Two

See that tiny little baby in the picture down there? That tiny little baby turned two today.

She is short and fat and hilarious. She loves shoes, and socks, and has little pink Mary Janes that squeak when she steps. I bought them figuring I would just take the squeakers out, but let her try them on before I did, and, well, she loved the squeakers so much I never did take them out. She calls them her "squeaky shoes" and sometimes, just for the fun of it, beats her heels against the footrest of her stroller just to hear them squeak.

She stopped nursing a few weeks ago, the longest any of my kids have gone. This past Shabbos, for the first time, she ate a meal not in a high chair or a booster, but sitting in a regular chair at an adult table. She's left-handed. She loves cats, and points them out gleefully from the stroller: "Chatula! Chatula!" She has been expert at going up and down the stairs for a while, and no longer needs to hold on. She loves to play with her big sister and follows her around the house; I still keep a pretty close eye on what she's doing, but these days I will fold laundry in one room and listen to her and Marika playing together in the next. She likes Playmobil, but you have to watch out or she'll put it in her mouth sometimes. And she likes Hello Kitty, and, well, pretty much anything Marika likes. Especially drawing, especially when she can do it sitting at her little pink chair at the little pink table in the living room. It's more fun there, of course.

After being the most epically horrible sleeper I have ever given birth to (and whoa, is THAT saying something) she settled down  to sleeping occasionally aged about three months, and to sleeping through the night, sometimes... well... I think she did do it last week once maybe. Yeah. Sleep is not so much our thing around here.

She says amen to brachos. She says no to most questions, being, you know, two and all. She loves to climb up on the rocking chair and rock it, and sings "nadned, nadned" when she does. Oh, and she LOVES the playground. She'll climb up the stairs of the play structure, go through the tunnel, down the bridge and down the stairs by herself, and do it again, and again, and again.

She likes lox and chicken and noodles. Chicken soup, not so much. Peppers yes, apples yes, tomatoes yes, cucumbers no way.

We're all doing well here. Maybe I'll blog about it all a bit more, if anyone is still reading.

Oh and by the way

It's a girl. Not nearly as grumpy as the picture would lead you to suggest, but since Blogger insists on rotating all my pictures and not letting me rotate them back, I had to pick one that looked OK sideways.

All is well around here. Just busy. As usual.

Of pterodactyls and robots

Just when I had almost completely forgotten that I once had a regularly updated blog, one particular post became the target of about four hundred spam comments. I get all my comments by email, and for the last couple of weeks, the bulk of my mail has been from "Anonymous" on "Pterodactyl." I haven't looked at any of them, so they haven't been that successful as spam, but they have reminded me that I haven't posted since... May, was it? So perhaps it's time.

This morning (it was Shabbos), the three older boys were upstairs playing while I was down with Marika and Mordechai having breakfast (muffins, if you were wondering). Suddenly I heard loud wails of outrage from Avtalyon, who, a few minutes later, came downstairs in tears because Barak and Iyyar had taken away his missiles. (Back story: I went to the US last week for five days for work, and brought them back Lego... something... robots, which came equipped an impressively deadly array of Lego robot weapons, which, sadly for me, are interchangeable; this means that there has been a lot of sneaky reassigning of weaponry to different robots and attendant protest from the owner of the robot thus disarmed.)

I listened to Avtalyon sob about his missiles for a minute or two, then got up and found two pieces of chocolate sitting on top of the freezer. I handed him one and one to Marika; he was not soothed. Then I said, "Avtalyon, I have a devious, sneaky idea for getting your missiles back." It was like turning off a switch: sobs instantly ceased. "You and Marika should eat the chocolate. Be very messy. Get chocolate all over your faces. Then go upstairs and look really happy. Say, 'Imma gave us chocolate!' Then Barak and Iyyar will want chocolate. They'll come downstairs and say, 'Can we have chocolate too?' And then you can take back your missiles."

Avtalyon thought this was an AWESOME idea. He not only ate his chocolate, he actually attempted to draw on his face with it as though it were a crayon. Then he and Marika went upstairs and I heard a gleeful "Imma gave us chocolate!" and then, exactly as predicted, "She DID?" Fifteen seconds later, Barak and Iyyar came downstairs. "Can we have chocolate too?"

Hitch in plan: Avtalyon is again crying. "I don't see my missiles!" "First give Avtalyon back his missiles. Then we can talk." Grumble grumble. All three of them go back upstairs. Me, hollering up stairs: "Avtalyon! Did you get your missiles back?" Avtalyon: "Yeah!" Me: "Did the devious plan work?" Avtalyon "Yeah! It worked great!"

Barak, looking puzzled: "What devious plan?"

Musk Ox Day

Fifteen years ago today, I turned 25. On the same day, I defended my master’s thesis. A few days later, I got on a plane for Moscow, en route to a summer in Tver, which I knew would be followed very shortly by at least a year in the UK for more grad school. It was one of the points in your life that you remember as a temporal landmark in later years; I think of every event in my adult life as either before the summer of 1998, or after it.

During the two years of my MS, I was in a disastrous relationship with a guy who was depressed, unstable, and not at all in love with me. Instead of recognizing this and getting as far away as possible, I devoted more and more time and energy to fixing him (why are we so dumb? Why?), to the point where I suddenly realized in early April that I had not written the master’s thesis that had to be done and defended by the end of May, when I had that plane ticket to Moscow. I wrote my thesis in four weeks, fueled by Milk Duds and Diet Coke.

That same semester, my friend Cecilia was wrapping up her music degree, getting ready for her performance recital, and planning a cross-country move to start a PhD in a different field. It wasn’t an easy decision and it wasn’t an easy time for either of us. We were leaving behind lives were knew weren’t on the right path; we were leaving our friends and our familiar worlds and heading off, both of us really on our own, to do something totally different. I knew, deep down, that the relationship I was in, the one I once thought would last a lifetime, was about to end; she was taking a decisive step off the path she’d been on since she was three. We both knew we were making the right decision, but it was so hard. Neither of us were feeling very happy about any of it.

All through that year, whenever the boyfriend was more angst-ridden than usual or I just felt like I couldn’t deal, I would email Cecilia—sometimes at 3 PM on a Friday—and say, can I come visit? The next Greyhound is in an hour and a half. And I’d get on the two-hour bus and go visit, and we’d knit and watch bad TV and eat pizza and talk about nothing for hours, sometimes all night. It was more than an escape hatch; it was more like the valve on a pressure cooker. I’d stay for a day or a day and a half and then I’d take the bus back to reality.

I don’t remember exactly how the discussion started, or on which late night, but at some point we started talking about qiviut. Qiviut, in case you don’t know, is the fiber of the musk ox, made into insanely expensive yarn. Neither of us could possibly hope to afford it, and we thought about how really, all one would need to support oneself—no degree required—was a musk ox. We thought, hmm, we could forget the whole academic thing and we could open a musk ox ranch! Maybe in Canada, or in Australia. And after a while we decided that if things really didn’t work out, if we both still hated our lives in fifteen years, we’d throw it all up and open a musk ox ranch together. On my fortieth birthday, fifteen years to the day after my thesis defense. I wrote the date into the acknowledgments section of my thesis: May 19, 2013.

It seemed so impossibly far away.

It is, of course, today. In a few hours, to mark the occasion, we’re going to Skype. She’s a ten-hour time difference away, so it’ll be morning for her and late at night for me; we’re going to knit and eat pizza and drink Diet Coke together, and complain that we don’t have any short circular size 6s. We’ll wonder where lost scissors go, and we’ll ask to borrow each other’s tapestry needles. And we probably won’t talk about anything too heavy, because we never do. We won’t talk about the twists our lives have taken, or how we both got to where we are—places we never thought we’d be, but good places, all things considered. We know we made the right decisions, fifteen years ago. Hard, but right. And so, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Diet Coke to chill, and some knitting to do.

Happy Musk Ox Day.

 

Because Grandma E told me to

Guess where I am right now?

No, guess.

Hanging out in a hotel room, in the city where I work, with Grandma E. Mordechai is allllllmost asleep in his crib, Grandma E is reading on her Kindle, and we are both sitting here very very quietly, waiting for him to conk out so we can start chatting and knitting and doing other fun things like that.

I am having a lovely week. I mean, I miss my kids a lot. But even still.

I don't love that I have to travel for work, but since I have to do it I might as well enjoy it, right? So in between working I have been visiting with my friend Yehudis and the lovely Sarah Peasley, who came out for a night and knitted with me and even hung out with Mordechai while I was in all my meetings yesterday. And then she left and along came Grandma E, who took a train A THOUSAND MILES to come and visit for a couple of days. She keeps telling me she's 83, but I find that kind of hard to believe. (I, on the other hand, am turning 40 in a couple of weeks. I find that hard to believe too.)

The trip over was OK. I actually bought a seat for the baby, thereby ensuring a nearly empty flight on the way here (seriously, people stretched out over 4 seats on both flights!). Changed flights in Toronto, which I emphatically Do Not Recommend; I had my pedometer in my bag so I can tell you with absolute authority that the person who designed that airport did it wrong. It took me 1,963 steps to get from Flight A to Flight B, and most of that was with all my luggage in tow. And the baby and carseat and so on.

Grandma E and I have been having a lovely day of knitting and walking and visiting and shopping. Went to Target and bought half a gross of socks for various boys large and small, a bunch of sippy cups and Avengers underwear (and other things). Bought my husband a little birthday present that I think he will enjoy very much. Bought myself a new water bottle and Mordechai a toy phone.

Aaaand with that, I hear the sounds of sleeping baby breathing. Time to turn off the computer and knit!

Briefly

Busy days, no time for blogging. But:

Last week, in the last-minute countdown to Shabbat, Marika kept circulating in and out of the kitchen asking for things, trying to get attention, etc. I know she just wants me to drop everything and pay attention to her, but now is not the time, so I reassure her: "Just a few minutes, sweetie. In a few minutes, I'm going to light. And then it's going to be Shabbos." Marika, joyously, "And then you're going to kiss me!"

Shabbat was lovely; we had nice guests and spent the late afternoon playing with friends. The kids even stayed past Shabbat and I went to get them after havdalah. As we walked home in the dark, Avtalyon was not pleased with me. I had done things wrong, yet again, it seemed. "Imma! How come you don't ever make it be Shabbos for longer? Why, Imma? Why do you always make Shabbos so short?" Because I can't control the movement of the sun, sweetheart. But you don't have to know that just yet.

And last night, as I tried vainly to find an apron to wear as I tackled the mountain of dishes: "Where's my apron? Has anyone seen my apron?" Marika's face lit up and she cried, "You can wear mine!" And she ran over to her little toy kitchen and pulled out her size 3, teeny tiny little pink ruffly apron with the owls on it, that I got for when she helps me in the kitchen. What could I do? I put it on. She thought it fit fine.

Mordechai turns one today. Avtalyon turned five last week. Out tenth--tenth!!--anniversary is in a few weeks. Time marches on; not every day is easy, but every day is good.

Guns and Israel: Why what you think is probably wrong

Two weeks ago, I turned on my computer after Shabbat to discover what everyone in America had already been grappling with for a day: Newtown. And in the days that followed, in the news--well, you all know what you read, about gun control, the NRA, mental illness, and gun control. And every so often, Israel would come up, as a place where people are all armed to the teeth and ergo these things do not happen. A school massacre could never happen here, because we have armed security guards, and, well, people here are armed.

Well, no. School massacres like the ones in Newtown haven't happened here, because mentally unstable teenage boys here don't have access to guns, and the Arab terrorists who would very happily shoot up a classroom full of children aren't given the chance to do so.

Rates of gun violence in Israel are not low because everyone here has a gun. Rates of gun violence are low because guns here are very tightly regulated, and because the guns that are out there are in the right hands.

In  Israel, there are 7 privately owned guns per 100 people. In the US, there are 89. The US rate of firearm deaths per capita is five times as high as the rate in Israel. Even though we have, you know, this terrorist problem.

Guns in Israel are ubiquitous. Yes, this is true. You see guns everywhere. You see guns on the bus, guns in the bus station, guns on every policeman and security guard. You see soldiers in uniform carrying guns, and you see soldiers on leave, not in uniform, carrying guns. So the sight of a 19-year-old boy with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, eating a hamburger, doesn't get a second glance.

It's easy to see this and think that Israel is the NRA's version of paradise. Actually, this is pretty far from the truth, because when you get down to it, you cannot have a gun in Israel unless the government specifically says you can--and unless you have a very good case to own a gun, they're going to tell you no.

Guns in Israel exist for a very clear reason. They're there, to be blunt, to keep Arabs from killing Jews. There: I said it. That is why we have guns on the streets here: so that when a terrorist gets on a bus with a bomb, or walks into a pizza restaurant with a bomb, or starts mowing down passersby with a stolen bulldozer, or climbs through your bedroom window to murder your family, you have a chance to kill him before he kills you or anyone else. It's pretty straightforward. We have off-duty soldiers, policemen, and security guards carrying guns for this reason, and we have the guns visible for this reason.

Attitudes toward gun ownership in Israel are completely different. Gun ownership is not a right. It's something you avoid if you can. There is nothing cool, exciting, or sports-related about guns in Israel. You do not use them to go target shooting for fun or, for the most part, to go hunting (although I'm told some people do hunt here, it's nothing like deer hunting in, say, upstate New York). Military service is mandatory, for the most part, because Israel is constantly fighting for its own existence. You learn to use a gun with every expectation that at some point, you will be using it in a situation where you might die. Guns are large, smelly, greasy, heavy, awkward and dangerous. You do not collect them, you do not show them off. They are a necessary evil. And because of the mandatory military service, people understand this, they understand guns, they respect guns and they know how to use them. There are very few gun accidents here; people do not accidentally shoot their own kids in parking lots. Stolen guns are rare, because if you have a gun, you have to keep it behind two locks at every moment it is not on your body. If someone steals your gun because you were negligent, you--yes, you--can be held responsible for crimes committed with it. It's a pretty strong disincentive for being negligent.

In Israel, you cannot just walk into a store and walk out with a gun. You have to have a reason to own a gun, and you have to demonstrate that you have a need for a gun, and you have to prove that you are capable of owning your gun responsibly. If you live in the West Bank, if you are employed in security, if you transport valuables, if you travel in the West Bank--these are reasons to own a gun. Usually, they are reasons to own one pistol, which you plan on carrying. One pistol. Not a Bushmaster.

If you apply for a gun permit, you stand a 40% chance of being rejected. If you have a gun, the police check up on you regularly, to make sure you haven't done anything you shouldn't have. And you have to reapply, at least annually, to demonstrate that yes, you still need your gun.

We live in the West Bank, within a literal stone's throw of lots of Arabs who would very much like to kill us. We are not allowed to have a gun, simply because we haven't been here long enough and, I would imagine, the Israeli government doesn't have confidence that we are Israeli enough to handle one safely. My husband looked into it when we moved, and was told, sorry--not for another year. If we'd stayed in Jerusalem, we would have been refused even after that time. Because we didn't have a good enough reason.

But it doesn't matter, because we're not going to have a gun in our house. With a houseful of curious little kids, we're much safer without one. And unless you live in Givat Assaf, or Efrat, or Afghanistan, or Yemen--so are you.

Kid chronicles

On Friday night, a few of the kids were not sick, exactly, but under the weather. Avtalyon fell asleep on the landing of the stairs at about 4--just lay down there and conked out. Mr. Bigfoot moved him to his bed, and there he stayed, until around 11 PM when the three of us (me, Mr. Bigfoot and Alisha) suddenly heard the dulcet sounds of Avtalyon belting out birkat hamazon (grace after meals) at about 200 decibels.

"Avtalyon? Are you up?"

"I'm benching!"

"We can hear that. Do you want to come downstairs and eat something, so you'll have something to bench on?"

"Okay!"

He came downstairs, a little flushed but not feverish, eyes the size of dinner plates and the color of tar pits. He traipsed into the living room, stopped short, and then, with the full-body, arm-waving expressiveness that is his peculiar provenance, exclaimed, "Imma! Do you know what? It's the middle of the night! It's not morning anymore! Do you know how I know?"

Pause while he waits for an answer.

"No! How do you know?"

"Because I can see the bookshelves!"

I will cheerfully give myself full credit for figuring this one out. He was talking about seeing the bookshelves reflected in the windows. During the day you see the backyard; at night, it's dark out and light inside, and so you see the bookshelves. Of course.

Mordechai is ten months old. How crazy is that? He's got two teeth on the bottom, two on the top, and two more coming in on top on the sides. He just started waving bye-bye, crawls everywhere, loves to climb ther stairs but can really only do it with two adult hands right behind him, because he doesn't have the balance to not fall over backward every so often. He still has that insanely hilarious cackle when he laughs. He just started eating food, and has gone pretty much directly from gagging on half a teaspoonful of pureed carrots to eating cheerios and matzo balls and noodles and demanding four square meals a day plus snacks. If you put him in the high chair, he howls until he sees the box of Cheerios come down from the cupboard. Then he's happy. He's getting much better at navigating them into his mouth, too.

Marika turned three a few weeks ago, and had a lovely birthday party at school that was the culmination of nearly a full year of "yom bodedet" fantasies. She went to an upshearin for a friend's little boy last December and has been kind of obsessed with birthdays every since. She was very very attached to the crown she got, for days, and still refers to any cake or gift or birthday-associated item as a "yom yom bodedet."

I pick the kids up from gan most afternoons, and usually what happens is I pick Marika up a little early, at 5-8 minutes till 2, and she and I and Mordechai in the baby wrap go up and get Iyyar and Avtalyon (whose ganim are right next to each other) and then all three of them play in the gan playground for an hour or close to it. This works out well for everyone. Iyyar gets his OT in by swinging hard on the swings, which I insist on as a prerequisite of playtime; Avtalyon also gets his playground time in, which his OT also suggests for his gross motor delays. But really, what most of them do is sit down in the sand and dig. And dig. And dig some more. Twice a week Barak comes home as I am heading up the hill, and I take him with me, and then they launch major works of civil engineering, with connecting tunnels and bridges and what have you. All the other kids have long gone except for Oded and his sister, the daughters of the assistant in the big gan that is between Avtalon and Iyyar's little ganim (since Iyyar and Avtalyon are both in gan safa, with only nine--NINE--boys in each, they're in smaller spaces. Iyyar's in a side room, Avtalyon's in a trailer.) Today I saw Oded's little sister, who is four but very tall for her age, strike up a friendship with Marika. She has only just begun to really have friends, so it was really fun to watch the two of them settle into the sandbox, collect their toys, take turns and so on.

Iyyar's doing well. He's in a good phase right now, seems happy at gan, is doing less of the weird behavior, isn't too hard to get out the door in the morning, isn't pounding on Marika quite as much. But it's day by day. Some days are great; some days, not so much. I'm still hoping to see him in a regular kita aleph (first grade) class next year, but if he's in a kita katana, and that seems like the best place for him, then that's OK too. He's gotten kind of amazing with mental math. And he's gotten really affectionate, in a way that is a little bit clingy but not alarmingly so. He just likes to sit next to me on the couch and cuddle. Obviously, I don't object to this. I'm all about cuddling on the couch.

And Barak just got a 107 on his Torah test. Homework continues to be a struggle and I've completely stopped trying to get him to daven on days he doesn't have school. I don't need to make it into a fight. He's steadily turning into a yishuv kid; goes all over by himself, although I insist on knowing where he is and exactly when he'll be back. But last week I ran out of eggs, and after wrestling with myself a little bit, I handed him money, sent him to the grocery store, and told him I needed 30 large eggs and he could also buy some parve chocolate for us to share. Half an hour later, he was back, mission accomplished and only two eggs broken. A new era, to be sure.

Overheard

1. Avtalyon: "Ooowwwwwwwwwwwww!"
    Abba: "Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?"
    Avtalyon: (through sobs) "It's not going to make it better! It just shows me you wuv me!"

2. Barak: "Imma? I feel that you should be aware that the parve chocolate coins in the cupboard have been mysteriously disappearing. There used to be a whole lot and now there's only one, stuck down behind the box of crackers." Useful information for me to have, but not in the way he thinks.

3. Mordechai:"WAAAAAAAH!" Translation: "I want to talk to the management! I want a new room! Why do I always get stuck in the crappy room with the cold little bed and the thin mattress and no room service? I want the room with Imma, with heated bed, down blankets and in-bed minibar.  GET ME THE MANAGER!"

4. Iyyar: "Imma, do you know what we did today? We made soup with pitriyot [mushrooms]. The ganenet took us all outside and we went and looked for mushrooms and picked mushrooms. Then we went back to the gan and made soup. But you can't do it yourself, only with the ganenet. Otherwise you might get sick."

5. Marika: "Iss my yom yom bodedet! I hadda yom bodedet in my gan! Inna chair!" Translation: It's my birthday! I had a birthday in my school! I got lifted up in a chair!

6. Mr. Bigfoot: "I hope you're still blogging. Are you still blogging? You need to write some of this down.

You never forget your first time

My husband said, I'm going to head out for maariv. I opened my mouth to say, okay, and that was when the noise started pouring through the streets, the noise that is so much louder than you think it is going to be. The siren that says that Israeli radar has picked up a Hamas missile, and that missile is heading toward your babies and your husband and you.

We have 120 seconds here, from siren to impact.

The first thing you think when you realize that this is really happening is the kids, the kids, where are the kids? The first thing you do is start to scream their names.

We don't have a safe room. The safest spot in the house is in the front hall, between two supporting walls with a steel beam over them. Barak was there in a flash; we had done a drill at home, they'd done drills at school, and he didn't need to be told. I ran outside in the unearthly noise and screamed to Iyyar, get INSIDE, get INSIDE, and I saw our neighbors, two teenage girls, standing frozen in confusion in the middle of the street. I shouted at them tikansu! tikansu! and they came and sat with Iyyar  and there was my husband, Barak, Iyyar, Avtalyon, and I had the baby but oh, my God, where is Marika?

I ran outside screaming Marika! Marika! and my husband took the stairs two at a time shouting Marika! and we couldn't hear anything over the sirens but had it been a minute? A minute and a half? The siren, the siren, and Marika! Marika! Where are you? My husband shouted down, I've got her, and pounded back down the stairs with her in his arms, my little girl who'd fallen asleep before Shabbat in a pile of  blankets on her brother's bed, and they dropped down on the floor with the rest of us and I slammed the doors shut

and all of us sat.

And listened.

And waited for the boom that did not come.

Home (no place like)

Seven people still read my blog!

Wow.

I’m kind of surprised. But since there really are seven of you who like my blog enough to say so, I guess I’ll give you the long-overdue update.

The short version: we moved.

This, quite simply, has been the best thing ever. It’s hard to even put it into words. We spent two years living in an old, dingy, run-down apartment that was built as a dorm, built by people who knew for an absolute fact that they, themselves would never have to live in the apartments they were building. We did not have a kitchen to speak of. We had only one toilet, there was no washing machine (we bought one but it died and we didn’t replace it, for a variety of reasons), no bathtub, no kids for our kids to play with, far from everything, no local schools, not a neighborhood we ever would have chosen. It did have some advantages, the biggest one being that the apartment was, well, free, and there were some very nice people, but it just wasn’t a place to set down roots. We knew all of this, more or less, in advance. So when we came to Israel, knowing that we’d be in this furnished apartment for two years, instead of sending a lift (=shipping container full of our stuff), we put it all into storage, packed up 18 49.5-lb bags, and got on a plane with just that.

In a lot of ways, the last two years, we were camping. We didn’t have our own stuff, we didn’t have our own home, everything was temporary.

In August, we moved, not to another apartment, but to an actual house, in a yishuv about an hour north of Jerusalem. It really is more than I ever dreamed of, certainly more than I thought it was realistic to hope for. Three bedrooms and a full bathroom upstairs, a big living/dining room, enormous kitchen, office, and second full bath downstairs. Big backyard, huge playground a couple of blocks away; I can walk to all of the kids’ schools in about seven minutes if I need to and not even arrive out of breath.  

I now have a real kitchen. Gas stove, oven, big freezer, washing machine, dryer. The house is finally organized, the last box emptied and put away, the linen sorted, the pictures hung, the outgrown clothes in the storage closet in the right-sized bins. The house was really, really dirty when we moved in, and the last three months has been spent cleaning it, bit by bit; the switchplates, the doorframes, the windows. It looks beautiful now. It looks like home.

And it’s hard to put in words exactly what that means. We have our own stuff back, all of our own stuff: the baby pictures, the bookshelves, my grandmother’s crocheted bedspreads, my wedding china, my mug collection. My husband has his seforim back. The kids have all their old toys, and now Barak and Iyyar have a bunk bed and Avtalyon has the train bed that I bought for Barak when he was three. Marika has Barak’s old toddler bed, with the pretty pink quilt that Sarah made; Mordechai sleeps under the sock-yarn blankie that Cecilia made. I have my spinning wheel, and all my yarn, and lots of new things that I bought for the lift: new beds for us, new comforter covers, a new set of Corelle for weekday dishes. I can cook again. Not only do I have an amazing, incredible kitchen, but I have all of the equipment I need to cook. I have a blender, a big stand mixer, immersion blenders, all the little gadgets and pans and so on that make cooking a pleasure. And cookbooks! Let’s not forget cookbooks. I made pad thai last week and have been experimenting with different kinds of pesto. We eat much, much better now.

And the kids are better, and happier. They are happier because they have friends whose houses they can go to and who come here to play. And they have a backyard with a swingset and a tree swing and lots of dirt to dig in. And they are happier because, well, I am happier. You’ve seen that poster, right, from the 80s? If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. It’s true.

But when mama is happy, things are pretty good. And she is. So they are.

 

 

Is anyone still reading this thing?

Where are we? November, right?

November. Okay, well, here's where we are:

Mordechai is shattering all household records for baby development. He got his bottom two teeth in a few weeks ago, and sat up for the first time, let's see, seven weeks ago. He's now eight months old and is crawling everywhere, pulling up on everything, and standing quite nicely without holding on to anything--for long enough to take a picture, anyway. He goes to sleep at around 6 and mostly stays asleep until the next morning, waking up a couple of times in there for a snack but generally going back to sleep. He does wake up much earlier than the rest of us though; if I go to bed really late (like after 4) I hear him awake in his crib, rolling around and talking to himself. He is, without doubt, the world's most delightful baby; he smiles at anything, loves to cuddle, and is just, well, totally adorable. And he nurses all the time--no solids yet, no interest really that I've seen. Sometimes he goes for something I'm eating and I let him try it; this leads to him spitting whatever it is out, and, usually, flipping sideways in my lap with an expectant look. The real thing, now, please, Imma.

He doesn't sleep in our room anymore, because he would just wake me up to nurse every half hour all night long. After a couple of weeks of musical beds, we've worked out a solution: I put him to bed at bedtime in our room and then move him into the other pack and play in Marika's room. She likes this, and points out "Mordechai's crib." The other day she told me, with difficulty and at length, that sometimes Mordechai stands up in his crib and cries. I don't really remember where everyone else was linguistically at exactly that age, but it strikes me that they were a little farther along (with the exception of Avtalyon, maybe.)

I looked at the AAP list of milestones for three year olds the other day, and Marika is not really there with the language. At all, really. I can't understand half of what she says and I don't imagine strangers do; she comes out with a lot of non sequiturs, and whatever you ask her when you pick her up at gan, the answer is "Great!" As in, "Who did you play with?" "Great!" "What did you do at gan?" "Great!" I realized a week ago that she completely didn't know her colors--everything was "Blue!" so we've been working on that. And she really can't identify many things by name--her vocabulary is very limited. I know that a little bit of delay is normal for kids in bilingual environements, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little concerned. Well, gan safa is a good thing; it's there if she needs it.

Iyyar and Barak are taking karate now, which seems to be going well; Iyyar and Avtalyon are taking capoeira, which I think they're enjoying more. It's good OT for Iyyar, for sure; he's noticeably better and less, well, stimmy after karate. Both of them are doing well in school, in their amazing gan safa classes with 9 boys and at least 3 adults in the room at all times. Onsite OT, onsite PT and speech, art therapy, play therapy and attention therapy (!)--it's pretty incredible. They like school and never protest going; I'm trying to temper my possibly unrealistic hopes about how much it will all help in the end. We'll see, I guess.

Things really are good around here, just so, so busy. I have no free time whatsoever; right now I'm blogging because I couldn't fall asleep (going to bed at 2 am is, well, early for me) and thought I'd post. I know there are cute stories to post, I just... can't think of any of them right now. Maybe it's time to go back to bed.

Wow

I don't really have time to blog (there's a surprise) but since this is also more or less my baby book:

Mordechai is seven and a half months old. He started babbling in a serious, interested, considered way a few weeks ago, and erev Yom Kippur, two and a half weeks ago, I looked across the room to where I'd left him enjoying some tummy time and did a double take: he was sitting up, all by himself, in the middle of the stone floor. I did one of those slow-motion dives across the room, sure he was about to topple over and crack his skull on the floor. He didn't. Not only did he not fall, he got himself back on all fours and started sort of heaving himself forward. A few days later, he was crawling. On Thursday, he was in his pack'n'prison and I realized that he was up on his knees, reaching up and trying to get a hold of the side of one of the walls. My next-door-neighbor was there and saw it too. "I think he's trying to stand up," I said. "Uh, you think?"

Yeah. So. He stood up. On Friday. Now he's pulling up on everything. This afternoon, he pulled up on one of the little white kid-sized chairs in the living room; then he let go with one hand and grinned at me. And then he reached over for the ottoman, grabbed onto the ottoman and cruised right on over. On his feet.

Cruising on the furniture. Seven and a half months. For point of comparison, Barak was not even rolling over both ways at that age. I think he sat up by himself for the first time at maaaybe ten months. Iyyar did not pull to standing until he was well past one.

Barak, Iyyar, and Marika all started walking at fourteen and a half months; Avtalyon started at ten and a half.

Hmm. Maybe it's time to get that baby gate on the stairs. You think?

In other Mordechai news, I bought a new baby carrier last week (a Chibuki, if you're interested) and I love it. It's kind of a pain to get on (lots and lots and LOTS of fabric) but once it's on it's amazing. It distributes the weight so evenly over your back, shoulders and hips that you really can wear it all day; we brought the kids to the zoo last week and Mordechai was it in from 9 AM till almost 7 PM, only coming out to nurse, with no complaints. He slept really well afterward, too.

He's starting to look less like Iyyar and more like Barak, I think. Still no teeth yet; a bit more hair. He is a total flirt, and finds a new best friend any time I sit down on public transportation or anywhere else. Wants to be carried around or plunked on the floor to explore just about all the time. Still not eating any real food; I've given him some tastes of this and that but he's not interested. Still wants to nurse all night long. (Yes yes yes I know. You don't need to comment on this.)

Other non-Mordechai-related things: Iyyar in general seems to be doing better. Some days are better than others. Barak is again not doing his homework and I just got a call from his rav. Marika is talking more and more; Avtalyon is a blog entry unto himself which I will, perhaps, one day write.

Hmm

Huh. So. It's been a while, then, has it?

A lot has happened, pretty much all of it good. Short recap:

1. We moved. We now have a house, with an upstairs, a downstairs, a backyard, and a kitchen that is beyond even the raving fantasies of my kollel-apartment dreams. It's got two sinks. A billion cupboards. Space for everything. And nice floors.

2. Mordechai is seven months old. On erev Yom Kippur, he sat up by himself for the first time. Yesterday, he started to crawl, and now nothing is safe. World's fastest transition from Easy Low-Maintenance Baby to Holy Terror: achieved.

3. My in-laws are here. We haven't seen much of them--they've rented an apartment in Jerusalem and we are now in a yishuv around an hour away--but they're here, and that is nice.

4. Kids have handled the transition pretty well. Iyyar and Avtalyon (whoa, it's been so long since I wrote here I had to stop a minute and remember their blog names) are now in gan safa, which is a special-ed kindergarten setting for kids with speech issues. It's not exactly appropriate for either of them, in that Iyyar doesn't have speech issues and Avtalyon is getting over his on his own, but it's pretty amazing for the issues that Iyyar does have (in plenty) and it's certainly not hurting Avtalyon any. A 3:1 student-teacher ratio rarely does. Onsite OT,  PT and art and music therapy are what they're there for, and we have hopes that all of them will help a lot. So far, the adjustment has been a little bumpy but basically OK. The staff seem fabulous.

More detail on all the above to follow, I hope, now that I am on vacation (vacation!) for a whole week. But for now, there's the nutshell version.

Giving birth at Hadassah Ein Kerem

After Mordechai was born, I wrote birth story parts one and two, and didn't get to three. I've been putting it off, but I do want to write it, and not really just for me. I want to write it because I wish I'd known beforehand that such things were liable to happen--if I had, I would have done some things differently.

Even though I think what happened to me is not the norm, it really could happen to anyone. So. For the record, and for anyone else who is planning on having a baby in Jerusalem soon, this is what happened.

...


Where were we? The baby had been born, my friend went home, Mr. Bigfoot went home to get a few hours of sleep before getting the kids off to school in the morning. It was around 1:30 am, a little over an hour later. And the nurse came in and said, "I have some bad news." Fortunately, before I had the chance to react to that as one might, she went on and said, "We don't have a room for you." I didn't really process this. She said that they had a bed for me (okay) and that there should be a room by about 11 AM. I kind of thought that this meant they'd put me back in an L & D cubicle, one of the partitioned areas with a bed and a curtain, for a few hours.

But before I could go anywhere I needed a lot of stitches. I had given birth to a 9-lb baby who was face down, and it was pretty unpleasant. In addition to the horrible-ness of it in general, was the additional horrible-ness of the OB who told me I needed stitches insisting, right after I gave birth, that it was now or never. I said, I need a few minutes to recover from this. She said--and I cringe just remembering it, but she is the one who should be ashamed and not me-- "I know how to deal with Americans. I worked in America. Let me tell you, if you do not get stitches, you are acting against medical advice. It is your responsibility. You take full responsibility. Don't think you can sue me later."

Really.

I said, I just had a really horrible delivery and I need half an hour to recover. I know I need stitches but I can't deal with it right this second. Please come back in half an hour to give me a chance to gather myself together before there is more pain. And that was the response. She said, she might be busy in half an hour and no she would not come back. And I said,  I cannot do this now, and she shrugged and said, "Your decision." Then she walked out the door without looking at me, tossing a nasty "Mazal tov," behind her as the door slammed shut.

The very nice American nurse who had been there when I arrived ran some kind of interference, I am pretty sure, and at some point a different and much nicer doctor came in and did the stitches. It really was awful, although not his fault, and almost as soon as he was out the door the nurse suggested I go take a shower. I was completely confused by this and said I couldn't stand up long enough to do that. She said, do you want me to help you? Because you might not get another chance for a long time.

She was right.


I changed into clean clothes, washed my face and hands, picked up the baby. She got a wheelchair and brought me and the baby upstairs, along with all of our stuff (bag of my stuff, bag of baby stuff, bag of clothes I'd worn during labor). In one elevator, up a few flights, out another elevator to Yoldot Bet (postpartum ward #2).

Okay, so, for those of you who have had babies, let's imagine this scenario. I have just had a baby after about a week of early labor, and the baby was almost 9 pounds and face down. I have had a lot of tearing and a lot of stitches. I have had no drugs, not even Tylenol. It's around 2 am, and not only have I not slept yet tonight, I didn't sleep at all the night before, and I've barely slept most of the week. I'm sticky with sweat and shaking with hormones and covered in blood. I'm still in that very early stage where just moving can make me bleed enough to soak completely through a pad and soak my skirt. Which is exactly what happened when I sat down in the wheelchair.

When the elevator door opened, there was my bed, which was sitting in the hall next to the elevator. No curtain. No screen. Nothing. Just a normal high hospital bed (which isn't easy to get into, by the way, postpartum), sitting there in the hall next to the elevator. Everyone and their brother--patients, families, staff, anyone and everyone--is walking right past. This is my bed, where I am supposed to wait until I get a room.

The L&D nurse piled my bags and paperwork on the bed and we brought the baby to the nursery to be checked in.  As I stood there, swaying a little, waiting for the nurses to look at him, the L&D whose who'd come up with me said, well, mazal tov! And she left.

And I sat down on a plastic chair near the little plastic bassinet the baby was in. Then after a few minutes, I pulled him and his little bassinet into the nursing room, to the side of the nursery, and sat down.

I stayed there for 12 hours.

I don't want to be overly dramatic about this but I do want to be honest. I was no one's job. No one looked at me. No one offered me a drink of water, anything to eat, or asked how I was doing. There was a water dispenser, but no cups. I did not have a cup, and I couldn't stand up to get to the water, so I didn't get anything to drink. At one point I asked for a cup and was given a disposable plastic cup that held about two ounces of water; I got up to fill it and soaked my skirt with blood just moving. One of my most vivid memories of that day was sitting in the chair, thirsty, nursing, just staring at the water dispenser, wondering if it was worth the risk.

The only attention I got was when I started to fall asleep holding the baby, at which point I was suddenly surrounded by angry nurses telling me not to fall asleep because I might drop the baby. They could not have made it more clear to me that I was not their job; I should be out in the hall, in that bed, and not there in the nursery where I had no business being. They really just wanted me to go away. But I couldn't, because I needed to keep nursing the baby so that he wouldn't get newborn jaundice just like all three of my other boys had. And I couldn't nurse the baby out in the hall. And frankly, the idea of lying in that bed, on public display, in the state I was in, was not anything I could consider. So I stayed in my chair in the nursing room.

There was no bathroom. I needed a bathroom and asked where the bathroom was and was told there wasn't one. So what do I do? I asked. Go into any woman's room and use hers. As in, just walk straight into another room and say hi, I'm using your bathroom. I had no choice, so I did, and of course--of course! I bled all over the floor, and it was while I was trying to mop up blood from the floor with wet paper towels four hours after having a baby I began to think, something here is really not right.

At around 8 AM I started wondering about breakfast. I knew that the way it's done in Israeli hospitals is that all the new mothers are expected to go down the hall to the dining room, but I didn't know where or when. At that point, foolishly, I sort of expected someone might tell me. By 9, I was really, really hungry, and I asked one of the other mothers who were coming in and out to nurse their babies (this was not a rooming-in unit) where breakfast was. She told me that I'd already missed it.

At 12, I started trying to get a nurse's attention to ask about lunch But it was lunchtime for them too, I guess, and no one was around or interested in looking at me. By the time I found someone to ask,  I was told, with obvious irritation, that lunch was over. And then she said something about how I should read the sign. By the door. OK, the sign by the door? There was an entire bulletin board covered with paper, all of it in Hebrew, some of it packets of multiple pages or brochures stapled to the board, some of it copies of copies. I could not even have told you at a glance which pertained to the hospital and which to postpartum care and which to... anything. I certainly could not have told you which had to do with dining hours and policies. I couldn't have stood long enough to figure it out, and just walking that far would have been a challenge.

I haven't eaten, I said. She pointed me alllll the way down a very long hall. Lunch is there, maybe you'll still get something. I started walking and again, not to be dramatic, but I was so dizzy I'm amazed I made it. I was hanging on the rail and taking two steps and resting. And then I finally got all the way down there and there was no food left. So I walked back.

The same nurse was there behind the desk and saw me come in and looked back at what she ws doing.  I said, there was no food. No reaction. I said, look, I haven't eaten since yesterday. I just had a baby. Could you help me out here? There was a lot of eye rolling and exasperated sighing but she did, after a few minute, beckon me into the hall and down--all the way down--that long hall again, somehow expecting me to match her pace. When she realized I could barely walk, she did slow down. And she found me some chicken and rice from the staff dining room and I ate it alone at a table in the empty dining room. And then I walked back.

The baby cried, and I sat there shivering and sweating and feeling the blood seep through my clothes. I tried to nurse and he didn't seem to be getting anything. I tried so hard not to fall asleep. I remember dreaming while awake, seeing things move that weren't there. Everything hurt, and the longer I sat, the worse the pain from the stitches and the swelling. I was there holding the baby, watching people move past at not quite the right speed--too fast, too slow--talking too loudly or seeming not to make any noise at all. I wondered sometimes if I was dreaming, but the crying of the baby and the pain in my body were all real.

Don't fall asleep. Don't drop the baby. Don't fall asleep. And watching the hands of the clock which seemed not to move at all.

At some point in the afternoon I remember them calling my name from the other room and telling me someone was ready to look at my baby. I got up and pushed him into the other room, where there was nowhere to sit, and just stood there waiting. For half an hour. While no one looked at my baby. Is anyone going to look at him? I asked. It's not so easy to just stand here. So go back in the other room, I was told. But then I wouldn't be HERE when the doctor does show up and I really don't trust you to explain to him about my children's history with jaundice. So I stood. There weren't, by the way, lockable brakes on the bassinet, so I couldn't even lean on it. It would have rolled away.

Every so often, I'd get up and walk to the desk and ask when I was going to have a room. The answer was always, not yet. But I always had to stand there for what seemed like forever before anyone looked at me, and if I dared an "excuse me" I got that Israeli Hand of Wait--if you live here, you know it.

Why didn't I kick and scream and pick a fight? I just didn't have it in me.

At around 1:30, finally, I heard my named yelled from the other room. "You have a room." I got up, I got my stuff together, I put the baby in the bassinet and rolled and dragged everything to the front desk. Where I was ignored. For twenty minutes, by the clock. At which point I finally, finally, lost it. I started to cry, and it was the kind of crying where you just can't stop.

The nurses stopped talking and all the heads swiveled in my direction. They stared. And then one of them said, in honest confusion,

?למה את בוכה

Why are you crying?

They really had no idea.

It did get their attention, and the nurse (or whatever she was) who brought me to Yoldot Gimel (Postpartum Unit 3) did at least carry some of my stuff for me. By the elevators, we ran into Mr. Bigfoot, who had scrounged a single guy to watch the kids while he brought me Shabbos supplies. "It's a good thing you came when you did," she said to him, shooting a meaningful glance in my direction, implying that I was not quite stable. We got up to my new room, and put my stuff down and she had the gall to say to my husband something along the lines--I can't remember now--of how I was very worked up and needed something something.

I don't remember now what I said in response, but I do remember the look on her face when I was done. It was shame.

...

So. If you're going to have a baby in Jerusalem, would I say, don't go to HEK? No. There are good reasons to go there. I think the L & D care I got was excellent. My postpartum care once I was in a room was also excellent. It's the only hospital in the city that allows rooming-in, and that was a very big deal to me; it is the only hospital that had a lab onsite that could do CMV testing for the baby, which also was relevant.

What I would say is, do not be there alone. This is of course easier said than done; if someone had said that to me before Mordechai was born, I would have shrugged and said, well, I don't really have a choice. But if I'd known what could happen, I would have taken someone up on an offer even if I wasn't sure she meant it. I would have hired someone. I would also have read more carefully the list of things to bring to the hospital. Bring your own water bottle, because no one is going to bring you anything to drink. Bring snacks, because there's no such thing as meals in your room.

I knew I needed someone to advocate for me before and during birth. It just never occurred to me that I would also need an advocate afterward. I thought I was covered. I didn't know it wouldn't be enough.

...

In the end, it's only a blip. I didn't hemorrhage like I did with Marika; if I had, things might be different. After two days in Yoldot Gimel, I was discharged and spent three days at Hadassah Baby, where I ignored the newborn care they provided completely and spent my days in bed, nursing the baby and watching the National Geographic channel. In the hospital, for the first time ever, I had not had enough milk for the baby. He cried incessantly and I had to give him formula--I really had no choice. At Hadassah Baby, I had milk. I took four hot showers a day and ate food I had not shopped for or cooked, and by the time I went home I was OK.

The baby was fine. He did not have CMV and he did not have jaundice.

Now, that otherworldly interlude in the tinokia feels like a bad dream. The baby I brought home is real.

It's almost like blogging again

A few things that I really need to mention:

1. The other day I was slicing strawberries into bowls for the kids. I was doing this assembly-line style, with four bowls in front of me, the container of washed straberries behind them, and a knife in my hand with which I was topping and halving the strawberries as children circled me (well, half-circled me, since I was in the "kitchen" and they're not allowed to cross the line of red tape that delineates the kitchen space). Avtalyon was particularly eager for strawberries and kept asking for tastes, which I denied on the grounds that he would then get more strawberries and it wouldn't be fair.

"Imma, I want the tooth bowl."

"The what?"

"The tooth bowl?"

"The tooth bowl?" Puzzled, looking at bowls. "They're all the same size."

Avtalyon pointed at the blue bowl. "That one. The TOOTH one."

"How is that a tooth bowl? It's blue plastic."

Avtalyon, exasperated: "Noooooo! Not the tooth that's attached to my mouf! The TWOTH bowl. The number twoth one, right there!"

2. Marika has started using the toilet, with incredible enthusiasm and frequency. She appears to have the smallest bladder ever, because as soon as she got the idea (feeling of full bladder --> pee in the toilet--> get chocolate chip) she started leaping up and crying potty every 20 minutes or so, all day long. A couple of times I got suspicious that she was just after the chocolate and told her she couldn't possibly need to go again so soon: both times she got frantic, ran to the toilet, peed on the floor and cried. I'm obviously thrilled at how well this is going (we only started with this a few days ago and she's barely even having accidents) but really hoping that she gets more, uh, stamina soon.

3. Barak's two top teeth are coming in. Iyyar's top teeth are just getting loose. Barak had no cavities at his last checkup--hooray! Much better than the five he had last time.

4. Did I mention that Barak got glasses? A few weeks ago I noticed that he didn't seem to be looking quite at me when he was looking at me. Then I noticed his right eye wandering outward. A quick google made me instantly panic and get an eye doctor appointment for the same day; by the end of the week, I had calmed down and we had realized that he had become really nearsighted. Which explains the plunge in his math mark and his spaciness in class for the last few months--he couldn't see the board. I asked him why he'd never mentioned it and he shrugged. "I thought it was normal." Which I understand, really. Anyway, he's got glasses and now looks more like Mr. Bigfoot than ever; all he needs is the receding hairline and the beard.

4. Barak has been really cranky lately and on more of a hairtrigger than ever. He blows up about being out of milk, about his brother going into his room, anything. I think it's anxiety about the move. He likes the idea of moving to a house, he likes the idea of not living in a dorm, he likes the house we're moving to. He doesn't like the idea of leaving his school or his friends, and he doesn't like transition in general. I remember him being like this before we moved here, two years ago; his teacher told us he seemed really sad and anxious at school, and I saw it too, and it really disappeared a few weeks after we'd arrived--it was the idea of the unknown that really threw him. Once we were here, he liked it. Hoping hard that all will be the same after we move.

5. Huh. Move. I don't think I've said much about that here. Facebook, see; I post things there and forget that I haven't mentioned them here. So, uh, we're moving! We signed a lease on a house on a yishuv (settlement) about an hour outside of Jerusalem. The house is fine, not perfect but really OK, and we're lucky to have found anything because there's been a housing crunch there recently. I didn't blog much about this really stressful turn of events, but we discovered after we had made plans in a lot of ways (like registering two of the boys in gan safa) to live in this yishuv that there was very little housing available. We were getting really nervous and having a house this nice is a huge relief.

It's got three small bedrooms and a full bath (with bathtub!) upstairs, plus a laundry area; a fourth, larger bedroom and another full bath (two! bathtubs!) downstairs, plus a big L-shaped living/dining area and a kitchen that is, in a word, amazing. Tons of cabinets, tons of counter space, built-in range, two ovens, two sinks, and just lots and lots of space. Gorgeous. I can't wait to cook there. It was really the kitchen that sold me on the house; the rest of it is a little run down and not the best maintained, the upstairs bedrooms are under the roof and all have sloping walls and skylights instead of windows, and there are some other things I don't love, but the kitchen? Bliss. Also, it has bars on all the first-floor windows and a good solid door, which is important to me safety-wise, especially since we're really right near the perimeter fence. And A/C, which is too expensive to run much but still really really nice to have.

6. Iyyar has been doing amazingly well. The difference is really noticeable; he doesn't stim nearly as much and seems more relaxed. He still is kind of challenging and still takes more time than any of my other kids (sometimes more than all the rest of them combined) but it's getting us somewhere. We do "homeworks" (=OT activities) all day long, about every two hours; five minutes on the swing, Obese Iguana (I'll explain that if anyone asks me to), hiking up stairs with a water bottle in his backpack, dragging mattresses around the house. It's not something I understand but I now trust his OT with all my heart and soul, because she is so right. We do this stuff, he calms down instantly. Why five minutes on the swing makes such a difference I really don't get, but I see that it does, so I do it. And the other day when I was still jetlagged and wide awake at 6 am and the sprinklers came on outside, I went and woke him up and said, "Let's go outside and play in the sprinkers!" Just him. And we did, and it was magic.

stuff

I think it is safe to say that as a family, we are not among the world's more materialistic people. Still, we are American and we are Americans who have made/ are sort of still making aliya and this almost inevitably involves the transport of a staggering amount of Stuff. When we moved here almost two years ago, we came with 19 pieces of checked luggage, 6 carryons, 4 carseats, 2 strollers, and a partridge in a pear tree that unfortunately did not survive its trip in the cargo hold. Since then, we shipped 6 more boxes and have of course bought things locally and I have hauled another 500 lb of stuff across the Atlantic and other people have brought us stuff and now we have an apartment full of stuff AND that 20' container of which you have recently heard tell on its way. How this is all going to fit into a smallish house without closets I'm not really sure. (Well, I'm going to buy closets. That will be part of the solution. But there are currently no closets and only a very very small machsan.)

I spent an awful lot of time last week acquiring even more stuff. Jasmin asked me what I bought and my one-word answer was "Target." I didn't buy the whole store but it sure felt like it: three trips, six shopping carts full. The space goes quickly when you are buying cases of pull-ups. Some of the stuff I bought because I have a preference for American this or that; most of it I bought because it was so much cheaper in the US and I had the space to ship it. Anyway, to satisfy Jasmin's curiosity more fully, here, as far as I can remember, is what I bought last week:

Ikea stuff: Expedit bookshelves and the desk that attaches, a toy kitchen for Marika and a set of toy pots, a toy tea set, and soft toy fruit and vegetables. Six sets of duvet covers and sheets.

Everything else: pillows, a duvet, shampoo, conditioner (the kind I like), baby shampoo, Aquaphor, cereal, brownie mixes, tons of clothes from Lands' End, a swingset, a baby swing, OT stuff for Iyyar, board games, a baby toy for Mordechai, copy paper, Corelle dishes (12 place settings each of meat and dairy), vacuum cleaner bags, Pull-ups and diapers, more dishes, a 220-v blender, a step-up transformer for my small US appliances, a new set of dairy flatware, a printer/fax/copier, a new high chair, water bottles, Play-Doh, undershirts for the boys, socks, maple syrup, scissors, Sharpies, 2 bikes, a tricycle, a kid-sized table and two chairs to fit it, Wedgits (which were so cool I brought them back in my luggage), a bouncy seat/rocker, and I'm sure there are other things but that's all I can remember at the moment.

Where to start?

When I was 19, I transferred from a large, cash-strapped Canadian university to an Ivy League university with a lot more money to spend. The first week I was there, I did not unpack. It wasn't because I was loathe to settle in--although I was--or because I didn't really want to be there--although I didn't. It was because I literally did not have a moment. I had something scheduled every minute of the day, from math placement classes to course exchange to whatever else. I made my bed, I dug clean clothes out of my backpack, but the boxes of stuff I'd brought with me pretty much just sat there for most of the first week. It was the first time I'd ever been that busy, with every moment of my time spoken for by someone or something. It never happened again, until last week.

Two weeks ago, about 30 minutes after Shabbos ended, Mordechai and I got in a cab to Ben Gurion airport en route to the US and the city where we used to live. Goal: pack six months' worth of meetings into four days, while also shopping for, packing and loading our lift. The movers did the actual packing, but I had to go through our basement storage space, decide what we were and weren't taking, do all the pre-aliya shopping we didn't do the first time around, organize everything and do it right because there wasn't going to be a next time. I also had to get everything I ever wanted to see again out of our apartment, because it's in foreclosure now and while it's supposed to get restructured and all be fine, I'll believe it when it happens. I did all of this, plus work, with Mordechai in tow. Mordechai hit four months this past week and still refuses to put anything silicone (like, say, the nipple of a bottle) in his mouth.

It was a challenge. I did have help: the amazing Kory did my Ikea shopping for me and showed up with a van packed to the gills with all the stuff she'd taken care of for the last two years (like my wheel!) plus a bunch of new acquisitions. I stayed with Yehudis, who took me to Target and Trader Joe's and provided me with a helpful ten-year-old who ran errands for me.  And Kory's daughters hung out with Mordechai during my meetings, so I didn't have to stress about that, and they even delivered him to me every three hours so I could feed him between meetings. So I got up at dawn or before, packed and hauled and shlepped and organized, fed the baby, went to work, had meetings all day, came back to my apartment, packed and hauled some more, and then went back to Yehudis's after they were all in bed and started writing speeches. Then Kory came with her girls and we had a day of all moving, with the packers there going through all of our stuff and filling the basement with amorphous blobs of paper-wrapped furniture. Then Kory left and on Friday came the loaders and they packed that 20' container to the gills. We had space at the end for everyone who said "can I just send one or two boxes" and even for the ones who had more than that. One of them saw how much space was left and offered one last Target run; I accepted and asked him to get the boys bikes, which he did. And I went to the grocery store and bought ten parve brownie mixes, which are going to be fun to find when we unload.

I'm sure I must have eaten and slept, although all I can actually remember eating is Chinese food in the backyard and hamburgers on Thursday night with Kory. Oh and some Triscuits. I'm sure there was other stuff though. There must have been.

Anyway, it's done. It wasn't perfect; there are things I wish I'd gotten that I didn't get and I'm sure I'll unpack some of those boxes wondering why in the world I decided to ship that. But it's done, and we got home on Tuesday, and Mordechai did pretty well overall the whole trip and Mr. Bigfoot managed OK at home, so all's well, etc. And in four to eight weeks, I'll have matching dishes, and a 220 blender, and new sheets, and a desk, and Marika will have the world's cutest toy kitchen from Ikea, complete with soft stuffed fruit and vegetables. It'll be great. Although the thought of unpacking all of that makes me feel a little... queasy. But we'll get through it.

Local news: I am supposedly going out to the yishuv to sign a contract on a house tomorrow. Rental, not purchase. It's a nice house: 140 meters (about 1400 square feet), four bedrooms (three small, one big), two full bathrooms, a nice big living/dining room and a kitchen that nearly made me weep with joy. And a backyard with fruit trees. If it happens, I'll post pictures.

All is well. Just tiring. Don't give up on me; I'm still here, just otherwise engaged.

Over

Well hello there.

I'm still here. Are you?

Lots and lots going on here. Which means, as usual, no time to blog. And my maternity leave (such as it was--more on that in a moment) is over, so it's about to get even busier, so maybe I should post something.

When was the last time I checked in? Right after Pesach, wasn't it? Okay, so let's see...

1. Work. Work is aggravating and upsetting and a lot of things I wish it weren't. I worked like crazy during my leave. I tried to say no, and I was told "you don't say no to [Plony]." There were two weeks that were absolutely hellish, and I'm not using that word lightly. Pulling two consecutive all-nighters with your kids off school for Yom Ha'Atzmaut, when you're also sick? It's not a joke. You start to shake and you can't see straight and you have no patience for anything and cry at the drop of a hat and freak out your kids. I had to postpone Barak and Iyyar's birthdays, which I told my boss. Direct quote: "It'll give them something to talk about in therapy." What do you say to that? I mean, really, what, unless you're willing to walk away from your job and go find a lawyer? And then more things happened after that, making it obvious that nobody really thought anything of the fact that I'd worked straight through my leave. So this is what's at the front of my mind right now, and I haven't decided what to do about it yet, but I'm going to have to do something.

2. We still don't have an apartment on the yishuv we're moving to. I went out there yesterday and looked at two places: one was perfect, lovely, and probably not available, and the other one was a little-boy death trap. We have no other leads, but did post a "seeking apartment" ad in the weekly newsletter so maybe that will get us somewhere. We have to be out of this apartment by July 1 and I'm leaving for a 9-day work trip on June 17, so time is getting tight here. Oh and I also need to pack up this apartment, find movers, deal with our old apartment, and... my maternity leave, such as it ever was, is over. It's all a little crazy. Or maybe a lot.

3. Iyyar and Avtalyon had their vaadot hasama (think IEP meetings) last week. They're both in gan safa and OH THAT REMINDS ME I have to call three different people about this to actually start the process of getting them registered. Excuse me while I go do that.

I have no idea why I am not asleep

Pesach ended yesterday. The Pesach dishes are put away but the chametzdik dishes are all still shoved in a jumble in the two taped-off cupboards. I don't yet have my regular toaster ovens or hot plate or sink bins, so can't do much till Mr. Bigfoot gets those out of the storage room sometime later today. We were both up till 3:30 am between the baby (wide awake/crying) and the kitchen, and got up at 6 am (him) and 6:45 (me) to deal with laundry/kids/school. I thought I'd get to go back to sleep but three (three!!) people knocked on our door before 9 am for various things; then I brought Marika to gan and then I had a couple of urgent phone calls to make and then... yeah. I'm still here. I could go back to sleep but now I'm sort of wired and besides the baby is going to wake up to nurse any minute now.

So.

Lots of things to talk about. I am so tired I don't even realize I'm tired anymore; I'm just used to random words coming out of my mouth midsentence. Doesn't that happen to everyone?

List? Sure, why not.

1. The baby is sweet and adorable and lovely. Seven weeks on Friday (how? did? that? happen??) and he hasn't really settled down to any kind of a schedule, other than usually sleeping for most of the morning. He's outgrown all of his newborn clothes, is looking at my face very intently, and has juuuuust begun the first glimmerings of smiles.

2. I know I owe you the rest of the birth story. It's coming. In the meantime, remember how he was born on Rosh Chodesh Adar? It's a good birthday, because it's a day you are supposed to Be Happy anyway, because Purim and all that. So his blog name is going to be Mordechai. There you go.

3. Pesach was nice. It was the most minimal Pesach I have ever done (with kids, anyway). The house got cleaned of chametz, the kitchen was turned over, I did do some cooking, but nothing beyond chicken soup/schnitzel/chicken and potatoes/some vegetables. No baking, nothing fancy, I never even broke out a milchig pot. The kids ate a lot of matza. We got a hetter for Avtalyon and Iyyar to eat peanut butter (ordinarily a no-no for Ashkenazi Jews) and that saved us. I really don't know what we would have fed them otherwise.

4. The seder was lovely. We went to Racheli's house! It really was the nicest seder I can remember; the kids were involved but I didn't feel pressured to be at the table every minute, everyone more or less behaved, it was fun and we all enjoyed. Racheli is one of 8 siblings (one is married, rest at home) and they like to put on plays in the middle of the seder; this time, one of the brothers was Pharaoh, one girl was Moshe and another was Pharaoh's gabbai, and Iyyar and Avtalyon were, of course, the plagues. Frogs and lice, specifically. It went like this:

Moshe: Let my people go!
Pharaoh: No!
[Cue Iyyar and Avtalyon pretending to be frogs and jumping all over Pharaoh, who waves arms in distress and screams for his mommy.]

Needless to say: hilarious. Four Questions were carried off with aplomb, and Marika, unbelievably, stayed awake to the very very end.

5. Tried to refinance our condo again. No idea where it's going, but not feeling optimistic at this point.

6. Just found out we may need to move out of our apartment 2 weeks before school ends for the kids. I am trying to tell myself this isn't the end of the world, but it throws a huge monkey wrench into my work/family/move plans for June. It will work somehow but if this happens, it means a huge amount of extra work for me. Which, frankly, I just do not need right now.

7. Speaking of work: there are a lot of speeches to write and some of them I am still writing. I wrote a speech the day after I got home with the new baby. I have written more speeches since then and people are still calling and emailing and even texting me for more speeches. I wouldn't say maternity leave is a total mirage--I am, after all, not getting paid, which is pretty real--but I'm definitely not off call like I have been in the past. I remember previous maternity leaves as being six weeks of sleeplessness and then six weeks of getting my house nice and clean, being pretty well rested, and feeling like I had my life generally in order (before it all crashed down on me the day I went back to work, obviously). This year, it was speeches the minute I walked in the door, then the bris, then Purim, then Pesach prep, then Pesach, and that ended... yesterday. And now the speeches are starting back up in earnest. And then I have to get ready for the move, find an apartment, buy furniture, etc. It's a lot.

8. Mr. Bigfoot still does not have a job. He does, however, have his MA (they even sent him two diplomas!) and just finished his last bechina for smicha (his last rabbi test for ordination). It's something.

9. The current thought is that both Avtalyon and Iyyar should do a year of gan safa (language kindergarten) next year. Iyyar is doing better but I don't think he's ready for first grade. Avtalyon's speech eval showed that he had retrieval issues, which we see a lot of although I didn't know what they were; he'll be talking about cutting an apple and instead of "cutting" he'll pantomime with sound effects. It's not that he doesn't know the word, it's just not at his disposal at the moment. But it happens a lot and it seems to be (says speech therapist) why he chooses not to speak Hebrew at gan even though he understands as much Hebrew as English and clearly is quite capable of speaking Hebrew at home and in other settings. I had initially been pretty resistant to the idea of putting Iyyar in kindergarten again, since I didn't see what it would accomplish, but gan safa would be a different story. We had a meeting with the gan psychologist before Pesach, who had observed him, talked to the psychologist in the yishuv where we're moving, and seen all his evals; that was her recommendation and it seemed like the best option. He's got a special ed placement board meeting in a few weeks and that's what we're going to request.

10. Going to take a nap now. More later. No promises on when, though.