a huge smile on his face. And when he talks about his rebbe, it's with an attitude that can only be described as adoring.

5. One of Iyyar and Barak's historic favorite Shabbos cereals are Puffins. For a long time I was buying peanut butter ones, but I switched to the plain ones when we started with the peanut-free classrooms--I was worried that someone would successfully lobby for them for breakfast, or they'd find their way into a schoolbag. This past Shabbos, though, Barak found an unopened box of the peanut butter ones and they were both breakfast and afternoon snack. Shabbos afternoon, Iyyar didn't seem so happy; that night, he woke up constantly for more than two hours, crying and going back and forth to the bathroom. At around 2 am, it suddenly occurred to me: I went into the kitchen and read the label. The regular Puffins are soy- and dairy-free; the peanut butter ones, which I guess I haven't given them since early August, not only contain soy but are processed on equipment that also handles dairy. Argh.

6. I'm 31 weeks tomorrow. Besides the itchiness and the puffiness and the usual third-trimester stuff, I feel fine. This is around when things started moving with Iyyar, though, and it wasn't much later with Avtalyon. Stay tuned.

7. My husband is a very great fan of the Rambam (otherwise known as Maimonides). "The Rambam says..." is a pretty common phrase around here. Last week, as I walked Barak home from the bus stop, Barak wanted to tell me something, some piece of utter and incontestable truth, that he'd learned at school. He started out with, "The Rambam says..." and then stopped. "I mean, the Torah says..."

8. Abba tells good bedtime stories. I read books but have no knack for the make-it-up-as-you-go-along serial. Lately, he has been much more in demand at bedtime than I have, and this is because the current serial is about--wait for it--the Torah Team. I would tell you the characters, which are fabulous, but I keep pushing Abba to write his own frum comic books (in his spare time, which is even more boundless than mine) so I won't. But they're fabulous. Really. Come over sometime at bedtime and listen.