January first

Do you know, I totally missed New Year's Eve. I thought yesterday was the 30th and today was the 31st. I only realized tonight, when I checked Facebook and saw all those New Year's good wishes. So, a first of January list:

1. Exciting news: Avtalyon appears to be setting the household record for speed of potty-training. He's been pishing in the toilet occasionally for a while now, but last week sometime decided to wear underwear and use the toilet regularly. Out came the animal crackers, and so far he's only had a couple of accidents. Is it too optimistic to think I might actually have one kid toilet-trained and ready for tzitzit by age 3? His birthday is in four weeks. It could happen.

2. Current favorite Avtalyon lament, "I'm very hungry!" It doesn't really seem to correspond much to the actual state of his stomach. Witness last night, when I opened the kitchen cupboard and he spied something interesting. "Imma! I'm very hungry!" Pause. "I want chocolate."

3. Other funny turns of phrase: "That's weird," which isn't funny when you type it out like that but is hilarious when combined with upturned palms and a face of mock confusion. He also sometimes likes to help me with my Hebrew. "Imma! Adom is RED!"

4. I'm noticing lately that Barak is talking more like me. I guess this makes sense, since I'm his main English language model these days. Still, I'm a little taken aback when I hear him use "indeed" and "conflated" in the same sentence. Use big words with your kids, people. They can handle it.

5. Having discovered the cheese counter, I branched out on Friday to the deli counter. Also cheaper and, more importantly, I can get exactly the amounts I want of what I want. I like turkey but nobody else does: I can buy three slices of turkey and 200g of bologna and nothing gets wasted. It was a busy week and I hadn't cooked, so Barak and I went to Supersol right after school on Friday to pick up Shabbos necessities. Unfortunately, the good stuff was all gone from the bakery, which should not have surprised me. Supersol rolls: yum. Supersol pita: eh.

6. I know, I know, it's Shufersal now. But it will always be Supersol to me.

7. Did you know that the price of cartissiot is going up today? It is. Not sure by how much though.

8. Oh! I never mentioned the washing machine. I have a washing machine! It's a Bosch, 5 kg, 5 years old, fully functional except that every cycle but B leaks a lot. B only leaks a little so we use that. It gets the clothes way way cleaner than the coin-op machines we'd been using, and not only that, it is HERE. I've been doing the laundry, for the first time since Barak was born and MHH took it over. I don't mind. It's right outside the bathroom so it's easy enough to do, and I love being able to keep on top of it. The bathroom is no longer full of piles of stinky laundry, the shabbos shirts are no longer left mouldering for days, and I am a much happier Imma.

9. Actually, I think I won't do a 9. If I'm going to post every day for a month, I'd better leave something for the next 30 days.