Door number three, please.

2012-02-04T18:35:00.004-05:00

I am not truly deeply concerned about this (yet), but I am very aware that Avtalyon's speech is not where it should be, either in Hebrew or in English. After a year and a half in a Hebrew gan environment his Hebrew is still really poor; also concerning is that his English is also starting to lag. A lot of the time he just doesn't have the words to express himself: he substitutes with a lot of hand motions and facial gestures and general jumping up and down to communicate his point. I know that it's normal for kids in bilingual environments to lag slightly in both languages, but it's worrying me and especially since he seems to have some of the same attention issues that Iyyar does, I am not waiting around.

I talked to his ganenet who has agreed to recommend him for a gan safah; I'm paying privately to get him evaluated by a speech therapist now to get all the paperwork in before the placement boards meet next month. And I think I will also pay privately to get him evaluated in English, just to have a general idea of where he is in terms of where he should be. The speech therapist I took Iyyar to for his English eval was very nice and seemed very good; well worth the NIS 400, I think.

His ganenet says he's happy at school, which is very important, but says he seems really spacy, which I agree with. Better to get on it early, before he becomes unhappy. Major goal: prevent a rerun of whatever happened to Iyyar last year. They do seem to have some similar issues so far as attention, although developmentally they've run on completely different schedules. Iyyar was late doing everything while Avtalyon was early, and Avtalyon has done a number of things that have given both me and previous ganenot the impression that he was really bright. Which I think he is, which is why I want even more to figure out what's getting in the way of him and, say, knowing where his cubby at school is. Because it's January and he still doesn't know where he's supposed to put his projects.

The real question right now is what to aim for with Iyyar for next year. At the moment, he's supposed to be getting an hour a week of speech therapy, although we can't start that until his evaluation is written up and sent to us in a couple of weeks. He's also supposed to be getting OT, and the eval is scheduled for Thursday; the person I am bringing him to is supposed to be good with sensory issues so hopefully she can let us know what is going on there and how to help. Also, we now have Racheli, who is a really delightful Israeli 14 yo whom we've hired to come over a few afternoons a week for an hour or two to just sit with Iyyar and Avtalyon and read them books, talk to them, make them talk etc. She's from a big family so unfazed by chaos and they have really taken to her, which is great; also, when he does start with speech therapy and we're supposed to be working with him on his Hebrew at home, I'm hoping she'll be able to help out there.

Iyyar's been having his ups and downs behaviorally. I made him that star chart to get him to look at me and listen when I call his name; that made for a good week, but then the next week was awful (even with a second star chart). Lots and lots and LOTS of talking to himself, handwaving, just checking out generally. Wednesday was a disaster and ended with everyone, including me, screaming and in tears. The last two days have been better and tonight after Shabbos I made a star chart for everyone in the family. Abba and I have rows on it too. Ours are for Not Screaming. Not that we usually do, but I felt like it was good to make it clear that not only children are expected to work on themselves, and I did scream once last week which was upsetting for everyone. Iyyar looked pretty happy when he saw me put that on the star chart. "I'm going to try really really hard not to scream. And you're going to try really really hard to look at Imma when Imma says your name, with no silly faces or silly hands or voices. OK?" He was OK with that.

This time he asked for a comic book (Bone #8) for his prize. Fair enough. I told Mr. Bigfoot that if I get a whole week of stars, I want takeout for dinner.

Oh, and want to hear some good financial news for a change? Notice all the "I'm paying privately for X" mentions above? Yes this is annoying in that it's supposed to be getting paid for and isn't and if I had known I'd be paying privately I could have just done this last September. But I just got a bonus at work equivalent to a bit more than a regular paycheck, plus an extra week's pay that I didn't realize I was getting because I had more unused vacation last year than I could carry over. So that's where the private therapy, and the star chart rewards, are coming from.

At the moment, Iyyar's ganenet wants him in a regular first grade with speech, OT and play therapy. Her main objection to a kita katana is that even though there exists such a class for kids with attention and emotional issues, and Iyyar certainly qualifies on both counts, he is not exactly a problem behaviorally. Yes he acts strangely, but he doesn't bother anyone. He doesn't hit. He's very nice to the other kids. He tries to listen, even if he doesn't always manage it. And he's very very sensitive to other kids who aren't nice. So if we put him in a class of 8 boys with emotional and attention issues, and say 2 of them hit... that would not be any improvement over the stressors of a regular class. Probably worse. Sure, you can get 2 kids hitting in a class of 30, but that's not the same as 2 out of 8. I hadn't really thought of this that much but both his ganenet and a friend with a kid in the Israeli special-ed system pointed it out to me. Peer group matters a lot, and if I have a kid who's acting strangely we'd rather he model his behavior on kids who aren't.

But. But but. In a kita katana he'll be getting all the therapy I haven't been able to get for him, and a small class, and trained teachers, and a lot more attention. So I really don't know what to do. I'm supposed to talk to the head of education in the school that we're planning to enroll the boys in next fall, and am going to try to get a sense of what next year's kita katana for first grade looks like. The gan psychologist will be observing Iyyar again on Thursday, and is going to talk to me and to Michal after that about what seems like the best plan. For myself, I really just don't know right now what's best. I wish I did.

Books

2012-02-03T17:10:00.001-05:00

Before Marika was born, and before Avtalyon was born, I bought my kids some presents. New babies don't care about presents (their mothers enjoy them, but the babies couldn't care less). But their siblings? They are a different story. I think before Avtalyon was born I'd bought a ton of Beanie Babies for Barak and Iyyar, since they were really into those at the time. When Marika was born, there was a lot of Playmobil, since that was what kept everyone happy and quiet.

This time? Books. I bought a lot of books. Tzomet Sefarim had a sale that ended yesterday, with 4 books for NIS 100. Most of the books on the kids' sale table were hardcover and quite a few of them were hardcover comic books (Asterix, Tintin, Petie Pete) or creepy graphic novels (Bone). I made three trips to the store and I filled out our collections of all of the above. Then on Tuesday, when I had promised Iyyar lunch at the bus station, we did one last run.

Did I tell you about lunch? I don't think so. Iyyar had a star chart, see. It was a chart with a mere seven spots on it, where for each day that he stopped and looked at me when I called his name, without making faces, he got a star. He did great with it. He got a star every day. What did he want for his prize?

Guess.

Oh go on, guess.

He wanted a Happy Meal.

Yes, that's right. We brought our children 8,000 miles to live in Jerusalem so they could have Happy Meals at McDonald's.

(Whatever works. Seriously.)

Anyway, after the English speech therapy eval on Tuesday (which was really fun, unlike speech eval #1, and which he aced and which left him feeling happy and with some cool stickers on his shirt), we went to the bus station. We had our lunch (Happy Meal for him, Burger's Bar for me, thank you very much) and trooped down to the bookstore to get some more books. I picked two, he picked two. His were comics. Mine were both books with more words and less pictures, designed for Racheli (new member of the DN3 cast of characters! More on her anon). One of them was Fantastic Mr. Fox, in Hebrew.

Which Barak discovered when he got home from school today. And read, in one evening, in Hebrew. And summarized for me, pretty accurately, in English. Conclusion: "And the three guys just sit in the rain with their guns outside the foxes' door forever while the animals are eating all their food!"

Indeed.

Hot chocolate

2012-02-01T17:00:00.003-05:00

It has been, as you may be aware, an unusually wet winter in Israel. This is a wonderful thing because we have been very short on rain for years now. January was the wettest month on record, ever, and today, February first, it rained, sometimes really hard, nearly the entire day.

All of this is great. It would be even better if I could convince a certain second-grader that it would be a really good idea for him to, you know, wear a coat.

Barak has decided that he is Too Cool for Coats. So today, when it was bucketing down rain and the wind was howling and it was maybe 50 out, he walked home from the bus stop with his water-resistant Thinsulate-lined LL Bean parka shoved IN HIS BACKPACK. And walked in the door soaked, dripping, and grinning the grin of the cool.

I should have yelled at him. I did chastise him, but mostly with a lot of eye-rolling. I made him take off his wet clothes and found him pajama pants and a brand-new sweatshirt that I brought back from the US in December but hadn't given him yet. It's a size 10, so I thought it would be way too big, but surprise--it's really not.

And I made him hot chocolate, for the first time since we moved here. Hot chocolate with milk and cocoa and sugar and real vanilla, in our one and only ceramic mug. He was pretty much in heaven. Soft cozy sweatshirt! Soft cozy pajamas! Hot chocolate!

The dishes have been piling up lately, mostly because I'm so busy with work that I haven't had a lot of time to do anything in the evenings, and I've got so much going on generally that the morning naps have been few and far between. Most mornings, I have running around to do. So as Barak rhapsodized over his hot chocolate, I did some damage control in the kitchen, and may have grumbled to myself just a little.

"Barak, when you grow up, you're going to tell your wife about this. You're going to say, 'When we moved to Israel, my Imma cooked for all of us for two whole years with just an electric hot plate and two toaster ovens!' And your wife won't believe you. She'll say, no she didn't. And you'll say, yes she did! And she'll say, how did she not lose her mind? How did she not yell and scream and throw things?"

At this, Barak looked up. Because it is possible that there may have been some yelling and screaming and dish-flinging a few days ago. On my part.

"...and you'll say, well, sometimes she did..."

Still here

2012-02-01T05:51:00.003-05:00

37 weeks tomorrow. I am, to be honest, barely aware of this, because I am so busy with non-pregnancy-related things.

#1 on the list of Things that Are Taking All My Time and Attention is Iyyar. After months of slowly getting better, things with him lately have, well, tanked. It's not that he's behaving badly exactly. It's that he's behaving strangely and worryingly. He's talking to himself, he spends a lot of time in self-soothing behaviors (lots of waving his arms around as he conducts invisible fight scenes or writes letters in the air), and, predictably, this is not going over so well with the other kids, who do not want to play with him and by not wanting to play with him, stress him out more. And then he comes home from school and you can barely get through to him with anything. This doesn't happen every day, but it happens a lot, and today is February first. The "by Purim he'll be a different kid" we were hoping for when we started seeing so much improvement over the summer is not comng to pass.

After the psych eval of which you have already heard tell, we had a speech eval in Hebrew, which was a disaster, and a speech eval in English, which was great. "If anything he's above average." No language or processing issues evident at all. I'm trying to track down an OT to evaluate him for sensory issues: the one who was recommended to me lives in Ramot and that is just not practical for us. At this point the big question is where he's going to go next year, and it's looking like a kita mikademet, even though that brings its own host of issues with it. I got a call from someone today about the vaadat hasama (placement board) I requested last week. Today Iyyar is being observed by a gan psychologist and I guess we'll go from there.

In the meantime, Avtalyon has also been raising alarm bells and we've started the paperwork to get him into a gan safa. And Barak, who does not do well with not getting All The Attention All The Time, is feeling neglected. At least he's able to tell me this.

It's Wednesday, which is Mr. Bigfoot's David Yellin day, so I'm off to do the pickup rounds. Finally registered at the hospital last week, by the way. Oh, and does anyone have any experience with going to beit hachlama here? I'm thinking that would be a nice quiet place to make a million more phone calls for Iyyar.

Sometimes a French fry is just a French fry

2012-01-23T12:33:00.002-05:00

So, I took Iyyar to get his speech therapy evaluation last Thursday. It was about what I expected, although I didn't realize his Hebrew was quite as bad as it is. The therapist seemed really taken aback when I told her how long we'd been here. "A year and a half? And he's been in a Hebrew educational framework the entire time? He can't even put a correct sentence together." Good news: he qualifies for speech therapy with, uh, flying colors. Bad news: there is a waiting list of several months (months!! I am looking now at the original forms we submitted for all of this and they are dated July...) and even when his turn comes up, he'll be getting an hour a week of therapy with the expectation of an hour a day at home of 1:1 attention from a Hebrew-speaking adult.

Riiiiiiight.

The good thing that came from it though was that the speech therapist was nice, and I took advantage of this by saying, look, why is nothing happening here? I brought along the eval with the referrals for various services he got in mid-December, and I said, he has gotten none of this, nobody has even called us with an appointments, I don't know who to talk to and every time I call it takes an hour to be told someone will call me, eventually. Which they don't do. The therapist was, to give her credit, horrified by this and said "But he needs help now!" to which I was, with difficulty, able to respond by politely agreeing instead of by banging my head on the pint-sized table I was sitting at.

Sunday morning the phone rang, and it was the psychologist, telling me that she had never gotten any of the messages I had left (which I know isn't true, because the speech therapist opened up a screen that showed all the messages I'd left WITH check boxes next to them showing she'd seen them) and telling me that Iyyar's report was ready and did I want to come in next week to pick it up. I said, can you fax it today? and she said, well, it's a lot of pages (for the record: "a lot" in this case = three) and why don't you come pick it up? Next week? I said, how about today? And she said, ok, can you come in at 11? It was 9:45 and I looked at my watch and said yes I could, so I went straight out the door.

So, I don't want this to turn into a giant long post, but in a nutshell (coconut shell?): there were no surprises so far as the cognitive stuff, except that his Hebrew is really bad (which I knew at that point) and he has some specific learning/cognitive issues (attention/speed of processing/attention/organization of thought) that she seemed to think were worse than I did, but having seen the testing taking place I also knew that he'd been pretty stressed during the testing itself and that never helps. The cognitive stuff was all testing that had taken place while I was there; the psychological/emotional testing had happened while I was in the US, and Mr. Bigfoot had been there.

Yeah. That.

So... how much stock does the field of child psychologist generally put in child apperception testing these days? Because... well. First she started telling me that she'd shown Iyyar pictures and that how he described them gave a window to how he perceived the world. Okay, fair enough. Then she started telling me that he felt small and insignificant, exploited (exploited??) by adults, that he wasn't being nurtured adequately, that parental figures were distant and absent and that authority figures were frightening. I said... uh. Where are you getting this from? She asked me if I wanted to see the pictures and I said yes.

First picture: three little chickens at a table happily tucking into bowls of food. Shadowy hen in background. Iyyar said, as best as I can recall: "The baby chickens are eating the food. They like it and they're happy. The mother is walking." Interpretation: because he did not say that the mother gave the food, the mother is not being seen as a source of nurturing. Instead of feeding them, she is WALKING.

But... she was. I mean, I saw the picture. I would have said the same thing.

And the rest of the pictures? They were scary. As in, I found them scary and I am 38! There was a huge toothy tiger about to attack a monkey, and it didn't look good for the monkey. There were two tiny bears huddled together in a crib in a dark shadowy room with a huge bed, empty except for an Ominous Lump under the covers. There was a big lion in a throne with a mouse visible in the corner in a mouse hole.

Everything Iyyar said seemed totally reasonable to me. He described the pictures. When asked to come up with more ideas, he said things like "Maybe the mouse wants to be friends but he's afraid the lion will eat him," and "The bear is sad because he got his fur cut, but it's OK, it'll grow back." I thought this was normal. The psychologist didn't. She also kept talking about how fixated he was on food. And food, see, it's not just food. It's everything a baby needs from a parent. It's nurturing, understanding, feeling understood. And Iyyar is NOT GETTING IT. How does she know this? Because he kept talking about food. Also, his thinking was all concrete and not abstract (he's five. You know he's five, right?) and he identified in every picture with the small/weak figure and not the large/strong figure (cf. "five" above). Oh, and he was much more relaxed with Mr. Bigfoot (visit two) than with me (visit one).

I walked out not being sure whether to be devastated or bewildered. Because I got the really, really strong impression that she thought that Iyyar's issues were due to my being a cold and absent mother and his being afraid of authority. And I may be many things, and I am sure I have MANY failings as a parent, but cold and absent? I... really don't think so.

Fast forward to home. I asked Mr. Bigfoot about this. "Oh. Yeah. Well, he didn't really want to go, so I told him that when we were done we would go out for lunch. We went and had schnitzel and French fries at the place down the street right after. He ate a huge amount so I think he might have been kind of hungry while we were there."

Oh. What about the pictures?

"Yeah, he wasn't so into them. He wanted to color them in, and she said that when they were done talking about them he could draw a picture. So he was kind of going through them as fast as possible so he could draw. And get French fries."

It's hard to write it off entirely, just because, well, who could? I know Iyyar doesn't feel understood and it is absolutely the case that I don't understand what is going on in his head. And if someone is sitting there in an office saying, we've tested your son and the results show that You Are A Rotten Mother, I don't think many people could take that with equanimity. Also, I got the really strong impression that she didn't think much of me or Mr. Bigfoot from the first meeting. Not sure why; just a personality clash, I think. I have a hard time with people who don't ever ever smile.

Anyway. Yeah. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah. And French fries.

The post that is not a list

2012-01-15T18:53:00.002-05:00

I don’t read very many blogs anymore. I used to read quite a few but one by one their authors stopped writing, or I lost interest for whatever reason. Most of the links on my sidebar are dead these days (and yes I should probably do something about that.)

In the meantime, one of the blogs I read is this one, and if you know me at all you can probably guess why I read it. Completely different life situations, very similar day-to-day issues. One of them being one of the tags she uses: parental jealousy.

I am having a lot of that right now, as I often do late in pregnancy and even more when I have a new baby. I am finding it a lot harder here. I live somewhere that it is pretty common for women to have babies. Pretty much everyone here, with only a few exceptions, is either pregnant or has a new baby or is too recently married for either. This was also the case last year. And every time someone has a baby, without exception, there is family. Certainly a mother, often both parents, and frequently two sets of parents in turn. One of the women here had a baby about six week ago; she had her mother-in-law here already to take care of her daughter (who is in Marika’s gan) while she was in the hospital, and then a few days later her mother flew in and stayed for a MONTH, and her sister is in seminary nearby and was able to help out a lot too. I saw her a couple of weeks after giving birth and she looked… amazingly well rested. There is only one woman here who didn’t have that kind of luxury, and she had her mom visit for “only” a week postpartum; her mom works and couldn’t take off longer. I think her in-laws also came although I didn’t ask.

And you know, they don’t even think of it as luxury, so far as I can tell. It’s just a normal thing that normal mothers do. Apparently. Not that I would know.

And I am jealous. Which is actually a little bit out of character for me, broadly speaking, because I am pretty good at not coveting anything I know I can’t have.

For example: Mr. Bigfoot went to pay a shiva visit a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t go because it wasn’t practical; someone needed to be home with the kids and it made more sense for him to be the one to go, since the avel was more a friend of his. He came back and said, later, it’s just as well you didn’t go. You didn’t need to see that huge fancy house. And I was completely taken aback by this, because a) I wouldn’t be thinking about that at a shiva house anyway and b) truthfully, I have no problem with big fancy houses. I don’t covet them. It doesn’t bother me that other people have them. Yes, it bothers me—sometimes it bothers me a lot—that we live the way we do, but I don’t look at anyone in a big fancy house and say, “I want that.” I don’t want it and it doesn’t bother me that other people have it. It’s so beyond what is realistic for us that it doesn’t even enter into my thinking.

What does bother me is seeing things that I feel should be realistic for us given where we are in our lives but are still so totally out of reach. Like when we stayed, over the summer, for Shabbos in the house of friends of friends. It was a regular house, not huge, but it would have been perfect for us; smallish but totally adequate kitchen, comfortable living/dining room with lots of space for bookshelves and a nice bright playroom off to the side, a little office off the kitchen that would have been exactly right for me. Most of the furniture obviously acquired secondhand. Three bedrooms, two of them quite small but big enough for bunk beds and a crib. One and a half baths.

And somehow, the fact that it was a little bit run down, the bathrooms old and cramped, that there were water marks in the ceilings and floor tiles that were chipped and doors that didn’t quite close, and the kitchen was in the “small but workable” category—this made me wildly, ragingly, disturbingly jealous. Because that should be realistic for us, and yet it is still so completely out of reach for us right now. Right now, a second toilet, a bathtub, and a kitchen with a stove are the stuff of fantasy. And a house? Belonging to us? I might as well wish for the moon.

Or for parents.

Which I do. I am jealous. I know that I am independent by nature and generally want to do things by myself. I’m not used to being taken care of and I don’t expect it. Mostly, it’s enough for me that I am getting to take care of other people, which I waited so long to do. And I have a husband who really does take amazingly good care of me. It should be enough. But right around now, when it’s getting hard to walk, hard to sleep, when everything aches and there is so much to do, and it’s not easy to keep up already, and I don’t even know who’s going to watch the kids when I have to go to the hospital and it’s not at all out of the question that I’m going to have to go give birth by myself because there won’t be anyone but Mr. Bigfoot… the thought of a mother, the kind that would swoop down and take care of the kids and clean up and do baths and go grocery shopping for me, like they do for the other women here… yeah. It would be nice.

Like a lot of things that are just not going to happen. And I need to get over it. Again.

Moving right along...

I had my third-trimester ultrasound today. Yes! Third-trimester ultrasound! I’ve never had one of those before, since they don’t, you know, do them in America. B”H it was all fine. The kids had a good day, and although Iyyar got off to an unusually rough start this morning, he was doing much better later on. The ultrasound took a lot longer than I expected, because they were running really late, but I still got home with enough time to take a nap before Mr. Bigfoot left for the afternoon. And he got the boys from gan, and he also got Marika for me, so I could sleep.

By the way, I feel like I have been doing Mr. Bigfoot an injustice by more or less leaving him out of the blog most of the time. I don’t want to give the impression that he’s an absentee father, because he so isn’t. He gets up at 6 every morning, davens vasikin, and takes Barak to the bus. I get up around when he leaves, at about 7:30, and start getting Iyyar and Avtalyon up, and then Mr. Bigfoot walks them up the 88 steps to their gan. All I have to do is get Marika ready in the morning, which is easy as she is pretty delightful when she wakes up, and then walk the ten minutes of flat ground to her gan. Mr. Bigfoot even packs lunches. He does the laundry. He deals with the pee on the bathroom floor when the boys miss. He picks up the boys from gan four days a week and often gets Marika too. And he stops at the makolet on the way back from dropping off Barak, if I need him to, and gets milk or bread or whatever else we’ve run short of between big grocery shops and shuk runs. Me? I don’t even always have dinner on the table for him. Most days, but not every day by any stretch.

So, not fair to say I don’t have help. I totally do. And one of the huge advantages of our current situation is that he’s rarely very far away, and most of the time available in case of emergency. If I really really need him, I can call him and he can come home. I don't, in general, but I know I can if I have to. It’s not minor.

And it will be OK. I don’t need parents to be OK. The kids don’t need their biological grandparents in their lives to be OK. We will have a place to live and food to eat and they’ve already got a lifetime supply of Playmobil.

Iss okay, Imma. Iss just fine.

Also

2012-01-10T05:46:00.002-05:00

Why is it that Israeli phlebotomists--every single one I have encountered--are SO MUCH BETTER than phlebotomists in America? Before we came here, every time I needed to get blood drawn, I heard about how small/deep/scarred/difficult/uncooperative my veins were. And got stabbed lots of times and often still didn't come up with enough blood for whatever it was. I can remember at least twice taking kids for blood draws and winding up with traumatized children and no bloodwork. Here? I go in, I feel a pinch and about a minute later there's a wad of cotton in the crook of my elbow. Today I went to get my 1-hour glucose test and saw a toddler getting blood drawn; he was mad about it, but you could tell just looking at it he was more indignant than anything else.

Weird.

Anyway, the good thing about needing bloodwork is that the big Meuhedet is right next to the shuk, where I had the chance to load up on all kinds of good stuff. Strawberries are in season here now (in JANUARY. I love it) and I got a huge bag of gorgeous red peppers for NIS 3.90/kg (around 50 cents a pound or so). And lots of apples/cucumbers/onions/mushrooms/etc. And a big bag of squishy carbohydrates. Which is always, let's be honest, the best part of the shuk.

So I'm back home now and ten minutes to go before I pick Marika up at gan. It's Tuesday, so Barak should be home in about an hour, and Mr. Bigfoot is getting Avtalyon and Iyyar. And I need to think of something to do with everybody all afternoon. So I can nap when Marika does. It might be a video afternoon. I've given myself a little bit of a pass on the videos lately, as long as they're in Hebrew--it's educational, right?

In which unexpected developments continue to develop

2012-01-09T18:12:00.002-05:00

Yet again, I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve been thinking for a while about things to post. There are lots of things to post about. Marika, for example, is being really funny. She is obsessed with the Israeli happy birthday song and wants me to play it (we have an Israeli kids’ music CD) nonstop. The song is one minute long, so there’s a limit to what a body can stand, but while it’s playing she’s a riot; she literally runs around in circles because she’s so excited. We also have a book with the words to the songs on the CD, and she finds the page with the happy birthday song and shows me. “Yoma yoma dedet mee mee!” That would be, “yom huledet sameach to me!”

Work is going fine. The Bituach Leumi thing has gotten marginally worse; I realized that the accountants (if you want the name of an English-speaking accountant to stay away from, email me privately) had screwed up yet again and submitted my 2011 income incorrectly, and my actual monthly withholding should be NIS 3,000. That, for the record, is a little bit less than we anticipated paying in rent next year. This whole thing has put all of the financial tribulations of the last year in perspective; the rest of it just paled in comparison.

Until Saturday.

What happened on Saturday, you ask?

Well.

So on Saturday night, I called back our former upstairs neighbor, who is the head of our condo board (there were only four apartments, he was the only other owner who spoke good English, and the two of us basically made all of the decisions together) and who had left me a couple of messages over the previous week. We’d been playing phone tag for a few days but finally caught each other late Saturday.

He started out with the good news: that the property tax appeal had gone through and the city had agreed to reduce our annual taxes by $300. Not much, but something, although we owed 1/3 of that to the lawyer who had done the appealing for us. Fine.

“And we’re going to do it again for the next property tax cycle because of the foreclosure,” he said.

The what? The foreclosure. There’s a foreclosure?

So. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but one of the families in the building had been kind of problematic for a while. They did not pay their assessments, they had at least 10 people living up there, they did not maintain their apartment and they used an incredible amount of water. They also, apparently, were not paying their mortgage. We had gotten foreclosure papers sent to the condo association a couple of years earlier, but as of a few weeks ago, they were still there and said that it had been worked out; since they had obviously not gotten kicked out we believed them. But, the upstairs guy told me, their apartment was in fact foreclosed on in December. And sold at auction.

For $70,000.

Turns out they had not paid in THREE YEARS. Not only that, but the bank gave them money—thirty-eight THOUSAND dollars—to get out of their apartment by year’s end so that the bank could write off the loss in that tax year. So, almost nothing down, three years of free rent, and $38k to move out. Not bad, if the whole ethical issue doesn’t give you pause.

In the meantime? We paid almost the same for our apartment. Taxes have been doubled and we had to double the assessments as well. We have never missed or been late with a payment, and in fact made (before the crash) a lot of extra payments to principal too. We have a principal of $163k and monthly payments of $1608, counting the maintenance. We’re still paying them, even though the apartment (which is only partially rented out, because we still have all of our stuff there and I go back regularly) now loses us well over $400 a month. We’ve tried to refinance a few times but been told no: first off, our mortgage was sold to a private investor; second off, we have a perfect payment record and savings to boot, so why should the bank want to reduce our payments when we have proven ourselves perfectly capable of making them, and willing to do so even despite, well, everything? No reason at all. For us, the old rules still apply.

We did everything the way you’re supposed to. And because we’ve always played by the rules, we’ve lost so much money on that apartment I can’t even think about it. If we hadn’t bought that place, if we’d stayed in our old rental, we could have bought an apartment here with cash. As it is, we have this apartment that is nine thousand miles away that is sucking us dry and will continue to do so for as long as we remain responsible mortgage-payers.

So. I did the refinance paperwork, again, and explained the recent developments—the husband who has been unemployed for going on two years, the insurance that is now costing us $900/month out of pocket, the foreclosure upstairs. I also called a private mortgage broker today, to see if he had any other ideas. He suggested “letting it go.” As in, stopping payments and letting the bank take it. That, in his view, was the only reasonable course of action given our situation (which I described to him a bit more fully than I describe it on the internet). He agrees that it would make sense for the bank to reduce our payments and principal, but added that unfortunately the way these things work doesn’t often make sense.

Yeah. I’d noticed.

Remember how happy I was when we bought that place? I felt settled. I felt like a grownup. I loved painting the walls and putting in the shelves and feeling like I had my very own home. Like Grandma E said, we could never have imagined this then.

Somehow or other, this will be OK. I was IM’ing with my friend Shanna (who is a divorce lawyer) before and we both heartily agreed that it’s much better to need a real estate lawyer than a lawyer like her. It could be so much worse. It’s just money. Everyone is B”H healthy and we still have savings and I still have my job and somehow or other, b’ezrat Hashem it will be OK.

I joke sometimes that between me and my husband, I do the hishtadlus, he does the bitachon. I’ve done all the hishtadlus I can; now it’s just time for bitachon for both of us.

Two!

2011-12-24T17:11:00.003-05:00

Sunday

2011-12-18T15:19:00.002-05:00

So last week, after I got back from my trip, Iyyar had his appointment with the developmental pediatrician--the appointment that was supposed to be in February but magically happened the next day because I fell apart crying in the Hitpatchut haYeled office. Really, I should have taken him, but I was so tired and jetlagged I convinced myself that it would be fine if Mr. Bigfoot did it. (Note to self: no.) He went and gave me a report and brought home a typed report that includes many repetitions of "father does not know..." and ends with a recommendation for a social worker, among other things. Sigh.

The evaluation Mr. Bigfoot brought home was not informative. It told me that Iyyar can write his name nicely, has good reflexes, draws lopsided circles, draws complete people with all their features, and is communicative in English but less so in Hebrew. It also started out with "yeled chamud" ("Cute kid.") Is it me or is that an "only in Israel" thing? She felt, after observing him in a small room containing his father and a friendly adult, lots of toys, undivided cheery attention, and no environmental stressors or other children, that Iyyar would be best served by an additional year in gan. Both Michal and I strenuously disagree with this: he has an early birthday, he is tall for his age, he finds the "school" aspect of gan easy already and knows full well that he is supposed to be heading into kita aleph. Also, he is doing reasonably well socially. Keeping him back would serve no purpose; he would be upset, he'd be the tallest/biggest kid in his class, he doesn't need the time to catch up academically or socially, and I don't think it would address any of his actual problems (not that anyone seems to understand what those actually ARE).

Other recommendations are for a speech therapist (great) and a psychological evaluation (great, but didn't he already have four hours of that?). That was a week ago and we have yet to hear anything from anyone, so I am not feeling optimistic. I'm going to call tomorrow because apparently the speech therapist to whom his materials were given is available by phone on Mondays from 8:30-9:30 am and only then. (Better than nothing?)

In the meantime, Michal finally spoke to the psychologist who did the first eval. She (Michal) said that repeating gan was not the solution and instead recommended a kita katana (small class for kids with mild to moderate learning disabilities/emotional issues). This was at my behest; she said last week that she'd like to see Iyyar in a regular kita aleph (first grade) with therapy/support, and I said that while I would love to see that too, I wasn't at all sure he'd be ready, and given the incredible amount of hoop-jumping that would have to be achieved to get him into a kita katana, the last thing I wanted was to come to the conclusion in June (or, worse, October) that a regular first grade was not going to work--and then have to start from scratch, with Iyyar not in the good place he is in now. I said I was not at all willing to close the kita katana door, and she saw the logic in this. Also, Iyyar had a hard day today. It's too long to get into here but he had some kind of a mysterious blowup on the way home from gan with Mr. Bigfoot and Avtalyon. Mr. Bigfoot had no idea what triggered it, and I did figure it out later but only after a lot of time and indirect prodding.

Even after Iyyar told me what the problem had been, and explained it to me, and we talked about it and how he had reacted (running away from Abba while Abba was calling him to come) and why it was dangerous/not OK, and why we had to use words to explain when we were not happy about something etc. etc.--even after I understood what had gone on in his head, I had to realize how really not normal that thought process had been, even for a five-year-old. What he got upset at, how the distress manifested itself, both in the moment and afterward--he needs help. At least this time, with enough time and quiet and patience, I could help. He was able to use words, he was able to tell me what he'd been thinking at least to some extent, he calmed down, he felt OK later, he went to bed happy.

And that's the thing, see--Iyyar is doing better. He IS. He blows up less, he communicates more, he is happier and calmer. I've been pouring on the love and the patience and he is getting that at gan too. It is, despite the opinion of the psychologist (who seems to think I am wrapping him in cotton wool) exactly what he needs to recover from whatever the **** was going on in that gan last year. But it takes so little--next to nothing--to set him off. And what is happening right now, see, it's a spiral. It's a good spiral. Right now, he is calmer and happier, so he behaves better in gan, and he gets positive reinforcement, and he is motivated to behave/less stressed and ergo able to behave. Therefore he can play with the other kids, he can sit still, he can focus better, he can do the things he needs to do to manage in gan. Last year, it was exactly the opposite. But he is, and there is no other word for it, emotionally fragile. He is terrified of disapproval. It takes so little to bounce him in the opposite direction, and I look at him and I see how easily he could fall apart completely in kita aleph.

This is not me being a neurotic overprotective American mother. This is me being his mother, and knowing him better than anyone else. But still not knowing what is wrong, or how to help.

Because I should probably not leave that last post at the top of my blog for too long

2011-12-15T17:56:00.002-05:00

Here's another one.

(You know the really pathetic thing? After I posted last time, I went to bed and thought of another half dozen things at least I could have vented about but didn't.)

Anyway.

The next day, I was sitting on the bed putting on my socks and muttering to myself. "Iyyar's doing much better. I don't have any cavities. The kids are healthy." Mr. Bigfoot overheard me. "Are you telling yourself good things?" "Yeah. Not everything is awful." "No." "It just FEELS that way." "Right."

Right.

So, here is a list of Things That Are Not Awful:

1. The kids are healthy. This is huge. Remember last year? That isn't happening now. We had a couple of weeks of stomach bugs, all of which passed relatively quickly. B"H, no major health issues currently going on with anyone. Pregnancy seems to be going fine, the kids are doing well.

2. Iyyar really is doing much better. He has his ups and downs, but overall he is taking many more steps forward than he is taking back. He loves his gan. He has not said he hates/doesn't want to go to gan in months--not since before the chagim. He tells me he loves Michal and he also tells me about how he is playing with the other kids. Just like he spiraled downward last year, and things got worse and worse in a vicious cycle of frustration/acting out/disapproval/anger/other kids not wanting to play with him, this year, it's heading in the opposite direction. He's happier, he's more cooperative, he's playing better with the other kids, he's less disruptive, more patient. This week Michal told me she was hoping to see him in a regular kita aleph next year. I'm not actually sure that would be best for him--far from it--but I was really, really happy to hear her say it.

3. Marika is one day away from turning TWO. The mind reels. That deserves a post of its own, but in the meantime, she is cuddly and adorable and has developed quite the personality. She has also recently figured out how to open doorknobs. That part I could have waited for, but I'm happy to see her growing and happy and doing new stuff all the time.

4. No cavities! I went to the dentist when I was in the US, because I really like the dentist (he's in the same building as my office) and I have been having issues lately with a really raw and painful mouth--certain foods (sesame seeds, tomatoes, citrus, hummous, anything acidic or rough-textured) seem to rip my tongue/inside of my mouth to shreds, and some of them make my mouth swell. It seemed weird that I could be developing multiple food allergies at once, and I was due for a cleaning, so I called to see if they had a cancellation and they did. Anyway, no cavities (yay!) and the mouth thing he told me was pregnancy-related; he gave me some fancy toothpaste and a special toothbrush (?) and told me to stay way from trigger foods. Also, he fixed a chipped filling. Even better, when I went to pay, the receptionist discovered that I had a huge credit on my account--apparently I overpaid last time--and only owed $9 for the visit. There was a sign on the desk that said, "Like us on Facebook and get a $10 credit!" so I asked if I could like them on Facebook and call it even. They said sure, so I walked out of there without paying anything. I'm not thrilled that they sat on $163 for almost a year without telling me, but it was a nice surprise nevertheless.

5. I brought back a lot of Tootsie Rolls. There is no Tootsie Roll shortage here.

6. I also brought back a lot of little plastic dinosaurs from the thrift shop. Twenty cents each--couldn't resist. The kids are happy, with that and also with the whole box of K'nex I bought for around $6.

7. Work is going well. Nobody expects me back in the US next summer.

8. This baby is the most active baby-in-utero I have ever had. S/he never seems to stop kicking, wiggling, rolling, and squirming. It's fun. I try not to wonder how this will translate into sleep habits in the outside world. Hopefully, just in the kicking off of many blankets.

9. The kitchen is clean. I made pizza for dinner and cleaned up while the kids were eating it. I also redid the contact paper on the counter on Tuesday, so it looks much better in there. And I bleached the sink. That helped too.

10. We are going to get a new washing machine, cost be damned. I can't not have a washing machine. Mr. Bigfoot says no more used appliances. The End.

11. We have three windowboxes full of ivy and geraniums, courtesy of Deb.

12. Barak can now do most of his homework by himself. He usually gets about halfway through it without help. This is a big improvement from September, when he'd do three out of ten questions after a lot of misery and suffering and parental involvement. His homework continues to be, in my opinion, wildly ambidiout; last night's Chumash homework involved reading and understanding and answering questions on TWENTY-SIX psukim. Which they had not done in class. Seriously.

13. Yesterday I heard Barak singing a song I didn't know. Mr. Bigfoot didn't know it either. He listened carefully for a minute and then grinned. "He's singing mishnayos." Last year he was singing Pirkei Avos, this year it's mishnayos. This is why we moved here.

14. I made a to-do list of all the horribly overwhelming things I had to do. I did three of them today. It's only a start, but it helps.

15. My computer is working much better now, after a lot of long-distance intervention from IT at work.

16. I brought back a lot of Trader Joe's chocolate chip granola bars. Marika has figured out that there is almost always a chocolate chip or four hiding in the bottom of the wrapper. I can open one, hand her the wrapper, and she will be so busy hunting for tiny chocolate chips that she leaves me alone with my granola bar until it's almost gone.

There. Sixteen good things. The seventeenth: I am going to bed.

Spew

2011-12-12T19:21:00.003-05:00

I’m warning you. This one is not going to be pretty. If you’re not in the mood, just skip it, ok?

The last few weeks have been really hard.

So much has been going on that I don’t really know where to start.

I guess I’ll start with the meeting with the CPA, the day before I went to the US for my latest work trip. The meeting I’d been trying to schedule for months, while they ignored and ignored my emails, and didn’t do my return for MONTHS. The meeting where I thought I was showing up to sign my 2010 returns, and in which I was told that I owed Bituach Leumi (social insurance) 13% of my gross income, from the date of my aliya, retroactively, and henceforth forevermore. About $10k on the spot, and 13% of my gross—not net, gross—salary, going forward. This is not including taxes in any way. This is JUST social insurance. And I still have to pay social security and medicare in the US.

I had had no idea. I didn’t cry until I got home, when my friend Zahava called to check up on me and I lost it in a fit of hysterical tears and uncharacteristic profanity.

It’s just too much.

I’m working full-time now. But it still isn’t enough to support us. We’re just breaking even now, with the free apartment.

We are losing so much money on our condo in the US. We can’t refinance.

Mr. Bigfoot doesn’t have a job. He just lost most of his tutoring hours, not because of anything he did but because the at-risk kids he was tutoring left the school. And the cartoons he’s been doing for pay haven’t been renewed—because even though everyone says to him how much they like them, only two people have bothered to tell the magazine.

Our washing machine died. We’re back to the laundromat.

I am so jetlagged and so tired.

Every time I turn around, someone is mad at me about something. Now? Not the time to jump down my throat because I have not been in touch, did not stop by when I was in the US, did not phrase an email quite in the way you would have liked. I don’t have the emotional energy right now to deal with anything that is not a child or a speech. Leave me alone.

Hitpatchut ha’yeled is not helping Iyyar. Iyyar needs help. Now. He needs someone to help him function in school, he needs help with attention and auditory processing, he needs help learning how to deal with stress. He needs to learn how not to run around in circles singing to himself. He needs the ability to register when his name is being screamed at him, and respond, not stay lost in his own world as he walks obliviously into the path of moving vehicles. But everything takes weeks, and even though we have been trying to make this happen since last June, here we are in December and he does not have so much as an intake appointment for speech therapy or OT or anything else. As of this morning, he’s been recommended for all kinds of things, but nothing has happened. I also have a two-page evaluation of him sitting in front of me, which I can’t understand.

They don’t pick up the phone. They don’t return calls. They don’t do anything, except, this week, magically find an appointment for the next day when I fall apart crying upon being told that the next available appointment for the next hoop-jumping step on which everything depends is not for another two months. That, they did.

Avtalyon’s ganenot are also worried about him. Right now they think it’s a hearing problem but also want us to start paperwork with Hitpatchut Ha’yeled. I can’t get that moving until we get another hearing test. I went through the hoops to get the referral and the guarantee of payment—two separate trips to two separate offices, each requiring a morning of no sleep—and called the audiologist. Earliest available appointment: January.

Does he have attention/processing issues like Iyyar seems to? Or permanent hearing loss from all those eardrum ruptures? I took him to the ENT and his ears are clear. Whatever it is, it’s not going to self-resolve.

I just spent a week in the US, and while I was there, everyone but Iyyar got sick. I had to listen to Marika crying for me with a 102 fever from 8,000 miles away. I came home to a house with no visible floor or horizontal surfaces in any of the bedrooms or my office. And kids with diarrhea who couldn’t go to school. Avtalyon threw up a few times the night after I got home.

This was after Barak threw up at school and I had to go get him, by cab, and then he narrowly missed throwing up in the cab—the same cab that, by chance, came when I called later that afternoon to take Avtalyon to the doctor for his ears.

Barak doesn’t seem to have any friends at school. He doesn’t play with anyone. He doesn’t talk about other kids. His Hebrew is doing better, his teachers are happy with him, but socially, he seems to be heading into trouble.

Oh, and did I mention the fight he had at school? The one that was started by another kid who knocked him to the floor and punched him? Whose mother then called me because Barak had, from the floor, thrown his pencil case at him and hit him in the eye? And thought I should talk to Barak about how unacceptable violence was as a means of conflict resolution? That was a fun day of phone calls right there.

And the hasaa which sometimes doesn’t have seatbelts.

And the hasaa which is different every day, so Barak doesn’t always get on it, because he doesn’t recognize it. Which means I have to go get him by cab, and pull Mr. Bigfoot out of seder.

I still haven’t found a doula. Or registered at the hospital.

The house is a mess.

We got an absolutely huge water bill. I called the maintenance guy and said, there is no way we have used that much water. He looked around and found a leak in the toilet tank--the water has been running in there nonstop. Not our faulty plumbing, but the water bill? Still our responsibility.

We got an absolutely huge ($400) phone and internet bill. Considering we don't use the phone, and the internet is supposed to be the same every month, this is obviously a mistake, right? Multiple calls to the campus communication guy. He promises to look into it. So far? One guess.

I mentioned that the washing machine died, right? The one we bought less than a year ago? With no warranty?

I’m eating so badly. I’m pregnant, I need to be eating well, but cooking real food in my horrible little excuse for a kitchen is so hard, and what I should be eating/what the kids are willing to eat/what I can make in that kitchen are just not the same at all.

And oh, what we spend on food.

I brought back $26 worth of Target pullups. They leak. Avtalyon has wet the bed every night he’s worn them, and woken up crying that his bed is wet. It soaked right through the mattress pad and now the mattress is ruined.

Also, I have a new laptop from work, which is behaving strangely. Hours on the phone with computer support. Hours I should have been writing speeches.

The external keyboard I brought back doesn’t work at all. Not salvageable. It’s a toy now. Good thing I didn’t toss the old one—the one I’ve used so much the letters are worn off the keys.

I spent too much money in the US, some of it on stuff that I then had no room to bring back. Because I was using the space on a broken keyboard and leaky pullups.

And the Meuchedet insurance which has still not paid us back about NIS 650 we are owed. But in order to deal with it, I have to deal with endless Hebrew, and I just… can’t.

I hate my OB and don’t know where to find anyone better. Dr. Nili Yannai doesn’t seem to exist anymore, or at least, none of the numbers I have for her work. Anyone?

I am ignoring my 26-week gestational diabetes screening, even though I’m almost 30 weeks. Every single day, there is something else that can’t be put off.

Two simchas in the kollel this week, with signup sheets posted for who’s bringing food. I can’t ignore it. I can’t deal.

Three days a week, I have to do all the afternoon pickups. This means pushing a stroller up The Hill. That is really, really hard right now.

It’s 2 am. Did I mention jetlag? Or that I have to be up in 5 hours?

I’m leaving out the good stuff, of course. There is good stuff. I just can’t see it right now.

Further to the kinderlach chronicles

2011-11-19T16:20:00.003-05:00

So Deb was just here last week and we had a lovely time, and I need to blog about that, but first, some kid blogging catch-up:

1. Avtalyon is being insanely cute lately. With Barak and Iyyar, three and a half was a Very Difficult Age. With Avtalyon for whatever reason it is an Incredibly Delightful Age. Favorite story of the week:

Avtalyon has grown extremely fond of the Steggie sweater made for him by the fabulous Tanta Cecilia. He puts it on and puts up the hood and gets this hilarious look on his face that's part "Look at me, I'm so cool" and part shyness about how totally cool he is. When he puts it on I pretend to be very scared that he is in fact transforming into a terrifying dinosaur. He grins and reassures me, "But it's really yarn, right Imma?"

The other day he came into my room when I was still asleep, hysterically wailing about something I didn't immediately get (being, as I just said, asleep). I finally got it out of him that Iyyar had been scaring him. Ah.

"Avtalyon! I know! I know what you can do!"

[Hysterical wailing]

"Go get your dinosaur sweater! Then put it on and you'll be so scary, you won't be scared of ANYTHING."

[Hysterical wailing instantly stops. Avtalyon gets that awesome look 3 yos get when every cog and wheel in their head is turning madly.]

Hiccup. Hiccup. "'Kay."

Two minutes later, he is back, naked except for pullup and dinosaur sweater, which he wants me to zip up. He puts up the hood and grins, a little self-consciously. "Now I'm very scary. Right Imma?"

Right!

2. Marika has lately taken to calling roll. She wakes up in the morning, or from her nap, and wants to know where everyone is. Barak, so far as she is concerned, is either home or on the bus, since she sees him leave for the bus in the morning and return on the bus in the afternoon. "Barak bus?" she inquires, standing in her crib in footie pajamas, hair in full sheepdog mode. "Right, Barak's on the bus," I agree. "Abba dabbis?" which means--actually I have no idea what it means. Abba Shabbos? Sometimes she asks, "Abba dowdide?" which is "Abba outside?" Then she asks after Iyyar and Avtalyon, or hears them, at which point she crows their names. Then, of course, she wants to get dressed, which requires pigtails ("Kuku! Kuku yeah?") and of course shoes ("Whoojh!")

3. A few weeks ago, on Succot, we went at night to see the succahs on Yaffo Street. We were on the bus just as it started to get dark, and I entertained Avtalyon by telling him to watch the lights "pop on." The streetlights are on light sensors so they go on when it gets dark and don't necessarily all go on at once, so it's fun, if you are three, to see this happen. Now Iyyar has associated lights popping on with night, and last week, at about 3 am, while I was working, he suddenly burst out of bed. I saw him walk past my door and came out to see what he was doing. He looked at me with those huge bottomless dark eyes of his and said, with a lot of expressive hand gestures and talking very fast,

"Imma I just needa look out the windows to see if the lights are on outside and if it's night."

"Okay, go ahead."

Two minutes later, with even more expressive hand-waving:

"Yes they are so it's definitely the night. Also! The moon! Kay Imma?"

"'Kay. Can you go back to bed now?"

Vigorous nodding. "Yeah."

Thirty seconds later:

"Imma, c'you tuck me in please?"

I could. And did. Of course.

4. Barak is really seriously reading now. Last night I started reading Charlotte's Web to the boys, after I put Marika to bed. I got up to chapter four before bedtime. Barak asked if he could take it to bed with him and I said yes. He was still busy reading when I wanted to go to sleep so I said he could keep reading, but please to go to sleep when he felt tired.

Ha.

Next morning, he was in bed with Iyyar, and inspection of the brand-new paperback made me very suspicious that he had read the entire thing. Suspicion was strengthened when he didn't wake up till 10 am, and then only because his brothers were in the room being loud.

"Barak, did you read the whole book last night?"

"No. I didn't read the last chapter."

"How far did you read? What happened."

"Charlotte died." Pause. "I was crying and so I went to bed."

Oy!

"Did you read the last page?"

"Yeah. All her children and grandchildren were Wilbur's friends after that. But Charlotte died."

"Why don't you read the last chapter now?"

"Okay."

He went off and read it.

He's seven and a half and he read almost all of Charlotte's Web in an evening. I'm impressed.

5. Hebrew reading, however, doesn't seem to be going as well. He's got 5 hours a week of tutoring, and his teacher is not terribly positive. She says things like, "He's a sweet boy who wants to learn" and "He needs a lot of help." Which, unfortunately, I can't really give him, because a lot of his homework is over my head. Anything that's regular second-grade--math, reading, workbook stuff--I can do. But half his day is religious studies, and do you know what he gets for Chumash (Bible) homework? A page with the pasuk (verse), name and number, and a list of eight or ten questions to be answered in full sentences. So he's supposed to look it up, read it, and answer them all. He can't do it and I can't either. So what happens is he goes up to the bais medrash with Mr. Bigfoot for night seder and usually they manage to get through half of it, but it's really hard. I need to get Barak into reading in Hebrew the way he's into reading in English, but don't know how. Eitan the Great is really not available enough; comic books are good but he mostly just looks at the picture. I think he'll get there eventually, but in the meantime don't want him falling even further behind.

6. Iyyar. Iyyar is... well.

Iyyar is doing much better than he was doing six months ago. That's where I should start. He is behaving better, he likes school, he tells me he loves his gan. The episodes of "nobody home" are fewer, but they are still there; the listening is there more often than not, but "not" is still pretty often. I talked to his teacher yesterday and she agreed with my feeling that he is not going to be able to deal with a regular first-grade classroom. She doesn't know what the problem is any more than I do, but we both feel it's a combination of attention and emotional issues that feed off each other. We, meaning Mr. Bigfoot and I, had our first meeting with the hitpaychut ha'yeled (child development) psychologist last week; the second appointment, with me and Iyyar, is next Wednesday, as in a week and a half from now. The psychologist was sure just from what we had told her that he would need OT but told us it could takes weeks to months to get it started; I told this to his ganenet on Friday and she had the same reaction I did. "No! No! Not okay! He needs help NOW." Which I agree with but I don't know how we can hurry anything along. I'm going to call them this week and ask the psychologist to call the ganenet, which she had already said she would do (but hasn't done yet). I'm not sure she'll do it, but at least I can get her full name and phone number for the ganenet to call her.

The ganenet (whose name is Michal--I might as well give her a name at this point) was very upbeat and said "You know, by Purim he could be a different kid, you never know..." but was saying the same things I was--I just don't know what's going on with him, I don't know what the problem is and I don't know how to help. She said, and this was really good to hear, that he is OK with the other kids. It's just with adults that he gets this deer-in-the-headlights look. And I really do think that a lot of that was from last year, from feeling that he was in trouble or doing something wrong all the time, and developing these really problematic coping mechanisms--the making faces, the dancing around and yelling, the impulsive behavior, the throwing things. He does it less now but he still does it, even at home. And it takes so little to set him off, especially if he's tired or stressed to begin with. It's almost like flipping a switch. You can see it happening--the switch from "Iyyar is here" to "nobody is home." And once it happens, it's almost impossible to talk to him.

So there is a lot to be done here, and it's kind of frustrating that it is all happening so slowly when he needs help NOW. Also, not knowing what kind of an environment he will need next year throws a major monkey wrench into our attempts at planning. If he needs a "kita katana," which is what seems the most likely, then that really limits the number of places we can go--although the community that was on the top of our list to begin with does have one, which could be really perfect if it works out. I'm going out there next week to visit and talk with the principal, who I'm told has excellent English so that will be a big help.

In the meantime, he is in a good place. Michal is amazing. She likes him a lot and she wants to help; she has a ton of patience and she communicates with me. Whenever Mr. Bigfoot or I pick him up, we at least make eye contact with a "How did today go?" Usually she indicates that it was a good day, and if not, she'll stop and give details. But he can have several good days and then a day that is Not Good at All, and it takes so, so little to set him off and it is so, so hard to bring him back out. I told Michal on Friday what I'm most worried about--that he'd get into a regular class with a regular teacher like Barak had last year, act up somehow, and get publicly told off in the way that was standard in Barak's class--for example, being made to sit in the corner. That, I told Michal, would just be the end for Iyyar, and she agreed and said exactly what I was going to say next, "He'd never learn again in that room." Right.

I just want to fix things for him. I know it's not that easy. I just wish I had some better idea of what to do.

7. OK, can't end on that note. So how about a picture? Of some yarn? Because I now have... a wheel!

Idle curiosity

2011-10-29T18:36:00.002-04:00

So, any readers who have had babies in Israel and want to tell me where they gave birth and what their experience was like?

See, here's the thing. My sister-in-law just had a baby (mazal tov!) last week. I went out to visit her a few times before she was discharged from Shaarei Tzedek. And the postpartum nurses? They were MEAN. Not just gruff or typical Israeli, but actually mean.

See, here's the other thing. If you haven't picked up on this, I have a really, really thin skin. It is very easy to hurt my feelings. It is very easy to make me feel bad. Call it a personality flaw or moral weakness or whatever you want, but I don't think I can change it at this point. And when I am about to have a baby, or am in the process of having a baby, or have just had a baby, I absolutely totally cannot deal with anyone being mean to me. At all.

So there's Hadassa. And there's the natural birthing center at Hadassa, which is pretty pricy. There are doulas. But there is no getting past that in Israel, the person who will deliver your baby is almost certainly going to be someone you have never ever seen before. And will absolutely positively not be the lovely midwives I love and trust who delivered my last 3 kids.

Anyone have any experience to share?

Just, you know, wondering. Idle curiosity. Of course.

Positive

2011-10-22T18:34:00.002-04:00

Hey, guess what? This blog post is going to be entirely 100% positive and optimistic! (she says, determinedly).

I feel it's time.

1. School starts again tomorrow! Yay! Everyone is ready. Avtalyon and Iyyar have been asking when they are going back to gan. Every morning for at least the last week, Avtalyon has gotten up in the morning and immediately asked me, "Right we don't have gan today?" in a manner of resignation. Iyyar out-and-out said he wanted to go back to gan. And Marika, for the last few days, has been pulling her backpack off its hook, bringing it to me to put on her shoulders, and banging on the door yelling, "Dowdide! Dowdide!"

She's subtle, that one.

2. The kids are being really sweet lately. Not much fighting at all over break, and a lot of really nice helpful behavior. A couple of times I got them involved in all-family laundryfests; I sat on the couch folding and directing and it all got put away faster than it would have done if I'd done it myself. Friday everyone helped clean up for Shabbos (except for Marika, whose contribution was not getting in the way too terribly much). Barak is now old enough to be seriously helpful. He knows where things go, he knows (more or less) how to fold things, he enjoys helping.

3. My sister-in-law had a baby girl! She is gorgeous and perfect and so sweet. And she was born in the hospital that is walking distance to us (if you're feeling energetic--I admit I took the bus). I went out and visited her a couple of times and then went over to help her get home, so she wouldn't have to shlep her stuff downstairs/put in a carseat by herself. It was really nice to be able to do this, and even though she got discharged later than planned on an erev chag, it all worked out. I took her home by cab, went to the store with her daughter to get diapers (she got sent home with 4), and then hopped into the bus that was right there to go to the shuk. It was the fastest through trip imaginable: I hadn't had time to do much cooking so I just blew through there buying fruit, salad fixings, yerushalmi kugel (yum!), olives and so on. On the way out the exit was crowded so I turned right to go out through the open part of the shuk, passing, on the way, one of the candy stalls, where I saw--are you sitting down--Cadbury Dairy Milk with Caramel.

Bliss!

I only bought one, which was good because it disappeared pretty quickly. I did have help. But not too much. :)

4. One of the really nice things about living here is how much freedom I can give the kids to do things on their own. Within the campus for all three boys, and even outside it, to a certain degree, for Barak. On Wednesday morning as I was heading out to the hospital, my husband mentioned that he didn't have any drinks. He really likes those kind of gross (to me) Spring/Prigat drinks, the kind that are 5% juice and 95% sugar water with coloring. I can't stand them and won't go near them, but for him it's just not Shabbos/yom tov without a liter and a half of colored sugar water. The timing was going to be awkward: I was heading out at quarter to eleven, I'd spent the morning at home with the kids frantically cooking, and I was going to get home late. Mr. Bigfoot wasn't into the idea of taking all four of them to the store (understandable).

But! We had a helper! I got Barak to grab an empty backpack and we went down to the makolet (minimarket), which is right across from the bus stop, together; we got Abba his drink and we got challah for the chag and I got Twizzlers for the kids, because I'd promised them candy for the holiday (I NEVER buy candy ordinarily, with the occasional exception of chocolate, so this was a Big Deal). I put it in Barak's bag, saw him safely across the street, and waved goodbye; he walked home by himself. Because here, he CAN.

5. Avtalyon is being insanely cute lately. The facial expressions alone crack me up. Mr. Bigfoot took all the kids up to shul for the Simchat Torah festivities. Forty minutes later, Avtalyon was deposited home by Barak. "Avtalyon, why did you come back?"

With much regretful facial squinching, "I hadda come home. It was too much running around."

"Was everyone running around?"

Shrug shrug shrug. "The girls were not running around. They were just sitting in some chairs."

I guess you hadda be there. Trust me. It was very cute. He is also completely into Batman these days. Grandma E. sent three pieces of Batman fabric, conveniently cut and serged into cape size. Avtalyon has appropriated all three: one as bottom sheet, one as top sheet, one as pillow cover. He is especially pleased with the arrangement when he can get into bed in a Batman shirt and Batman underwear. "I gotta FREE Batmans!" Captain America and Iron Man are also big these days. If you ask him, he will tell you that they are friends.

6. The office is currently not a trashed wreck. I have been really vigilant about making the kids clean it up. Also, at Rosh Hashana they got back all the Playmobil/Lego that got "tooken away" over the course of the year when it was left out on the floor overnight. I impressed on them that next Rosh Hashana is a VERY LONG WAY AWAY and how sad would it be to lose your Clone Troopers or whatever they are for FIFTY-TWO WEEKS? Very sad, they agreed. I see no Lego at all on the floor right now.

7. The lice were gross but seem to have been dealt with. Also, perk of lice: ordinarily one does not do laundry during the intermediate days of Succot. However, due to lice we got a pass on this one, and merrily washed everything in the house on hot multiple times. Result: no mountain of laundry to deal with post-chag. As Avtalyon would say: yay.

8. Marika is as always immensely entertaining. She's also getting way more articulate. "Thank you," which until yesterday was "Di di Imma!" is suddenly, "Tityou Imma!" Or "Tityou Barak!" or "Tityou Abba!" as appropriate. The other day she said thank you to Mr. Bigfoot and said "Tityou Imma!" by mistake. Then she corrected herself. :)

9. Mr. Bigfoot is working now. He gives one shiur at a local yeshiva high school with an Anglo program; he is also doing a significant amount of tutoring and is up to about 9 hours a week. He's also been hired to do some art work, which is a nice change. It's not a lot of money, but hopefully it will all lead to something more; in the meantime, he's enjoying it and it's something.

10. We bought a couch cover from a departing family last spring, along with an old armchair and a cover for it. This has made the living room much more cozy. There is enough room for everyone to sit, if squishily; the couch is a lot more comfortable now than it was. It's surprisingly nice for napping purposes. :)

11. And! Last but certainly not least: Deb is coming and she is BRINGING MY WHEEL! It was mailed by the person I bought it from on Friday and should be there by next Thursday. Deb will be here the Thursday after that, so if all goes well, in less than two short weeks I will again have a spinning wheel in residence. And that, of course, will fix everything.

Blah

2011-10-16T15:55:00.004-04:00

I sat down ready to blog about all kinds of things but for some reason when I clicked into the little Blogger box that says, "Title," my fingers put in, "Blah." Not sure why. Am I feeling blah and not realizing it? Or is it just a nod to the speeches I should be writing at. this. very. moment?

Anyway...

1. Lice. We have lice. I saw something horrible walking around in Barak's hair not a week after an obsessive full-family lice combing turned up nothing. Not only did he have them, but so did Iyyar. AND SO DID I. Dealing with lice in three little boys with crew cuts is unpleasant but mostly manageable. Dealing with lice when you yourself have waist-length hair that is fine, wavy, and prone to intense tangling is entirely different. I hacked off six inches before I even started and I think the lice comb pulled out at least half of what was left. Ew. Ew ew ew. Also, massive laundry.

2. I told Deb, when we were on the phone booking her tickets (to come! and visit me! in two and a half weeks woohoo!) that I planned to clean the whole apartment before she got here. My friends, she LAUGHED. She did. I take this as a challenge. Operation Get the Damn House Clean Already, 5772, has already begun: our bedroom is totally clean (I did that first because it's the one least likely to get messed up) and the closet is cleaned out and organized. Marika's room is next (I'm doing this in descending order of how likely something is to stay clean once I've cleaned it.) Next is the office, which, no matter how perfect I get it, is always trashed within 48 hours; the kitchen, well... yeah. I can do that the morning she gets here, I guess.

3. Succos! Succos is fun. The kids are all off school for two and a half weeks, which is OK because Mr. Bigfoot is off too. I am not even a little bit off work, however, which makes it all kind of exhausting. Also, the yom tov prep this year is... well.

I've sort of talked in general terms about where we live and the setup here, although I think if you travel in the same circles I do you've figured it out already. If you haven't, we're in kollel housing, which in our case is one large apartment building with about 30 apartments. Last year, there were two buildings, about 30 families and 4 single guys, one of whom got married during the year. This year, funding has been cut significantly. We are no longer getting meals at a dining hall, and we are paying our own utilities; this has been replaced by a stipend of $250/month which for us represents a little more than what we spend on a week's groceries. Stipends are the same regardless of family size. Not surprisingly, this change meant that far fewer families are here this year, and many more single guys, who can almost, if not entirely, make ends meet with a free apartment and that amount of money. Last year, the family: single guy ratio was 10:1. This year, it's close to 1:1.

Now. Why is this a problem for us? It's a problem for us because in general the expectation in past years has been that the single guys eat by the families on Shabbos. There was a dining hall during the week, and it closed on Shabbos, and then the families invited the single guys over. Last year, with the 10:1 ratio, it was no problem. This year, the single guys are mostly still eating in the dining hall--they can pay to do it and it's just about what they get with their stipend. However, the expectation still is that they will eat by the families for Shabbos. These days, that is harder. And this Succos, there are only four families around and seven single guys and also some other guys from the yeshiva we share our campus with, and a whole bunch of them just kind of showed up to the succah meals for which four families (read: four women) were cooking, expecting to get fed.

Some had RSVP'd. Some had not. Some had signed up on the Google Doc to bring stuff, but even those who had did not bring enough and did not seem to see why this was a problem. (If you signed up to bring X number of plastic forks, plates, table covers, grape juice, cake, and a woman says to you, "Where is it?" and you say, "I think there are still some forks in that bag" and walk off, she will want to kill you. FYI.) So by Shabbos lunch, when there were NINETEEN people, half of them single guys who had not contributed in any way to the meal, sitting there expecting to get fed... I was not pleased. The other women were not pleased.

And it's complicated, you know, because--well on the one hand it isn't complicated at all. They're schnorring and they shouldn't do that. But on the other hand, this is always the way it's been and no one has sat them down and explained that they can't expect the families to feed them anymore. And who's going to do it? And there's also this cultural expectation that most of them were raised in, that the women deal with the food. AND there's the cultural expectation that it's a mitzva to host meals, and while most--really, all--of us generally enjoy doing that, none of us can afford to feed half the kollel, and we don't like feeling taking advantage of.

Anyway. It kind of put a damper on my yom tov, wondering what kind of a mess was going to be in the succah and how many guys would be at the next meal and whether there would be enough food and plastic goods etc. And seeing 19 people there to eat the 24 rolls of stuffed cabbage I'd made, expecting 12 people. And knowing that I'd signed up for almost all of the meat, to be sure that there wasn't any with soy, and had ergo spent about twice what anyone else did.

Yeah. I think next time there's a communal meal, we'll be passing. And you know what? It makes me not want to host the single guys anymore. Even though individually, I really like them, and they're not really doing anything wrong. Because in order to keep inviting them and not resenting it, I'd have to sit them down and say, "Stop schnorring" and I'm just... not going to be the only one to do that.

3. I am trying really hard not to panic about a bunch of stuff. For example: I really want to move. I know I can't move now, but I want to at least plan/prepare for moving this coming summer. However, in order to do that I have to, you know, KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING. Which I don't. Because Mr. Bigfoot doesn't have a job for next year, and we STILL do not know what is going to be with his teacher's license because--wait for it--the person who was supposed to give the final answer for what he was going to be required to do to get it, went on vacation the day before he'd promised to write the list out.

You got that right.

In the meantime, Mr. Bigfoot was offered work--poorly paid and part-time, but with potential. And he took it, because he wasn't about to say no to work because it might conflict with the program he doesn't yet know whether or not he'll be doing! But now... oh you see the problem already?

So we don't know, and it's more uncertainty than I can deal with.

4. Our condo in America. I'd tell you, but then I'd really have a full-blown panic attack and probably not be able to finish this post. So let's just pretend it's not there, mmmmmkay?

5. Yesterday, in the middle of the lice and the laundry and the aftermath of the whole yom tov food debacle, and the subsequent flying emails from all the politely enraged kollel wives, I sat down at my computer and bought a spinning wheel. Because really, what else was there to do?

It's a used Ashford traditional, which was my first wheel about, uh, oh wow... 16 years ago?! It's mass-produced, functional, and solidly built; it will survive the trip here in a box and I will again be able to spin. And somehow, I think that this will make things better.

Now, rationally, this makes no sense. I have almost no time to knit so why would I be able to find the time to spin? I don't really have anywhere to put a wheel, although that I think I can manage. But the wheel, somehow, is about normalcy. It's just something stable and settled and the way things used to be when we had our own place. I can't bring over my Hall and I don't know when I'll be able to, but a Trad... it'll be something.

6. Huh. I'm starting to see why I titled this, "Blah."

7. We had a really fun evening tonight. (I'm trying!) Took the kids on the bus, and attempted to take them on the train downtown, only to find as soon as we got off the bus (which would also have taken us exactly where we were heading, only not as exciting-ly) that the train was ON STRIKE. Didn't it just... start running two months ago? Anyway, we got back on the bus, and went to Ben Yehuda and all had Moshiko, and then walked down Yaffo as it got dark and saw all the succahs out and the people eating in them, and went down to Kikar Safra and went into the big giant city succah and saw the mayor (hi Nir!) who was the only guy there in a suit and tie, and then came back up Yaffo and got cookies to eat in the Holy Bagel succah, which was the only one that passed Mr. Halachic Man's test (if you saw a guy tonight squatting down next to a succah and measuring it with his fists, that was my husband.)

It was fun. The kids had fun. I did too. It was really special, being out there on a balmy October night with thousands of other people and dozens of succahs in Jerusalem. I know I'm sounding cranky now, but it really was.

8. My husband just walked in from the succah and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was blogging. He said, "You've got five minutes. Then go to sleep." He's right, of course.

(Now he's looking over my shoulder to see if I made him sound mean. I didn't! See!)

Trying to think of some good way to wrap this up but I can't, because he's right, I'm really really tired. Going to bed now, in hopes of better Perspective in the morning.

Ouch

2011-10-05T17:33:00.003-04:00

I hear that there are certain traits that are considered common to oldest children. I guess you could find different people saying different things on this topic, but Barak, for whatever reason--nature or nurture--has always been a soother. One of our family lines, when Mr. Bigfoot is getting a little too stressed about his comps or class prep or the invisible airborne particles of chicken soup that might have landed in his yogurt, is, "It's okay, Abba." I actually can't remember the full origin story of this line, but when Barak was around two and a half or three and Mr. Bigfoot was getting worked up about something, Barak came up to him, patted him on the leg, and said, soothingly, "Iss okay, Abba. Iss just fine."

Iyyar is the same way in a lot of circumstances, but it comes from a different place somehow. Iyyar is really sensitive to other people's feelings and is upset when other people are upset; if the baby is crying, he is really alarmed, and once when he was in Yehudis's playgroup and Yehudis's baby was crying upstairs (with her grandmother--she was sick), Iyyar followed Yehudis around all morning urgently trying to make her aware that the baby was CRYING and shouldn't she DO something about this?! Barak, at this age anyway, does not seem over sensitive socially and brushes off slights from other kids; Iyyar is deeply troubled by them. Right now this seems to be the biggest issue at school--other kids not playing with/not talking to him, and his inability to figure out how to deal with this constructively. We're working on it, but right now it's hard.

Anyway. That is not where I meant to go with this post, but Iyyar and gan are really on my mind right now. What I meant to blog about was my kitchen.

My kitchen is really hard.

Most days it doesn't bother me too much. I'm used to it. I have a two-burner solid ring hot plate and two toaster ovens, a dairy one I brought back from the States and a parve one I bought here. You really can do a lot with that. But it's not easy and it's not so much fun, especially when you have almost no counter space for prep work. And what's kind of extra-specially frustrating is that now that we live here, there are so, so many good ingredients to work with. So much good produce. So much amazing dairy. The shuk! For Rosh Hashana, I didn't do anything fancy, but I stayed up all night (literally--till 9 am) the night before making banana bread, carrot kugel, chicken soup, matzo balls, salad, garlic mashed potatoes, chocolate cake and schnitzel. Then on Shabbos we went to the home of friends who used to live where we live, and moved last summer to an apartment with a real (read: normal) kitchen. She has been glorying in this kitchen, which is nothing fancy but to me is the stuff of dreams: a gas stove! A normal (Israeli-sized) oven! Sinks not full of mold! Counters! Cabinets! And lunch was amazing. Amazing yummy vegetable salads, amazing yummy chicken and carrots. So so good.

A few weeks ago, for whatever reason, I just really really wanted to cook. I found a new recipe and I made meatloaf. I doubled it and put it in a 9 x 13. I covered it and put it in my toaster oven.

And the rack crashed to the floor of the oven because it was designed for toast, not the weight of a 9 x 13 pan full of meat.

The kids were in bed but Mr. Bigfoot was around, and I just lost it. I screamed. "I hate this kitchen! I hate it! I hate it so much!" The entire screaming outburst lasted about fifteen seconds but it is not my usual thing. Mr. Bigfoot was alarmed. "Just one more year. Then you'll b'ezrat Hashem have a kitchen again."

Just one more year.

It's taking me a while, but this is where I started: last week, I decided I wanted to make challah. I haven't made challah since we've been here and for whatever reason I just wanted to do it. So I broke out a recipe (I couldn't find my usual one--I made it so often in ye olde country that I had it memorized, and here I'd forgotten it and had to get it from a friend) and I made a half-sized batch of challah.

I kneaded by hand. (I had to move the burners to the top of the fridge to make space.) I let it rise. I rolled out strands and braided them. I gave each kid a glob of dough to make into a roll. I baked them.

And.

The oven is so small that the outsides of the challah are too close to the heating elements. The crust was hard and dry, the inside not quite baked through. It wasn't my usual recipe--not as rich, not as sweet. The kids were SO excited to see me bake challah. They wanted SO much for it to be "my" challah. But it just... wasn't.

Iyyar: "Imma? Why is this challah all hard and not sweet?"

Me: "I'm sorry, sweetie. It's because the oven is so small. The challah is really close to the heating element, and that means that the outside of the challah gets too hot and kind of dried out. I need a bigger oven."

Iyyar looks crushed. Barak looks up and all of a sudden his eyes get all big and encouraging.

"Iyyar! Do you know what? One day, we're going to have an apartment with a real kitchen! With a stove! A real stove that Imma can cook on! And then she'll make challah and bagels! Do you remember Imma used to make bagels? And cookies! She used to make cookies too! And then we'll also have a bathtub!"

I wanted to cry. Partly because he was being so good and brave about it, and so clearly trying to make us both feel better; partly because what is wrong here that I can't bake cookies anymore, and my kids are dreaming about one day having a bathtub?

Just one more year. Of course, first Mr. Bigfoot needs to find a job. Things have been looking moderately encouraging on that front. He's been picked up by a local yeshiva high school as a regular tutor for their Anglo olim boys, and is now up to 9 hours a week of Gemara bagrut tutoring. The pay isn't great, but if he can get enough hours it will add up. He's got some cartooning work, which again, pay isn't great but hopefully it will lead to something. And he's waiting to hear back from the Misrad haChinuch about what, exactly, he's going to have to do to get his Israeli teacher's license. Ideally, he'll be able to finish all the requirements this year, although we won't know until they tell us and this has been dragging on for months already--since before Pesach.

In the meantime, Marika is settled into gan, Avtalyon is enjoying his new gan, and Iyyar, well, Iyyar is trying his best. Barak really likes his school, although homework is a struggle and he doesn't love his gym teacher.

And me? I'm still here, plugging away. Cooking some semblance of dinner nightly.

Iss okay, Imma. Iss just fine.

Disjointed

2011-10-04T03:51:00.003-04:00

Since I got back from the US, what was it, almost three weeks ago now? I have not been able to sleep. Like, REALLY not able to sleep. Like awake until 4 or 5 AM, and then falling asleep during the day at inconvenient and inappropriate times. I wasn't like this before, so I have to assume it's the jetlag, which technically I "should" be over by now--but the thing is, it's really hard to adjust back when I'm not really adjusting back. I'm still working on US time. I'm still going to sleep (for a nap) not too far off the time I would have gone to bed in America. So it's not crazy that my body thinks that my nighttime sleep is the nap and my morning sleep is the real sleep, and doesn't let me wake up conscious and refreshed after only three or four hours.

Anyway. Right now I am in an empty house, which I have been cleaning up; I just ate some breakfast and have a sinkful of dishes soaking in hot water. Quick blog post, then dishes, then nap. So: a list?

1. Did you hear about El Al's new baggage policy? As in, only one 50 lb bag per passenger?! Wasn't it only three or four years ago that you got 2 70 lb bags? All of the European carriers have been doing this for a while but I think a lot of people, myself certainly among them, were shocked to see it from El Al. Because the people who are most loyal to El Al are the people who come frequently, who have family here, who tend to bring a lot of stuff. And the kids who come for a year for seminary and yeshiva, and bring a lot of stuff. And the people like me, who go back for work and regularly come back with a lot of stuff.

There was a time when I would have shrugged and said, who needs more than 50 lb of luggage? But now? I DO. This last trip I came back with two 49.5 lb bags and had to leave a laundry basket full of stuff that didn't fit by Yehudis. OK, some of it I didn't strictly need. The Tootsie Rolls, for example. And my policy with these trips is to let each kid make one food and one non-food request, and it happened to be that Iyyar and Avtalyon requested soy-free hot dogs and bologna, and Barak requested Rice Chex (!!) so that took up a lot of space. But the rest of it? Six pairs of kids' leather Shabbos shoes of good quality and reasonable price, a combination nonexistent here, for my sister-in-law (a gift from her father-in-law, that he ordered and had sent to me). Scary underwear for the boys. A huge box full of kids' clothes from the last time Lands' End did a $40 off any order of $100 sale. Tons and tons of Hanes socks, which last longer than any socks I've come across here, for the boys. Sneakers for my own boys. Books I needed for work, English books for the kids. Chanuka presents--toys that will not disintegrate into choking hazards after a few days and that cost less than a week's groceries. School supplies, good quality at a third the price of what you see here. Diaper cream, a third the price it is here. Tums, ditto. Aquaphor, not available at any price. The list goes on. And no, mail is not an option, for a number of reasons: exorbitant cost, unreliability, customs fees among them.

El Al! Don't you realize what this is going to do to your customer loyalty? Because I for one am going to go with any airline that isn't Turkish that will let me have two bags. Is it really worth it? Does it really save you that much money? How about charging something reasonable for the second bag--say, $50 or $75?

Grumble.

2. Marika is getting so verbal. She says so much! "Thank you" is no longer "ta ta" but "dangoo Imma!" She loves plums and calls all plums apples. She calls all bread pita ("deeda!") As of today, she didn't cry when I dropped her off at Carmit and was even excited on the way over ("Mee!") And she brings me her clothes and shoes when it's time to get dressed, and even asks me to put kukus in her hair ("dyoudyou!") and, if she finds a barrette, demands that as well. Asking her to stay still while I comb her hair and put it in pigtails, however, is a different story entirely.

3. Her favorite thing to do these days is look out the window. Either she climbs up on Iyyar's bed to look out toward the playground, or gets up on her little yellow chair to look out the living room window (over the windowboxes containing dead tomato plants that I really need to deal with. Soon.) She loves to holler Barak's name out the window, even when he patently is not out there. I think she is hoping it might help, somehow.

4. School and Iyyar are sort of touch and go right now. He comes home and says other kids aren't playing with him. I want to think this isn't true but I don't know. The teacher says he hasn't made friends yet but gave me a list of names of kids she think have potential. Unfortunately the one he likes best is in tzaharon (afternoon daycare) but Succot is coming so hopefully we'll manage some playdates then. In the meantime, he is much much better behaviorally at home. MUCH. I still see things that worry me--the singing-while-eating, the in-his-own-worldness, how hard it is for him to stay on task long enough to just get dressed--but I don't want to smack him fifty times a day anymore, or, usually, even once. The degree to which this is an improvement, for my own mental health along with everything else, cannot be overstated.

5. I cleaned up our bedroom. Thoroughly, including a full closet clean-out. It is a little embarrassing what a mammoth undertaking this was, but it was so satisfying once done. Now I want to do all the bedrooms. Cleaning mojo is not a thing to be wasted, and I have a visit from Deb coming up to motivate me, so let's see how this one goes.

6. Oh! And Deb is coming!! This is quite exciting. She is also planning on coming back with me when I come back from the trip that is supposed to be happening next month (that I still don't have dates for), which is also exciting. I am hoping she allows me to hijack at least some of her luggage allowance for books, yarn and Tootsie Rolls.

7. Speaking of ADD (I wasn't? Oh. Sorry) I think I may have mentioned that Mr. Bigfoot has a pretty raging case of it himself, which has never been diagnosed or treated but is blindingly obvious to anyone who lives with him or works with him for any length of time. He's developed coping strategies for some of it, and I sort of kick him along for some of it, but there's no pretending it's not an issue. Someone recommended to him an herbal ADD remedy (gingko, crataegus, scutelleria, verbana etc.) that is supposed to help and he started with it last week. So far, it doesn't seem to be doing anything but it hasn't been that long. Does anyone have any experience with using that? For adults or for kids?

8. The rash. Oh dear. The rash has been getting... worse. And I looked back at my blog and yes I did have this with Marika. How did I forget that? (Probably got lost in there somewhere with the shingles and the exploding toaster ovens and the month I waddled around at 5 cm.) Yehudis said, take a good probiotic. That never hurts, but... I'm not sure what else to do. I can't smear ANYTHING on it right now--it sends me straight through the roof. Oh for a bathtub...

9. What should I make for dinner? Ideas? Anyone? There is that last pack of soy-free hot dogs...

10. Because shabbos has effectively been canceled this week due to Yom Kippur, I decided to make chicken soup (really turkey soup, since I discovered how well turkey necks work for soup and how very very cheap they are) on Sunday, for dinner and the break-fast. Usually, when I make chicken soup, I do all the prep on Thursday night and go to bed with a pot full of vegetables and a cheesecloth bag full of bones and greenery in the fridge. Then in the morning when the kids leave for school, I add the water and put it on the stove, so that by the time the kids are home I am at the matzo ball stage. This time, I started cutting up vegetables at about 1 PM, aiming for dinner at 6. Wow. BIG mistake. Avtalyon saw me, Iyyar saw me, Barak saw me, and I think someone asked me when oh when oh when the kitchensoupandmatzoballs would be ready at least every five minutes for five hours straight. I think it was just too much for them to see the pot and smell the soup and be told, nope, sorry, not ready yet, allllll afternoon. That's the last time I do something like that for a very very long time.

Time to wash dishes. Thanks for not giving up on me, even though I don't post so regularly these days. I mean to, I want to, it's just, you know... I'm a little busy.

I was going to write email to Grandma E

2011-09-24T15:24:00.004-04:00

but then I figured I might as well just put everything I was going to tell her in a blog post instead. Except in a list with numbers, since it's a blog post.

1. Right before I left for the airport to come back home, I found a Priority Mail box on Yehudis's porch, with Grandma E's return address. It was full of cute little girl dresses in sizes 2T and 3T for Marika. We put one of them on her today, a long-sleeved striped T-shirt dress with a crossover (surplice? is that what they call it? top) and little ruffles along the neck and waist. It might possibly be the cutest thing ever, and Marika, in pigtails and little pink sandals, might possibly have been the world's cutest little girl.

She understands so much of what we say now. Mr. Bigfoot kept saying all day how cute the dress was, and at one point when he said it she looked up at him with a big grin and her hands on her skirt. "Dwess!" When I get her dressed, she is there like lightning, and if I don't have her shoes to hand, she dashes off and finds them for me. And then runs to Mr. Bigfoot and shows off how pretty she looks. Seriously. She is barreling out of babyhood at shocking speed, that one.

2. A few weeks ago I got a copy of the Schoolhouse Rock CD. Maybe there's more than one, but this is the "best of" that has such classic hits as Conjunction Junction, Interjections, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. My personal favorite is "Interjections! Show excitement! Or Emotion! They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong." Marika's favorite is "Zero My Hero." Except she pronounces it, "Dzeewoh!"

3. Iyyar's ganenet gave us the filled-out six-page evaluation form for us to take to get him a develomental exam/therapy. She checked almost every box and commented on everything we've seen in him plus some things we haven't. And she made it sound so... dire. I mean, I understand that there is a strong motivation for her to do this, because if she said the reassuring things that I, his mother, want to hear ("He's fine and will surely outgrow all of this,") well, then he wouldn't be getting any help. One of the things I noticed was that she said, "He hasn't made any friends in gan yet, probably because of the language issue." Last year, one of the things Iyyar told me all the time was that he didn't have friends, nobody played with him, the other kids were mean etc. Both the ganenot totally and absolutely denied that this was true. They said he had friends and he played nicely with the other kids, and that all kids said things like this sometime. And then they'd say things like, "He bothers the other children so they don't want to play with him." It never made much sense, except for the overwhelming impression that whatever the problem, it was all him and not the gan.

Last week, Iyyar came home dancing and singing: "I have a friend in gan!" I dropped him off the next day and he pointed out a kid with huge payes. "That's my friend!" All was sunshine and roses. Yesterday, he came home and it was like he had regressed, not quite to last May, but maybe to July sometime. I had to ask him ten times to do anything, kept having to tell him to look at my face, kept repeating his name before he'd pay attention to me and even then didn't make eye contact. I couldn't get out of him what the problem was, until bedtime when we were cuddling in his bed together and he suddenly burst out, "I had a bad day in gan today. Nobody played with me!" Hmmm.

I'm starting to wonder about a lot of things that went on in his gan last year. And tomorrow I'm going to take a copy of the class list to his ganenet and ask which kids would be good to invite over to play during Succos break.

4. Barak's second-grade homework is already way over my head. They get a pasuk in Chumash to look up (a verse of Bible) and a list of ten questions to answer. Right now, they're doing Lech L'cha (Genesis 12). They're supposed to find the pasuk and answer the questions WITHOUT HELP. For Barak, this is not happening; his Hebrew is getting much better but he just doesn't have the vocabulary. I don't either! On Thursday, he broke out his homework and I just couldn't help him. I mean, I could have done it if I'd sat down for an hour with a dictionary and ignored all my other children, but an hour before dinnertime on Thursday it wasn't happening. I sent him up to find Abba in the beis medrash, and he came back ten minutes later saying, "Abba says I should eat dinner now and he'll help me at dinnertime." Okay, except that dinner is currently a pot full of raw vegetables and another pot of water that hasn't yet boiled for pasta. So after dinner the two of them sat down together and did two of the ten questions before he (Abba) had to leave for night seder.

Barak was upset. "I have to do TEN questions Imma! That's my homework!" "Barak, it's OK. Abba's going to call your morah and ask her what to do." So after night seder, Abba called Morah Tzipora and explained the issue: he's only home for an hour at night, Barak can't do it on his own, what do we do? She said, it's ok if he only does a few of them as long as he understands what he's doing. She also said that he needs help in general; he asks for a lot of help in class and is having trouble keeping up. This isn't so surprising; Barak has, after all, only been here a year, and his Hebrew is more on the level of "He took my pencil!" and "Let's play Lego" than it is on the level of "And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land."

What to do? We talked. We could hire a tutor, but we both don't like that idea; it's good for fathers and sons to learn together. "But the only time I have is night seder." Night seder begins at 8. We looked at each other. "He's never asleep by 8 anyway. He's always reading in bed till 9 at least. He might as well be learning Torah. Is he awake now?" Yes he was, at 9:30 PM.

"Barak?"

Barak came bounding out of bed. "How would you feel about going to night seder with Abba to do your Chumash homework?"

"Instead of going to bed? Going to the bais medrash with Abba?"

"Right."

Solemnly, trying very hard to contain any unseemly excitement: "I would feel very very good about that."

5. There was going to be more to this list, but I just got a phone call with a speech I need to write RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND. So I'm off to accept an honorary degree, and I'll just have to finish this later. Stay tuned!

Ketchup

2011-09-20T14:44:00.002-04:00

So I just read back through the last few posts and realized how much I’ve left out in the last few months. A lot. Really a lot. It was a busy summer and almost none of it is reflected in the blog. So here, little and late, is some review:

1. I did ulpan last summer. I started out in bet, moved to aleph because I preferred the teacher, and learned a tremendous amount. It was great for me, and also I think really good for Mr. Bigfoot, who for the first time was spending significant quantities of time on his own every day with all or most of his children. He got a lot more confident about taking care of them, and started feeling that being alone with all four of them was a normal, not an emergency, situation. That really helped when I was out of the country last week, and was also good bonding time—now that we are back to our school schedule, he really doesn’t see much of them at all.

The problem, through, was that when I was working and doing ulpan, I was so exhausted I couldn’t function. I’d come home from ulpan and collapse and sleep for three hours. This was not a huge problem over the summer, when Mr. Bigfoot was around, but doesn’t work now that he’s back to being out of the house all afternoon. So when September rolled around and it was time for me to start ulpan gimel, it was really a dilemma. I wanted to do ulpan. I NEED to do ulpan. But it’s just too much, especially since I now am working 35 (!) hours per week, almost all at night. So I’m not doing it, and not only that but I barely have to leave campus now that I don’t need to shlep Barak anymore. I need to figure out how, exactly, I am going to avoid losing all the Hebrew I learned in the last year, because as things stand I almost certainly will.

2. Before Barak was born, a few weeks into my pregnancy I think, I started getting some itchy spots on my calves. Slowly, week by week, it spread, until I had a horrendously itchy rash over most of my legs. I went to the dermatologist, who told me it was eczema and I should use moisturizer. I did, but it didn’t help at all, and by the last two weeks, it was everywhere but my face, hands, and neck, and I was indescribably miserable—the itchiness was horrendous, there was no way not to scratch, and… yeah. Awful. But a week after Barak was born, it was gone.

A few months ago, the back of one knee got itchy. Then it spread. Then it spread all the way around my calf and then it appeared on the other one. Then it spread all the way up one leg and now it’s starting on one arm. This time it’s not pregnancy-related. So what is it? It’s unbelievably itchy. It’s also really not going away, despite all the Aquaphor I smear on it. It looks exactly like it did last time. Another dermatologist run? Or any other suggestions for things to smear on a Horrible Itchy Rash that Won’t Go Away?

3. Grandma E asked me what I missed, besides the shopping (Target! Trader Joe’s!), about America. I’ve been thinking about it. Obviously it was really nice to see my friends. I ate the things I miss here (TJ’s tomato soup!). I was totally astounded and completely unprepared when it began to rain, in the beginning of September! But I think the only thing I actually missed, that gave me a sense of “ahhhh,” to be there, was being able to talk easily to anyone I met. My Hebrew just isn’t there yet. But it’s funny—a few weeks ago I overheard a couple of Hungarian girls talking on the bus (tourists) and started chatting. And I was really struck by how simple Hebrew is, at least when compared with Hungarian (okay fine ANY language is simple when compared with Hungarian, but…) There’s just so much less to keep track of. Surely I can do this. I just need to work at it some more.

4. Iyyar’s new gan, and his new ganenet, seem very very promising. The second week of school, she pulled Mr. Bigfoot aside and said that she wanted to get him a developmental exam so he could start therapy ASAP. She noted the things we’ve seen—how it’s hard for him to focus, hard to pay attention, how he’s in constant motion. She hasn’t noticed the anxiety, and that’s reassuring, because he really has been so much less anxious lately. I can’t even describe how much better things are with him at home. The faces, the inability to talk to him because he was just on another planet and wouldn’t look at you, the running around in circles yelling at nothing—all gone. He’s still a little spacy, still kind of oblivious—he’ll never notice what I’m in the middle of when he asks for something or starts talking to me, for example, and still sometimes does things that are wildly dangerous without realizing it—but nothing that’s so far off normal for a five-year old. I’m feeling a lot more optimistic.

5. Have I mentioned the Scary Underwear? Can’t remember. Anyway, in case I didn’t:

When Barak was ready for underwear (or when I hahahaha thought he was and bought it for him), he got Sesame Street underwear. Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover etc. He liked this very much. When Iyyar was ready for underwear, he inherited Barak’s underwear, with the addition of some extra Super Grover underwear because he loved Grover. This was fine and great.

I don’t remember when, exactly, I bought Barak his first package of superhero underwear, but it must have been around age four. I don’t remember Iyyar saying much about it, but Avtalyon used to take any underwear he could find and pull it on over his diaper and even over all his clothes—I have some cute pictures of him aged 18 months or so, wearing Grover underwear over his overalls. When we came here he was still in diapers, and I brought superhero underwear (Batman, Spiderman, Justice League etc.) for Barak and Iyyar and the Sesame Street underwear for Avtalyon.

This, clearly, was an error in judgment on my part.

Because right from the beginning, when Avtalyon was out of diapers last December sometime, he resented this. He did not want Sesame Street. He wanted what his big brothers had, namely, “scary underwear.” And he was not taking no for an answer. He’d sneak it out of his brothers’ drawers when they weren’t looking, and they would get enraged. He started waking up at the crack of dawn to raid their underwear drawers before they got up, to snag the Batman underwear before they caught him. They responded to this by—you got it—hiding their underwear on high shelves that he couldn’t reach. One morning we were all woken at about 5 am by the hysterical wails of a distraught Avtalyon, the stealthy one-child Scary Underwear Liberation Front, thwarted: “I HATE Cookie Monster! Cookie Monster’s STUPID!”

I felt bad for him. Mr. Bigfoot, who better than I understands the appeal of Scary Underwear, felt bad too. So I told the other boys, “Just let him. When I go to America next time, I’ll bring back lots and lots of scary underwear. He won’t wear it out before then, and you can all have new underwear. I'll even get Star Wars if they have it.”

I was as good as my word. I bought SIX packages of scary underwear at Target. Star Wars, Captain America, Star Wars in Lego incarnation, whatever they had in the right sizes. And when I came home, I pulled them out of my bag and handed them over.

The look on his face made it all worthwhile. Mr. Bigfoot was pointing out Captain America and how he had bullets bouncing off his shield. The next day, Avtalyon bounced out of bed, naked except for underwear, beaming, and danced over to me to show off his tush. “Look! It’s Captain America! Dere are bullets bouncing off his shield!”

6. Last thing: When I was away, Mr. Bigfoot emailed me, “Remind me when you get back to tell you the cutest thing ever.” I wasn’t here for this, obviously, but I can picture it. Apparently one morning Mr. Bigfoot woke up to find a sad, sad, sad Avtalyon, sitting in the corner of the hall, knees up to his chest, naked except for socks.

“What’s wrong, Avtalyon? Why are you looking so sad?”

“I can’t finda Hulk shirt.”

“Why don’t you just wear a regular undershirt?”

"I needa HULK shirt!”

“Why?”

Lips atremble, face awash in tragedy, “If I had a Hulk shirt, I be a little bit powerful.”

Loud and clear

2011-09-17T19:00:00.003-04:00

One of Marika's favorite words is "empty," which she pronounces in three syllables: "ah-ba-dee!" She'll pick up a cup off the floor, inspect it, and offer it to me delightedly: "Ah-ba-dee!" Or she'll take her own cup of water, dump the contents on her high chair tray, hold it up and comment cheerily, "Ah-ba-dee!" It's very cute.

This is the necessary information for the Cute Baby Story of last week. As you may already know I went to the States last week for about five days, all by myself, for work. No kids, no baby, just me. It was very strange but ultimately not as bad as I'd feared--I didn't have a nervous breakdown and everyone here managed just fine without me. Starting a week or two before I left, I was trying to get Marika to ease off on the nursing, knowing that I was heading to the States without her for nearly a week and I wanted her to be done nursing before I left. We got down to one nurse a day for about a week, then went two or three days without any. I thought, okay, that's that, but then on Thursday night I went in to check on her and of course she instantly woke up, stood up in her crib and stretched her arms out to me to be picked up. I can never resist this, so I sat down with her in the rocking chair--and she looked at me brightly and started pounding my chest suggestively with her fists.

"You want to nurse?"

"Yeah!"

"I don't think you're going to get very much."

"Nuh!"

"Oh okay fine. Just this one last time." So she nursed, although I can't imagine there was really much of anything to be had, and went happily back to sleep.

Next morning, I was sitting in the living room checking Barak's backpack when she came over to me and started climbing into my lap. And grabbed the neck of my t-shirt with both hands, peered down inside pensively, gave me a big grin and informed me, "ah-ba-dee!"

Indeed.

For what it's worth

2011-09-07T05:56:00.000-04:00

We have a new family upstairs. They are nice. The mother is Israeli, the father is American, and they’ve all been living in America for the last six years so the kids are all American. The mother has been stopping by a lot for help/questions/stuff she needs to borrow, which is fine with me; I’m glad to pass along the favors, since we got plenty of them at the beginning.

Friday night she stopped by after she realized she didn’t have a Shabbos tablecloth. I found an extra for her and we stood there chatting as the kids sat at the table devouring their Friday night chicken soup and banana nut bread. I hadn’t made chicken soup in a couple of months (too hot) and the banana bread was really good if I do say so, so they were all happily blessed out and very quiet.

Suddenly she looked at them and said, “Your kids are so good. How are your kids so good? Why are they so quiet? How do you do that?”

And it turned into a whole long conversation about parenting, because she really truly had no idea how she was supposed to get her kids to behave. “I threaten them but then I don’t know what to do. I put them in time out and then just come out and laugh!” So we talked about it for a while and it got me thinking.

Now, if you have met my children (or, um, babysat for all four of them at once) you will know that my children are anything but perfect. They act up and they test limits and they can be obnoxious and they do all kinds of things they shouldn’t do. But mostly? They are really sweet kids. I mean, I’m their mother, so I’m biased, but I do think this is true. The other day, Barak sat down on the couch with Iyyar and taught him to read the word “and.” Then he read him “Where the Wild Things Are” and every time he got to the word “and,” he’d point at it and say, “What’s that?” and Iyyar would triumphantly crow, “And!”

(Sorry, just had to tell that story. It was so cute.)

Anyway, like I said it got me thinking. About parenting, about how I was parented, about the aspects of the way I was raised that I incorporate and those I avoid like the plague. And also about what I see other people doing sometimes, things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t! don’t! don’t!”—not that I do.

I should probably mention, if you’re not already aware, that I am permanently afraid that I am really messing my kids over. I don’t think I am, but it’s a subject of constant worry. So maybe I’m completely self-deluded and a terrible parent and you shouldn’t listen to anything I say, but for what it’s worth, this is what I told my neighbor, and these are the things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t!”

1. Don’t threaten your kid if you’re not going to follow up. “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s one,” followed by “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s two,” has to be followed by, “Okay, I said three and you didn’t put it down, so now it’s gone until tomorrow at X time.” Tears and screaming and whatever, as the object goes away and stays away until tomorrow at X time. If tears and screaming continue, you might extend the object’s time-out. No positive consequences should ever, ever, ever come from whining, screaming, misbehaving, or pitching a fit.

Counting only to two, then saying “I said put that down!” and yanking the object out of child’s hand as you roll your eyes is not helpful to anyone. You don’t teach anything that way, other than that it’s OK to not listen. Use your judgment when you see that the kid is tired or hungry or strung out, but in general, Be Consistent.

2. Don’t say derogatory things about your child in their hearing. Saying that Plony doesn’t listen, doesn’t respect you, thinks rules don’t apply to him, doesn’t play nicely, doesn’t do his homework, isn’t nice to his friends and ergo doesn’t have any, can’t pay attention, thinks he’s so smart and will find out someday… not helpful. Really. If you’re talking to your friend about your kids and your kids are at all within earshot, or even IN THE SAME HOUSE, don’t talk this way. Say, “it’s hard for him to listen and we need to really work on that,” or “I’m worried about how he does X,” or “she needs to work on Y.” Because saying negative things about your child’s character is asking your child to live up to your expectations. And overhearing things like, “They think they don’t need to listen to me,” isn’t going to encourage them to listen. Trust me.

3. You are in charge. Not your kids. If there is a rule it should be a rule. Yes sometimes we make exceptions about cookies after school or artificial coloring or bedtime, but if the rule is that if you hit you spend ten minutes in your room and your kid hits, no matter how much you don’t feel like getting off the couch to wrestle him into his room, you have to do it. If you told him, come here or we’re going home right now, and he doesn’t come, no matter how much you don’t want to go home, you have to do it. Don’t just roll your eyes. Don’t just yell. Cf: Be Consistent. Kids want to know the expectations. If they don’t know what the limits are, the only way for them to find out is to test them. And if the limits change all the time, they have to be testing all the time. That isn’t fun for anyone.

4. Don’t just punish. Debrief. Talk about it afterwards. Nicely. With hugs and kisses and reassurance. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.

5. Last, but first. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. If you want your kid to speak nicely, speak nicely to your kid. If you want them to say please, you also have to say please. If you tell them they’re bad, they’ll believe it. Be polite to them. Treat them with respect if you expect them to treat other people with respect. Don’t think that they should have to earn your respect but you should get it automatically. If you love each other, you respect each other.

Oops

2011-09-04T05:21:00.003-04:00

A month since I last posted? Really?

Sorry about that.

We're all fine here. August was a little crazy; everyone was home, I was attempting to work close to full-time hours, and you know, the stuff? It kept on happening.

Exciting news of the hour: the world's most beautiful middle-aged Mercedes minibus is now opening its doors to Barak twice a day. Yes, folks, you understood correctly: he finally, finally, B"H, has a HASAA!

The extent to which this is revolutionizing my world cannot be underestimated. Seriously. Now, all I have to do is get him to his bus stop, about a 10-15 minute walk from here, by 7:25 AM. Right now I'm still meeting him in the afternoon, but when I'm confident he knows where to get off, he can walk home on his own; there are no streets to cross, except for the driveway right in front of our building, which he's been doing alone all year.

The van is punctual. It has seatbelts. So far, the kids even behave.

It's a miracle. Seriously.

In other news, Iyyar and Avtalyon have started gan, in different rooms (there are only 2) of the same building. So far, so good. Parents' meeting tonight; further bulletins, I am sure, forthcoming.

Marika also (gasp!) started gan today. Thursday was a day for the kids and their mothers; today was the first day they went solo and by all accounts she did great. She was crying when I left but I am told she stopped within a few minutes; when I walked in, she was happily playing, and when she saw me, did not run to me but instead ran to the teacher and pointed at me and jumped up and down! Then she ran to me. And got lots of hugs. She also (kind of) ate her sandwich, although that, for her, usually involves licking the peanut butter and dropping the bread on the floor. She'll figure it out.

She is, somewhat unbelievably, still nursing; I know that Month 22 is not that big of a deal for some of you out there (ahemshanna) but it's certainly a record in this house. Barak went to 18 months and change, the next two boys stopped at 16. Marika is down to one or maybe two ten-minute nurses a day, but seems to have no intention of giving them up. However, she's going to have to, because what she doesn't know, and I am in some degree of denial about, is that in a mere six days (aaaiiiieeeeeee!) I am going to the US, for five days, ALL BY MYSELF. WITH NO CHILDREN AT ALL.

*thud*

A little bit of me is looking forward to it; mostly I'm terrified. I think I'll have a nervous breakdown on the way to the airport and I'm sure I'll be crying when I see the city lights under the plane turn into ocean. What Mr. Bigfoot reminded me yesterday, and I need to keep reminding myself of this too, is that going on a work trip is not abandoning my kids. It's taking care of my kids. It's what's necessary to have a job that allows me to be with them pretty much all the time. I have a good babysitter, they'll all be in school in the morning, Mr. Bigfoot won't be that far away. They have all been allowed to make two requests, one food and one non-food, from the US: they have requested soy-free hot dogs, Trader Joe's fig bars, bologna, and Rice Chex. And they all want Lego. Like we don't have enough, but fine; I've added it to the already enormous "things to buy at Target" list.

I think that's all the big news for now. No real news on the Mr. Bigfoot job situation; many developments, none of them leading to anything definitive. Further bulletins, as always, as events warrant.

The zoo

2011-08-04T18:34:00.002-04:00

Today was a really fun day.

For ages (like, really months) I've been trying to find time to eat falafel with Projgen, who's been commenting on my blog since Barak was a baby and who I finally got to meet when we moved here. Today we actually managed it, although we didn't eat falafel in the end (9 days, so Burger's Bar had fish and chips! Who can resist? Not me.) I went with just Barak and Avtalyon, and we also went up to the big ball pit thingy at Burger Ranch (awful food, great ball pit) and bought the cheapest things on the menu just so that they could play. Totally worthwhile: they both had a blast.

After "real" food and the Great Tootsie Roll handover (onetiredema sent me Tootsie Rolls back from the States! And some other stuff, but nothing as important as Tootsie Rolls!) we went down to the bookstore and met up with Mr. Bigfoot and Marika and Iyyar, said goodbye to Projgen, and hopped on the 33 for the six-minute ride from the mall to the zoo.

And the zoo was a blast. The kids were fantastic. I mean, they're kids. They weren't perfect. The boys all wanted to climb on things they weren't allowed to climb on, and Avtalyon got a little too overconfident in wandering off all by himself and had to be reined in, a lot. But mostly? It was just great. They were great. Seeing all three of them from the back, in height order, staring at the penguins, made my heart melt. And Marika was a total smiley delight, despite being trapped in the stroller for hoooooouuurs.

I just love them all so much. There's a reason why I do all of this, you know--the exhaustion, the crazy, the moving to Israel. It's because I really really love my kids. I want them to be good people, to have good lives, to be happy, to love and be loved. I loved seeing Iyyar and Marika's faces when they found us in the bookshop. I love Marika's "yeah!" when I ask her if she wants to nurse. I love how Barak always always wants to sit next to me, wherever we are and whatever we're doing. I love how Iyyar and Avtalyon can now clean up their room really well, all by themselves, and I love even more going in there to ooh and ahh and tell them what a great job they did. I love Iyyar jumping around joyously with a bloody mouth and a newly fallen-out tooth, even though it seems like that tooth only came in last week sometime.

I love walking through the zoo as a family of six.

Progjen mentioned to me that I don't blog about the kids as much as I used to. She's right and it's not good. I need to bring the focus back on them--on the cute stuff, the stuff I want to remember, the stuff that's important.

Hey, this is important. Know what's important? Garbage! Garbage is important. Because each of my kids has had a different and distinct word for "garbage," and for all of them, it was one of their first words. Barak said "gahbitch!" which, when you write it out like that, sounds almost like the word you and I might say, but... believe me, it wasn't.

Iyyar said, "jarba!"

Avtalyon said, "barkip!" or, referring to the receptacle, "barkistan!"

Marika says, "barjinih!"

She also, on a similar note, refers to poop as "bee!" This started out, "Marika, are you poopy?" She'd grab her diaper and agree, "bee!" However, she got wise pretty quickly to the idea that having a bee meant getting out of her crib/highchair/whatever. So now, you'll go in there to get her after a nap and she'll leap up, grab her diaper, and tell you, soulfully and imploringly, "bee!" She is, usually, lying through all five of her teeth.

She also looks like a sheepdog if you don't put her hair in a pigtail. She knows this and is very happy when I tell her I'm going to get her a kuku.

She loves shoes. If I tell her I'm going to get her shoes, she is RIGHT there. And then next to the door, caroling, "dowdide! dowdide!"

She loves water. Drinking it, playing in it, bathing in it. "Wawa!" is heard about fifty times a day. Usually when you give it to her in a cup, she drinks half a sip, then dumps it out on her high chair tray and smacks her hands in it. Gleefully.

She only eats the top off her pizza. Today I gave her half a piece with olives. She ate all the olives and all the cheese and dropped the rest on the floor.

She loves plain yogurt and will eat a whole container of 4.5% herself, with a spoon. And her fist, of course.

She loves loves loves Barak. Sometimes the two of them get on our bed and Barak tickles her until she's shrieking. Then he stops so she can get some air. They she hollers, "MO!"

Avtalyon is all about food lately, even though he's getting skinnier and skinnier, just like his brothers. Standard refraim, "K'I eat someping? What c'I eat?" He loves vegetables, especially cucumbers, which he calls hinkumbers. Now we all do, because it's just such a great word.

Iyyar likes Hungarian noodles better than anything else in the whole world. It's incredible how many he can eat. If I am making them for the whole family, I use four cups of flour, and five eggs, and they all get eaten.

Iyyar has also been getting dressed lately, all by himself, unprompted. And getting stars on his star chart, for another Wallace & Grommit movie. I hope I can find one. We have The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and I actually haven't seen any of the others here.

Barak is in the middle of having Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH read to him. We're up to where Mrs. Frisby meets Brutus. He loves it.

Iyyar is just beginning to put letters together.

All of the boys are playing musical beds. They all want to sleep in our bed, and they never seem to want to sleep in their own. Sometimes Mr. Bigfoot has to relocate all three of them at 1 am for us to go to bed.

They all love French fries. Only Iyyar likes ketchup.

Iyyar likes onion rings better than French fries. He discovered this the other day, when he had French fries and I had onion rings.

I need to go to bed now. But I thought you should know.

The things that make it all worthwhile

2011-07-31T12:55:00.002-04:00

Ever since Barak was born, Mr. Bigfoot has been the Man in Charge of Laundry. I won't pretend that there haven't been a few disasters in the laundry arena since then, but overall it's been a successful term in office. I make sure the laundry gets into the hampers, he stain-sticks it religiously, washes it, and hangs it to dry, and one of us puts it away. It's a good system.

So today, on the eve of the 9 Days (when it is for the most part forbidden to do laundry) Mr. Bigfoot staged an all-day laundry marathon. On Friday we moved all the furniture and dug behind all the toys to find every last scrap of laundry; from last night until today, he ran load after load. I went out at around 1:30 with Barak and Marika to the shuk, where I bought a staggering quantity of fruit and vegetables and bread for about $40; when I got home, Mr. Bigfoot looked perturbed.

"What happened to all my underwear?" he asked.

"What?"

"I only have about ten pairs. I used to have a lot more."

"Well, yeah. But we use bleach on our whites and some of them got holes. I threw those out."

Silence.

"I don't have enough underwear."

"I think you can wash that if you really have to."

"It's better not to."

Pause.

"Do you want me to go buy you some new underwear right now?"

"Um, yes please."

"OK. I can get some at the bus station. But if I go to the bus station, I'm going to take advantage of the air conditioning and get myself a diet coke and sit down for a little bit."

Mr. Bigfoot thought this was fair enough so, after a fruitless attempt to get Alisha to come meet me and split a last-chance-at-meat-before-the-9-Days hamburger, off I went.

I admit that I really like the Tachana Merkazit (otherwise known as the Central Bus Station). It's just a regular bus station, with stores on the first floor, stores and a food court on the second, and departure/arrival gates and a few more stores and food stands on the third. But there are several key differences. First off, all the food in the entire bus station is kosher, at least to the level of rabbanut stam. There is a kosher McDonald's. There are clothing stores where you can buy modest skirts and tops and just about everything, and you can also buy headscarves and kippot and tzitzit and washing cups, and there is a secular bookstore with books in Hebrew and English, and there are four or five bakeries, each of which sells challah on Friday and cheesecake erev Shavuos. On Fridays and Saturday nights it's packed with people traveling for Shabbos. The restaurants in the food court have specials for soldiers in uniform. There are a lot of machine guns. There are a lot of children. It's not like any other bus station anywhere else in the world.

So I didn't mind too much going on this spur-of-the-moment underwear run, without children. The bus came right away and I went in, through the security that's not much different than what you get at an American airport. I bought what I came for, plus some pretty little hairclips for Marika, and went up to the food court to buy a diet coke and bask in AC for a little while. Then I decided to get onion rings. I ordered my onion rings and there was a secular-looking French woman trying to order the soldiers' special and not understanding what the problem was. I translated for her and all was well. Then this woman in jeans with permed hair turned to me, looking worried, and said (in French) "The 9 days start tonight, right? So I can still eat meat now?" I assured her that she was in the clear to eat a burger. I stood there waiting for my onion rings and as the orders ahead of me came up one by one, the tough-looking probably-just-out-of-the-army 20-something guy at the counter bellowed out the names. "Eliyahu? Eliyahu? Where's Eliyahu? Eliyahu, your order is ready!" And up comes a guy in a black kippa and tzitzit. "Mordechai! Mordechai!"

And it's normal. That's the thing. You can get a kosher burger in Manhattan or Chicago or LA. But you can't get one at the bus station. You have to go to the kosher places in the Jewish neighborhoods, and if you want a kosher burger at the bus station you are probably flat out of luck. My kids can wear kippot and tzitzit on the street, but they got looks when we left our neighborhood. They could get a Jewish education, but only in private schools. I could get a good job and my coworkers were nice about my religious idiosyncracies, but they all thought I was weird and a little crazy and I had to deal with it. Once we left our bubble, we all had to navigate our way somewhere we really didn't belong.

Here, my kids can just be themselves and be, well, normal. It's nice. It's amazing. And the onion rings were pretty good too.

* * * * *

One more thing: after we got back from the shuk (with 1.5 kg of cherries, 2 kg of nectarines, 2 kg of peaches, 1 kg of grapes, a whole bag of stuff from the bakery, another whole bag of leafy greens of every description, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, and... whatever else I forgot) I washed all the cherries and we (the kids and I) sat down to pit and devour them on the spot. I got a bottle of water out of the fridge and asked Iyyar to get cups. He got three green cups and a blue one. Barak asked for the blue one. Iyyar declined to give it. Barak, who doesn't deal with things like this well at the best of times and was hot, tired, and thirsty, began to howl.

"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID! I SAID I wanted the blue one and he WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME! It's NOT FAIR!"

I, being a mean and heartless mommy, said, dryly, "I don't think it's actually that big of a deal. The water tastes the same and he was the one who got the cups. Why is it not fair that he wanted the blue cup?"

"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID!" etc.

"You know what? Other women, they have babies, and a week later? They're skinny again. It's true. I've seen it. I've totally seen immas who are skinny again a week after their babies are born. I'm NEVER skinny a week after. It takes me forever to lose the weight and I haven't been skinny since before you were born! It's NOT FAIR!"

Barak stared at me with an incredibly endearing mixture of confusion, amusement, hesitation, and disdain. "That doesn't matter."

"But it's not FAIR. I want to be skinny a week after I have a baby."

"But it doesn't matter. You're more cozy this way."

"But it's not FAIR! It's stupid and I hate it!"

"You're being silly, Imma. You're just more cozy like that."

"Oh. Okay."

Barak, who at this time was grinning a little self-consciously, drank his water. From the green cup.

Again

2011-07-28T15:24:00.002-04:00

Schools. Transportation.

You'd think that it would have all worked out by now. But no.

I moved Iyyar's gan to a closer and I hope more appropriate gan for him. He started there a month ago, just for camp, which I think was a good intro; smaller group, more mellow with the schedule, more fun stuff. He's liked it so far and the ganenet, who will not the same as the one he'll have in the fall, has seemed positive about how he's been doing. Avtalyon will be there too; like many ganim here, it's one school with two classrooms, one for the younger kids and one for the older kids. So that part is good.

What's less good is that it's not all that much easier to get to. Faster, but not easier. It's still up a lot of steps and, more problematic, across a really dangerous-to-cross street; the only way to do it safely is to take the bus (the bus!) up two stops to the next crosswalk, cross the street and then walk back down. To get home, that's not practical because you'd have to haul the kids straight up a really big hill. However, it is easier to cross in the other direction, because of the curve of the road--you can at least see what is coming. So that's something. But it's still really not ideal.

Bigger problem: Barak's transportation. The school has been a great fit for him, he had a really good year and I don't want to move him. But it is looking increasingly unlikely that there will be any kind of a bus. Why? Well.

Because they are opening a new boys' elementary school, literally five minutes from our front door. Opening with first grade only.

I can't even express how I feel about this. If it had been here last year, when we came, my year would have been completely transformed. He could have walked by himself. It's up some stairs, down the driveway, through a gate and up four steps. There you are. Now, not only can we not avail ourselves of it, but the fact that they are opening means that all the boys--all EIGHT boys--who were registered in Barak's school for the fall, and who wanted to arrange a bus, are now going there. Naturally enough. So not only was the school not there when we needed it, it is now taking away the bus that I thought Barak would have.

Anyway. Nothing I can do about the school. But the hasaa. I cannot, and I really mean cannot, do again what I did this year. I don't have a hasaa for the two younger boys. Marika is no longer in the Snugli. Mr. Bigfoot has some part-time work. For me to take them all, and I feel sick just thinking about this, would entail me taking all three boys on the bus in the morning, stopping halfway up the hill, walking all of them back down, dropping off the younger two, getting back on the bus with Barak, taking it to the city entrance, and walking him up the hill another 15-20 minutes to his school before continuing on to my ulpan. It means taking the long slow bus instead of the short fast bus we took last year, and it also makes us vulnerable to rush hour traffic. It's what I was doing the last four weeks, just with Iyyar; one day we hit traffic so bad that Barak was an hour and a half late. For camp it doesn't matter. For school, it does.

And in the afternoon, I would have no choice but to load all three other kids on two buses each way to get him. Every day. Because this past year, the person who took him home half the days was Other Father, who as you may recall was the one responsible for allowing Barak to travel solo to the mall. So he's off the list of Approved Transport Options.

And add to all of this that I am now working more. I have Marika in gan in the mornings because I must, and I really mean must, not only work more but sleep more. I can't do this year again. I can't.

School starts in five weeks. I don't know what to do.

QOTD

2011-07-09T19:44:00.002-04:00

This afternoon Iyyar asked me to read him Tikki Tikki Tembo. I think this book appeals to him as the second son. Anyway, the very last page has a picture of the mother, who has seen the error of her favoritist ways, sitting with Chang in her lap as Tikki Tikki Tembo recovers from his unfortunate dip in the well. Iyyar studied this picture and then asked, "How come there's only one bed?"

Me: "I think they're very poor. Probably they only have one bed."

Iyyar: "Why doesn't the mother write more speeches? She should write more speeches. Then they could have more money and buy another bed."

Me: "Iyyar, do you think most mothers write speeches at night?"

Iyyar: (blankly) "They do. Mothers write speeches at night to earn money."
Pause. "Most mothers do."

In other news, I bought three and a half kilos of cherries at the shuk on Friday. They are all gone now, as is the entire kilo of cherry tomatoes and a shocking quantity of nectarines. Strangely, there was a lot of competition for the bathroom this evening. Can't imagine why.

אני בקניון עם הבן שלך

2011-07-09T14:35:00.002-04:00

What I was able to gather from the woman on the phone was that she'd been on the 33 bus and had seen Barak alone and crying in the back. She'd asked him what the problem was, he'd said, "I don't know where my Imma is" and she'd asked him if he knew his phone number. THANK GOD he did--I had drilled it into him, singsong, with the promise of a ruggel when he knew it cold, months earlier. Efes-chamesh-arba, shesh-shesh-echad, etc. She said, I'm waiting with him at the entrance to the mall, and asked me if I wanted him to put him in a cab with directions to get to me. I said no, I think he'd be too scared (and never mind the booster seat etc.) I told her I'd be there as soon as I could and that I was calling a cab that second. Ran out the door with a booster in hand, then turned around at the top of the stairs when I realized I had no money in my wallet; got money from inside our apartment, ran back out, and took a cab to the mall.

Now. Where was Barak supposed to be? Barak was supposed to be at his friend's house. You know that whole hasaa issue you've been hearing about for the last year? The current deal is that three afternoons a week, I take Barak and his friend home, and the other three afternoons, said friend's father takes him. Today was friend's father's day, and the plan was that he was supposed to stay at his friend's house to play until 3. Apparently what happened was that Barak ran to the back of the bus (where it is more fun to sit) and friend and friend's father did not follow him; the bus got crowded; when it was time to get off, friend and friend's father somehow got off without Barak. From what I understand, the father thought he was already off and he wasn't.

Barak was right where the woman who called (whose name was Avital) said he was; sitting on the steps by the bus stop, face streaked with tears and dirt, eating noodles out of a container she'd got him at Cafe Neeman. She was lovely and told me again what had happened, now speaking in English; I thanked her profusely, she refused to take money for the noodles, and went off (to her job? or to go shopping?) inside the mall. I talked to Barak very sternly about the whole running-to-the-back-of-the-bus issue. He told me with maximum Barakian earnestness (and that is pretty... maximum) that he was NEVER EVER GOING TO DO THAT AGAIN. "Were you really scared?" "I was so scared. I thought I was going to be lost forever. I thought I wasn't even in Yerushalayim anymore. We went past the zoo!"

Since at this point Mr. Bigfoot was missing his ulpan, we went inside the mall and did some shopping I'd been needing to do--got an adult-sized sunhat and an easy-Hebrew newspaper for Mr. Bigfoot and some first-grade-appropriate books for Barak. And we stopped and got something to eat. And talked about how scary it was to be lost.

And then we went home, on the six.

Now. What's the sixty-thousand-dollar question here? It's how, exactly, Other Father got off the bus without Barak.

I can sort of see it, but not really. If it had been another mother with a stroller, I could have seen it more. With a stroller you have to get on in the back, but the kids have to get on in the front to pay, so it's easy, on a crowded bus, to lose sight of them. But he didn't have a stroller, just two first-grade boys. Barak ran to the back of the bus, which he should not have done. When I talked to the friend's mother, though, she told me that he did this a lot and often didn't listen. To which my question is--why? And it sounds like other father is not into enforcing discipline with other people's kids. Which, frankly... well. Barak does what he is told with me. He does what he is told at school. He's not a wild or crazy or rebellious kid. If he was doing his own thing, he thought it was, tacitly at least, permitted, even if not ideal. He's not a saint, but he's generally well-behaved. Where is the other father in all of this? This is why we have discipline, in large part, isn't it? So that our kids stay safe?

And what the other father did when he realized he didn't have Barak made no sense. He didn't jump in a cab and go after the bus. He didn't call me. He didn't call the police. He called Egged. What could Egged do? The buses, so far as I know, don't have radios. He doesn't have a cell phone, so I'm not sure what he did exactly--I don't know if he even had my number with him. But Barak had been on his own for close to an hour when I first heard about it. A lot can happen in an hour. Anything, really.

I don't get it, why he didn't keep an eye on him, and how on earth he got off the bus without him. And I am not planning on allowing Barak to travel with said father again, which takes care of Plan B for afternoon transport. So I really, really, really have to find a Plan A.

In the end it's good that this happened: Barak now understands the importance of bus safety, and is unlikely to go running off to the back EVER AGAIN; nothing bad happened; he learned an important lesson.

But so scary. It could easily have... well. Let's not think about that, okay?

Briefly

2011-07-07T11:36:00.003-04:00

1. I think that the Egged bus driver training school is actually housed in the Department of Secrets at the Ministry of Magic. Because there's no other explanation for the behavior of the #13 today: right at the end of the route in Katamon, it went down a one-lane road with cars parked on both sides, on the sidewalk, at angles, doing deliveries etc. There was, looking down the road we were about to descend, clearly not enough room for a bus or even a car to pass through the aisle that was left. A Vespa, maybe. A bus? No way. This did not, however, deter the driver of my bus in any way, and I looked out my window in stupefaction at the cars/trucks/delivery vans that were passing within millimeters of my window and in some cases seeming to bend out of the way altogether.

The bus I was riding was not, for the record, purple, and the driver did not have pimples or, to my knowledge, answer to the name of Stan. Still. Suspicious.

2. For the first time ever, yesterday Barak curled up on the couch with a Hebrew book with only a few pictures. And started reading it. As in, reading the words. I was blown away enough by this; but then today, when his friend David was here, I saw him (Barak, not David) sitting on the couch reading a Baba comic book out loud to him.

Baba? Baba is written without nikkud. No vowels. I... the mind reels. Two months ago he still didn't understand anything Rav Eli was saying. Now he's coming home telling me the entire story he heard in class, he knows what they're doing the next day in camp, and he is READING INDEPENDENTLY IN UNVOWELIZED HEBREW.

*thud*

3. And now, a cliffhanger, for the few readers who don't already know this:

The day before yesterday I went to lie down for a few minutes between my ulpan and Mr. Bigfoot's ulpan. I heard the phone ring. I ignored it. Fortunately Mr. Bigfoot didn't. Half a minute later, I heard him yelling, "Imma, get up! You have to get up right now!" That was pretty effective, and I vaulted out of bed to see which child was covered in blood. Instead, it was Mr. Bigfoot holding the phone out to me and looking horrified. "It's a woman speaking Hebrew and she's saying that she found Barak on the bus by himself. They're at the mall."

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION.

In which I reassure you that I really am OK

2011-07-02T15:57:00.005-04:00

I talked to Alisha erev Shabbos and mentioned that I'd just talked to Grandpa M on the phone. "He kept saying how good I sounded. And sounding really surprised."

"Does he read your blog?"

"Sometimes Grandma E reads it to him."

"..."

I think she was implying that perhaps my blog has been a bit of a downer of late, and that Grandpa M might possibly have had some reasonable basis for concern based on the most recent few posts. I conceded that there was some possibility that she was right.

I should probably remind my faithful readers (all 17 of them) that I tend to blog late at night when Perspective may not be at its strongest. Also, when I start feeling sorry for myself I don't exactly focus on the positives.

Anyway: I am OK. Really. I am OK, Mr. Bigfoot is OK, the kids are, B"H, basically OK.

Rundown by family member, youngest first:

1. Marika now has enough hair for two actual pigtails. I am unspeakably besotted. She is in constant motion, climbs on and off the couch and the beds and can now do stairs standing up if she's holding my hand (up and down). Favorite foods: full-fat yogurt, nectarines, cherries, peanut butter licked off her sandwich. She is always demanding "wawa!" but after taking one dainty sip, dumps the entire contents of her cup on her high chair tray.

She's a little bowlegged still and I'm wondering if I should look into it. She's been walking for about 4 months, which seems like enough time for that to have sorted itself out if it's going to. I need to make an appointment for Tipat Chalav anyway, since I didn't quite manage her 18 month checkup. I know they're going to yell at me; she's not quite 10 kg at 19 months. At 12 months she was 7.8 kg, so she's gained around 4 or 5 lb, but she's still teeny tiny. And still nursing, every morning, before and sometimes after naptime, and at bedtime. And whenever she climbs into my lap and starts thumping my chest meaningfully with her palms.

2. Avtalyon is great. I went to his gan mesiba on Wednesday and he actually participated, as opposed to the Chanuka mesiba when he mostly just sat in his chair very close to me and watched. Phrase of the developmental stage: "I hate that!" and also, "That's stupidhead!" But the other day, he was sitting at the table eating a nectarine, and I told him he was cute and I liked him so much. He said, "I like you too." Pause. "We like each odder."

Just in the last week or so he's started playing much more with Marika. Instead of viewing her solely as an annoying obstacle in his path to wherever he's going at best, and a competitor for and messer-up of toys at worst, he's starting to view her as mildly interesting. I'm trying to think of specific things they've done together but can't really--it's just general, like if he's playing on the floor with Lego and she comes and starts playing with Lego too, they'll sit there companionably together instead of him chasing her off. It's an improvement, believe me.

Even bigger improvement: Avtalyon has B"H not been sick since THE WEEK AFTER PESACH. So, more than two months without one single ear infection, fever, or episode of vomiting. This is unbelievable and amazing and... fantastic. He no longer conks out at 4 PM when I put him in a time out. He no longer wakes up at night crying that his neck hurts. Even without the tubes. He's just, B"H about a billion times, doing much better. Finally.

3. Iyyar... well. Iyyar is more than a couple of paragraphs. He hasn't gone to gan for a few weeks, which I mentioned last time. We've had some good days and some less than good days. In the meantime, I started the ball rolling to get a developmental evaluation done. He's switching gan starting tomorrow and we'll see how that goes. Hopefully things will improve once he's in a different setting and back with a routine; if not, I've got some names of OTs to see privately, to see if we can't figure our what's going on with him a little. And since I've had more time with him over the last week, I've been able to figure out better ways of dealing with the freakouts/tantrums/behavioral stuff. Like, you can often talk him down, but you have to change his environment first. I don't know why, but this is true most of the time. And you can explain to him why what he's doing is OK, but he'll only listen if you give the example of Avtalyon. To wit, "If Avtalyon wanted a tomato and screamed I WANT A TOMATO, and I said no, and then he screamed I! WANT! A! TOMATO! and I still said no, and then he screamed GIVE ME A TOMATO RIGHT NOOOOOWWWWWW while throwing a chair across the room, and THEN I gave him a tomato, then what would he do the next time he asked me for a tomato and I said no?" Iyyar, giggling, "Throw a chair." "So should I give him a tomato when he yells and screams?" "No." "That's why any time you start yelling and screaming about anything, even if it was something that at first I was going to give you, then the answer is no. Because otherwise I'm teaching you to tell and scream." He gets it, it's just getting him to the point where he's able to listen that's... hard.

4. Barak is, B"H, really doing great. Thursday was the last day of kita aleph. He got a really nice report card that said he davened beautifully, had derech eretz, played nicely with his friends, and was good at math. There was also a sentence that I'm pretty sure was saying that his rebbe admired his ability to sit quietly for hours when he understood nothing. Erm. Anyway, his morah suggested that he should be working on reading comprehension over the summer, and that's what we're doing.

Enter Eitan (yes his real name), the 16-yo Israeli kid a friend of mine found. He rocks and Barak loves him. He's been coming over and sitting with Barakh and reading with him, and talking to him about it to make sure he understands. He came twice so far and has really been fantastic--they're reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea together, in a lavishly illustrated kids' version. I'm pretty sure Eitan knows at least some English, but I asked him to make sure Barak thinks he doesn't know a word. Last time they sat there reading together for an hour, and when they were done Barak told me all about Captain Nemo. "I think he's kind of weird and maybe not so nice." Indeed.

5. Mr Bigfoot is done with school for the year and like me has started ulpan. He's really enjoying it; it's three hours a day, four days a week, and the timing works out well since his is in the afternoon and mine is in the morning. Both of our sessions run until Erev Tisha b'Av, at which point I will reassess how well I can manage this long-term. In the meantime, we're both learning a lot. Plan for him for next year: do the program for getting an English teacher's license here, teach two mornings a week at an English-language high school near here, and do a couple of other (paid!!!) projects I am not at liberty to mention. He's only got two bechinas left for next year, and while he might not be working in the rabbinate at all, a recognized smicha bumps you up the teacher's pay scale, so that's good.

6. Oh, and me. I am fine, previous posts notwithstanding. A friend of ours is going to the US next month and has offered to bring an empty bag over just for me, so that I can do some online shopping and have stuff sent to his parents' house in NJ. This is a HUGE big deal, because Grandma E has books for us, and I want to buy the kids clothes and shoes that won't fall apart and that I can pay for in dollars. Everyone is at the end of the clothes sizes I brought with us, and especially Barak and Marika really need new stuff--Iyyar and Avtalyon have hand-me-downs, but they don't, at least not enough to get by with. Barak, incredibly, has grown through two full sizes this year and is now wearing size 7/8 almost everything--and it isn't too big at all. Marika is tall, so she's in 18-24 month clothes, even though some of them look like circus tents on her because she's so, well, skinny.

Anyway. Work is good; I just got a really good performance appraisal, and a raise, and my boss thinks staying here another year will not be a problem. My clients are happy with me. A few of the hardest things have turned around or are showing signs of turning around: Avtalyon's feeling better, Barak's picking up Hebrew, Mr. Bigfoot has some better job prospects. I have some contacts for the Orange debacle. The weather hasn't gotten horrible (yet).

It's all basically OK. Just, you know, exhausting. And a little overwhelming sometimes.

Orange you mad

2011-06-29T06:44:00.002-04:00

Know what happened to a lot of that money?

Orange has been billing me for internet I specifically said I didn't want and didn't use. Total: 1,700 shekel. I argued for an hour and even cried and it got me nowhere. They also charged me 500 for a loaner phone while they fixed the one that dropped in the bathtub; that they credited me for.

Anyone know the number for pikuach tikshoret?

For the record

2011-06-27T15:15:00.003-04:00

Here's my kitchen, circa Pesach, ergo the taped cupboards. In fairness, I do now have a double-burner hotplate to cook on, and a somewhat larger and fully functional fridge. The rest is the same, except that the contact paper on the counter is coming apart and needs to be replaced.

Top toaster oven is dairy, bottom one is parve. They're so small you can't use them for both. The shelf over the sink is the one that I had my Shabbos dishes on when we first came. That's how I found out it wasn't strong enough to hold more than about five pounds.

While we're on the subject

2011-06-27T09:31:00.003-04:00

Mr. Bigfoot went to the bank for me this morning. He got a new password and also a printed statement, which he went through with the bank guy. Where did all that money go? Turns out Orange has been billing us almost exactly twice what they should be. I called them and of course, they said that because I agreed to be billed twice what I was told I was getting billed, they could do nothing. They are billing me EIGHT HUNDRED SHEKEL A MONTH. Go ahead, convert that into dollars.

Fainted yet?

So now I have to go in there, in person, tomorrow, and argue. In Hebrew. And probably get nowhere. Again.

Also?

Barak was supposed to go to a friend's house. Said friend's mother just called and said that he wasn't there. I think he went with the wrong friend's father, and this said friend's father does not have a cell phone. I hope he gets home soon, because actually, I have no way of knowing where he is. I'm pretty sure he's with the other father, and it's OK. And in the meantime, I invited friend A here tomorrow afternoon. Because I am a lunatic. And I want my son to have friends.

Also?

Iyyar went to gan this morning, in that he got in the car of the neighbor who has been driving him. Then I got a call saying that he was refusing to get out of the car. Neighbor drove him back home.

He'd better not really be in that gan next year, like the registration form I just got in the mail says he is.

I know! How about if I turn this blog into all whining, all the time? How would that be?

::crickets::

In which I feel sorry for myself. Just a little.

2011-06-26T14:22:00.004-04:00

Or a lot.

(Warning: I'm about to indulge in a lot of self-pity here. I need to get it out of my system. If you're going to judge me, stop reading now, and go read about gay pride in NY. It's a lot more cheerful than I'm about to be.)

Hey, remember how just a few days ago, I was feeling positively chipper?

Yeah. Well. Perspective fail, right here.

Let's start with last July, shall we?

We got here with a plan of a two-year stay, and the understanding that my husband would be learning full time with a very heavy schedule in exchange for a free apartment (free rent, free utilities) and food five days a week. We had all the boys registered in schools and we had a schoolbus that was supposed to stop at our door.

I had the daily schedule all worked out, and it was completely manageable and even easier than what I'd had the year before. I was going to work from 7 PM until 1 AM and sleep until 8, because Mr. Bigfoot would be able to manage getting the kids where they needed to be until then; not only would I have 7 hours to sleep, but I was going to also get a rest in the morning, because I was going to be home with Marika while the boys were in school, and Marika is a champion napper. We'd rented out our US apartment, because its value had fallen roughly $80k from what we'd paid for it and we couldn't sell it; we were going to take a loss of a couple hundred dollars a month, but that, we figured, was OK, since we were storing our stuff there anyway. We'd sell it eventually, at least get something back, buy a bigger place one day.

Anyone hear laughing?

Within a couple weeks of getting off the plane, Iyyar had gotten relocated from the ten-minutes-away-by-foot gan to a half-an-hour-away-by-bus-and-vertical-climb gan; Barak's school had vaporized with the schoolbus, and on September first I found myself with a schedule that involved a minimum of three hours of shlepping children on buses around Jerusalem, with between one and three separate forays per day. Mr. Bigfoot's lunches were also taken up with shlepping; he had less than an hour for dinner, so we hardly ever saw each other. Avtalyon started screaming the day gan started, and his ganenet kept calling saying I had to take him home. He woke up at night, he cried, he cried, he cried. And it took us well over a month to discover that he had strep and double ear infections, despite multiple doctor visits. We changed doctors. We got to know the new doctors very, very well.

Pinworms. Lice. Concussion. Strep. More strep. Stomach viruses. Three-day yom tov. We got a morning hasaa for Iyyar and an afternoon hasaa for Barak, finally, but I still had two trips a day, three hours. Succos, everyone was sick; during one seuda, two children threw up, right in front of our guests.

The boys just about blew up behaviorally, at first, although it calmed down a bit by October. The phone calls started coming from Barak's school: not reassuring. He was zoning out completely, not even trying to pay attention. Endless, endless calls trying to get him the help he was legally entitled to, which did not come until January. In the meantime, he seemed to be learning nothing. And we had stomach viruses, strep, ear infection after ear infection for Avtalyon, doctor's visits at least twice a week and sometimes twice in a single day. Cab fare, carseats, Mr Bigfoot had to miss class and seder.

In October, the dining hall switched caterers, and immediately Iyyar and Avtalyon started not feeling well. It turned out that the new caterer used a lot of soy. We'd go up to the dining hall and see hot dogs and hamburgers that nobody could eat. And turn around and start cooking at 7 PM. I kept trying to get them to tell me what food would have soy in it, but could never rely on it being accurate, and they kept getting sick.

In December, one good thing: we get the washing machine. If we hadn't, I can't even imagine what the rest of this little sob story would be like.

Friends come to visit us from the US. I have been looking forward to this for months. Iyyar is sick, Avtalyon is sick, we cancel everything we had planned except for a party at our place--during which I discover that the caterers are not trying, not even a little bit, to let me know what is going on with the food. They don't get it. They don't understand, or seem to care.

January, I asked, finally, if I could just have the recipes so I at least know what was in what, and was told no, a better solution would be for me to not feed them food from the dining hall, except for the things we know are safe: cornflakes, bread, raw fruit, salad, milk for Barak.

Then I lost Barak's afternoon hasaa and was back to getting him from school three times a week, in addition to taking him in the morning every day and bringing Iyyar home four times a week. I went back to buying monthly bus passes. They raised the price.

Iyyar's behavior worse, worse, worse. I keep trying to talk to his ganenet. She won't deal with me because of my awful Hebrew. This is a recurring theme. I need to work on my Hebrew. It is so demoralizing, not being able to say what I want to say. How am I going to do ulpan? I am working from the minute the kids are in bed until 1 or 2 am, and getting up at 6:30. I have Marika all morning and the only time I get to sleep is when she naps. Still, I decide to register in ulpan in the summer, part-time.

Now I am back to shopping, planning, cooking, cleaning for everyone. Remember how hard that was before? Now I'm doing it on a hot plate and in a toaster oven, in a 3/4sized fridge, in a kitchen with two square feet of counter space, hardly any cabinets and nowhere for a dishrack--and no gate to keep the children out. Instead of eating in the dining hall, we are eating at home, which means the floor needs to be cleaned, the dishes need to be washed, the different dietary needs need to be dealt with. Mr. Bigfoot has an IBS flare and needs IBS food. And we're buying almost all our own food--another two thousand shekel a month. So I needed to work more. I decided to invest in some cleaning help. After half a dozen visits, the administration found out and I was told I wasn't allowed. I learned how to sponja my own floor, and just when I finally got the hang of it was told no, I couldn't do it like that. My toaster oven stopped working. Alisha tried to get it fixed for me. It came back just the way it was, able to heat but not bake.

We got an email saying that the food was going to be completely canceled--no more cornflakes or anything else--and we were going to have to start paying for our own water and electricity. There would be a stipend for food, which was not adequate for one person and certainly not for six. I bought a new plastic cabinet for added cupboard space, and a rice cooker.

I got a letter saying that our taxes on our apartment had been raised by $160 a month.

Then the fridge stopped working. It froze my food, it didn't stay cold, the cucumbers rotted overnight. I put in a repair request and another one. They brought a procession of old fridges, one after another, from the miklat--none of which were an improvement. Can I have a new fridge? No. Can I buy my own fridge? No. I threw out so much food, every day something had to get tossed. Pesach came. First seder, the fridge died, completely, during the seder. The replacement to that came with chametz in it. I cried. They relented. I bought my own fridge.

More ear infections, another round of stomach flu. Avtalyon has been sick almost nonstop since we got here. Eight rounds of antibiotics, and that is not even counting the two concussions, all the viruses, the ear infections the ENT decides not to treat. We run completely out of children's Tylenol. Finally, his ENT says he needs tubes. Meuchedet denies them. As if in protest, Avtalyon's eardrums rupture. Again. I take him in for an audiogram, and yes, he has 40 dc of hearing loss.

The convention. For more than a month, I felt like I never slept at all. Every time I looked at my computer, another two or four or seven requests popped up. Endless revisions. So much work, so little time, so much pressure. If I mess up, if someone complains, will they terminate my telecommuting agreement? I'm the only one earning money.

A week later, my electric hotplate died. Where are we now? May?

Iyyar's behavior, which had gotten steadily worse until Pesach and then so much better, started to go downhill again. Every morning I'd wake up determined to be patient, and after ten minutes want to go in my room, close the door and scream. I kept talking to his ganenot, which got me nowhere. I decided to move his gan. Dozens of phone calls, three trips to the iriya, many tears later, it was done. A week later, I got a letter informing me that my boys were registered at their old gan. I hope this is a mistake. I haven't been able to check yet.

I found out that we were supposed to pay NIS 50 per person per night whenever we had guests. I should have known this, but had somehow not registered or forgotten. I had to sit down and figure out how many guests we had hosted, in our own home, since August, and pay for them. It cost NIS 1500.

In the meantime, I can't read the school newsletters. I can't help Barak with his homework. I have to learn Hebrew. I started ulpan, right before Shavuos.

The week before last Iyyar absolutely exploded, and I said that's it, he's staying home from school. I avoided calls from his ganenet. Things got better for a few days. Then worse. Today I went to talk to his ganenet, and that was... unhelpful. Iyyar took a bath, and poured in the entire bottle of soap; then I went into the bathroom and realized he'd smeared poop on the walls. On purpose.

What do I do with that?

Last week in ulpan, my teacher put me on the spot because after three nights of four hours of sleep, my attention had lapsed and I hadn't followed her instructions. She started telling me that if I didn't focus, if I didn't do what I was told, I wouldn't progress. I wouldn't learn Hebrew. Didn't I want to progress? Why wasn't I trying?

I started to cry, right there in class. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

I don't have any perspective anymore. I can't see past any of this. Last night I couldn't sleep until almost 4 am, worrying about everything. Mr. Bigfoot still doesn't have a job for next year. It's June. As of September, we'll have more bills, and everything will be coming out of my one part-time salary, less what we have to pay for our condo--more than $400 a month shortfall every month. I woke up and tried to work out online exactly where our money had been going, to see how to get it down, and was locked out of my bank's webpage. To get a new password, I have to go there, in person, and deal with the non-English-speaking bank staff. I did a lot of math last night and have realized that I can't account for about NIS 10000 of our outlays over the last 11 months, and what I thought was a statement of my bank account is actually a statement of my debit card--you wouldn't think it to look at it, but it is, and so I have no idea at all what's been going out of our account on our direct debit accounts to Meuchedet, Bituach Leumi, or Orange. Is someone billing us an extra NIS 1000 a month? Maybe. No way to tell until I can get to the bank.

I can't tell you how not like me it is to have lost track of my bank account like that. But I have no surplus cognitive space. None. Work, my actual job, is taking up so much of my brain right now. B"H, I like my job, I do it well, I enjoy it. But I have to really be on the ball. My kids need me. I need to be learning Hebrew, and that is not optional--pretty soon, my kids are really going to suffer if I can't keep on top of their academic and social needs.

I still haven't dealt with my Israeli taxes.

I don't even know where I'm going with all this. Just to get it out of my system, I guess. I've left out all the good stuff, of course: Barak is now thriving, Iyyar and Avtalyon are really speaking Hebrew much better, Marika is adorable and now has two pigtails. We got a great tax return. I am switching into a different ulpan, with a better teacher, tomorrow. My boss is happy with me. The convention went well. I got a good performance review. My husband is nice. We bought some bookshelves, and the living room looks better now. I've been growing tomatoes and basil on the windowsills, and they've been doing incredibly well and are fun for the kids to water. I don't have to travel this summer. Avtalyon hasn't been sick since right after Pesach--besides the odd stomachache or bout of diarrhea, nor has anyone else.

It could be worse.

But it's still really, really hard.

Still here

2011-06-18T14:06:00.002-04:00

Just busy.

Things are good. I took a week of vacation and then had a slow week that let me recover from the convention; work now is busy but not unmanageable. The kids are mostly doing well; I feel good and go to bed at night happy about what I'm going to do the next day. I'm not overwhelmed, I feel energetic, things are good.

Just, you know, busy.

Updates in a nutshell:

1. I started ulpan. I know, I know. I have no time for ulpan. But it has to happen sometime and my rights expire in January; Mr. Bigfoot is off as of last Wednesday and he can be home with Marika in the morning (he'll be starting his own ulpan in the afternoon, so we can trade off.) It's 8:30-12:30, three days a week, so not as huge a time commitment as a regular ulpan; also, it's up the street from Barak's school, so very convenient. They put me in kita beit, which is appropriate; my spoken Hebrew is, I think, better than that of most of the other people in my class, but my grammar is atrocious so it's the right thing for me. And I'm learning a lot--I can see a difference in my Hebrew already. Current plan is to keep going until the session ends, erev Tisha b'Av, and reevaluate from there whether to continue into the year, which would require finding childcare for Marika.

2. I moved Iyyar and Avtalyon's gan for next year to a closer gan. I don't know what it is, but Iyyar's gan is not a good fit for him. I hope it's that, anyway, and not that gan in general is hard for him. His behavior over the year had gradually gotten more and more difficult; I was getting complaints from his ganenet that he wasn't paying attention, bothering the other kids, throwing things, running around when he was supposed to be sitting still, etc. Pesach, he had three weeks off, and by the end he was really doing great. I asked his ganenet, and she told me his behavior in school had also improved. However, by last week, it had gone back to horrible. If I didn't know that he was not always like that, I would have thought he should be evaluated for... I don't know what, but something major.

Last week I took him with me to check out a different gan. I got him early at school and we walked there together. At least, I walked--he mostly got dragged, because he was yelling and screaming and pitching fits the whole way. His arm was rigid with tension, he wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't respond to anything I said, wouldn't make eye contact at all, just screamed lots of things--some of which made sense "I don't want to go to a different gan!" and some of which didn't "They won't let me go out of there!" But he wouldn't explain or let me ask questions or figure out what the problem was. Anyway, we got there, we looked around, and I met Avtalyon's future gananet (who seems OK, not fabulous but OK) and Iyyar's (who seems great.) On the way home, his arm felt like an arm, not like an iron rod. What was he so afraid of that he didn't see? I don't know.

I think the problem in a nutshell is this: Iyyar is, for some unknown reason, unhappy and stressed at gan. This is resulting in difficult behavior. I want to find out what the problem is and deal with it. His ganenet wants to find out how to make the behavior problems stop. We are not getting anywhere with this. The new ganenet saw him at close to his worst and did not try to shove us out the door; instead, she said, "let's try him here and if it turns out he needs help, we'll get him some." That sounds better to me.

In the meantime, I have decided, with two weeks left to go, to make gan optional. He hasn't gone. Three days later, he's like a different kid.

3. Marika is great and hilarious and constantly on the go. I've noticed lately that she's a little bowlegged; her legs curve inward a bit from knees to ankles. Shouldn't she have outgrown that by now? I need to make her overdue 18-mo Tipat Chalav appointment so they can yell at me for how skinny she is (I'm guessing 22 lb or so) but they can't yell at me for any developmental milestones, at least.

4. Avtalyon is also hilarious and is eating like a horse. He never seems to stop--he's ALWAYS hungry. Except at school, where, apparently, he doesn't eat. What's up with that? I feel like I should have more to say about the child who currently has the greatest comedic value of anyone in our household, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

5. Mr. Bigfoot is now suddenly in a much better mood, having passed (woohoo!) his last bechina of the year. He's still looking for work and trying to figure things out for the fall, but the basic plan is there; learning two sedarim and day and something else (whatever comes up teaching-wise, and/or English teacher training) during the third seder. I think it will work out well, logistically, and having both Iyyar and Avtalyon in the same (closer) gan will help the daily schedule a lot. Barak is supposed to have a hasaa, too, and if that happens it'll be a whole new life in a lot of ways.

Anyway, that's it in a nutshell.

Still here

2011-05-26T13:57:00.003-04:00

Just busy.

Pesach came and went, and it was good, and then the boys had their birthdays, and then I had mine, and soon Mr. Bigfoot will have his. We're still figuring out next year, in terms of work, the kids' schools, and so on. We're planning to stay in the same apartment, and are buying some furniture off the people who are leaving to make things a little more homey. I also bought Avtalyon a toddler bed and Marika a crib, to replace the mattress on the floor and pack and play that they'd been sleeping in, respectively. Avtalyon was delighted with his new acquisition; Marika, not so much.

Lots has been going on but I've just been too busy and too tired to sit down and tell you about it. Marika's thing these days is singing "dayeinu" (dai dai dee dee!) and "avadim hayyinu" (ah ba dee-eee!) at the least provocation. Avtalyon has gotten really verbal and really entertaining; he'll inform me very solemnly, with those huge dark eyes of his, that dinosaurs "eat their friends. That's not very nice." He still loves band-aids. He still calls cucumber "hinkumbers," but that might be because we all now do it too. He loves matzo balls and goes berserk at the slightest sign that they might be in the offing; like, the soup pot goes on the hotplate and he is immediately circling me for matzo balls even though it will obviously be hours before any are available.

Iyyar goes back and forth between being sweet and charming and the cause for my fingernails being ground into stubs. Today I was putting some things into the trunk of a neighbor's car--they have a kid at the same gan and while they don't have room in the car to drive us home, they don't mind if I put my shopping in the back. I looked up and suddenly realized that Iyyar was unlocking the brake on Marika's stroller. Which she was in. On the top of a huge, huge Jerusalem hill. I dropped everything, dived on him and screamed, right as the stroller began to roll. What was he thinking? He wasn't. Was Barak like this at this age? I don't remember but I really don't think so. It makes me nervous. I know he wouldn't really hurt her on purpose, but there's this oblivious side to him that's kind of alarming sometimes. He seems happier about school, although he still complains that nobody plays with him; separate interviews with all three ganenot gave an absolute rebuttal. He plays nicely, he has friends; the only problem is that he jumps around and gets silly when he's supposed to be paying attention in circle time. OK, fine. He just turned five; this is not so unreasonable. He still wants to sleep in his heavy polarfleece pajamas even though it is now really warm at night; he wakes up sweaty with his payes stuck to his face. I think those pajames might have to go into hibernation pretty soon.

Barak, after months and months of talking about planting things, finally got his wishes fulfilled in the form of two window boxes which now contain a basil plant, a bunch of tiny tomato plants, and one brave bean plant that just showed up yesterday and is already two inches tall. There are also pepper seeds in there, but those haven't come up yet. They're in an intensely sunny window and we water them faithfully, copiously and enthusiastically; we'll see what will be.

I took a week of vacation, just to recover from the general exhaustion of the last few months. It hasn't really helped. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to and I still didn't sleep much; too much on my mind and I can't relax. The kids were on edge this week and I had a hard time with that; maybe it's the change in weather. Maybe it's me.

Anyway, off to knit. No better relaxation than that! The apartment is actually quite clean and surprisingly well organized, a product of my vacation time; I haven't done anything for Shabbos, but it starts so late now that's not a problem.

Oof!

2011-04-23T13:56:00.002-04:00

Holy cats! Three weeks since I posted?!

Um... sorry about that?

What can I say? Pesach. Also, pre-Pesach stomach flu, for everyone but Abba. I was sick in bed for a couple of days and really under the weather for another four; every single kid had a fever + diarrhea/vomiting/general ick. Pesach did get made, and so far has been going fine; we had 17 (!) people for the seder, which was fun. Iyyar made it to midnight, Barak made it all the way to nirtzah, at 2 am. Yes, they were all up at 7 am as though nothing had happened. Why can't I do that?!

Various other things are afoot. My husband, who I have decided to rename, for purposes of this blog, Mr. Bigfoot*, is trying to find a job for next year. As a backup, he's also starting the process to get certified as an English teacher, which requires vast amounts of hoop-jumping, beginning with getting every transcript/degree he's ever gotten in his life certified by the Israeli government. Fun fun! If you, or anyone you know, or anyone you've ever met, has a job for my husband, please let me know. Thanks.

Work has been crazy busy. This is good, but also stressful. I think I'll be back in the States for work the last week of June. Not sure yet, but that's how it's looking.

Marika is being adorable. Newest thing: elaborate "I dunno!" shrugs, complete with upturned palms and head inclined at an angle that would send me running for physical therapy. Also, she is enjoying putting her own diapers in the garbage can. When she does, she looks at you expectantly, at which point you, of course, applaud.

Avtalyon torments Marika at every opportunity, steals her toys, blocks her passage everywhere, and has to be watched like a hawk lest he close a door on her hands. Iyyar is settling down somewhat; Pesach break agrees with him, as does all the soy-free meat at this time of year. Barak is also being really cute, and erev Shabbos, when I was rushing around like a madwoman because we were going to have 4 yeshiva guys for dinner and I was running late, he heard Marika crying for attention in the pack-and-play in which she had been unceremoniously deposited for safekeeping. "Imma, do you want me to make Marika happy?" "Yes! Yes PLEASE Barak!" And he did, playing a wild game of peek-a-boo on three sides of the crib. They were both absolutely shrieking with laughter. Good times.

OK. Time to clean up from Shabbos. Hoping for a zoo trip tomorrow. Moadim l'simcha, everyone.

*A few months ago, Alisha brought back some things from the States for us. Because she lives here, not there, said things were bought by me online and sent to her mother's NYC apartment during Alisha's visit there. As anyone who's ever lived in an NYC apartment knows, extra storage space is generally at a premium, and Alisha's mother was extremely nice to permit my random boxes to pile up in her home when, you know, she's never even met me. One of the items was a box containing shoes for my husband, in size Ridiculously Huge, which I discovered too late are not only hard to find here but absurdly expensive (NIS 800! And not even such great quality). Anyway, I finally emailed Alisha's mom to say thank you, and she graciously said it wasn't a big deal (which I suspect wasn't true) and that she hoped one day to meet me, my kids, and Mr. Bigfoot.

I howled. Because he IS. His feet are HUGE and I trip over his shoes regularly. So forget the heilige husband acronym. From now on, he'll always be Mr. Bigfoot to me. :)

Also

2011-04-02T13:27:00.002-04:00

What is up with the line spaces? More specifically, what is up with the lack of line spaces? There were none in my last post, despite my trying every which way (even using the space bar! the tab key! no dice!) to get them in there.

Will this post have spaces? Only Blogger knows for sure.

This past week? Not fun.

After my post of grim determination on Perspective:

a) I spent the night in the hospital with Avtalyon. Barak had his mesibat chumash (in Hevron! the mind reels) and when I came back Abba said in passing that he'd bonked his head on the radiator. Head-bonking happens so often around here that this barely registered. When I was talking to Persephone later ont he phone, and he woke up screaming, I thought, oh, he got soy at dinner and his stomach hurts. Then I looked again at all the writhing and screaming and thought, huh. That's some stomachache. "Avtalyon, where does it hurt?" "Here!" he wailed, holding his head.

Ohh. Ear infection. That's weird, we were just at the ENT yesterday and he didn't say anything about his ears. And he was SO upset. I took him out of his room and sat with him on the couch in the living room, hoping he'd calm down, but no. Went to get Tylenol and oh I think he's going to throw up ewwww he threw up all over me and "MY HEAD HURTS!"

Dingdingdingdingding

"Could you go grab the carseat and call me a cab to Shaarei Tzedek?"

So we spent the night in Shaarei Tzedek, and it was in some ways impressive and in others way Not Impressive At All, and in the end he is probably IY"H fine and it was a concussion. No energy to blog the rest of the experience; maybe later.

b) Then! Iyyar woke up warm. Then he was hot. Then I checked his underarm temp and it was 103.3 (meaning it was really over 104, for those keeping score at home.) Then the diarrhea started. He went through ALL his underwear and started going through Barak's before I could get his washed. All together now: eww. He was home Thursday and Friday.

c) Other Unbloggable Stuff that was Very Very Gross and Annoying. Also, EARLY. and LONG. I miss being pregnant. TMI yet? Sorry.

Hey, I have line spaces! Awesome.

OK, one more whine.

The fridge.

Our fridge stinks. Figuratively, not literally. Stuff on the door does not stay cold, and anything in the back of the fridge freezes. Since this is a 3/4 sized fridge, that doesn't leave a lot of room. I've put in endless forms about this, and the maintenance guys, who are extremely nice but have no budget, have attempted to fix it, replaced it with another equally semifunctional fridge, taken it away, returned it, and, most recently, brought in a THIRD semifunctional fridge which, while now very very clean (thank you Rami Levy and your knockoff Magic Erasers!) also freezes my cucumbers.

And guess what?

PESACH IS COMING.

I have an electric burner and a fridge that only kinda works. Two feet of counter space, a tiny freezer and a plastic Keter closet.

I do at least have two brand-new toaster ovens, one of which is a Black and Decker 220 I brought back with me from the states.

Still. This is going to be interesting. I think it'll be OK, in the end, but... yeah.

OK. Off to make havdalah. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel of only seemingly endless whining.

זה היום עשה השם

2011-03-28T17:00:00.001-04:00

Back when I only had Barak, someone posted a comment asking me if he was always hilarious and adorable or if I only posted the good parts. I said that yes he was always hilarious and adorable, and yes I only posted the good parts.

I mostly do only post the good parts, about everything. I do whine on this blog, but I try to keep it to a minimum. (I should probably try a little harder on that front.) I don’t really use it as a place to air angst or misery or painful things in general. I’m not that kind of a blogger. I have nothing against those blogs—I read a few of them avidly, much to my husband’s chagrin—but that’s not generally what this blog is for, for me. It’s about the kids, my life, a chronicle of what our days are like, something for the kids to enjoy later, I hope. It’s not quite The Good Parts Version, but it’s not the Dark Cobwebs from the Dungeon Version, either.

This week was hard. Hard things happened this week, to other people, and I was powerless to help; much more minor things happened to me that I should have had better perspective about than I did. Iyyar and Avtalyon were both sick and now Marika is looking under the weather; it was Purim, which is always a challenge. Put together, it was hard to stay on an even keel.

Last night it all came to a head. I came home and my husband and I talked until almost 5 in the morning. I had to get up at 6:30, but somehow, it was okay.

Today I feel better. Today I feel lighter. Today I am looking at my family and loving and enjoying them, and trying hard to not try to be in charge, and to embrace the transience of everything, and the uncertainty and the lack of control we all have.

This is the world.

This is how it is.

This is how God made it, and that means that this is how it has to be. That doesn’t mean we have to like it. We don’t understand it. We can’t understand it. And just like a kid can rage at his father for strapping him down in a carseat when he doesn’t want to be in it, just like a baby can feel betrayed by the mother who holds him down to get a shot at the doctor’s, we can feel rage and feel hurt and be bewildered by how cruel and arbitrary it all seems to us, so much of the time, so much more so these days. We don’t have to like it. We don’t have to understand it. But we have to accept that somehow, in a way beyond us, it is right.

זה היום עשה השם

This is the day the Lord hath made. I can't always rejoice and be glad in it. But I have to try.

Keeping the ball rolling

2011-03-19T16:08:00.002-04:00

Don't want you to give up on me again, after all!

A few people have asked about the origin of the kids' names. First off, you should know that they're all made up. I don't use any real names on this blog, except for when they're really common first names, and also except for the name of my erstwhile cat. My kids' actual names are a little odd in America but pretty normal here. If you want the full story on their blog names, you can go back to the blog entries around when they were born (May 2006, January 2008, and November 2009). But the short versions:

Barak: He was born before I started the blog. I started this blog in spring of 2005, when he had suddenly gotten very mobile very quickly. "Barak" means "lightning" in Hebrew, so it seemed appropriate.

Iyyar: He was born in the Hebrew month of Iyyar. I wasn't feeling very creative, I guess.

Avtalyon: My husband was bucking for this as his real name. I put my foot down. The compromise, which wasn't much of a compromise really, was that we used it as a blog name.

Marika: She is named after my Hungarian grandmother, whose nickname was actually Mariska, which she hated. She wanted to be called Marika instead. So that's what I use here.

What else is news around here? Well, it's Purim soon. No! Not on Sunday! On Monday, because in Jerusalem we celebrate Shushan Purim (it's a walled city!) What's actually been occupying most of my headspace this week, though, has been Iyyar, who's been really, really difficult lately, and has been seeming, well, just really stressed. I don't know if I can put my finger on when things started getting so hard with him, but I'm thinking it was around my trip to the US. But it seems like it's been getting worse, not better. He came home from school last week with his sleeves and kippa all chewed, and the next day I went to talk to his ganenet (teacher) to see what was going on. I didn't get much out of her, so I asked a Hebrew-speaking neighbor and fellow parent to try again. She didn't hear anything from the ganenet about what might be bothering Iyyar, but got an earful about how Iyyar was bothering her/the other kids. He doesn't sit still, he throws toys, he runs around, he doesn't listen, when you tell him he's done something wrong he grins at you.

I'm sure she's not making it up, but I'm also sure that she's not the kind of person who would never have said anything about it until directly asked in March if there were any problems. Also, I've asked regularly how it's coming, and the only answers I get are regarding his Hebrew progress--uniformly positive. This is all stuff he does at home at his worst, but it's not all the time. My theory? He's been causing a little trouble all year, this month has been bad, and now that she's fed up she's retroactively annoyed at him for all the annoyance he's caused since September. And also, unfortunately, since he's acting up the other kids don't want to play with him, which upsets him and so he acts up more and... yeah. Not a good cycle.

Iyyar is a little out of step with the other kids. This is not news. Yehudis noticed it when he was two, and although his last year's teacher did not, she was not particularly perceptive. Yesterday when my husband went to Iyyar's Purim party (I was at the doctor with Avtalyon, who came down with strep, again, on Thursday) he came back saying that Iyyar hadn't participated at all, hadn't done anything the other kids were doing. But in October, when I went to a similar mesiba, he did everything he was supposed to do. So I don't know. Do I think he has any massive developmental issues? No. He did talk late and he is a little spacey, but he manages OK at home, he plays with other kids, he's learning his letters, he can sit through stories, etc. My husband says he's like he used to be as a kid--just kinda out to lunch. And disorganized. And prone to fantasy. And not really all that attuned to what's going on around him

I took him out of school on Wednesday and we went out for falafel; the point was some Imma time but it really didn't go so well. He didn't listen to me, he did this incredibly annoying thing where you're trying to talk to him and he pointedly looks elsewhere, he deliberately wandered off when I asked him to stay close to me. He's also been really, um, sketchy in the matter of truth-telling lately. And bedtimes. And staying calm--he's been falling about screaming at the least little thing.

Yeah. Just generally difficult. Like I said it's hard to pinpoint when this all started, but I am sure he hasn't always been like this. Hopefully, it's related to my having been away, and it'll pass. Right? Right?

He's so cute and sweet when he's not driving me crazy. I wish I knew what to do. I think he needs more one-on-one time, more attention, more talking time. That's usually the answer. It's hard though--I make a point to walk him home, and he doesn't listen and runs off. Or argues, or kvetches for something. And then I end up yelling at him (not at volume, but sternly) and how did that help?

He did a great job cleaning up with me tonight though. We picked up all the toys in the living room together. I feel bad complaining about him--did I mention how cute and sweet he can be? It's just been a bit... difficult lately.

Part five in the increasingly inaccurately named...

2011-03-13T15:52:00.003-04:00

Only the Hitchhikers among us will know what the title is about, but that's OK.

I thought of two more things on my aliya list. And since 18 is a good number, and 16 is meh, here are two more:

17. Sickies. How could I have forgotten this one? I admit I had heard about the "cholim chadashim" syndrome, and had definitely registered other people saying "you and your kids will be sick a lot the first year." So maybe it should not have come entirely as a surprise when we went nearly six months with at least someone, and often more than one someone, sick every. single. week. As in, home from school sick. Avtalyon has had four eardrum ruptures since we've been here. (Yes, he is now down for tubes, but the approval and scheduling take time.) There have been too many colds to count, along with stomach viruses, strep, an attack of mystery insects that Iyyar's ganenet was convinced was chicken pox, an infected hand, a MRSA-infected infected foot, more stomach viruses, pinworms, lice, boils, frogs, and... oh you get the picture. Lots of sick. LOTS. For some reason, this caught me off guard.

I think we may have gotten hit unusually hard because of having three boys in three different schools/ganim; lots of bugs to pick up and pass around. Also, the rain came late this year and I'm told that wreaked a lot of health havoc on its own. Still. You have been warned. It won't necessarily happen to you, and I hope it won't, but it might.

18. And last! (For now anyway.) There are many ways in which making aliya is like mothering a child. For example, you can't do it perfectly, you will lie awake nights worrying that you're doing it wrong, and somehow, everyone you meet knows how you're doing it wrong and will tell you so. For example, I have lost count of the people who have told me that I MUST DO ULPAN RIGHT NOW. Five hours a day, five days a week, for five months. Must! Or our klita is doomed! No time, you say? Well you must MAKE the time! (That is a direct quote. As if I have not been daydreaming for years about magically finding another seven hours in every day, the way people in Manhattan dream about finding whole extra rooms in their apartments.)

Barak's rebbe? He wants us to only speak Hebrew at home. (He is serious.) I've been told by other mothers that my insistence that my child ride in a booster seat is ridiculous, and I should let him take the bus to school by himself. Aged six. Crossing an intersection that is eight lanes of traffic crossing six lanes of traffic, with several islands and a light rail line in the middle. I've been told that we must buy a car, no matter what, and not to do so is an act of irresponsible parenting. I could go on and on and on. I won't.

What it boils down to is the same thing I tell myself as a mother. Nobody else knows my situation like I do. Nobody else knows my children like I do. I can and should listen politely to other people, because maybe they'll tell me something I don't know. Maybe it'll be useful. Maybe not. Ultimately, you take the advice that works for you and leave what doesn't. So I hope some of this whole long screed will come in handy for you, and if it doesn't--well, feel free to ignore. : )

איזה היא עשירה

2011-03-10T18:29:00.003-05:00

A few years ago, Grandma E came to visit us in Chicago. She's been a few times (she's kind of like the Godfather that way--she keeps saying she's done and then we keep dragging her back) so I don't remember which visit, but I think it was when Barak was two or three and we had the first whiff of the job insecurity that was going to be the recurring theme of the next, well, the rest of our lives, to date anyway. We were in the kitchen and I was making noodles and I'd made some homemade pesto to go with it. I was grating cheese and she saw me grate a little pile of parmesan and a bigger pile of muenster (or whatever it was) and sprinkle the mixture on everyone's noodles.

"Why are you using the muenster?" she asked.

"Because the parmesan is expensive cheese and I'm stretching it with cheap cheese," I told her, and she nodded.

My husband came in and we had dinner and I just remember it being a lot of fun with a lot of laughing. Later on when he'd left the room, she said, "Well, you two won't ever be the richest people in the world, but you might just be the happiest."

It was one the nicest things I've ever heard and it's one of those things I sort of pull out when I'm having a week like this one.

Money is just money. Yes you need it. Yes you need enough. But "enough" is subjective.

We have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear. There is money in the bank. Not endless amounts, but not nothing, and enough that the wolf is not actively howling at the door. I have a job. And IY"H, somehow or other, my husband will, eventually, get one too.

Did you see in the news earlier this week about the Chinese-Jewish guy in Honolulu who was determined by Gallup to be a composite of the world's happiest person? This was part of a three-year (I think) attempt to determine who's happy. I don't think there is any objective criteria for what makes you happy. It's too complicated, and I think everyone knows that declaring Alvin Wong as the world's happiest man is a little tongue-in-cheek. But I can tell you one thing that is absolutely fatal to happiness, and that is comparing yourself to other people.

It was hard, back in America, to look at my friends and their houses. With, you know, basements. And closets. And kitchens. And those were my kollel friends, who are not exactly wealthy. But a carpeted basement playroom! That seems like such unimaginable luxury right now.

But last week we had our eighth anniversary, and Hadassah the Amazing babysat for us. (Did I tell you she cleaned my kitchen while we were out? I did? Well, let me tell you again. She cleaned my kitchen when we were out!) And even though we ended up taking the bus to go get pizza, it was so much fun, and we really enjoyed it. And when we came back, she opened the door before we knocked, and she said, "I knew it was you because I heard you laughing."

It's all OK.

I'm not saying it's not hard. It is hard. I do too much. I sleep too little. I worry a lot. I don't know what's going to happen next. But right now, I am just where I want to be.

What we're up to

2011-03-07T02:36:00.002-05:00

The kid-by-kid update:

Barak seems to be doing OK these days. He is happy to go to school in the morning and generally in a good mood, if tired and prone to meltdown, when he gets home. Homework continues to be an Issue. He spends 8 hours a day in a Hebrew environment and by the time he gets home at 4:30 PM, he wants nothing but a quiet corner and a box of Lego. Homework? Surely you jest. I had been letting him get away with it for a while but his teachers (his regular classroom teacher and Morah Penina, his lovely 80-year-old tutor) both called me a couple of weeks ago saying, look, he's not making progress and you need to be reinforcing this at home. So since then I've been trying, but it's so not pleasant and such a struggle. He's six and a half. It's too much for him. But they're also right in that if he doesn't pick up Hebrew by the end of the year, kita beit is going to be really hard.

He's being really good with Marika lately. Just a really sweet big brother. Yesterday we were out on the playground and he was giving her turns down the slide; he sat on top, I put Marika in his lap, he held her and slid down with her. She LOVED this. I wish I'd had a camera. She wanted to do it again and again and again and...

Iyyar is also getting good reports from his moros, who say that he's playing nicely and picking up Hebrew well. He seems to understand everything you say to him in Hebrew--I can give him running directions in Hebrew and he follows them. One thing I want to mention about him though is how much better his face looks. Last year, almost the whole year, his face was puffy. He almost looked like he was on steroids. He wasn't sick, it was just some kind of a reaction to something. I don't remember specifically when it stopped looking like that but I was just thinking the other day how thin his face looked, in a good way. No more puff. I don't know what it was but I assume he was allergic to something that's not in his environment anymore. Who knows what?

Last Shabbos Iyyar and Avtalyon made a huge mess dumping out all the toys in their room, right after it was all cleaned up for Shabbos. I told them they had to pick up before they could have seudat shlishit. By "pick up" I meant a minimal standard of "Lego in Lego box, laundry in basket, rest of toys in toy basket." No sorting or putting away of things in right places, just dump it in the basket. They ignored me and wouldn't do it. I offered to help and started doing it with them and they still ignored me, so I said, OK, you're on your own, come out when it's done.

Five hours. They were in their room for five hours. Eventually, they got hungry and they did it. This is I think the third time in two weeks that we've done this. One of these days they will get a clue and just do it in the beginning when I am there offering to help. Right? Right? Right?

I pick Iyyar up from school twice a week and we talk the whole way home. His brain is really all over the place; we start talking about one thing and then he's asking me about something else. I think Barak had more of an attention span at that age--actually I'm sure he did. Not that I'm worried about this, it's more of a personality thing; Barak FOCUSES, where Iyyar is more prone to flying around all over. Also in the "sweet brother" category, he's been saving pieces of treats for Barak and Avtalyon--yesterday he got a chocolate vaffel (like wafers) at school and broke off pieces for both of them and put them in plastic bags in the kitchen to save them. Big pieces, too. Totally unprompted by me. So sweet.

Avtalyon is being really, really cute. His big thing these days is that he hates being wet. If he spills a tiny little bit of something on his shirt, that's it, ALL his clothes come off and he's naked until I make him get dressed. But he wants new, all-dry, uncontaminated by proximity to water clothing. Sometimes I let him, sometimes not, depending on what the previous outfit looked like.

He's also all about the dramatic hand gestures. He likes posing for the camera, scary action poses and so on.

When I came back from the US I brought the box of Clics from the basement. I also brought a new bike helmet, because I couldn't find the one we had already and the kids have been zooming around down the hill on their little ride-on car in a way that makes me nervous. What do these two things have to do with each other? Well, there must be some genetically programmed desire in my children to make train tracks out of Clics while naked except for underwear and a bike helmet, because so far they've all done it. Barak did it, Iyyar did it, and Avtalyon has not seen any older brothers do it within memory but two days after I got back, he was doing it too. Go figure.

On days when I pick Avtalyon up from gan (Abba and I switch off--it's a complicated schedule) we have this whole obstacle course that we have to go through to get home. There are low walls to walk on, ramps to run up and down, and of course the Alligator/Elevator we have to ride. It's an outdoor glass elevator that goes up to the sixth floor; he pushes the button, we go in, we ride to the top, come out, admire the view, go back down. More low walls, the cat by the schwarma stand to find and comment on, and then the revolving metal security door to ride. Yes, ride: he climbs on the lowest bar and I turn it for him. Fun fun.

And Marika has suddenly become a toddler. She's walking instead of crawling as her primary means of locomotion and is getting close to being too big for the Snugli. She has had for months a habit of reaching her non-sucking-thumb-hand down under my sweater when she's ready to fall asleep, to grab a nice soft handful of t-shirt. Lately it's been warmer and I haven't been wearing sweaters, so she's been reaching into my shirt and grabbing, you know, what's there. This is a little awkward while in public and she may soon be graduating to a stroller as a result.

Yesterday we went to Geula with a friend on a skirt-shopping expedition. It was really fun. I bargained hard and got four skirts for NIS 360, about $100 these days; we also stopped at Moshiko for falafel. I brought the stroller for her and it did make it easier; I could try stuff on, she fell asleep, I could eat. But it's such a pain to bring a stroller on the bus, even though people do usually help. I just don't have enough hands to hold her, hold the stroller, and hang on when the bus starts moving before I find a seat (which it always does).

Favorite word these days: "yeah!" If you ask her a question, any question, with a yes/no intonation, she'll say, "yeah!" with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Also, I've heard her say, almost distinctly, "What is that?" ("Wah dee dah?") and "I want it!" Right now she is playing in the pack and play next to me saying, "Ah dee dee! Ah why? Why? Whee ditch. Ah de det'." Palatalized consonants continue to abound. "At'. At'. At'." And if you prompt her, she will say thank you, very seriously. "Ta tuh."

The jet lag was awful but she seems totally over it now. Oh, I didn't mention: yesterday on our shopping trip I bought her a toy stroller for the princely sum of NIS 20. It's a nice one too, with a metal frame, and just her size. She loves it. The boys put Grover in there for her and she pushed him around the house for a while; then later in the afternoon my SIL came over. I had brought her back some dental floss from America (long story, but it's one of those things that's much cheaper there) and Marika demanded to hold them; two minutes later they were of course gone. We hunted for a while with no luck until with a flash of inspiration I looked under Grover's tush. She had, naturally, stashed them there, because what is a stroller for if not to give your dental floss a tour of the apartment under a Muppet's rear end?

Anyway, that's the news from around here.

Hey, have you noticed I've been blogging more? Hmm? You have? Well, I've noticed that yesterday, 38 distinct visitors came and read this. But nobody but Jasmin does much commenting. So maybe you could, you know, say hi. Because if I'm going to go back to blogging more often, it's much more fun if you wave back. OK?

Insomnia

2011-03-05T18:40:00.002-05:00

I can't sleep.

So much on my mind, so much of it unbloggable.

We came here knowing we'd be here for a year, anticipating the possibility of two, and having no plans after that. It was OK at the beginning because a year is a long time and we had a Plan B for year 2. But now we're at a point where it's looking very likely that we'll be here for a second year. Okay, good, fine, we knew that might happen. What is freaking me out is a) not knowing if I, personally, will have a job post August and b) seeing all the people here making plans NOW for what they'll be doing post August. If we stay for a second year, we will at this point next year, be in the same job-seach position, and without backup plans, and that is Scary.

What would make me able to sleep a little better would be some kind of an assurance from my boss that I can keep doing this for another year. The knowledge that at least we will not both be unemployed would help a lot. But until we know what we're doing, it's probably best not to even broach the subject. So far as I know, no one's complained, and that's the important thing. It does, however, make me a little bit insane when it comes to work--I am so paranoid that someone will complain about me (even though, to my knowledge, no one has done this in the last six and a half years) that I am bending over backwards when it isn't even called for and thereby getting even less sleep.

So tired.

Going to try to sleep again now. Wish me luck.

Lessons learned, part 4 of 4 (so far)

2011-03-05T17:59:00.002-05:00

13. Keep your eyes on the prize. Whatever it is about aliya that made you want to be here, remember it. Write it down. Everyone has their breakdown moment, or two, or fifty. You’ll get yelled at in the store one time too many, or your kid will lose his hasaa again, or you’ll have no idea what all those piece of paper you just signed in the bank were. Take the piece of paper out, listen to the Eitan Katz CD, watch that Come Back video one more time.

14. Jet lag with children: Two weeks. Seriously. I’m sorry, but this is true.

15. Think way ahead of time about how much luggage you’ll have with you (100-170 lb per person, plus car seats/strollers) and how you will get everything to the airport. A friend with a minivan will not do it. Two friends with minivans will also not do it. We needed a friend with a minivan and another friend with a U-Haul.

16. Try really hard to maintain your sense of humor and not take things out on your spouse/kids. My husband wasn’t around for any of the pre-aliya planning because he was simply not home; he worked every day including Sundays and was out of the house from 8 am till 10 pm most weekdays. He brought things to work to scan/copy/email, but that was it. He did not deal with any of the logistics, packing, planning, hauling, loading, etc. because he really couldn’t. So when a week in it transpired that he did not know the difference between Misrad Haklita, Misrad Hapanim, and Bituach Leumi, I should not have blown up at him.

I'm sure there will be other things. It's only been 7 months. I still worry, a lot. Will we have jobs, will we find a place to live, will we be poor, will we be happy here, will the kids be happy here, and always, in the back of my mind, when will there next be a war, and what will happen to us in it? Because in Israel it's always "when" and not "if." But l'at l'at, as they say, slowly slowly, we are settling in, feeling more comfortable, feeling more glad to be here--to be home.

Lessons learned, part 3 of 4

2011-03-04T17:57:00.000-05:00

9. Everything costs more here. Everything. My tendency when packing is to be minimalist, but I really wish I had packed more of those little random things—needles and thread, first aid items, sippy cups. School supplies here? Three times the price, if you want good quality. Barak desperately wanted a backpack like his classmates’, so I bought him one, but oh do I wish I had stocked up at Target the previous August. There is no such thing here as a $1 pack of crayola markers. A pack of good quality pencils is $4. Bring it. Yes, you can buy everything here, but you’ll pay more and it won’t last as long.

10. Leave room in your budget for the unexpected. For us, there were two huge unexpected expenses: transportation and food. We did not expect to be paying about NIS 800 a month to get children to and from school, and we did not know that the cafeteria food would be so soy-laden that two of our kids couldn’t eat most of it. It threw an extra NIS 2000 onto our monthly expenses. When you thought you’d be able to manage the first year on your sal klita, that’s a huge difference.

11. NBN grants are not what they once were. The economy is down, their fundraising is down, and the days of $18k grants are gone. I did not know this when I applied and it was a very big shock to get our grant letter. Obviously any gift is wonderful, helpful and appreciated; I am very grateful for what they gave us. But don’t count on the money, or even on any ballpark amount that you think likely. As I was told, "we give away as much as we have," and what they have changes month to month.

12. Ask for help. Forget that American thing of self-reliance. You can’t make aliya without other people. Try not to call the same person every time, but get over the not wanting to call. You have to. When someone offers to help, put their number in your cell phone.

We interrupt this series of posts to bring you

2011-03-03T19:52:00.002-05:00

a totally unrelated post.

I can't sleep. This NEVER happens to me. I have always been able to fall asleep more or less the minute my head hits the pillow, probably because I am so perpetually underrested. Since I got back from America, the jetlag has been killing me. Not only that, but I seem to have developed, overnight, an inability to metabolize caffeine. I have been, to put it bluntly, something of a Diet Coke junkie for the last, oh, twenty years or so. It has never been even a tiny bit of an issue for my sleep; I have never thought twice about drinking full-octane Diet Coke right before bed. Apparently, I can't do this anymore, as of last week sometime. Two days ago I drank Diet Coke while working and couldn't sleep until 5 am; the next day I didn't have any and fell asleep by 1, which is the earliest I've been able to sleep since I got back.

My schedule is bad enough sleep-wise. If I can't take advantage of every opportunity I have to sleep, it's a disaster. I've kind of been a wreck the last couple of weeks.

Right now it is 3 am. I am pretty sure the reason I can't sleep is that I went out (yes! I went out! with my husband! and no children!) for pizza (that wasn't the plan but it's what ended up happening) earlier this evening and had a Diet Coke with my pizza because come on, what's pizza without Diet Coke? I think this was a terrible mistake. I really really can't sleep.

Oh, have I told you about Hadassah the Amazing? We love Hadassah the Amazing. She is the chesed girl that Onetiredema's... friend? cousin? someone? set us up with. Every Tuesday at 2:30 she turns up as if by magic and for two hours entertains children, holds babies, and--wait for it--sometimes even washes the dishes. For free. This is part of her seminary program--the doing of chesed. For some inexplicable reason, despite the pervading craziness of our household, she appears to like us, and offered to babysit for us this evening so we could go out for dinner (the original plan. the pizza happened when the restaurant we went all the way around Jerusalem to get to had downgraded from its previously mehadrin hashgacha. alas). Not only did she do this FOR FREE, but when I came home she had washed ALL the gross crusty dishes in the sink AND put away all the toys.

Amazing. Lovely. Really. Tuesdays are totally the best day of the week because of her.

Let's see, what else...

Oh, Barak earned his airplane. For the last seven months or however long it's been, both he and Iyyar have had jars of coins. For every night of civilized bedtime (read: I do not have to go into their rooms after 8 pm and they do not come out) they get a coin, valued at 1 shekel or 25 cents (yes we still play fantasy exchange rate around here) in their jar. Said coins are exchangeable for Playmobil or, upon discussion, other things. Barak decided back in September sometime that he wanted the white airplane. This would be the $52 giant Playmobil jet. I said, that is an insanely expensive toy and I am not buying it for you but you may feel free to earn it. And he has been. Every day he makes sure I dropped in a shekel, he's been counting them regularly, and before my trip he had about 165 in there. I told him that if I heard only exemplary reports during my absence, I would front him the other 50 and bring him the plane, but it was going to live in his room so Avtalyon couldn't dismember it like he does all the other Playmobil. Barak was naturally only too happy with this, and I brought him back the plane. Now Barak has set his sights on the airport AND the cargo area. I'm not even sure they make the airport anymore, but I'm very happy he's a) so good at delaying gratification and b) working toward some nonviolent toys for a change.

I am really looking forward to Shabbos. I decided to give myself an "off" Shabbos. No guests (sorry Alisha, you don't count as a guest) and I am not going to stress about what the house looks like. Not only that, but I got a Groupon coupon for catered Shabbos food and used it, so Abba is going to Talpiot to pick up some Naomi Catering food--really really expensive stuff but we paid NIS 80 for NIS 200 of food so it's OK. I have chicken soup left from last week so all I have to do is make matzo balls, buy challah and chummous and dessert, and I'm set. I may also make sushi, just because I love sushi and because Alisha is coming, but I may not. I'll see. I have no plans to get out of pajamas the entire day.

Do I try to go to sleep again? I am really really wide awake here. Hmm. Maybe I'll take some knitting into bed with me and see how that goes. Stay tuned, as always, to this ever-exciting channel.

Lessons learned, part 2 of 4

2011-03-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

5. I know everyone says this but it’s so easy to forget: as hard as all the transition is on you, it’s ten times harder on your kids. They WILL act up. They WILL be monsters. And as much as you want to scream at them, “Why are you doing this to me when you see what I’m trying to deal with right now?” they are saying to you, “I need you to reassure me that some things are still the same.”

6. At least half the details you thought were worked out will fall through. For us, it was schools and school transportation. We arrived thinking all three boys had schools and workable ways to get there; in the end, only Avtalyon did. It was really, really hard to let go of the plans we had that obviously weren’t happening, and even harder to start from scratch the day before school started for Barak. In the end, it was really truly for the best: they are both in fantastic schools, both, I think, much better for them than the places we’d chosen from the States. But it was hard, hard, hard.

7. If you don’t speak Hebrew, start working on it as soon as you decide you’re making aliya. For us, it was hiring an Israeli babysitter and asking her to only speak Hebrew with the kids and, as much as possible, with me. I can’t even begin to say how much this helped. I still speak Hebrew like a caveman, but I can function in Hebrew: I can mostly say what I need to and I mostly understand what people say to me. This is about 90% because of Asnat. Also, get a copy of “The First Thousand Words in Hebrew.” It’s cute, it’s not taxing, and it’s a good thing to look at while you’re nursing a baby, sitting on the couch on Shabbos, or between things.

8. Don’t believe the people who say your kids will speak Hebrew by Chanuka. Yes there are kids like that but they are not the majority and your kids will probably not be among them. Find out exactly what help your kids are entitled to, and insist on it. Call again and again and again. This is not rude; it’s expected. Get the teacher’s home phone number and check in regularly. Again: expected. The more the administration sees you involved, the more they will pay attention to your kid. Israeli classrooms are big and if your kid isn’t acting up, the teacher will not see a problem—even if one is there. Barak, for example, is not picking up Hebrew quickly. He is now getting 10 hours a week of 1:1 tutoring at no cost to me. If I hadn’t hocked the principal mercilessly for four months straight, he’d be getting exactly 0.

Lessons Learned: Part 1 of 4

2011-02-28T17:51:00.002-05:00

It’s been seven months since we made aliya. As the saying goes, the next time I make aliya I’ll get it right. (Joke: you can only do it once.) Some things we did get right. Some things not. Some things are still works in progress. But for the record, seven months in, for those considering this: here are my thoughts on aliya with 4 little kids and a husband who kind of turned up for the whole process the morning we got on the plane.

There are 16 of them and this is too long for one post, so I’ve broken it up into four posts and postdated them; keep checking back, because a new one magically appear every few days even if I don’t go near Blogger. Fun fun!

1. Start thinking about packing as soon as you are sure you want to go. Not as soon as you know you’re going or as soon as you have a date. As soon as you have decided that aliya is for you, start thinking about how you are going to deal with your stuff. For us, this was 23 full months before we actually got on a plane, with the added uncertainty of not knowing when/if/for how long we were actually moving to Israel, and what we would be doing with our apartment in the States.

In that time, I did not buy new furniture, I sold things (like my loom and second spinning wheel) that I knew I would not take with me, I did not buy anything that I would not either use up or want to take with me. I also went through my storage space about eight months before, and threw out or donated everything I did not plan to ship. Then I went through our entire apartment, room by room, and cleaned and organized, such that I did not, when it came time to actually pack, have to deal with drawers of junk, closets of undifferentiated stuff, drawers of random papers, etc.

2. So far as actually packing, I started putting things in boxes two months before we left. This part is hard, because you need your stuff, but you also need to start packing well ahead. So first I packed up yarn and books, and then clothes that were out of season or not yet grown into; in the meantime, packing stuff into boxes for storage. I also made lists of the stuff I packed to ship, in an ongoing Word file. In retrospect, I wish I had also done this for stuff I’d packed to store—it would have made my recent return trip much easier if I could have looked on a list and seen that the pirate bike helmet was in box #16. But I did the packing alone, with a pretty stressful job, four kids (one of them a newborn), nothing like enough childcare for the hours I was working, and a mostly absentee husband who was working 14-hour days himself. I couldn’t manage that part.

3. Start thinking about the actual flight as soon as you have tickets. I bought new backpacks for the kids who didn’t already have, and confiscated Barak and Iyyar’s backpacks a few days before we left to fill them with all manner of goodies: sticker books, Playmobil, matchbox cars, all kinds of things I knew they would like (that didn't make the bags too heavy for them to carry themselves). I also, the day before we left, made them each snack bags, all full of borderline treaty but basically healthy food: crackers, animal crackers, cheese sticks, carrot muffins, etc. (Nobody ate the pb & j. It doesn’t travel well.) These were separate little bags with handles that they could carry in their hands. That way, I didn’t have a huge bag of food in my carryon, minimizing the weight on my back, and they didn’t have to ask me every time they wanted a pretzel. The juice boxes had to go in my bag, though, because of security.

4. I think my biggest mistake, so far as packing was concerned, was being too practical. I underestimated how much I would want my own psychological comfort items: our pictures on the walls, my own kitchen equipment, my yarn stash; how much my kids would want all their own random toys (even the ones from the thrift store with pieces missing), their own familiar sheets and pillowcases, etc. The biggest smile I saw after we got here was on Iyyar’s face after I’d hung our old fish shower curtain in the bathroom. We didn’t send a lift, to save about $2000; it didn’t make sense financially when we were moving into a furnished apartment and didn't know where we would be long-term. In retrospect, it was a mistake. I wanted our wedding pictures, I wanted our own curtains, I wanted our favorite plastic cereal bowls, not new ones. Change is hard, and familiar items really help.

In which I sit down to email Grandma E and decide to blog instead, since I'd be typing the same things anyway

2011-02-26T15:06:00.007-05:00

(Grandma E, just pretend this post starts, "Hi Grandma E!, okay?")

So, here's the other conversation. Roman type is Hebrew, italic is English.

The scene: I am picking Iyyar up from gan. Right next to the gan is a bais yaakov (girls' school) with a tzaharon (afternoon program), which some of the girls from Iyyar's gan, which ends at 1:30, attend. Usually one of the ganenot walks them over; today she was in a hurry and asked me if I would. I said sure. So off we headed, me (with Marika in the my tai), Iyyar, and two Israeli girls, aged about five. I was speaking English to Iyyar and didn't want them to feel left out, so I said to one of them, in Hebrew:

Me: We are speaking English. We are from America so we speak English at home. What language do you speak at home?
Girl #1: I speak Hebrew at home.
Girl #2. I also speak Hebrew. But I know English also!
Me: Really? What do you know in English?
Girl #2 Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten!
Me: Wow! That's great! Good job. What else do you know?
Girl #2: Go to sleep young lady!

****************

This, coincidentally, is the phrase of the week around here.

We got back on Monday. Oh, you didn't know we'd been away? (Grandma E. knew. Hardly anyone else did because I never got around to emailing or calling to tell anyone. I am bad. I am sorry.) The trip was good. Seeing Yehudis and Yehudis's kids, of whom I am extremely fond, was great. Eating soy-free hamburgers, Ben and Jerry's, and all my Trader Joe's favorites was also great, as was drinking Diet Coke in cans ($2 each here so I never do that). Work was also good. Marika was absolutely amazing, both on the way there and back and during the trip. But since we got back? As they say, oh-em-gee. She has been jetlagged like nobody's business, up crying till 3:20 am, happy and playing if I go in to get her, hysterical when I put her back down. Today is day five and I am being cruel and letting her cry. It's been three hours. I am not good at this.

So as I attempt to distract myself from the pitiful wails of my baby in the next room, how's about a list?

1. Usually, when you invite teenage boys for Shabbos, they sit and do nothing. Girls, on the other hand, don't sit down unless you are sitting down, without a direct command. Such as the completely delightful Birthright girls we had a few weeks ago, one of whom (hi Emily!) may be reading this post right now.

This Shabbos, we had--well, no lashon hara from me. But if you are a seminary girl/yeshiva bochur/other young single person staying for shabbos at the home of a rebbe/teacher/family friend/total stranger, I have three pieces of advice for you:

a. Do not show up completely empty-handed. Spend NIS 8 on a bottle of Prigat if you must, or NIS 8 on an Osem cake. But bring something. If you are part of a group, one thing from everyone is fine, even if you are a bunch of teenagers. It is absolutely and totally the thought that counts here.

b. OFFER TO HELP AND MEAN IT. If you arrive to see your hostess flying around her apartment frantically finishing up Shabbos prep with a baby on one arm, a screaming toddler glued to her leg, and the floor is not swept and there are two sinksful of dirty dishes, ask where the broom is and what else you can do. Do not disappear into your room and come back five minutes later asking what the wireless password is.

c. Say thank you. Also, compliment the food. Even if you didn't like it.

Oh, and one more thing.

d. If your host's 6-year-old son asks you to look at the Lego spaceship he just made, do not say, "No." Because if you do, you will never be invited back. Ever. Ever ever ever.

2. Marika wasn't really walking before the trip. Now she's walking everywhere. Why? Here: stone floors. There: carpet with nice soft underlay. The consequences to falling are a lot milder.

3. Also while in the US, my friend Jenny's Albanian husband gave Marika an Albanian car. When he was a kid there weren't really commercially produced toys, so this is, I think, his dad's design, and a truly fabulous one it is too. This example is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, a little car that is essentially two wire axles, four jam-jar-lid wheels, a piece of wire for the body connecting the two axles, and a third piece of wire connecting the crossbar with a steering wheel. It's just Marika's height and it's actually steerable. She LOVES it and has been driving it around the house since we got home.

4. I forgot how unpleasant it is to be cold. It's been a long time since I was really cold--almost a year. So it was kind of a shock to get out of the shower shivering, or need time to warm up under a blanket, or have "is she cold?" included in the list of possible reasons why the baby isn't sleeping. I don't miss the cold. At all. I do miss the wearing of wool on a daily basis, though.

5. Still no Pesach plans. Ideas? Anyone?

6. One of the things I wanted to pick up while in America was a 220v toaster oven. Why, you ask? Aren't these things available here? Well, yes, they are, but you will pay twice as much for probably not as good quality, or the same price for about a tenth the quality. I wanted a Black and Decker 35 liter, which I'd seen online for $100. So I went into a random 220 appliance store, and saw it on the shelf for $169. It was one of those Pakistani stores, though, so I thought it was worth a shot to bargain. "That one is $100, right? That's what I saw it at online." The owner didn't bat an eyelash. "Yeah, it's $100." I should've said $90.

7. I came back from the US with three full-to-capacity checked bags (mostly stuff from my storage space, some online purchases), a new stroller, a carseat, a carryon, two diaper bags and, oh yes, a baby. I got out of the cab and the cab driver got me a cart ($3! only in America) and loaded it all on there for me, and then I was on my own, pushing the unwieldy cart, pulling the stroller, trying to keep things from falling off, manuevering past line barriers etc. It was 4 am and Marika was not so happy about any of it. Not one person offered to help, even though a couple looked at me sympathetically and one said, affably, "Well you've got your hands full!" As soon as I got to the boarding area, I was spotted by Israelis who a) helped me with my carryon and carseat and b) once the plane took off, passed Marika a bag of Bamba. A series of other random Israelis then helped me haul stuff off plane and onto next plane, helped me while on the plane, helped me get my luggage, and helped me get my luggage into the Nesher. It left me with a marked preference for the people who live here.

I don't think Americans are mean or hate babies or are unsympathetic generally. I think it's a national attitude of self-reliance run amok, a feeling that if you're doing this alone you must be able to do it alone or you wouldn't be doing it, right?

Wrong. If you see someone who looks like s/he needs help, for pity's sake OFFER. Do not worry about offending. Just offer. I once worked as a reader for a blind professor, and we had this conversation. "People don't want to offend, so they don't offer help. But every blind person in the world has had the experience of being really stuck for help and not getting it, and they will ALWAYS appreciate the offer. If I don't need help, I can always say 'no, but thank you for offering.'" If you see a woman with a stroller at the bottom of a flight of stairs, offer to help. Please.

8. Marika is still awake. Ai! Ai yai yai! Ai yai yai! If I go in there she will smile, pat her tummy, and want me to tickle her. Have I mentioned lately her fantastic palatalized consonants, the despair of many a student of the Russian language? At'! Dat'! And her Hungarian gy's are fabulous. One of her favorite phrases is "bugyi bugyi!" I know she's just babbling, because I have rarely spoken a word of Hungarian in her presence, but it's still fun, and funny, to hear her say "undies undies!"

9. I saw Tootsie Rolls in the shuk the other day. This is good, because now that I know they're here I won't ask people to bring them for me, and I will ultimately eat fewer of them.

10. Naomi met me at Newark airport with an absolutely perfect bagel. Everything on top, fresh and chewy inside, lox and cream cheese in the middle. I'm still thinking about it, almost a week later.

11. This past week was hard. But one thing I should mention. On Friday, right before Shabbos when everything was so crazy, Avtalyon distracted me and my really really sharp little yellow parve knife sliced right through my finger. I grabbed a sock off the laundry rack, held it as tight as I could, and davened as hard as I could NOT TO NEED STITCHES PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. It worked. I didn't. And I really need to stop and be grateful for this, because if I had needed stitches, that would have been really really not fun.

12. Marika very rarely cries, this week excepted. But the Shabbos we were in the States, I tried to get her to nap when she wasn't into the idea, and was in there crying for maybe 20 minutes before I relented. When I went in, she was standing holding onto the sides of her crib, eyes red and puffy. When she saw me, she scowled, and then POINTED TO HER EYES and cussed a blue streak. "Ah ja bee da bee da da BABY! Ah na na IMMA! BABY! Ah na na IMMA! Ah nana nee ah da bee boo ba na! " There was no doubt about it. It was, "See! Look IMMA! Look what you made me do! You made the BABY CRY! GET ME OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!" Needless to say, I did.

13. Anyone have a job for my husband? He needs one. Ideas welcome. Also, information about schools teaching limmudei kodesh in English, to girls/boys/problem children, that are hiring, more than welcome.

14. Marika is still awake. It is 11:22 PM. Last night she was up till 1:30, woke up at 8, had a two-hour nap, and was exhausted and rubbing her eyes at 6. I kept her up till a little after 7, and put her down; she woke up an hour later and has now been at it for three hours straight. GO TO SLEEP YOUNG LADY!

One of the conversations

2011-02-26T15:02:00.002-05:00

It was raining pretty hard one morning and Avtalyon wasn’t feeling good, which threw a wrench into my taking-Barak-to-school routine. Usually we walk, take the bus, and walk some more, and the round-trip for me is around an hour and a half. While we're gone, Abba takes Avtalyon to school, which clearly wasn't happening this morning, nor was Abba going to be able to daven until I got back (usually after 9 am). Given the circumstances, a cab seemed in order, so for the second time this year, I called one. It was absolutely pouring when the cab pulled up and we climbed in; I buckled Barak into his booster and as we pulled away I realized that the driver was not wearing a seatbelt. This, I felt, needed to be addressed. The following conversation, I am proud to say, happened entirely in Hebrew (his side) and Hebrew [caveman] (mine).

Me: Where’s your seatbelt?
Driver, stating the obvious: I’m not wearing it.
Me: But why? That’s very dangerous.
Driver: I don’t like it. It bothers me.
Me: It would bother you much more to fly into the window.
Driver: True.

[pause]

Me. It’s raining a lot. Don’t you think you need your seatbelt?
Driver: [mumble mumble]
Me, pulling out the heavy artillery: What would your mother say?
Driver: I’m big already.
Me: She still wants you alive.
Driver: True.
Me: She wants you to wear a seatbelt. I am sure.
Driver (weakening): But she doesn’t know.
Me: Maybe I’ll call her.
Driver, admitting defeat but being a complete good sport: I’m putting it on.

He did, too. And I didn't see him unbuckling it as he was pulling away, either.

Two conversations

2011-01-30T16:35:00.002-05:00

So mad!! So so mad!

I wrote a post. I wrote a long post. I wrote a long and funny post. Which I SAVED AS A DRAFT. And then published.

And then? Blogger ATE IT.

And now you will NEVER EVER KNOW how I got the cab driver to wear his seatbelt this morning OR what priceless gem of English was shared with me by one of Iyyar's classmates.

Because Blogger ATE MY POST.

[fume]

Going to bed now. Gnnnnarrrgh!

PS. Cyndy, if you are reading, I think the Roman galleon has now officially been loved more than any other toy in the history of children's playthings. Just so you know. Also, I just bought the motor that attaches to it, and may actually let them attach it so that they can sail the thing on one of those gigantic puddles we now have outside. Historical accuracy? What's that? Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

A day in the life

2011-01-27T03:51:00.003-05:00

The alarm goes off at 6:15, but I never hear it. I wake up when my husband pokes his head in the bedroom and says, "It's almost 7, you'd better get up." Almost 7 is WAY too late, so I get up and get dressed and hear assorted small boys in assorted states of undress shuttle around the house, looking for shoes, discussing lunches, requesting peanut butter AND HONEY AND CINNAMON NOT JELLY PLEASE. Is there a string cheese left in the fridge? Can I have a red apple, not cutted up? Marika is usually still asleep so once I am mostly dressed I go in and pick her up, all warm and sleepy with a funky bedhead, and nurse her and change her diaper and get her dressed; at this point it is around 7:15 and Abba has put Iyyar in the neighbors' car for his trip to gan. Barak and I should be out the door by 7:20 but it's usually more like 7:30 these days (we need to work on that). Check for keys, bus pass, phone, and wallet, put Marika in the snugli (which is really a my tai) and out the door. Turn right, through the gate, down the stairs, and along the dirt path; over the bridge over the highway and across the street to wait for the bus. Invariably, the bus trundles past as we are crossing the bridge. On the bus, which is usually packed but on which someone almost always gets up to give me a seat: Barak usually ends up standing, which used to freak him out but he's used to it by now.

On the highway, off the highway, and we get off the bus right by the Bridge of Strings, on Herzl at the bottom of Yamin Avot. Look to see if the new light rail trains are there today (they haven't been for a while, but the other day Iyyar and I saw two of them, actually running, in the early afternoon--a first, and very exciting). Hike up the hill with Barak, and then down the hill, discussing everything from the concept of negligence and criminal negligence to what treats we want for Shabbos this week. Barak and I have a deal that he is allowed to stop at the bakery we pass once a week for a treat; it's too much to never stop there, because it smells so good, and this way he doesn't hock me every day because he knows it's his decision. If he decides today is the day, he can pick two things, and invariably goes for sandwich cookies because by his logic, that way he's getting FOUR things. (I get a little cheese danish for me and an oatmeal cookie for Marika.) Get to Barak's school usually just as the kids are going in; some days he just marches in without a word, some days he asks for a kiss and even gives me one too (!) I tell him I love him and wish him a wonderful day, then turn around and go back to the corner.

If it's Thursday, I turn right and go grocery shopping. I used to go to Hechi Kedai, the less expensive, more crowded, much smaller chareidi grocery near us, but haven't been lately; I can't go there by myself, logistically, and it is just not a fun experience if I take Iyyar, who wants me to buy everything and is not good at keeping his fingers off things. So I go to Supersol, which has the fun cheese counter, but charges for delivery and really isn't as cheap in general. I know I should go to Hechi Kedai for everything but cheese and the few fancy things you can only get at Supersol, but it hasn't happened for a few weeks.

If it's not Thursday, I turn right, walk back to Herzl and get there just in time to see my bus rumble by; I sit down and wait, get on the bus, go home, and have a snack with Marika--bread and cheese usually. Put her down for a nap, and take a nap myself if I am lucky. Both of us wake up sometime before lunch, and I either go and get Iyyar or Avtalyon, usually Iyyar because his gan is farther away and I have a monthly bus pass but Abba doesn't. Up to the bus stop and on the bus, which only goes halfway up the hill; walk through the park, up the rest of the hill, cross the street, down the hill, and wait until the gan's doors open at 1:30 bi'dyuk.

Greet a smiling Iyyar, then walk halfway home and take the bus from where we can catch it, at the top of where all the stairs start. By the time we get back Abba and Avtalyon are in the kitchen eating lunch, from the dining hall, and Avtalyon is usually covered in hummous and missing most of his clothes, because although he is now down with the idea of using the toilet he still thinks he has to be naked to do so.

Abba heads back to seder at 2:45, and then we play or read books or find other things to do (laundry! baths!) until Barak comes home at around 4:30; sometimes we go outside, sometimes not. Wrestle with Barak a bit over homework but don't push it; I don't believe in forcing homework, which is his job, not mine. Sometimes Marika takes a short nap at around 5, sometimes not. Barak gets his milchig snack as soon as he comes home from school (usually cornflakes and milk, sometimes also yogurt) and always forgets to clean up; I always remind him and then he does. The boys start falling apart and fighting at about 6, like clockwork. They're tired, they want dinner, it's been a long day. Get kids in pajamas and do cleanup (you don't clean, you don't eat--yes I am mean like that) before Abba comes home with dining hall food, if it is a day that seems soy-safe. If the menu looks dangerous, allergy-wise, which is about half the time, I make dinner at around 5 and everyone is happier. I'd do it every day, even with the terrible kitchen setup, if it weren't for the fact that the dining hall food is free and the Supersol food is anything but.

Abba gets back at about 7:15, which is way too late, but what can you do? 20 minutes for dinner, max, and then herd the kids into the bathroom for teeth-brushing and pajamas. Bedtime at 8, which is when Abba goes back for night seder. The kids are usually in bed at this point, but rarely asleep before 9. I am at my computer working, having also been checking in by email throughout the afternoon from when the workday started in America. I don't make phone calls until I'm sure everyone is asleep, and sometimes that isn't until really, really late.

At 10, night seder is over and Abba comes home; he stays in the kitchen, checking email or sometimes doing dishes/laundry/taking out garbage. I try to get him in bed before midnight, but it doesn't always happen. I work until at least 1, often 2, depending on what time the kids went to sleep and I started working; then shower, teeth, bed.

And then the alarm goes off. And I don't hear it.

My favorite thing

2011-01-16T15:06:00.002-05:00

I will confess: I like riding Jerusalem buses. It's a really good thing too, because I spend an incredible amount of time these days riding Jerusalem buses.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling ambitious and decided to take everyone to the zoo, solo. I had Avtalyon and Marika all ready when Iyyar came home, and the three of us went up to meet Barak's hasaa at 2:15. He didn't know about my exciting plans--I hadn't said anything for fear one of the littler kids wouldn't be up for it--so when I saw him, I asked him if he wanted to go to the zoo, and when he (obviously) said yes, I told him to run inside and dump his backpack by the shomer's desk (I'd already asked the shomer if this was OK). He was on his way when a couple of high school girls headed in the other direction, who'd overheard, offered to take it for him.

(Would you give your kid's backpack to a couple of strange teenagers in America? Probably not, huh? Here, I didn't think twice.)

Anyway, we went to the zoo, and it was great. We saw the squirrel monkeys, which was awesome, particularly because Avtalyon is obsessed with Caps for Sale and what did he see when he woke up from his stroller-induced nap but a tree full of... monkeys! We saw tigers, we saw wild boars, and of course we saw the best thing in the zoo: the display of North American grey squirrels! Behind bars, where they belong.

On the way back, though, it was harder, because the kids were tired and the bus, it was PACKED. Like, no room to get on in front, so we got on through the back door. And there I was with Marika in the Snugli, Avtalyon in the stroller wedged between my knees, Iyyar in my lap falling asleep on top of me Barak leaning on my side with a sort of glazed look. Nobody was falling apart or anything, but I was buried in children and completely immobile. And I was stuck in the middle of the bus, way far away from the driver. How, exactly, was I going to pay our fares?

I asked. "Excuse me," I said to the nearest guy, "I'm a new immigrant [this is always a good thing to mention when you are about to ask for help] and I don't know what I am supposed to do. How do I pay when I can't get to the driver? Can I pay when I get off?" I had my tickets in my hand. "How many?" he asked me. Um, what? "Me, and my kids. One adult punch and two youth punches, and we all need transfers." In Jerusalem, when you don't travel often enough for a monthly pass, you buy cartissiot--a multi-trip card that comes with a certain number of punches, each good for one trip and one transfer. The guy reached out his hand and took my tickets. How nice! I thought. He's going to take them to the driver for us.

But he didn't. He couldn't really move any more than I could, so he reached up over everyone's heads and passed the tickets as far forward as he could. "One adult, two youth, with transfers," he called over to another stranger. That stranger's hand passed the tickets to another hand, out of my sight. "One adult, two youth, with transfers." Four minutes later, hand over hand, the tickets came back--minus one adult punch and two youth punches, and with the transfer tickets.

Maybe there's another city in the world where you could do this. But if there is, I've never been there.

Hey look at that!

2011-01-16T10:59:00.002-05:00

When I post, more people read this blog! Who'd a thunk?

Avtalyon is currently rounding Hour Three of his afternoon/evening nap and oh yes I will regret this but I just can't bring myself to wake him up, because he's just out like a light and I know he'll be miserable if I haul him out of bed before he's ready. Random thoughts, without even prefatory numbers:

What is up with this Israeli school project of sticking clay on paper? Big mess, result too heavy to hang on fridge.

Barak's new tutor: awesome. He loves it. LOVES. Like, he is sad on days he does not have Morah Yocheved.

I spoke Hungarian on the bus today. Someone behind me was talking, in French-accented Hebrew, about the town of Kolozsvar/Klausenberg and all the different names it has. She pronounced the word "Kolozsvar" so correctly I turned around and said, in Hungarian, "But of course the real name for it is Kolozsvar." She agreed, in Hungarian, and we had a nice chat on the 21 bus that was going nowhere in the traffic nightmare that is now downtown Jerusalem. I know the light rail project is supposed to fix the traffic, eventually, but so far? Not so much. Of course, the train is not actually running yet, so we will see, I suppose.

Avtalyon is being delightful lately. Actually, everyone is, although Barak is in a testing phase of "what will happen if I ignore you?" Because he is, on a very fundamental level, a kid who wants to be good, my approach to this has been explaining to him why this is not nice and how it makes other people feel. Not sure how successful it's being, but I'm going to stick with it for a while.

Last night I Went Out With A Friend. On Motzai Shabbos. To a restaurant. Without children. This is an exceptionally exceptional thing for me to do, and it was fun, even though I got totally turned around on the way back and ended up having to take a taxi home. It is really important to go out with girlfriends and without kids once in a blue moon. I forget this sometimes.

I need to post about our daily routine. Maybe that'll be next. Also about our hasaa developments, which I will not call woes because they aren't really that bad, just inconvenient. But okay generally. Stay tuned.

Registered Avtalyon and Iyyar in gan for next year this morning. It took two trips, because I had not taken the forms for a direct debit to the bank in advance of coming, because last time I registered them for gan (in August) I did not need to. This time, I did. Fortunately I was able to fill out the forms at the branch on Ben Yehuda and go back to the iriya, thereby at least accomplishing something today. Which is always good.

Note to self

2011-01-12T15:06:00.004-05:00

Do not attempt to speak anything but English and Hebrew if you want your Hebrew to be intelligible at any point later in the day.

I don't know about anyone else who attempts to be multilingual, but I? have a REALLY hard time with more than one second language at once. I speak, or should speak, Hungarian, Russian, and French with a reasonable degree of facility (although my Russian is currently in the tank, I can do pretty well when I need to). My Hebrew is not great, but is B"H improving rapidly. What is not improving is my ability to speak anything but Hebrew and English without completely torpedoing my Hebrew.

So this morning, when I stopped in at Supersol/Shufersal for MORE CHEESE (eat your heart out, Shanna), and overheard the cheese counter lady speaking Russian to someone else, it was really a mistake to start speaking Russian to her. But I couldn't help it, because listening in on a few minutes of Russian conversation ratcheted my brain over from its "Hebrew" to its "Russian" setting and my Hebrew was, in a word, gone. I ordered my cheese in Russian, discussed the cheese in Russian, discussed Russian and Hebrew and immigrating in general, also in Russian, and then went to the cashier with my cheese and couldn't get out a word of Hebrew. Then! I went back to Barak's school, where I had some business to deal with in the office, and likewise couldn't get out a word of Hebrew. It was really bad. Like, three months' Hebrew regression in a day.

I don't know why but my brain just does not process more than one second language at a time. It's like I've got the hard drive space, but not the RAM, you know? My father never had a problem with this. I remember being so impressed as a kid when we would cross the border and he'd speak German with the Austrian border guards, Hungarian with the Hungarian border guards, and English with us, all without missing a beat. The translators at work, holy moley, some of them switch between four or five European languages--and similar ones--without any problem. I just can't do this. If I'm in Hungary, I can speak Hungarian and English. If I'm here, I can, more or less, speak Hebrew and English. Last Pesach, when we were in Boston staying with French friends, by the end of the week my French was as good as it's been since I left Montreal in 1992. But if you'd asked me while I was in Boston to speak Russian, forget it. My French here? In the toilet, completely. I can barely get a sentence out. And when I ran into that Hungarian couple a few weeks ago, I don't know how I would have fared with more than a two-minute conversation--I haven't spoken Hungarian in a couple of years and don't know how cognitively available it is at the moment.

Some people are polyglots by nature; I just am by circumstance. And I think my main advantage, linguistically speaking, is a willingness to sound like a complete idiot, coupled with a willingness to say something that is almost, but not quite, what I want to say. Circumlocutions R Us.

Better post this before Blogger eats it.

I can't believe it

2011-01-11T13:40:00.001-05:00

What is up with my posts?! I know I wrote two posts in the last week, neither of them is here.

Did anyone see them on their RSS feed? One tonight, one motzai Shabbos?

This is really really annoying. No, I haven't been posting every day, but at least I've been trying to post more than usual.

Brush with the law

2011-01-06T13:29:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, after I dropped off Barak at school, I kept going up the street to get to the Supersol a little bit farther up the road. Avtalyon was sick and wasn't drinking, and I wanted to get some juice and bananas to tempt him; I'd told MHH that I might be a little late, but thought I could just make it back home before 9. As it happened, circumstances conspired against me in the form, mostly, of a checkout clerk who was either new or had a bad case of OCD; I was stuck in line for more than half an hour, and when I was done was just about frantic because I knew how much MHH doesn't like being late to seder (and he couldn't leave till I got home, because he was home with a sick Avtalyon.) So there I was, racing back down the street toward Herzl, when I was stopped by--wait for it--a traffic cop.

Oh. No.

Except that I couldn't figure out what I had possibly done wrong. I hadn't been jaywalking. I hadn't crossed against the light. I was just hustling down the sidewalk outside of Shufersal, without having crossed any streets at all.

And then I realized what the traffic cop was lecturing me about.

She was telling me that it was too cold for my baby's ears, and I needed to put a hat on her.

רק בארץ!

Boy, posting daily is great!

2011-01-04T13:33:00.002-05:00

Okay, fine, I cheated. I backdated posts. But in fairness to me, I thought I had posted when in fact I'd saved a post to drafts. Oh well. I should get points for trying, right?

News of the day:

1. Barak is reading much better. I just got some new books for him, courtesy of Shanna, one of which he'd never seen before. (Fire Cat. Very cute. Recommended.) A new book is always a great motivator and he plowed through the whole thing, all three chapters, mostly on his own--I helped a little here and there but the light bulb over his head is really going on. I love that.

2. I got a call from Barak's school today and it was the secretary, telling me that his hours had been approved. This is a HUGE BIG DEAL. He is supposed to get three hours a week of tutoring time from the Ministry of Education as a new oleh. The way this works is that the ME is supposed to approve the funding, release the funding to the school, and then the school hires and schedules a teacher. Great! Except that in practice, they don't have enough money for all the new olim so this only happens if you know about it, ask for it, and push for it. It's been four months since school started. It was approved today. The good part though is that it's retroactive, meaning he will get extra hours for the rest of the year. Which he needs. Not sure when this will start--whenever they hire someone, I think.

I'm impressed with his school. Really. The principal is ehrlich, the teachers are nice, the boys seem nice too. But Barak is quiet and well behaved and that he is not catching on is not causing a problem to anyone but him. It's not unique to any school that the quiet kids don't get attention--it's just reality when there are 25 kids and 1 teacher. So when I ran into his rebbe at the bakery on Friday and he told me, "He's a great kid, really great, and it's impressive that he can sit quietly for that long. But I feel that he is not with us." The principal told me the same thing yesterday. "He doesn't bother anyone else, they don't bother him, but he's in a cloud." He said look, he'll learn Hebrew, that's not an issue, but he needs help so he learns it without falling behind. Which is true.

3. Avtalyon is... I'm sort of afraid to say it lest I jinx something. So maybe I'll just say that it might have been an error of judgment on my part to buy three packs of diapers in size 4+ when they were on sale a couple of weeks ago. Because he hasn't been needing them for a week or two.

4. Iyyar has been challenging lately. He had a fever off and on this week and has just been massively cranky. And cranky in ways that reeeeeeally push my buttons. Alisha has been here most of the evening and is reassuring me at intervals that I am exceptionally patient. Like, me yelling from the bathroom where I am wrestling Avtalyon off Iyyar as they fight for supremacy on the toilet, "Alisha? What did you say about me a little while ago?" Yelled back from office where she was winding my yarn: "You're really really patient!" "Thanks!'

5. Shanna and her family visited. This was fun, despite the craziness here and the indescribable craziness of her journey here. Also despite the fact that my life is such that I can't ever do anything and I spent most of her visit at home with sick children/on the phone with clients/frustrated instead of out doing fun stuff or, you know, spending time with them. Her kids continue to be small, spookily verbal and unsettlingly blue-eyed. Her kids and my kids had fun together, and much cheese was had by all. Oh, and pad Thai. She brought me pad Thai. It was wonderful. Everyone should have some.

The wonders of technology

2011-01-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

So, you thought I wimped out, didn't you? Thought I didn't post! Well, maybe it looked at the way at the time, but hey, what's this? A post dated yesterday! So I guess I did post after all.

Under the wire

2011-01-02T16:26:00.002-05:00

Thirty-five minutes till midnight! It's still the second. I can still blog with a bracha.

Shanna and Alisha are here and Shanna's kids have been winding yarn on the ballwinder Penny sent. We had a birthday party, and that was fun, and we played a birthday game, and ate cake, and all of that was good.

Living room is a mess--squished cake on the floor and so on. I'd better go clean it up.

January first

2011-01-01T13:33:00.002-05:00

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.

Was it a month ago

2010-12-29T03:26:00.002-05:00

that I posted about how I needed to stop neglecting this blog?

Um. Yeah. Well.

It's too late for NaBloPoMo but that's no reason I can't run a one-woman version in January. I think part of the reason I don't post here, while I post plenty of status updates on Facebook, is that the longer I go without posting, the more I feel the need for a substantial post. But if I post every day, they can be dinky. Right?

When all else fails, lower your standards.

Hey, want to know what I did yesterday? I went to get Shanna at the airport! Did you hear about that El Al flight that was stranded at JFK for nine hundred million years, ten hours of which were spent with a fully loaded plane frozen to the tarmac? Shanna, her husband, her 3 yo twins AND her in-laws were all on that plane. Seriously, people.

So after a day of IM'ing her as sympathetically as possible, while continuously updating and canceling babysitting plans, I went out to the airport last night to meet her with carseats, snacks, child entertainment, knitting, and NO CHILDREN OF MY OWN. It was very very strange. The last time I was at an airport without children, I was pregnant with Barak and it was January 2004 and I was coming back from visiting my grandmother. These days, a trip to the airport is a major military operation involving CONSTANT VIGILANCE. Yesterday, I went to the airport, I sat down where I could see the arrival sign, I bought a Diet Coke (8 shekel!! some things are the same in airports the world over) and pulled out my knitting. The first half hour was heavenly, but then I started to get hives. It was just so completely weird. I felt much better once they'd arrived and Shanna and her husband had gone off to pick up the rental car, leaving me with two overtired children to chase around the arrivals hall. More like life as I know it.

Oh! And something totally unrelated that I have not yet posted about! The cheese counter. Oh, my, the cheese counter. Yes, it did take me four months to discover a supermarket cheese counter, because none of the three supermarkets closest to us has one. But the one near Barak's school does, and because they had a special on Ben and Jerry's last week I went there, and people, did you know that cheese when you have it sliced at the cheese counter costs exactly half of what it costs if you buy it packaged in the refrigerator case? As in, NIS 40/kilo instead of NIS 80? Even the cheapest cheese here is not cheap exactly but this is a huge improvement. Not only that, but just the experience of buying cheese like that--saying, I'd like 200 grams of that sliced please, and a piece about this big of that, and 150 grams of that, grated--is one I have not had since I was 22 years old, living in southern Hungary, and buying smelly sheep's milk cheese for my lunches. (I bought smelly French cheese today--just a little piece, because it was expensive, but oh, yum.)

Food in grocery stores: wonderful.

Food in the dining hall: going south rapidly.

All the lunches have a main option containing dairy or soy, such that half of my children can't eat it. There is exactly one cereal--cornflakes--available at breakfast that I am willing to permit my children to eat. To give the allergic boys cereal I have to buy rice milk, which costs NIS 16 a box (oh Trader Joe's how I miss you) so most mornings they have rice cakes with peanut butter and apple slices, which is probably better for them anyway. And the dinners, which are meat and we had assumed would be no problem, contain a tremendous amount of soy. As of last week they started labeling the menus in advance so at least we'd know when it was going to be omelet night; it was getting really, really hard to show up at 7 pm with everyone only to discover that the meat, green beans, and sesame noodles ALL contained soy, and dinner was going to be raw vegetables, hummus, and bread. Again. I've talked to the woman in charge a few times but she is focusing on feeding 300 people, and if I ask for something specific--green lettuce, for example, instead of iceberg, or Cheerios instead of sugary cookie cereal--she says, just buy that item yourself. But we are buying easily half of our food now--probably more--and this was not in the budgetary plan.

Okay, that's enough for today. As of Monday, DoNuThreePlonyMo begins! Alert the media. And crack open a diet coke.

Neglect

2010-11-25T14:59:00.002-05:00

I need to stop neglecting this blog. I've kept it up long enough--almost six years now--that I shouldn't drop it now, and besides that, I'll regret not having a record of this year. The thing is, though, that I have seriously no time. I do not knit. I do not sleep. I definitely don't have time to blog.

But I want the blog, so I'm going to blog anyway. Just probably kind of badly. Better than nothing, though, right?

And now for my fallback: the List.

1. I feel like my name these days is Giveret. As in "ma'am" or "lady" or "you there." Giveret! What do you want! Giveret! Please close the door so I can drive, then finish with the car seat. Giveret! It's your turn on line. I have mostly stopped jumping every time I hear this. I have not, however, managed to stop turning around every time I hear "Imma!"

2. We are going to Modiin for Shabbos. I am looking forward to this. I'm a little worried about the logistics of transportation though--we're taking the bus and I strongly suspect it will be hairy. Will bli neder report back next week.

3. The lovely Alisha brought us back a ton of stuff from her recent whirlwind trip to the States, including several rolls of wallpaper border: two each of Sesame Street, Marvel superheroes, and cute furry animals. Those made their way into the rooms of the little boys, the big boy, and the baby girl, respectively, today. I love it. It looks so much better in there now. Next: find pictures for the walls.

4. We also got our curtains up in the living room. I am less besotted with those. But, like this blog post, better than nothing.

5. There is a big bag of dishes under our sink that we bought before Rosh Hashana. We have not yet toveled them. I'm sure this is not a record, but I'd really like to be able to use those dishes.

6. Marika can stand up not holding onto anything for a pretty long time now. Long enough to investigate whatever she's holding, catch my eye, realize she's standing, and then drop the toy and give herself a hearty round of applause. Yay Marika! Yay!

7. Avtalyon is being absurdly cute lately. He is also in a major Abba-or-bust phase. Yesterday I picked him up at gan and when he spied me, he brightened for half a second before flinging himself down on the paving stones in protest. "No! No WANT Imma! HATE Imma! Want Abba!" I'm pretty sure he doesn't hate me--it's his word of the week--but it was a little much. I made him apologize before I took him home. "I sorry Imma." Pause. "Want AAAABBAAAAAA..."

8. Avtalyon's puzzles? The puzzles are absurd. He can do a 60-piece little puzzle now in a few minutes; we got a new one last week and he did it with no help in under half an hour. The hundred-piece shark puzzle, half of which is just blue water and orange fish, takes somewhat longer. Child needs more puzzles.

9. I mentioned that Barak is taking karate, right? In the bomg shelter? It is the highlight of his life right now and all three boys can count to five in Japanese because of it. Ichi! Nee! Sun! Shi! Go!

10. Did I tell you about the bug attack/chicken pox episode? I don't think I did. Eh, too much to get into here--short story, nobody has chicken pox, but the new pediatrician we have been going to had never seen a child as covered by bug bites as Iyyar was, which is why his ganenet called me at 10 am, 15 minutes after I'd gotten off the bus in Kiryat Abba, telling me he had chicken pox and I had to get him and take him to the doctor RIGHT NOW and not only that BUT I had to get a letter from the doctor before he could come back to gan. Which I did, two taxi rides and three hours and NIS 120 later.

11. We may be getting a washing machine. Stay tuned.

12. Things are getting better. They are. L'at l'at, as everyone tells me--slowly slowly. My Hebrew is getting better, the boys' Hebrew is getting better, we are getting more settled, hopefully soon they will stop being sick so much. Maybe one of these days, I'll even get to knit.

Happy birthday

2010-11-20T15:49:00.005-05:00

Marika is one today. One! One year old! How is that possible?!

She doesn't look one. She's TINY--not quite 18 lb. But it's OK. She's stayed nicely on her growth curve, somewhere between the 5th and the 10th percentile on the standard charts they use here and between the 15th and the 20th on the new WHO breastfed-baby charts. She is STRONG--if you're trying to change her diaper and she decides she doesn't want you to, you'd better be up for a wrestling match. She's standing, pulling up on everything, and just beginning to cruise around on the furniture. The second shelf of the bookcase is now in her reach, and one of her favorite things to do is crawl over, pull herself up on it (yes it's bolted to the wall) and merrily empty it of its contents. If that's not age-appropriate behavior, I don't know what is.

I think she had a nice birthday. She got a doll, pink and plush, the one and only girly toy currently in residence in our home; Alisha was just in New York and hauled back all manner of goods for us, including said doll, and some books for the boys, which served as their presents for Marika's birthday (non-birthday children get small presents too around here.) Gifts were handed out Friday night and she loved the doll: her eyes went wide and she made that baby sound of great interest-- a sort of palatalized "atch," or what, if I were transliterating Russian, I would write as "at' at' at'." Followed by a lot of heavy breathing, also indicative of extreme baby interest. The doll is in her crib right now, which, along with her pink crib sheet, pink baby blanket, and pink flowery pajamas, looks very girly indeed.

She also got a piece of chocolate cake, which she enjoyed, but didn't get as worked up about as Avtalyon did with his first-birthday cake. She's just not all that into food right now. Nursing? Yes yes yes. Food? Take it or leave it, mostly, unless it's something I'm eating while she's in the Snugli, in which case she WANTS IT NOW. The other day I had something in a paper bag in my hand that she knew was good stuff. She made a serious attempt to get at it by hauling my arm up toward her, hand over hand.

She sleeps through the night, mostly, as of a couple of weeks ago. She's still quite happy to be carted around Jerusalem in the Snugli, and registers outrage on the infrequent occasion of being confined in a carseat. The other day I put her in a stroller for I think the fifth time in her life. She was not pleased. I can sit in the park with the kids running around, and she'll be content just to hang out in my lap and watch for a good long time before demanding liberty. But if I put her down, she's off like a shot. Her favorite place to be when inside the house is on the floor, and whenever I set her loose she scoots directly under the kitchen table to check out the buffet offerings down there. It's occurred to me more than once that she might eat more if I served her all her meals under the table, instead of in a high chair.

How else can I say it? She is a total delight. On the way back from visiting Orley this week, she struck up a friendship with the young guy sitting behind me; she was in the Snugli and I guess he was playing peekaboo, because she'd lurch waaaay over to the left, look intently behind me, giggle, then lurch urgently to the right to do the same thing again. I peeked back once and saw him, grinning, having fun with his new buddy. She also does this on the city bus--picks some random person and informs them, "You're my new best friend!" No one has yet declined.

Awake

2010-11-11T18:30:00.000-05:00

It is 1:30 am and I can't sleep.

Where are we going to be next year? Where are we going to be living in two years? Three? What are we going to do with our apartment? If we are here next year, will I get to keep my job? I think it will be OK but I have no assurances. If I can't, we'll both be unemployed, and that would be pretty disastrous. Should I be looking for another job? Should we both be expanding the job-search radius?

Maybe I should not be posting this on the internet, but well... why not? It's not like my boss doesn't already know.

Can't... sleep...

for RivkA

2010-11-03T16:05:00.002-04:00

There are certain things I am comfortable blogging about, and certain things I am not.

I wasn’t going to blog about what happened last Friday.

But then yesterday, when I was at Orley’s house, playing hooky with Barak, right before I had to run out the door to catch the bus back to Jerusalem, my phone rang. It was a friend of RivkA’s, and she asked me please to write it up. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Write what up? Well, she said, it would be a nechama to the family if you would write it up, what you did on Friday. So I said, yes of course, I’ll write it up, and that’s what I’ve just sat down to do, although even now sitting at the computer I’m not sure what exactly to say.

I started reading RivkA’s blog… four years ago? I think? Something like that. Since then I’ve gone through phases with how much I read blogs, sometimes regularly, sometimes hardly at all, but I always checked in on hers every few weeks. Was she OK? How were her kids? How was she managing, with the Israeli healthcare system and everything in Hebrew and as an olah, with breast cancer?

I kept reading, but rarely commented, since the comments always seemed more like the schmoozing of a group of old friends than the comments section of a blog. I didn’t know any of them and so I just watched, much as one would watch from a couch on the periphery of a party, when the girl throwing the party is someone you just met in class, the most popular girl, who said, I’m having a party and I’d love you to stop by. And at first you think you won’t, but because the smile was real and the touch on your arm was warm, you stop by, and it’s a great party, and you watch your new friend and all her old friends and wish you were an old friend too. So you listen to the jokes and you laugh and don’t say much—and later, as you slip quietly out the door, you wish you’d been braver, said more, made a joke of your own.

I never said much, but I kept coming back. When we were planning our aliya, the months of paperwork and the weeks of packing, I checked in on RivkA. And a few weeks before we left, I finally posted a comment—soon I’ll be in Jerusalem! And maybe we’ll have a chemo date.

Right after we got here, in August, I emailed her. I live right near the hospital! I’d love to join you for a chemo date.

I didn’t get a reply, but I wasn’t hurt. I was the newcomer at the party. She was the popular girl. I knew the invitation had been genuine, but she had so many other friends.

The weeks went by, and I kept checking the blog, looking for another invitation, another opening to stop by anytime. But it didn’t come. Instead, I saw more and more reasons to worry. The posts were always positive. It’s just another bump in the road, she said. Always, with love and optimism.

When I saw posts that had been posted on her behalf, I felt a chill. Because a few years ago, I was the person posting on someone else’s behalf, when the someone else was a dear friend, another blogger, one with cancer. I knew what that meant.

We’d never had a chemo date.

When the call went out for help for the family, I emailed. I live right near the hospital, I said. I can walk over on Shabbos. Let me know if you need anything.

And again, the next week: I live right near the hospital. I can walk over on Shabbos. Maybe the family needs a break—I can come over, sit with her, keep her company. Here’s my cell phone number. Give me a call.

And on Friday, as I came down the stairs that lead to the road above our building, with my baby in the sling and my boys galloping down after me, I heard my phone ring. I picked it up and the woman on the other end was speaking Hebrew.

Do you speak Hebrew?

I speak some.

I’m a friend of Rivka’s and…

Baruch dayan emes.

The boys had gotten into a niche by the stairs where someone had left schach, long palm branches with the fronds still on, and started doing battle with them. I couldn’t hear the person on the phone. I asked them to be quiet, and they were so deep in their game they didn’t hear. Please be quiet, please be quiet, I need to hear this. Please!

I heard, “to do shmira…”

Can you, she asked?

I started to say, “I need to ask my husband,” but it came out, “Yes, of course I can. Just tell me when.”

When I got home, the phone rang again. What shift can you take? Midnight to eight? I can’t do that long, I said, I have a nursing baby—I didn’t know if I could take her with me. I could do two shorter shifts if I could come home in between and nurse. All right, I’ll call you back.

And then the phone rang again. Can you come now? In fifteen minutes? So people can go home for Shabbos?

I looked at the time and said yes and hung up. I picked up the baby and nursed her and quickly decided not to bring her—she’s eleven months, she’d survive without me and my breasts for a few hours. I told my husband he was on his own and as I ran out the door Barak said, “But what are we having for Shabbos dinner?” I called back over my shoulder, “Cookies!” and heard behind me three little boys yelling, “Yay!!”

(RivkA, you made three little boys very happy on Friday night.)

I got to the hospital and someone met me and we walked outside to the beit haniftarim, and she showed me where RivkA was and where the sifrei tehillim were, and the women who were before me finished and left and I was alone so I sat down and started saying tehillim.

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ...

Aleph. Beit. I am not a tehillim zeiger. My Hebrew reading is not fluent enough; I don’t get a rhythm. It was cold.

לַיהוָה הַיְשׁוּעָה; עַל-עַמְּךָ בִרְכָתֶךָ סֶּלָה.

Gimel. Daled.

Someone came in. I was on zayin. She left. I started chet.

מִפִּי עוֹלְלִים, וְיֹנְקִים--

I couldn’t help it. I giggled. Nursing! From the mouths of nursing babies!

I put down the tehillim and looked toward RivkA, and I said, I’m sorry we didn’t have our chemo date. I should have brought the baby, because I think you’d like it if someone sitting shmira for you brought her nursing baby along. Do you think anyone’s ever nursed in the beit haniftarim? Did you know I nursed for the first time on a Jerusalem bus a few weeks ago? You would have been proud of me.

RivkA, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chemo date. But I’m glad I had the chance, grateful I had the chance, to spend this time with you; to tell you I liked reading your blog, and I like you, and I know we could have been friends. I’m glad there was something, this one thing, that I was able to do for you, to say thank you—thank you for inviting me to your party.

Three months

2010-10-30T17:45:00.002-04:00

We've been here for three months, as of sometime last week. In honor of the occasion, a random list of totally unconnected observations and updates:

1. Marika is 11 months old. This is the same age that Barak was when I started this blog. The mind reels.

2. She just got her second top front tooth, bringing the total to six (four top, two bottom). She is the loveliest, happiest, mellowest baby imaginable; she's still totally content in the snugli for hours, but once I get home wants nothing so much as the freedom to crawl around the floor and taste anything she might find.

3. She's still nursing close to exclusively. This is a first around here. At seven months, an inadvertent attempt at putting Avtalyon to bed with only nursing and no real food was met with hysterical objection (solved by spanakopita); I'm pretty sure that if I didn't give Marika any real food all day, she wouldn't mind. She nurses a LOT--every couple of hours all day and maybe twice at night. I don't mind if she doesn't.

4. Avtalyon is feeling a lot better now. Last week on Thursday, after days and days of his being generally unhappy, and waking up constantly all night screaming, with my thinking it was all because of the pinworms (oh... did I not mention the pinworms? Yeah, he had pinworms.) my husband called me just after I dropped off Barak to tell me that he had peanut butter on his face. Had he taken peanut butter to bed or something. "He's a mess," he told me. "Does it... smell like peanut butter?" I asked. "Um... no." "Is it coming out of his ear?" An expression of horror followed. (Have I mentioned lately that MHH is colorblind?) So, one ruptured eardrum later, I thought we had our answer. But no! Because when I walked into the doctor's office, all she seemed focused on was a little patch of red rash on his face. The strep rash. From the strep infection he'd probably had for weeks (in my defense, there had been not one but two pediatrician trips in that period and she hadn't noticed any strep infection either.) Antibiotics are a miracle, I tell you; two days on amoxycillin and another antibiotic cream for the rash and he was, as his ganenet said, a different kid.

5. Remember X, where X was the weight I was at when I had my first prenatal appointment with Barak? I am now down to X + 12. I was X + 25 when we got here. This is good.

6. What is not good is our budget. I have not been nearly as careful about money as I should have been and have done zero keeping track, mostly because of all the crazy stuff that's been going on around here for the last few months. Result: extremely unpleasant surprise tonight when I sat down with our Israeli bank account and figured out how much we've been spending. WAY more than we should be. I knew that there would be some unanticipated expenses, but they've exceeded what I planned for: I did not expect transportation costs of NIS 600/month, for example, or laundry costs of NIS 240 (and that's without using the dryer--now that it is, B"H, raining, that might be necessary some of the time). I also didn't expect to be spending this much on food. The kids have rebelled at the dining-hall-provided breakfasts (not surprising) and Barak is never here for the dairy lunches. So we've been buying a lot of food for during the week, and more than I anticipated for snacks, Shabbos, etc.

I never kept a formal budget before we got here because I did everything online and I just knew where our money went. It was pretty much the same every month and I knew every month if there was room for a luxury item or not. Here, I have not been keeping a formal budget and I don't know where our money is going and I have to change that. We've also been doing an awful lot of our spending in cash and not tracking it, so now I am looking at a bunch of ATM withdrawals without knowing for sure where all that money meant. I am naturally pretty thrifty and extremely budget-conscious and not knowing where my money has been going for the last three months is giving me conniptions. MHH and I have had A Talk and both of us are now equipped with notebooks in which to write down EVERYTHING we do in cash. Further bulletins, &c.

7. Iyyar, B"H, is way way happier at school than he has been. He goes with a big smile and comes out with a big smile. No more screaming in the morning, at least not "I hate gan!" He talks a lot about the wheelbarrows. Apparently there is a sand pit with wheelbarrows at gan and this is a wonderful thing.

8. I was going to do a list of ten, but see item 3, above. I'm being summoned.

Grandpa vs. Og

2010-10-16T17:22:00.002-04:00

First, though, a news flash: Marika stood up unassisted today! I was sitting on the floor this afternoon while my kids were eating popsicles with the neighbor kids (who speak no English at all but somehow they all seem to get along fine) when Marika pulled up to standing on my leg--and let go! She stood there for about five seconds while I cheered until she topped. :)

Now back to our regularly scheduled post:

Those of you who have read this week's parsha knows that is prominently features a giant named Og. Og comes and tells Avram that Lot is taken captive, hoping that maybe Avram will go to battle to free Lot and get killed in the process. Not nice, these giants.

So, this afternoon I was reading to Barak and Iyyar from My First Parsha Reader or whatever it's called, and we got to a picture with Og and Avram. Og, in the picture, is maybe two or three times the size of Avram. I pointed him out to Iyyar and said, "See, he's a giant. Who's bigger, Og or Avram?"

"Og's bigger. He's a giant."

"Right!"

Now, really I should have seen the rest of this coming.

"Is he bigger than Grandpa?"

Um.

"I think he probably is. I'm guessing Og is maybe ten or fifteen feet tall. Grandpa is maybe six and a half or seven feet tall."

This, apparently, was the wrong answer. Iyyar looked worried.

"But Grandpa would win."

"You mean, if Grandpa fought Og?"

"Yeah." With confidence and dramatic gestures: "Grandpa would beat Og! Grandpa would kill him!"

"Actually... I don't know. Og is pretty huge. Og might win."

Iyyar looked stricken. Clearly, this would not do. Fortunately, Barak came to his rescue.

"No, Grandpa would win. Grandpa would get a big gun and shoot him."

Iyyar's relief was immense. "Yeah! He'd shoot Og and Og would be dead! Grandpa would kill him!"

I gave in. "Actually, Grandpa would probably get an Uzi. Or a cannon. Or a grenade launcher!"

Iyyar looked positively thrilled. "Yeah! He'd KILL the giant!"

"Yup. That giant would be toast."

"Yeah," Iyyar sighed happily. "Grandpa's really tough."

Of sweetness

2010-10-07T14:58:00.004-04:00

This morning I woke up at 6:20 after about four hours of sleep to get the kids off to school. The routine now is that Abba takes Avtalyon, I take Barak with Marika in the snugli, and Iyyar goes with the neighbors (hooray neighbors!) to gan, which their son also goes to. This morning the neighbors were running late and Barak and I were too; it got worse when he asked to take the closer-but-slow bus instead of the farther-but-faster one. We were late to school--not terribly, but about ten minutes.

I dropped him off--he doesn't even say goodbye anymore, just marches purposefully inside with his big blue backpack--and walked back down the main street back to the bus stop, got on another bus and got off at the Meuchedet by the shuk, where I had an appointment. Then back up to the shuk, where I bought cherry tomatoes, socks for myself, peppers, tons of Alei Katif bug-free lettuce, bananas, plums and red cabbage. Then home for an hour, cleaning up; then off to pick up Iyyar and make a post office stop; then back home, where Abba and Avtalyon were both napping. We played for a bit after Abba went back to work, then at 4 went up to the bus stop to pick up Barak, who now--halleluja!-- has a hasaa (a paid carpoool with another mother).

We came home and found the other neighboring family with kids roughly the ages of ours out playing; it was starting to get dark so I invited them all in to play Playmobil. The mom, whom I like immensely, and I chatted while I folded laundry and Marika trundled around the floor with ever-increasing fourlegged speed; then the mom went home with her boys and her oldest daughter stayed for a few minutes (she is 7) to help me with Barak's homework. ("What's that picture of?" "A hammock," and I wrote down the word in Hebrew so I could help him draw the appropriate lines to the appropriate letters.)

She left and Barak came out asking politely for a snack; he'd been going tooth and nail with Iyyar a little earlier so I was fine with that development and offered him some of the cherry tomatoes I'd bought. He said yes please and then I showed him a huge on-the-vine bunch of them. "How about this?" His eyes got wide. "Ohhhhh boy! Yeah!" He was so cute about it, and after I washed them and handed them over in a bowl he tucked in with totally adorable glee.

I couldn't resist. I went over and kissed him.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

What to say to that?

"I love you THREE."

"I love you four."

"I love you five."

"I love you six."

"I love you seven."

"No! Imma, let's do it by fives. I love you five."

"I love you ten."

"No, you start."

"Okay. I love you five."

"I love you ten."

"I love you fifteen."

"I love you twenty."

"I love you thirty."

"I love you forty."

"No, sweetie, you're on thirty-five."

"I can't! I have a tomato in my mouth."

Later on he confided that he was sure he loved me more. I said I didn't know. He said he did.

"I love you more than Diet Coke!" I said, dramatically.

He shook his head with equally dramatic dismissiveness. "Do you know how much I love YOU?" he exclaimed. "I love you more than my ROMAN GALLEON!"

What can I say? Maybe he wins.

Ten months

2010-10-02T17:36:00.002-04:00

Marika is ten months old.

How did that happen? No, really--how? Wasn't I just really really really pregnant and thinking that the most likely outcome was that I'd just be pregnant forever? And then I had a tiny little baby and now I've blinked and...

Last week Alisha was here for Shabbos and right before Shabbos I heard Marika cry. Then I went in to get her and she was sitting up in her crib (which she started doing right before Succot) and when she saw me she said, unmistakably, twice, "Ih-MUH! Ih-MUH!" I shrieked, of course: "She said IMMA!" and Alisha came in and said "That was her?! I thought it was Avtalyon!" Since then she's said it a bunch of times, usually when I come to get her from her crib; sometimes she just says it for fun while I'm holding her. She started saying Abba, too, a couple of days ago--but let the record show that she is the first of my children to say Imma as her actual honest-to-goodness first word.

And! Yesterday I went to get her from her crib and she was standing up! Looking very pleased with herself, too. Just a few days ago she started crawling, not just scootching on her stomach but really up-on-all-fours crawling; she doesn't quite have the arm/leg coordination down so sometimes pulls both legs at the same time, but either way, she's moving fast enough now to be a menace. You can't sit her down with a box of toys and look the other way now; if you do she'll be five feet away and sampling the under-table tasting menu faster than you can blink.

Favorite toy of the day: empty plastic soda/water bottles. She's got her bottom middle two teeth and her two top canines--total vampire teeth, much more pronounced than Iyyar's were. She still doesn't eat much in the way of food, although she likes drinking water very much; she'll eat Cheerios, she likes avocado, sometimes she'll eat a little bit of something else, but mostly it's still all about the nursing.

She's big enough now that I can't just hold her and cuddle her anymore. She loves nursing, she loves being held, but just quiet snuggles--nope. Fortunately, she is still happy in the snugli for hours and hours and hours, so I still get to hold her all I want.

Funny Snugli story (actually it's a My Tai, but whatever); last week I was shoe shopping (shoe shopping! for Naot!) with Alisha and then we did a shuk stop and then I got on a very crowded bus, more so than usual. Just as I stepped into the bottom of the stairwell, the door behind me closed and the bus (that was headed onto the highway) started to move. So, there I am, road-safety-obsessed me, standing in the stairwell of a very fast-moving bus with my baby strapped to the front of me, people packed in front of me, and nowhere to go. Hanging on for dear life with both hands, trying very hard not to fall, I saw that Marika was perfectly happy with this development because, well, there was just so much to see. Like that sparkly thing! That sparkly shiny rattly-looking thing right over there! That little chain attaching that guy's gun to his holster on the side of his belt! She has a good knack for the sideways twist-and-lurch and manages to launch herself pretty far in any direction when she has a mind to (she can't actually fall out, but she can really reach far). This time, she got just far enough to grab the chain and, naturally, start stuffing it into her mouth with one hand while grabbing at the holster of the gun with the other.

Now, I know that she could not have removed or fired the gun from my Snugli. She could, however, have given the guy with the gun the very strong impression that someone pressed in behind him in the stairwell was trying to steal it. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, because I couldn't let go. The crowd thinned a little as the people in front of me paid their fares, and the guy with the gun took a step away and with it went Marika's prize. She pouted a little; I was relieved. I got to the driver, he punched my ticket, and we sat down, at which point she started flirting energetically with whoever was in flirting distance--her favorite on-bus pastime.

Hey! Speaking of the bus (aren't I... always on the bus? It seems that way) I had another bus first the other day. Batsheva and I were on the way to the bus station when Marika decided that she was STARVING and had to eat RIGHT AWAY. On the bus. Which was full. Of charedi men. I tried to put her off for a little while but no dice; with a 25-minute ride in front of us I gave up, took her out of the Snugli and started nursing. Nobody, so far as I know, noticed, except for the fiftyish Israeli woman sitting in front of me, who shrugged and said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

Indeed.

Chol hamoed

2010-09-27T12:56:00.002-04:00

I went shoe shopping today, with Alisha and Marika; ordinarily I hate clothes shopping of any ilk but it was nice to get out, nice to have a break, and the pink flowery Naots I ended up with made it even nicer.

Jerusalem during Succot--succahs everywhere, people everywhere, holiday atmosphere with the buses wishing us happy holidays, men getting on the buses with their lulavim and etrogim, people just seeming in a good mood in general. Or maybe it's just me.

There was a Hachnassas Sefer Torah near us last night--same noise, torches, lit-up truck we had in America. More security. More invisible security, too--one of the yeshiva staff members walked by with his usually neatly tucked shirt hanging loose. I looked closely and yes, there was the outline of a gun underneath. Just in case. This in addition to the visible guards with the great big guns, standing up on a wall watching.

We had guests for yom tov and Shabbos, which was just lovely--both my friends, and fun to have around. We've had guests before but not, if you will forgive me, girls; so nice to have a guest I can hand a baby to or ask to peel potatoes. Or who will start washing dishes without even asking. Or who will go out for pizza with me motzai Shabbos!

I need to be working, but didn't want to abandon the blog for too long. We're all doing well. B"H life is good. It's just very, very busy.

Second day yom tov

2010-09-23T16:21:00.001-04:00

Except it's not! Because there isn't any such thing as second-day yom tov here!

Not that I don't like yom tov. I do. But three days? is too much. Especially THREE TIMES IN A ROW, which is what we've got this year.

So tomorrow I'm going to go buy some fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh bread, and get ready to have Shabbos meals in the succcah. So so much nicer this way.

Checking in

2010-09-16T17:04:00.002-04:00

Hmm, it's been a while since I posted last. Sorry about that. It's been... busy.

Want a list? I could do a list. Here, have a list.

1. Barak's transportation woes. Oh. The woes. I don't even know where to start. We had a ride, then we didn't, then a different ride, then we thought we were totally set, then that fell apart, then we had in the afternoon and now we don't and... yeah. At the moment I am taking him by bus and foot in the mornings. This is doable because B"H our neighbors are taking Iyyar, departing every morning at 7 am. This means we all get up at 6:15, I feed the baby and get dressed, wake up Barak, wake up Iyyar and physically put his clothes on him because he's half asleep and can't do it himself, take him up to our neighbors' car and insert him into his carseat, wave goodbye (as he cries and screams, usually) and then take Barak down to the bus, skipping the second bus entirely and just walking the last 15-20 minutes. School starts at 8 and the timing usually works out well; there's a bakery right near his school and sometimes I bribe him with a cookie. With all the extra exercise he can stand a few extra calories. Then I walk back to the bus and take it home, getting back at around 9; in the meantime, Abba takes Avtalyon to gan. Then I'm home with just Marika and I hope, once things settle down, that this will be naptime for both of us, since I usually go to bed at around 2 am because of work.

2. Avtalyon and gan. Oh, Avtalyon and gan. Avtalyon is Not Happy in gan. He cries the whole time. Screams. Wails. Sobs. Wants his Abba. Wants his Imma. The teacher has called me a couple times to please come get him; today she told me that she would give me back the money but please not to bring him again until after Succot because there was no point in having him there now. She's right; any getting used to it he achieves now will be undone by a week and a half of vacation. A couple of times Avtalyon has come home with a sticker on his shirt with a sad face on it. Not just a sad face, a sad face spouting tears. Who came up with a sticker like that?!

3. Iyyar screams and cries on the way to gan but has been getting better and also unfailingly has a big smile on his face at pickup time--not just "I'm so glad you're here" but "I've had a really good day and hi!" His gan is great. It's huge. I think there are about 30 kids, one ganenet and an assistant. But it's a big room, bright and spotless; lots of toys, all in their places, and the room is as clean at pickup time as it is when we drop him off. It's impressive. The teachers are great and consistent and orderly, the kids know exactly what to expect, the routine is absolute, and that is what children that age want: predictable, orderly, routine, comfortable, safe, known. That is really what Iyyar needs, especially right now, so I'm glad he is there, despite the incredible inconvenience: it's a good fit for him.

4. Afternoon pickup routine, in general: I get Iyyar at the top of the mountain at 1:30, Abba gets Avtalyon next door at 1:15. I don't mind the longer hike because I can usually accomplish an errand or two along the way and I like the 1:1 time (well, I have Marika with me, but she doesn't butt in on conversation) with just Iyyar. He tells me all kinds of interesting things. Like about lunch. His gan has, like many Israeli ganim, a very definite idea of what constitutes appropriate lunch, and it is enforced absolutely. Each kid gets a gan-issued box with three sections: one for a sandwich, one for fruit, one for a vegetable. Each section is labeled with stickers. No plastic bags permitted or required; no other food can be brought except for a bottle of water. The first day of this policy I asked Iyyar how it went over. "One of the kids brought chocolate. She tried to sneak it. She tried to eat it under the table." "Ooh. Uh-oh. What did morah do?" Iyyar, righteously: "She took it away. She said no no and took it away. She put it high up so she [the girl] couldn't reach." "Do you think she gave it back?" "No." "Maybe later?" "Maybe later she gave it back. Maybe AFTER school. Maybe she could eat it at home."

5. Laundry. Have I mentioned laundry? We do not have a washing machine. We have access to coin-op machines that are in a different section of the building, which means you have to do laundry either with all children in tow or with your children in the care of another adult. This, as you might imagine, is a Problem. I'll spare you the gory details, but earlier this week I had a vomit/diarrhea/wet sheet/no pants for Iyyar meltdown and we asked for permission to buy and install a machine. Permission was, against expectation, granted; any suggestions for washing machine shopping in the Jerusalem area?

6. I took Marika to Tipat Chalav last week, which was actually a nice experience; I also got on their scale when I was there. Remember X, where X was the weight I was at when I got pregnant with Barak? I was at X + 25 when we left; I was at X + 18 last week. Even though I've been eating lots of carbs. I still look pregnant, but I can see a difference. Ergo my increased appreciation for the hill.

7. You may have noticed that there has been no mention of how I get Barak home from school in ther afternoons. That's because I have no idea how I'm getting Barak home from school in the afternoons. Every day has been something different and unworkable in the long term; we're in bein ha'zmanim now, though, and Abba can get him next week, and then it's Succot, so we're not in Disasterville until October 4. Hopefully, we'll have something worked out by then. Right?

8. I hired someone to come clean earlier this week, a Sri Lankan guy who did not really seem to speak English or Hebrew but charged me 40 NIS an hour to de-filthify my apartment at lightning speed. Totally, completely worth it, and he's going to be coming once a week from now on (I hope)--on Monday morning, which is perfect, because I'm off on Sunday and it gives me a chance to pick up first. For those unfamiliar with the Israeli style of housework, you can't have anything on the floor at all if you're going to be mopping; oddly enough for a country in a perpetual state of water shortage, floor-cleaning here essentially involves flooding your house and then pushing all the water out the door with a squeegee stick. You may think I'm joking about this. I promise you I'm not.

9. Barak is enjoying school. He's happy to go, he seems happy when he comes home. I don't think he understands a word the teachers say, but he likes it anyway. The first Friday he came home I asked him how school was. "Fun!" "That's great! What did you do?" "I don't know. It was all in Hebrew." But it was fun, I guess. You should see the drawings in his notebooks though. He was supposed to draw Abba in a boat: he drew a pirate ship with skulls and crossbones and cannons and torpedoes. He was supposed to draw a fish in water: he drew a shark with so many teeth they couldn't all fit in his mouth. The shark was eating a fish. The fish didn't look happy. The whole thing was so gleefully violent and elaborately detailed I wanted to frame it. This, my friends, is the worksheet of an artistically inclined kita alepher who has NO CLUE what his morah is saying. Except for when she says it in English.

9. I'm tired right now and probably a little cranky, and I have a headache that is making me feel horribly suspicious that another tooth is starting up with me. So maybe the above doesn't read all that positively. But, as they say here, l'at l'at--slowly slowly--it is coming together. It is.

Logistics

2010-09-04T16:14:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow morning school start times: Barak 8:00, Iyyar between 7:15 and 8, Avtalyon 8:15.

Pickup times: Barak 2 PM, Iyyar 1:30, Avtalyon 1:15.

Morning plan: Have Iyyar ready to go at 7 am, and neighbor can drive him up. Iyyar wants me to come with him, which means leaving Marika at home with Abba & other boys. But Barak has to be up the hill at 7:30 for his pickup, and I probably won't make it in time. It will have to be enough that I get him buckled in. What if he freaks out? He'll be in a booster, not a carseat. Maybe I should go with him and hope for the best, or go with him and have MHH take Barak up the hill for his pickup, with Marika and Avtalyon. But that's a lot of stairs. Not sure they can do it. He'd have to carry Marika and hold Avtalyon's hand--even for me that's a lot. Maybe Abba should go with Iyyar. Then I can take Barak up the hill for his 7:30 pickup, and drop Avtalyon off from there. Of course then that means taking Avtalyon up the billion stairs and no stroller. I could take the stroller and leave it at the bottom of the stairs and hope no one steals it. Or I could walk around the corner with the stroller. Yes, best to do that. Then MHH gets home and should still have time to daven. Maybe.

Afternoon plan: get Avtalyon a little early, take stroller to bus, go get Barak with Avtalyon and Marika and stroller (two adult punches, b/c of stroller). Walk from #6 to school instead of taking the second bus, which is unreliable timing-wise. Or: get Iyyar a little early and take bus from his gan to get Barak, while MHH takes Avtalyon. There is more flexibility than I thought with Barak's pickups; the kids sit on the stairs by the shomer and it's OK to be 10-15 minutes late.

Either way, we will all completely miss lunch.

I have to find a better way.

What I took away from Barak's parents' night

2010-09-01T17:11:00.003-04:00

עברית אני לא מביןVERY VERY IMPORTANT עברית אני לא מביןMUST DO THIS EVERY NIGHT עברית אני לא מביןBAGS OF CORNFLAKES עברית אני לא מביןHEALTHY FOOD עברית אני לא מביןPENCILS עברית אני לא מבין EXCELLENT, MUST DO IT EVERY NIGHT עברית אני לא מביןKOSHER TZITZIT עברית אני לא מביןARBA MINIM עברית אני לא מביןעברית אני לא מביןABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY AND REQUIREDעברית אני לא מביןBIRTHDAYS עברית אני לא מבין THESE BOOKS EVERY DAY עברית אני לא מביןVERY IMPORTANT עברית אני לא מביןSCHEDULE FOR THE HOLIDAYS עברית אני לא מביןSIX FIVE NINE TWO עברית אני לא מבין TWO עברית אני לא מבין FIVE THREE FOUR TWO עברית אני לא מבין

One month

2010-08-29T09:54:00.003-04:00

since we got here.

So far it's been good, in general, though I wouldn't say easy. The travails of Iyyar's gan were utterly eclipsed by what happened with the school we had planned for Barak; after a week of finalizing his acceptance (interviews and visits and endless phone calls), we discovered that a) the school was moving to the absolute opposite end of the city, b) we were going to be required to pay ourselves for the required Hebrew help, at astronomical cost, and c) there was no hasaa (schoolbus). Well, technically there is a hasaa, but it stops at the top of those 182 steps I might have mentioned before, and they would not move the stop. And it costs more than tuition. And I would have had to take a bus just to get to the stop and back. And there was no viable way to get to the school itself by public transportation--it's over an hour each way and the buses are a huge pain.

So we had to find him another school, and I really don't want to get into the details here but last Sunday we (Barak, Marika and I) literally spent seven hours, beginning at 7 am, literally wandering the streets of Jerusalem looking for a school for him. Many tears later, we found one, a good school not too far from us as the crow flies but two buses (short trips, at least) away. The teachers and principal and office staff all seem lovely, there are no other English speakers in his class (a plus so far as I am concerned) and there are only 25 kids in his class, which is incredible around here. I found another parent who was willing to drive him in the morning, but as of now I have to go get him on four buses total every afternoon. This month they're still on short days (till 2) which means I can go get him while my husband is on lunch break, but after the chagim I'm going to have a problem. Hopefully I'll have it dealt with by then.

Iyyar and Avtalyon start school on Wednesday, and I think things will be easier for everyone once we're all in a schedule. Of course, only one week of schedule before it's all disrupted by a thousand chagim, but! at least only one of them is going to be three days this year. That is something I am really looking forward to, right there.

The view

2010-08-23T13:57:00.001-04:00

For the record

2010-08-21T15:57:00.003-04:00

What half a ton of luggage looks like: the inside of the U-Haul that took our stuff to the airport.

Three weeks

2010-08-18T14:09:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to check in once a week, just so you don't give up on me entirely...

It's been an interesting week. It got more interesting on Sunday when I went to pay for Iyyar's gan (nursery school) and was told that the gan was full. I said, but I have an email right here dated April telling me he has a spot. Sorry, it's closed. We'll find you another gan. No no NO, said I; I know it's closed and I know it's full but one of the spots in that full gan belongs to MY SON.

Ah, but no. It didn't. Because--well, it's complicated. We live in a neighborhood of Jerusalem that I'll call Neighborhood A. We live on the very edge of this neighborhood, which is built into the side of an incredibly steep hill. I haven't counted the number of steps it takes to get to the top but it's well over a hundred--I'd guess it's around 150 feet straight up. We live on the bottom. Right next to us, almost literally in our backyard, is the border of our neighborhood and Neighborhood B. Way back before Pesach, I registered Iyyar in a gan in Neighborhood B. Between then and now, all the ganim in Neighborhood B filled up. Then they had to turn kids away. But they're not allowed to turn kids who actually live in Neighborhood B away from ganim in Neighborhood B. So what they did to make room for them was kick out all the kids who lived in other neighborhoods, like, for example, ours. They didn't tell them or anything, of course, just gave their spots to other children. So when I went on Sunday, Iyyar's spot had evaporated, and after three hours and much haggling and consulting a map and calling my neighbors, he was reassigned to a spot that is absolutely on the top of the hill--not only on the top, but OVER the top slightly, and a block and a half down the other side! The hill is utterly un-strollerable. It's zigzagging stone stairs all the way up. The actual gan is also not on our bus route. The only way to do it is to take a bus halfway up the hill to the point where the (steep steep) footpath begins, and walk it from there. Counting bus waiting time, it's going to be 30-40 minutes to get there, a bit less to get home.

Avtalyon's gan is ten minutes away from us, in the absolute opposite direction.

Pickup times are 15 minutes apart.

This is going to be interesting. What it means is that my husband is going to have to do one run and I'm going to have to do the other; me doing a gan pickup is going to blow any possibility of doing ulpan right out of the water. There is some possibility that another family could bring Iyyar home a day or two a week--maybe we'll get lucky. We'll see, I guess.

The happier news is that things seem on the right track with Barak's school. The menaheles is lovely, the school looks nice, we are meeting the rav of the school tomorrow. There is a hasaa but no idea of the logistics there. And no point getting worried about it till I know. Avtalyon's gan is lovely, as is the ganenet; it's very close and in her home. That starts the week after next.

Stay tuned, &c.

Two weeks

2010-08-10T17:32:00.002-04:00

Still here.

Sorry for the infrequent posts. I am, it should go without saying, incredibly busy; I also have no babysitting and the boys are all home because school doesn't start until 2 September. So everyone is on vacation but me, and I'm still doing my job on top of the usual Imma routine and, of course, doing everything that needs to be done logistically to get us set up here. The first week had the most running around but something needs to be done every day; tomorrow, somehow we need to get Iyyar's gan paid for, which involves an ishur (form, basically) from the iriya (uh... town hall? municipality?) that has to go to our bank so that they can deduct the money monthly. I had a triumph Saturday night in getting myself logged onto my bank's English-language site; triumph was shortlived, as I got locked out mysteriously the next day. Only way to reset login info: go to bank. My kids are going to be just thrilled about that one.

The technical aspects of my telecommuting setup have not been without incident; getting my phone line working was a project, getting international service another project, and what has ended up actually working was not anything like what I had originally planned. As long as it works, though, right?

The boys are doing fine. They seem happy, possibly mostly because they are spending almost all of their time with Playmobil. That stuff? Worth its weight in gold, people. Yesterday Barak and Iyyar went eight hours almost straight at the dining room table (did I mention our new table?) happily and mostly quietly waging Playmobil knight war.

Further to the table: I have one. I have never owned a dining room table. Now I have a lovely and fabulous table, which seats six but has two leaves that open out to seat eight, and five nice chairs to go with it. So so nice. I bought it used, courtesy of onetiredema, who not only found the table for sale, but arranged for the whole thing, and fronted the money for me, AND worked out getting it delivered to Jerusalem from Modiin without my paying anything at all for that part of it. All hail OTE! Yay table!

Marika continues to be the happiest baby on record, in this family anyway; last night she went to sleep at around 8, woke up at 12 to nurse, slept till 8, woke up to nurse again and then went back to sleep AGAIN until around 10:30. And then took a 3-hour nap in the afternoon. In between, she smiled a lot. And ate some Cheerios. And rolled over in her crib a bunch of times; back to sleep is for newborns, quoth she. I'm sleeping on my tummy now and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

Most recent excitement on the work front: today my computer cord went kablooey, so tomorrow I need to either a) find a cord to use for a week until my office sends me a new one, or b) buy a new cord somewhere in Jerusalem. Marika is still mostly nursing so anywhere I go I have to bring her with me. Tomorrow morning, therefore, I set off, with baby and computer, on a hunt for a new cord. Wish me luck.

One week

2010-08-04T15:44:00.003-04:00

Actually, one week and a day, but who's counting?

Things are moving right along.

Sunday: we went to misrad hapnim and got our teudot zehut, which wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected, mostly because Alisha came with us, translated what needed translating and watched the kids while we were otherwise engaged. Once we were done at Window #9 (and Avtalyon's name had a new vav it hadn't had before but we're not arguing with), we all went out for lunch, which, for the kids, consisted of mostly chocolate ruggelach and juice/shoko. (I had a big big salad. And a coke shachor.) Once we were done MHH took the bigger boys home and Alisha and I hit the Israeli version of Amazing Savings and then the shuk--lots of plastic things for the kitchen, some new glasses, a colander, mixing bowls etc. From the shuk, Avtalyon's first barad. He approved.

(Oh--further to barads. A barad is a slushy. Barad is also the name of one of the bibical plagues, specifically hail, which is understood to have been a combination of ice and fire. Barak, when he got his first barad last week, had a red one, and explained to me the etymology of the barad: red like fire, cold like ice, ergo: barad! Totally wrong, but a brilliant chap.)

Monday: Monday was the bank. Oh, the bank. The bank was an experience. It is straight up the hell, henceforth known as The Hill, up which everything needful is to be found. If you have no stroller with you you can go up a bazillion steps; if you have a stroller you have to go up the windy way, which is much longer but, mysteriously, no less steep. We had a stroller so we had to do the straight-up yet windy way and Barak whiiiiiiiiiined the whole way about whyyyyy couldn't he go in the stroller since both Avtalyon and Iyyar got to go in the stroller (answer: because it's a double and they're smaller than you and Abba has to push it). When we finally got to the bank, the air conditioning was delightful, and the rep nice; less ideal was the fact that she spoke zero English. Most Israelis speak at least a little but but not her. An hour and forty-five minutes into opening our account (nobody here has any explanation as to why it takes that long other than It Just Does) I overheard the next guy speaking French and asked her if she spoke French. No, she said, just Hebrew and Russian. I just about fell out of my chair. "This would all have been a lot easier if I'd asked you an hour and forty-five minutes ago if you spoke Russian." We went through some of the essentials again, finished up, stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Tuesday, let's see, what was Tuesday? Oh right, Misrad Haklita. That was pretty easy, although I was supposed to meet up with Alisha again and we missed each other. Wednesday we actually did meet up, I got a cell phone and now it won't happen again. Today was Thursday: shuk shopping date with onetiredema and general decompression. Tomorrow: Shabbos. Finally.

We're here

2010-07-31T14:54:00.002-04:00

In a nutshell: we made it.

The last week is kind of a blur. The day before we left seemed to just run itself; I got up, the kids got up, Asnat came over, Ada came over, I packed and cleaned and packed, Yehudis and her sister came to help, and then in the afternoon the friend who was driving the U-haul with all our stuff turned up and MHH and I loaded that. We have some cute pictures of the kids clambering around inside the empty U-haul, and then of the truck packed with our stuff.

The morning we left was a little surreal. Barak woke up at 6:10 and was next to my bed, where I was half-awake and nursing the baby, saying, "Imma, are we going to Israel this day?" I told him we were but not quite yet. I remember thinking that I should have asked Asnat to come earlier than 9, since we were leaving at 10:30, but it was fine; the kids all got baths, got dressed except for the matching tie-dyes I bought them for the trip, and ate: I think they all had oatmeal for breakfast. I broke down the pack and plays and shoved them along with our bedding into the last piece of luggage. The friend driving the U-Haul turned up, the friend driving us came, and all of a sudden it was really time to leave; I went out the front with the kids and got them into their carseats, then went back to check on my husband who was going with the Uhaul--and realized as I walked through the house that he was about to leave with both carryons still sitting on the couch and the bag with the pack and plays on the bedroom floor. Let him know to load them, went back out the front, into the car, and we headed off to the airport.

The unloading and checking-in of the half-ton of luggage went amazingly well. The guy at the counter complimented me on my baggage: "Wow, every single thing is 49.5 pounds!" Except for the one piece I knew would be overweight, which I had expected to have to pay for and did. It was quite a production, but we did it and then headed off through security and to the play area we'd told the kids we'd get a crack at. Then off to gate F19. Then onto the plane to Philadelphia. Two hours, easy flight. Four-hour layover in Philadelphia, spent mostly in the play area, eating crackers and the kids playing with the new Playmobil they'd opened on the first flight. I scouted out the gate to the flight to Israel, easily spotted by the extra security screen and the obvious bunch of Jews sitting around. At around 7:30 we headed that way, went through the second round of security, and got on the plane with a minimum of headache; eleven hours later, we'd eaten all our snacks, everyone had slept at least a little (Barak didn't fall asleep until we were over Greece, watching Ratatouille and Finding Nemo over and over instead) and we were in Tel Aviv. I am pleased to report a trip completely free of vomit or other disasters; everyone except the baby made it in the same clothes. (She peed all over herself and me during a living-dangerously diaper change on my lap. Oh well.)

We landed, we got off, we got down the long ramp at the airport and found the phone to call Misrad Ha'pnim, and were met by a lady with very high laced-up sandals who kept deciding to push my jogging stroller and then walking away from it without locking the brakes. They told us all to get on a bus to the old airport, and it was us, a family from Montreal, and a single guy with big payos. In the old terminal, up some stairs, into the arrivals lounge or whatever they call it, and then processing with a very nice Misrad Ha'pnim rep who spent half her time talking to me and half smiling at the baby. I did the paperwork while MHH fielded the kids, Barak asleep in the stroller and the other two boys happily demolishing the bags of candy handed them by staff. (Seriously. Bags of candy for the kids. BIG bags.) Back to the main airport, by the same bus; got two guys with trolleys and all 23 pieces of luggage (including carseats); through the exit to find OneTiredEma and family smiling, waving, and holding a Welcome Home sign. When OTE offered to meet us at the airport I just thought it would be nice to have a welcoming committee; as it turned out it made all the difference between what would otherwise have been total misery and an arrival that was about as smooth as it could possibly have been. Taxman dealt with the taxi/luggage guys for us in Hebrew, OTE held the baby for me while I put in the carseats, and when Taxman realized that there was no one there at the other end to help us with our mountain of luggage, they all followed us in their car to help unload--and then supplied us all with pizza and popsicles. Amazing. As MHH said, "Wait. Who are they? You've never MET these people?" "She's a blog friend." He shook his head. "You and your blog friends. Wow."

Made the beds, put the kids in them, unpacked, took a shower; sat on the couch, ate more now-cold pizza, looked at my husband, and we both grinned. We made it. We're home.

One week

2010-07-18T23:50:00.002-04:00

We're leaving a week from tomorrow.

It's a little overwhelming.

In general I think we are OK so far as preparation--at least as OK as we can be at this point. Tisha b'Av is Tuesday, which means I can't finish packing the clothes, because we can't really do laundry till Wednesday; my husband's agenda for Wednesday involves spending the entire day in the basement doing laundry, cleaning out our laundry area, and working on his paper. We have a ride to the airport, for ourselves and our stuff, and the game plan for the last 36 hours is pretty well worked out. Two pieces of luggage left to pack, plus the pack and plays. K and I got snacks at Trader Joe's when she was here, and I have everyone's lunchbags clean and empty and ready to pack. It's still chaotic, there are still tons of random items lying around to deal with, but it's getting there. It is.

I know that I will want to look back and read posts that I wrote the last few weeks before we left, but the truth is I just don't have time. I am absolutely exhausted, and I need the sleep more than I need the blogging time. Marika is in an insomniac stage, which doesn't help; the kids are needing extra time and attention; there's just so much to do. I have a cleaning lady coming on Wednesday and Friday, and we are having Shabbos lunch out, which will help; the goal is to keep the kids out of the house every possible second between Friday afternoon and when we leave, to keep it as clean as possible. Not sure how that one will go.

The idea of leaving, specifically of leaving here, is hard. As much as I want to go, the actual leaving of this place--this apartment, this block, this community--is going to be very difficult. I have good friends here. I have been happier here, by orders of magnitude, than I've ever been anywhere else in my life. We moved here when Barak was three months old, and have not left since. I had three babies here. And I've never felt more at home anywhere else--I can't even go to the store to buy apples without running into people I know and stopping to chat. I feel like I belong here--like we belong here. Even though I know that really, we all belong somewhere else.

I know it's the right thing. And I think it will be good.

One more week.

The month in review, because Jasmin told me to.

2010-07-16T13:58:00.007-04:00

Uberimma: Who knows ten? I know ten. Ten are the days till we leave.

Uberimma: is about to wave goodbye to her spinning wheel. :(

Uberimma: just waved goodbye to six big boxes of stuff we won't see again till September sometime.

Uberimma: ‎'s stuff has a ride to the airport!

Uberimma: was just reminded that she still has no way to get her half ton of luggage to O'Hare in TWELVE DAYS.

Uberimma: One week and six days. But who's counting?

Uberimma: is scheduled to be landing two weeks, one day, and three minutes from now.

Uberimma: It's official: you cannot fit the worldly goods of a family of six into eighteen pieces of luggage. In case anyone was wondering.

Uberimma: loves LL Bean. They had a typo in their paper catalog knocking down the price of really nice no-iron Shabbos shirts to $19.50 each, and are honoring it. Husband has eight new shirts now, and strict orders not to grow or shrink in any way.

Uberimma: just got a book from the JUF about a little girl named Uberimma who makes aliya with her family and misses her grandma. Hmm.

Uberimma: is attempting to write a speech while listening to Avtalon tear around the living room singing "ROOshayayim! ROOshayayi-im!" a la Uncle Moishy.

Uberimma: is writing speeches and eating Nutella.

‎Uberimma: 's kitchen has never been this clean and empty outside of Pesach prep. My whole body aches, but it's gleaming. [collapses on floor]

Uberimma: has just been informed that we will have almost exactly half a ton of stuff with us when we leave. I don't think I needed to know that.

‎Uberimma: 's house seems empty without Deb and her daughter, but soon Sarah will be here! Aliya: best way ever to get all your out-of-town friends to visit. Highly recommended.

Uberimma: loves listening to Barak daven in the morning, all by himself, with his own siddur.

Uberimma: Two weeks and six days. It feels a lot closer from this side of the three-week mark.

Uberimma: backing up her hard drive. 198 minutes remaining.

Uberimma: hasn't packed in over 24 hours and is starting to feel DTs coming on.

Uberimma: just saw some amazing fireworks with Deb and Barak, whom I had to grab by the shirt to keep him from booking out of there at the first boom.

Uberimma: Three weeks and three days.

Uberimma: needs suggestions: how to get 18 pieces of luggage to the airport on Monday morning 7/26? We can get the people there in one minivan, but the luggage will need a truck or a full-sized van at the least.

Uberimma: should be packing but is taking a short break to snort at this.

Topless Robot - The 17 Least Appropriate Playmobil Sets for Children - Page 1
www.toplessrobot.com

Uberimma: just rejiggered her entire packing plan to allow her husband to take both boxes of seforim on the plane. Greater love hath no woman.

Uberimma: is convinced that stuff is regenerating when I'm not looking. The more I pack, the more there is lying around. Deb, I'm sure there's a bed back here somewhere...

Uberimma: is starting to see progress...

Uberimma: Sony Discman, circa 2004. Anyone?

Uberimma: is getting to the stuff that's hard to pack.

Uberimma: has packed, taped, labeled, weighed and inventoried 12 pieces of luggage. Six to go, most of which I can't pack until the week before we leave.

Uberimma: is really hoping for a night free of vomit.

Uberimma: has never seen such freaky-colored light. Is anyone else's sky looking, um, green?

Uberimma: just put her baby on the bus for the last day of kindergarten. Wasn't it just the first day?

Uberimma: is packing. It appears to be a recurring theme.

Uberimma: and family will IY"H be arriving on Tuesday 7/27, 3:15 PM. Start the countdown now: five weeks and 1 day till departure.

Uberimma: has flights!

Uberimma: is excited. Ellie's coming in twelve hours!!!

Uberimma: still has no flights. Hopefully Monday. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

Uberimma: is booking flights.

Uberimma: has visas in my hot little hands, all names spelled correctly. But they did not return my apostille. "The apostille was in that envelope? I will look." Breathe...

Uberimma: was determined not to pack tonight but did some packing anyway. Oh well, it's a harmless habit really.

Friend of Uberimma: Are you packing whenever you celebrate, or you're sad, or just for no reason? Are you packing when you're alone? Do you pack more than one or two boxes at a time? Have people talked to you about your packing? Uberimma, YOU SHOULD GET HELP!!!

Uberimma: But my packing doesn't affect me. Really. I'm totally in control of my packing. I could stop at any time--I just choose not to because I enjoy my packing. I can take care of my family just fine while I'm packing and I'm never sore the next morning. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM!

Uberimma: has a totally sewn-together Escher-esque tesselated fish blanket for Marika! (Don't be too impressed: I started it for Iyyar.)

Uberimma: plans to celebrate the arrival of visas and the departure of everyone for convention (speeches in hand) by taking the evening off to sew some fish.

Uberimma: has visas waiting to be picked up!

Eleven days

2010-07-14T23:05:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the long silence. I've been a little bit busy.

We are leaving in eleven days. Updates:

1. Barak has just been informed, to his great disappointment, that since we are making aliya on our own on a regular plane, not an NBN group or charter flight, there will be no welcoming committee/brass band/cake/soldiers waving flag. I had been showing him the NBN "Come Back" video and it did not occur to me that he thought SOLDIERS were part of the aliya package (well, they still are, but he was looking forward to soldiers waving at HIM, AT THE AIRPORT). I should have known better. If you know any soldiers you could connive into meeting us at the airport, you have the potential to make some little boys very very happy. And I'll knit them hats.

2. It's been a really nice month of visit after visit after visit. Cecilia left in early June and a couple of weeks later Grandma E came; then Deb and her daughter, then Sarah, and now K is here and being the most phenomenal pre-aliya houseguest imaginable. She is caulking my bathtub for me, people. I know. Seriously.

3. I took Marika for her 7-month (or whatever) checkup. The doctor was a little concerned that she wasn't sitting up yet; I wasn't really because, hello, she gets held ALL THE TIME, but when I got home I started trying to get her to sit up. Today she sat unassisted (with K, who has been hanging with my kids while I run around in circles) for ten minutes. I think she's OK.

4. Further to Marika: first two teeth came through yesterday, first solids (oatmeal) today. She didn't seem interested, didn't seem interested, and then today she WANTED THAT FOOD. I was eating cucumbers and hummous and gave her a taste on my finger; her mouth instantly turned into a black hole.

5. I just got back from loading six boxes (one huge, two big, three small) on a friend's lift. We should see them again sometime in September. Winter clothes and things a size up, toys, a Sterilite cabinet for the kitchen, yarn, books.

6. I should have put more puzzles in the boxes for the lift. Have I mentioned lately Avtalyon's passion for puzzles? It's like nothing I've ever seen. He is obsessed with puzzles and he is getting really, really good. He can do a 48-piece puzzle now, all by himself. It takes him some time but he doesn't get frustrated, he just sits there working at it and working at it until he's done.

7. Since we have K here and K has a Honda Odyssey with eight (eight!) seats, we have been doing some of the local-attraction-visiting that we haven't done much of over the last six years that we've been here. One of the places we went was the children's museum, where there is a real, genuine, green John Deere tractor that the kids can climb up into and pretend to drive. You should have seen Avtalyon's face. He wasn't even smiling. He saw it, his entire body went slack, and his eyes were burning with a fiery intensity that only a tractor-obsessed two-year-old can summon. When we got home, he went straight to his tractor puzzle, and for the last couple of days he's been taking it apart, putting it together, and circling it, muttering, "Tractor. Tractor yeah. Tractor."

8. Oh, one more Avtalyon thing. So you might know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time that the Pirates of Penzance are a local favorite. I have always liked it, I introduced it to Barak a couple of years ago, and it's a regular item on the bedtime CD hit parade. Lately, Avtalyon has gotten into it. "Beeya piyate keeng!" He sings, he dances, and, my personal favorite, when he gets to the section with the drums, sings, "da dum da dum da dum." On Friday night he was distraught because there was no Pirate King CD. I had to sing it to him. Fortunately, I know the entire libretto cold, so that was no problem.

9. Iyyar is in a... well, K is calling it a "defiant stage." I call it "testing testing one two three and a half," although he's four now and still doing it. Like, walking away from me and around the corner, while looking straight at me and grinning. What are you going to do if I do this? And this? and how about this? The timing isn't great, but it could be worse--like, say, two weeks from now. I'm hoping he gets it all out of his system. Soon.

10. Last thing, and this one about Iyyar: so he hasn't had any dairy for a year now, of any kind, with the exception of one small Tootsie Roll a few weeks ago. The day before yesterday, we went to the mall where they have a really neat outdoor play area. It was really really hot, and on the way home I thought we should stop at Baskin Robbins, where they have historically had dairy-free slushies. This one didn't. The only thing they had was a sherbet, labeled "contains milk." I let him have a kid scoop. That was two days ago and he has since had one totally uneventful bowel movement. I'm not sure if "contains milk" means "might contain milk" or "really truly contains milk," so I told him that this afternoon, when we go to pick up Abba at the airport, we will stop off again and I will let him have one spoonful of real actual cow milk ice cream and we'll see how it goes. It's a big deal right now, because we are about to be eating five days a week in a cafeteria that serves dairy for lunch every single day. Even if he can't, say, eat a cheese sandwich, it would be awfully nice to know I no longer have to worry about cross-contamination of ingredients and so on.

11. Okay, I lied. That wasn't the last thing.

Abba has been out of town this week, visiting his parents, which was, I freely admit, totally my idea. He has no idea what he has gotten out of. The amount of cleaning and packing and organizing and shlepping of heavy things up and down stairs that has happened this week is not to be believed. I cleaned out his entire closet, including the file cabinet; unloaded a huge box of shaimos, which was I think the fifth one; tossed and packed and organized every night until around 2 am. We had a cleaning lady come on Wednesday, for the second time; last time the two of us spent five hours emptying out and scrubbing down the kitchen, including scraping the grime from between the floor tiles with a piece of Lego and bleaching the baseboards (that was me) and de-gunking the oven (her). Yesterday she moved all the furniture and did all the floors and bathrooms. They look amazing now. Why is it that the house is only ever really clean at Pesach and when you're about to move out?!

Well that was nice.

2010-06-29T20:55:00.003-04:00

Isn't it kind of amazing how things work out sometimes?

I've been stressing about packing for months. Really, months. Do we ship anything? How? How much? Do we buy space on someone else's lift? Ship via New York, meaning we have to mail it all there and then pick it up at the shipper's Jerusalem office? Limit ourselves to the luggage allowance or pay for extra? I have been coming to a definite decision every few days, always a different one. Last week I decided to just deal with the luggage allowance and store/toss everything else. But the realities of that were just not practical. Seriously, what do I leave here: the kids' pajamas? my pajamas? the knitting needles? the pots and pans? the English books to read to the kids? 900 lb of luggage sounds like so much but it isn't much at all when you are moving a family of 6 across continents. I could just buy some of it again but it doesn't make sense when we have things we like already.

Then I decided, well, I'll just pay the excess luggage fees. But then I looked at our duffels and boxes and started to panic because they're all weighed out to 49 lb and what if the scale is off and we are charged $900--$50 per overweight piece?

Then I went into work today and when I got home there was a voicemail from my boss. I called her back and she said, sorry I missed you today, I wanted to give you a letter. About what? About your raise. And your $500 bonus for working so hard this year.

!!!!

(This never happens where I work, btw. At least if it does I've never heard of it. We didn't even get raises last year; I got a good one, relatively speaking, plus the bonus, which totally fell out of the sky so far as I'm concerned.)

Then the phone rang again. It was a friend who is sending a lift, from our neighborhood, to a city in southern Israel; we'd already dismissed the idea of shipping stuff with her as unrealistic because we'd have to get it and it wouldn't be worth it. But now, the lift is going to cost $8 a cubic foot, not $12, which is why she called. And we could pay someone to just drive it in a car--we won't have to get movers for the 6-8 boxes we'd be putting on. $300 or so for the lift space, a couple hundred dollars to pay someone to do the drive. $500.

Wow.

One little thing

2010-06-28T01:01:00.002-04:00

Before I forget:

When Grandma E was here, she decided to spoil the kids in appropriately grandmotherly fashion and bought them an Elmo cookie from the bakery. It was a big cookie and expensive so I said it was enough for the three of them; she got what she thought was a prune something for herself, but that turned out to be a chocolate something, which she couldn't eat, so she let them have that too. So what ended up happening was that I cut the cookie in half instead of in thirds, cut the chocolate something in half instead of in thirds, and each boy got to pick a half. Avtalyon picked half the Elmo cookie and the bigger boys each got a half of the chocolate something.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because Iyyar has lately been having some issues with a) telling the truth and b) keeping his fingers out of places they're not supposed to be. I left the extra Elmo-cookie-half on the counter and went to do something else; a little while later, I came back and saw the unmistakable signs of Iyyar fingers all over the frosting. It looked like he'd succumbed to temptation and pinched off about half the red icing. Eww. Also, not authorized.

"Iyyar," I said, sternly. "Did you take some of the cookie you weren't supposed to eat?" Iyyar, eyes opened wide, shook his head no. I raised my eyebrows. "Please tell me the emmes [truth]. Do not tell me a shekker [lie]. I only want the emmes."

Iyyar just barely nodded his head. "You ate it?" Tiny little head-nod again. "Were you supposed to eat it?" Tiny little head-shake, eyes very very wide. "Can you say I'm sorry, please?"

Very very quietly, "I'm sorry."

I got the knife back out and cut the mangled cookie into thirds, and gave a piece to each of the three of them. Then I gave Iyyar a kiss on the head and said, "That's for telling me the emmes. Please don't do that again. Next time, ask for the cookie instead of just taking."

I went back to the sink to wipe up from the cookie-cutting and the boys turned back to their cookie-eating. And that was when I heard Barak remark, "Well, that was a pleasant surprise."

Bad blogger

2010-06-27T19:49:00.002-04:00

We interrupt this blogging hiatus to bring you the news that WE HAVE A DATE.

Monday, July 26. Arriving Tuesday 7/27 at around 4-4:30 PM by the time we get our stuff together; anyone inclined to meet us with a brass band is welcome to do so.

Four weeks from tomorrow.

This is really happening.

Much to report in the last couple of weeks: a fabulous visit from Grandma E, some noteworthy sayings from the kids, Marika rolling both ways and becoming more delightful daily. Oh, and that Playmobil? Worth every cent, because it's been buying me entire afternoons of peace and quiet to pack. I would have spent more money on babysitting if I hadn't bought it, and that we can't keep.