Sunday, November 15, 2009

I don't think that one is in the parsha song

I think it is an attribute common to 3yos that they are focused on a very black-and-white concept of right/wrong, wrongdoing/consequence. Din is big at that age. Lately, Iyyar has been talking a lot about how "Hashem gonna punish you!" Not me, per se, but whoever does something wrong.

Friday night, when Abba was at shul, I had the bigger two set up at the kitchen table with little Lego and Avtalyon in his high chair with a box of little animals. They were playing and I was reading their parsha sheets--Barak does noticeably better on the questions when he is happily playing and relaxed. I did his first (he got all of them right but one). Then I did Iyyar's. Iyyar goes to the same chareidi playgroup that Barak went to, where they do a lot of Yiddish. So the first question, naturally, is "Voss iz die nehmen fun die parsha?" What's the name of the parsha? Correct answer, as he knows from the song, being Chayyei Sarah ("Sarah lived for one hundred twenty-seven years...")

"Iyyar, voss iz die nehmen fun die parsha?"

"Bereishis Noach Lech l'cha!"

"No, we did those already. What's next?" [Singing] "Bereishis, Noach, Lech L'cha, Vayeira...?"

"Hashem gonna punish you!"

"I don't think that's actually the parsha this week, sweetie." [Thinking: although that's applicable to what, a quarter of them at least?]

Barak's latest thing with the little Lego is hands. One of the items in the Glorious Bin of Lego I bought from a friend at work's garage sale was a dragon--it was missing its tail initially but Barak solved this problem most resourcefully with the addition of a tail plundered from an unsuspecting crocodile. What does this dragon eat? Why, it eats hands. Naturally. Right now, none of the Lego menschies have hands. All the hands are in a clear plastic box on the back of a sort of cart that Barak has rigged up, together with a chain that attaches it to the dragon so he can drag his supply of hands, treasure, and weaponry anywhere he goes. Barak was explaining this to me the other day and I will confess to having expressed some degree of, well, disgust.

"Barak, that's gross. A boxful of hands is just gross."

Barak gave me a look that was half amused, half sympathetic. "Imma! It's okay!" Eye roll. "It's just little Lego, Imma."

1 comment:

Deborah said...

Yeah, Barak would never let his real dragon drag a load of hands around.