Nine weeks

We don't have an actual departure date yet, so that's a bit misleading. My tzadaikas friend wore holes through her shoes today, did battle with metal detectors, and emerged victorious with a stamped-but-not-yet-apostilled marriage certificate; if all goes well, we'll have that shortly, and then visas, and THEN we can request tickets. Once we have those, bli neder I'll put up a ticker, so we can count down together. Whee!

I was thinking earlier that when I go back to look at old posts, I tend to look at the ones right before a big change. Right before I had a baby, right before the move. Because it's so easy to forget what things were like before. Which is why I should really really be blogging more now--but it's so hard to prioritize blogging in the midst of work chaos, children who really need my attention, the house, the paperwork, the very early stages of packing.

But I will want to remember this part, later, so...

1. My friend's 12-yo daughter is still coming every morning, bless her, and picking up Barak, so I don't have to walk him to the bus stop. Our mornings these days are a crazy rush, mostly because I am always so zonked and never wake up on time. My husband gets up first, and wakes up Barak; Barak gets himself ready and by the time I am swimming to consciousness with a baby plastered to me, he is eating oatmeal in the kitchen. At about two minutes to eight there is a wild frenzy of fatherly attempts to apply shoes/bag/jacket to Barak, with occasional meltdown when shoes/bag/jacket fail to present themselves or be acceptable, or lunch is not in place, or whatever; I usually pretend not to hear any of this, and stay in my room nursing the baby until he leaves. At this point, Avtaylon is usually jumping up and down in his crib yodeling, Marika is back to sleep, and Iyyar is either walking around the house in nothing but underwear or sitting on his bed sucking his blanket tag. I get them dressed and in the kitchen for breakfast, get myself dressed, and Asnat turns up at either 9 or 9:20, depending on the day; I run Iyyar to school, and go in my office to start working. At 12, Asnat leaves; Iyyar is done with school at 1:20 and either my husband gets him on his lunch or I do. Then Avtalyon wakes up from his nap, we all play for a while or maybe run an errand; Barak is home at 4, I try to make dinner, Abba is home at 6, and bedtime, usually, is between 7 and 7:30. I try to start working at 8, but it doesn't usually happen. MHH gets home at 10:15, and I either keep working or go clean the kitchen; it's rare that we are in bed much before 1. Being in bed by midnight counts as an early night around here.

2. Avtalyon is having a cape stage. The boys are all very into Playmobil right now, especially Avtalyon, who particularly loves the Playmobil firetruck; the other day, Avtalyon tried to get one of the Playmobil Romans in there, with a cape. Alas, the cape was too hard to get on by himself. "Imma! Imma help you! Imma help you batman!" Cape=batman. How awesome is that?

3. In similar linguistic awesomeness, on Sunday Barak was trying to read a sign that said "Beware of Dog." He got the "beware" part with some help, I read the "of" for him. "Dog" was hard, though. "Beware the duh... dooo... dah... dahg." Pause for consideration. "Beware the Fish?" Because fish, in Hebrew, is dag.

4. I go back and forth between thinking "sixteen pieces of luggage is a ton, we'll have no problem fitting everything we need" and "there's no way we'll be able to bring everything without shipping stuff." We have plenty of space for clothes and kitchen stuff. That's not the problem. The problem isn't even yarn, which will pad the kitchen stuff, or the bedding, which can be squished down pretty small. It's the books and toys and baby things--the pack and play, the seforim, the booster seat, the sixteen blankets Iyyar insists on bringing to bed every night. And the random items--my keyboard, the CDs, the pictures, the extra shoes for the kids to grow into. It's a lot. We may ship some stuff, we may not--no decision there yet.

5. Marika loves the Snugli. Right now I have her in a My Tai, which is a contraption with long ties that is kind of like a regular Snugli but more comfortable for both of us. The other day I wasn't paying as much attention to her as she wanted--it was almost Yom Tov and I was rushing around doing things all day--and at around 5 PM, she was ticked. Right as the kvetching was about to turn into full-blown wailing, I decided to run over to a neighbor's with some food for them, and to bring her with me. She was lying on the bed, surrounded by the laundry I was folding at top speed, when she saw me approaching with the My Tai in hand. She saw it, gasped, and started to chortle. "That! That thing! That thing is JUST WHAT I WANT!" She did, too.

6. There are lots and lots of things I've been thinking I should blog but I just don't have time to do any of them justice. Things like Barak's cupcake-baking, Barak's "snow troopers," Iyyar's recent propensity toward bringing me "ginormous shmattas," Avtalyon's burning desire to shmash houses, and just all the ways Avtalyon's been talking lately. "I want it DEESH ONE!" and "why chuck!" and "bay gull!" and "tayi?" I'll leave you to figure out those last three on your own.