Stuff

I've been thinking all day about various things to blog about, and now that I'm sitting at the computer to blog about them, am sort of lacking in inspiration. I had in mind some grand post about Motherhood and the Nature Thereof, but I don't think I have it in me really. What I was thinking about this afternoon, as Barak bulldozed a bunch of dried-out wet wipes around the floor of his room, shouting, "Imma! Look! Look!" was how motherhood instantly rockets you to the central point in the family solar system. First you're single, and then either you are one of several players in your family or, if you are me, you're on your own. Then you're married, and it's the two of you. Then you have a kid, and suddenly, there is nobody who can do what you do. You are the one the baby needs, and you're the one running the show, even though you may have no idea what you're doing.

Part of it is nursing, I think, or at least that's how it starts. Nobody else can feed the baby, nobody else can calm the baby as well. But even if I weren't nursing, and even now that I'm not nursing Barak, I think it would be the same. Iyyar will scream and scream in MHH's arms, and the moment he's handed to me he'll sputter and cough and heave a sigh of relief. Not every time, obviously, but often enough. When Barak was a baby and he did this, MHH would hand him over to me and mutter "Chopped liver. Abba is nothing but chopped liver." Now, if I'm going out and the options are "go with Imma" or "stay with Abba" there is really no doubt about what he'll pick. I asked Ada, when she was the teacher at Barak's daycare, if babies who were in the daycare full-time--meaning, up to 55 hours a week--were the same way with their mothers. "Oh yeah," she said. "Even when they only really see their moms on weekends. Mom is always number one. They know."

When Barak cries at night, he cries for Imma. When he hurts himself, he wants Imma. When he wakes up in the morning and wants to come out of his crib, he calls for Imma, even though as often as not it's Abba who actually comes to get him.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. I was just thinking, this evening, holding Iyyar on my lap and watching Barak play, how different it is now. Six years ago, before I moved to New York in search of a shidduch, I got sick and spent a few days in the hospital. I didn't call anyone to tell them because there wasn't anyone to tell; when it was time to go home, I called a cab. In retrospect there were people I could have called to come get me, but it was the middle of the day, I didn't have anyone's number, I didn't feel good (obviously) and I didn't want to spend time trying to find someone. So I just called a cab. When I got home, I realized that there wasn't anybody who had noticed I'd gone missing; I hadn't missed any classes (I was teaching then) and I lived alone. It didn't really matter to anyone that I'd been sick.

How different from things now, when my getting sick causes complete upheaval and derails everyone's life. Someone needs to take care of the kids, MHH has to stay home from work, the kids still aren't happy unless it's me. If I'm sick in bed I get MHH trying to keep them away, but Barak finds his way in, and I wake up to him climbing on me saying happily, "Hi Imma!" As much as I'd like to get a little more sleep, there's no question--it's nice to be needed.

On the flip side, back when nobody needed me, I never had anyone to worry about. Contrast that to now, when I am constantly shushing the perpetual dread of Something Bad. On Sunday, when Grandma E was here, we all went out to lunch and on the way back MHH walked with Iyyar in the stroller and I went in the car with Grandma E, Grandpa M and Barak (there wasn't room for everyone in the car and the restaurant is close.) At one point MHH came up behind us as we were stopped at a traffic light and was waiting at the corner to cross the street. I had to look away. I literally could not watch, because I was so afraid of seeing them get hit. That's how scared I am of something happening to them.

Like I said, no idea where I'm going with all of this. And my husband needs the computer to write a quiz for tomorrow, so that's all I'll say about it anyway.

I am nothing if not responsive

There has been a request to blog about a certain Barak story, and since I take my readers' requests very seriously, here it is.

As longtime readers (well, those who have been reading since May anyway) will recall, when Iyyar was born Grandma E came and stayed with us for a week. She also stayed when Barak was born, and both times averted (well, inasmuch as it was averted, she averted it) total emotional breakdown on my part--bad labor first time around, jaundiced baby second time around, hormonal postpartum mother both times. It helps to have a Grandma who knows what she's doing.

Because Grandma E lives about, um, a thousand miles away, we don't get to see her very often, and hadn't seen her since that last new-baby visit. Yesterday, she and Grandpa M stopped by for the day on their way to another visit, and I wanted to make sure Barak remembered her. We talk about her, but six months is a long time when you are two and a half and I wasn't sure he'd recognize her when she came. So that morning, after breakfast, I pulled out the photo album and we looked at pictures.

"Barak, who's that?" "Dass Gramma!" "Who's that?" "Dass baby Iyyar!" "Who's that?" "Dass Barak!" and so on. He definitely knew who was who.

"Barak, guess who's coming today?" Inquisitive look.

"Grandma's coming." He looked at me for a moment, with that look two-year-olds get when every cog and gear in their brains is churning madly.

"Grandma comin?"

"Yeah, Grandma's coming."

Think, think, think. Thought process concluded. Face crumples into despair. "NO!!!! No want it! No want it Grandma coming! NO!!"

What the...? "Barak, Grandma's coming! Grandma's so nice! She plays with you and reads you books, and I think she's even bringing you a truck sweater today."

"NO! No want it Grandma! No want it BABY!"

Ohhhh. I get it now. "Barak, we're not getting a new baby. Just Grandma is coming."

"Just Grandma?"

"Yeah, just Grandma."

Hiccup. Hiccup. Cough. Sniffle. "'Kay."

I think he remembered her visit all right.

Tired

I've been walking around with a cold for something like three weeks now, ignoring, out of necessity, the fact that I should probably be taking it a little bit easier. Yesterday, my body reminded me; at about three in the afternoon I started falling asleep. Relentlessly. Like, started dreaming weird dreams while standing up and holding a baby. I had Barak and Iyyar, and MHH wasn't coming home till six, and I could not stay awake. I walked around, jumped around, briefly started the process for taking a walk and then thought better of it. I considered calling a neighbor's daughter to come take the kids, but since falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon is so very much a pregnant thing to do (I'm not) I didn't want to go there. The second I knew MHH was out of class, I called. "Can you come home? Everything's okay, I just can't stay awake."

He got home at six and I handed him the just-fed baby, got into bed, and fell asleep instantly. At around 10:30 Iyyar woke me up because he was hungry and nursed forever. I checked my email, got a drink and went back to bed; he woke me up again at 3 and other than that let me sleep until 7:30.

Thirteen and a half hours with only two interruptions. Nirvana.

I could really sleep a little bit more, too.

And now with lousy pictures

The knitting is good. The photography... not so much. Sorry about that.

Okay, so, we had a lovely flying visit from Grandma E and Grandpa M today. Grandma E delighted Barak's little-boy heart with this.

Barak took one look and gasped, "Truck shirt! Issa firetruck! Issa firetruck shirt! Wear it!"

You'd think someone with his encyclopedic knowledge of all things trucky would have recognized this as a dump truck, but I think he was fooled by the red.

I dispatched CSY.1 with them to take to Savta, who lives near where they do. I neglected to take a picture beforehand, but I did just take a picture of CSY.2:
And while I was at it, I also photographed Barak's feet, which are clad in a pair of socks I made him with some Regia I got on sale at my LYS. I also made a pair for Iyyar, but he's outgrown them already. (He's got some chunky feet.)

And lest I hurt his feelings by leaving him out of this post (not to mention slandering his feet, which are very cute), here's a picture of Iyyar, in his second favorite spot.

Oh, and I didn't mention that in their entire six-hour visit there was no screaming at all, except for some very justified "But you said you were about to feed me and then you stopped all of a sudden and I don't care which big man who's not related to you just walked into the room!" protests. This, from a baby who, as Grandma E said "used to cry all day, every day, and all night." It wasn't quite that bad, but... it's an awful lot better now.

Kein yirbu.

CSY.1 and CSY.2

Cyndy's Sock Yarn Socks, pair #1, was finished last week: a pair of Priscilla Gibson-Roberts socks, from the Fall 2000 IK. Short-row heels and toes (theoretically--I only short-rowed the heels), variegated purple Lorna's Laces. Eight stitches to the inch on size 0 dps. The intended recipient is Savta; I'm hoping to make it to the post office before spring.

Cyndy's Sock Yarn Socks, pair #2, was finished a couple of hours ago: Lynn H Cushy Colorsport, color, um, some blues and whites. There was, it transpired, not enough for a pair of size 9 socks, even with a very short ankle. I did an afterthought heel, which, on afterthought, wasn't so smart: I ran out of yarn on both and now there are a lot of knots. Oh well. They are done, they look like they will fit, and if Sara comes for Shabbos Chanuka (#2) she will get a lovely surprise. (Oh. Wait. Pretend you don't read this, okay, Sara? Thanks.)

Cyndy's Sock Yarn Socks, Pair #3, was cast on an hour or so ago. Opal, um, something--I just had the ball band here a minute ago. Okay, Opal color 5001, the same PGR socks as #1, but this time I plan to do the short-row toe instead of wimping out and just decreasing away stitches and grafting the end of the toe.

Did I mention that Iyyar has been sleeping beautifully? No? Well, you probably figured that out already.

MY BABY IS CLAIRVOYANT. I just typed that. And as I hit the period key, I heard a familiar little cough. A come-and-get-me-please, I'm hungry kind of a cough.

Sigh.

Well, probably time to stop knitting now anyway. I didn't tell you that I tidied the living room and Barak's room, did I? Well, I did. They're lovely. Of course there will be no trace of my efforts by the time Grandma E visits, but at least she will know I tried.

This morning

far too early, I went in to get Barak, who was wide awake and making a terrific racket kicking the side of his crib. I have a cold and look (and feel) awful; he has a cold that has settled in his eye, so he looks like he's just been punched in the face, but he obviously feels just fine.

"Imma all done night-night! Imma all done night-night inna big bed!"

Yes, unfortunately, that does seem to be the case.

In other news, The Curse of My SIL's Socks continues. I think I have now cast on four (that's FOUR, folks) pairs of socks intending them to be hers. The first three were all too small. The fourth pair seemed to be going fine, till last night. I was trolling around the knitting internet looking for a better cast-off and decided to try Elizabeth Zimmermann's grafted cast off. It worked great--it looks very tidy and stretches beautifully. As I was doing it (with a sewing needle) I thought to myself, hmm, this is a great cast-off but I sure wouldn't want to have to pick it out.

Guess what?

Sock #1 is 60 stitches around. Sock #2 is 64 stitches. It's Cushy Colorsport at 7 stitches to the inch, so there's no way I can pretend otherwise. And I only have one ball of this color, so I can't even make two more socks to match the first two. Sock #2 has got to go.

(I'd like to point out in defense of my counting abilities that the curse only seems to apply to socks. I made her a pair of gloves in Socks that Rock at 8 sts/inch on ones--yes, I am just that nice--and they were fine. Hmmm.)

More talking

Barak is on the line. He's right on that line between baby talk and real talk. He still sounds like a toddler when he talks, because of the way he pronounces and inflects--but more and more often these days I'll suddenly realize, whoa, that was a complete and grammatically correct sentence he just said. Like tonight--we were looking at a book with pictures of animals and Barak noticed ducks. "Ducks! They're swimming in the water!" Wow.

This morning's getting-out-of-the-crib exchange, almost verbatim (I actually wrote it down):

"Hi Imma!"

"Hi Barak!"

"Imma came!"

"Right, Imma came!"

(Barak looks around for Abba and sees him walk past the door.)

"Also Abba came! Also Abba came home!" (I guess he thought Abba had just come back from shul--he hadn't, but that would have been the normal thing for a Sunday morning. Nobody told Barak that today was parent-teacher conference day.)

I took Barak out of his crib and put Iyyar down so I could get Barak dressed. Iyyar was wearing, for the record, a white stretchie with blue bears, elephants, and stars. The elephants have balls balanced on their trunks. Barak's discourse on said pajamas was as follows:

"Baby wearing pajamas! Baby wearing white pajamas. Pajamas got bears! 'S got bears! 'S got stars! 'S got bears and stars on white pajamas! Dassa elephant. Elephant holda ball!"

(Why does anybody but me find this blog interesting? I wonder about this sometimes. Well, whatever. Yesterday, eight posts for the price of one and today, Barak holds forth on white pajamas. I do spoil you, don't I.)

Bits and bobs

1. I mentioned that a few weeks ago--three?-- I was graced with a visit from my knitting buddy, Cecilia. Apparently, she took some surreptitious photographs of [what my husband gets very uncomfortable when I call] our knitting orgy. You know you've had fun with your knitting when your guest room looks like this: What you see here is the basket of fish I mentioned (well, you can just see the edge of the basket in the left of the photo; the fish, clearly, have been involved in some jumping.) Cecilia was supposed to turn that into this:It didn't happen, in the end, what with all the noodlemaking and so on that went on. But I can't complain, because not only did Cecilia bring sweaters for the boys, she also brought something for me:Actually, she brought two somethings (shawls, not wheels), and let me pick. I picked the other shawl, but I show this one because, upon seeing it, I immediately had to do what any knitter of lace will be tempted to do: pull off my wedding ring and try to slide the shawl through. It fit--and I have size 5 fingers.

2. In non-knitting-related news: I keep thinking, as Barak comes up with new and ever more articulate sentences, that I have got to blog about this one, or this one, or this one. And then when I sit down at my computer, I can't remember any of them. One I'm thinking of now, though, was--well, let me back up. Last night, erev Shabbos, I discovered too late that the noise machine that mimics the sounds of the dishwasher (it says "surf" but really it is "dishwasher with seagulls") had been turned off by our babysitter without anyone noticing prior to candlelighting. I subsequently had the chance of discovering that no, it was not coincidence that the baby started sleeping better the day I got the machine, and no, he does not sleep any better now without it than he did a month ago. He woke up every half hour or more all night, and did a lot of screaming. By the time the sun came up, I was wiped, and by the time he stopped screaming (9 am or so) I crashed. MHH, being kind, decided to have mercy on his wife and daven at home instead of going to shul.

Back to Barak. He noticed that this was very odd. Abba goes to shul every day. When Abba was davening in the living room, he came back to me, still trying to calm the baby in the kitchen.

"Abbas davenen?"

"Yes, sweetie, he's davening."

"No Abbas davenen innen shul?"

"No, sweetie, he's davening at home today."

"Abba daven innen room?"

"Right, he's davening in the living room."

"Oh."

3. As you may have noticed from the foregoing, Barak has a little bit of an issue with pronouns, personal and possessive. If he sees something that is Iyyar's--toy, blanket, pluggie, whatever, and wishes to identify it, he'll say, "Dass for baby's?" If it's mine, he'll say, "Dass for Imma's?"

4. (I'm remembering all the language stuff now.) Barak's new phrase of choice, unfortunately, is "I can't." It means, of course, "I don't want to." It makes sense. If he asks me for something and I definitively won't do it, I say "I can't." I can't give you juice, we're out. I can't turn the light on, it's Shabbos. I can't take you to the park, it's pouring rain. So it's logical, really, that when asked to do something he absolutely, definitively, doesn't plan on doing, he says, "I can't do it."

5. Shabbos ends early now, early enough that Barak is not only up for Havdalah, but an hour or so thereafter. Tonight, I wanted to deal with some of the three overflowing baskets of laundry that had been parked in our bedroom since Thursday. I put the baby on the bed and started folding the clean stuff at breakneck pace while MHH was at maariv, so that I could load a basket with sorted dirty stuff for him to take down to the basement when he got home. Iyyar thought this was fine; he enjoys rolling around in piles of clean laundry and chewing on a handy sock or washcloth. Barak preferred to play in the living room, which made me nervous; I like to have him a little closer, so I can keep an eye on him. "Barak, do you want to come help Imma with the laundry?" To my surprise, he dropped his forklift and came right in. "Barak help Imma!"

And wouldn't you know, he started out by actually helping--he pushed a basket full of clean clothes from the hall into the bedroom. "Push it! Help Imma!" I applauded this effort, while still folding. Then, of course, he wanted to help more, by taking laundry out of the basket and putting it on the bed--just what I was doing, of course, except that I was taking the clean laundry. I encouraged him to move laundry between dirty baskets--forget having it sorted for Abba--and he got into that. Then he discovered something he hadn't realized--that the cosleeper (now in bassinet format) had a zip-open storage section underneath. What's the logical thing to do here? Why, unzip it and fill it with dirty laundry, naturally. I was so glad he wasn't stopping me from putting away clean laundry I let him, with a mental note to get it all out of there before putting the baby down. Just as he was finishing, I heard the back door open and in came Abba. "Where'd all the dirty laundry go? Did you put a load in?" Not exactly...

6. Next motzai Shabbos we are getting not one but TWO very exciting guests--Grandma E AND Grandpa M! Grandpa M being, perhaps, the only person I know more excited about choo-choo trains, trucks, and big engines than Barak. They should get along well...

7. Oh, and on the subject of large machinery--there is a construction project a few blocks from us that we've been watching for a while. It's a three-story apartment building that started going up early summer and is now nearly done. On Thursday, on my way to get Barak at playgroup, I discovered that there was a genuine concrete mixer parked out front. Hmm, I thought. (Barak, if you have not guessed, LOVES what he terms cememixer trucks.) "Are you going to be pouring any concrete any time soon?" I asked the bored-looking man standing next to the truck. "Any second now, " he said. "As soon as the guy comes around with the wheelbarrows." Well then.

I picked Barak up. He didn't want to go, because he knows that after school (which he still calls camp...) comes the Dreaded Night-Night. "Barak, do you want to see a concrete mixer? Should we go watch!" "Go watch!" We walked back to where I'd seen the truck, and sure enough, they started to pour the concrete for the path on the side of the building. Ooh. Very exciting. I started explaining to Barak, in Hungarian, what was going on: "See, that man is bringing the wheelbarrow to the other man, and he has to run very fast so that the concrete doesn't get hard before he puts it down." In a few minutes, a Chassidisch woman with her young son (aged three or so) and baby came by and stopped to watch as well. She started explaining to him in Yiddish the exact same thing I was saying in Hungarian: "See, that man is bringing the wheelbarrow to the other man, and he has to run very fast so that the concrete doesn't get hard before he puts it down." A little microcosm of East European Jewish mothering there. Or something.

8. I mentioned over the summer that we have a Nigerian family living upstairs. They have a little boy, around Barak's age, named Hakim. Hakim does a lot of screaming, and I hear his mother trying to get him to do things in Yoruba. To me, it sounds like "Blah blah blah blah blah cookie blah blah blah." Yesterday, we heard Hakim crying very loudly indeed. Barak, busy with something in the kitchen, paused. "Hakim crying?"

"Yeah, I think he is crying."

"Hakim go innair crib?"

Oy. The world according to Barak, right there.

9. Wow, this has been my longest post in a while. I was going to say something about MOChassid's new CD, which we love, but I think I'll just leave it there and save the haskama for another time.

The stupidest cooking mistake ever

Okay, fine, maybe not ever. But it was pretty dumb.

I'm making challah. It's Thursday, you know--everybody's doing it, right? I made a double batch, so this is--let's see--eight pounds of organic whole-wheat flour, fourteen from-the-farm eggs with shells that you actually have to whack, five cups of water, two of oil, one of honey, etc. I let it all rise. I braided it--six huge loaves plus a big pan of rolls. I lined the pans up on the counter, right up next to each other so I could sprinkle the seeds on in one fell swoop without making a mess. I reached into the cupboard for the jar of poppyseeds, and went swoop over my challahs.

With the jar of black pepper.

Top me, please. It'll make me feel better.

Cabbage

Cabbage is such an underrated vegetable. How often do you hear that? But it's true.

Today I felt like getting down to my East European roots. I made four latkes (hear that, Sarah! we had latkes!) and then, because I was too lazy to fry the rest, turned what was still in the bowl into a potato kugel. And while I was doing the latkes, I also made fried cabbage. The good way.

When I made fried cabbage for my FIL (who is macrobiotic) he actually didn't believe me when I told him what I'd done. For him, cabbage is a Healthy Food, something that you do not Fry. Frying is for, you know, doughnuts. And other bad stuff. He tasted it, looked shocked, and then asked me how I'd cooked the delicious cabbage. "I fried it," I said. He looked at me, sure he'd misheard. "Well, when you say that, you don't mean you really fried it, do you? You just cooked it?" "I cooked it in oil, yeah. And some butter." Healthy food--> guilty pleasure, right there.

This fried cabbage starts with a little butter--two tablespoons?-- and two very large sliced onions. Cook the onions in the butter on the lowest heat you can for, oh, I don't know, forever or so. Then slice the cabbage (yes, the whole thing) and put it in. Unless you have a really big pot you'll have to add it in stages as it cooks down. Then cook that for, oh, I don't know, forever or so. Add salt and pepper. A little olive oil if you feel like it (this part is not authentic but being Jewish and liking butter on my cabbage I can't use schmaltz. Or, as the non-Jewish Hungarians do, lard.)

Eat. If you have never had this before you will not believe how sweet and intense and delicious it is.

What was in Cyndy's box

The yarn was my doing; credit for artistic arrangement of skeins, however, is all hers.

And the winner is...

Comment #21: Wendy!

In case you're wondering about my highly scientific drawing method, I numbered the comments (including the people who emailed me because they couldn't leave comments), wrote the numbers on a sheet of stickers, and asked Barak to pull one off.

Wendy, please email me so I can get your address and yarn vs. chocolate preferences.

And now I know who you all are, so you'll have to leave comments more often. : )

Oooh

Look what was on my desk when I got to work yesterday!

Why, it was a box. Two boxes, in fact.


And look what was inside!

I took home that box, and filled my bag with this

and when I came home, instead of cleaning the kitchen, I did this:

Yeah, I know it's sideways. But I'm too eager to get my hands on that yarn to rotate the picture. Priorities, you know!

Grand drawing will be held tomorrow night. If you want to get your name in, go comment on the destashing post, okay?

Shavua tov, everybody. Hope you all have as much fun with your motzai Shabbos or your Saturday night as I plan on having, IY"H...

Thursday night

I'd be in bed already, except there's challah baking in the oven. Iyyar has a little fever: 101.5. I called the doctor and he said to bring him in in the morning. I'm not sure what I expected him to say, but am really really hoping the fever is gone in the morning--because I want him to feel better, obviously, and also because I don't want to have to miss more work.

What have I been doing tonight? Oh, I don't know. Maybe clearing some space for the sock yarn that I should be getting my hot little hands on tomorrow. (Twenty-five pairs!) Cyndy has gotten her box but not reported back yet; apparently she has some kind of self-control because last I heard she was not going to open it till the kids were in bed. (A stronger woman than I.)

Anyway, here is the space on the shelf where her yarn used to be:

And here's a closeup of what's left. (I should probably have arranged things so that that really badly spun Shetland wasn't exactly front and center...)

Picture Thursday

Twenty-one comments! Now that's more like it.

I tried to post pictures earlier today but Blogger was uncooperative, so I'll try again. No, I never did find the battery charger, but I went and bought a new one, so the old one should be turning up later tonight.
But first, some pictures. Here is the sweater Cecilia made for Iyyar, with Barak"s scary dinosaur kippah for scale; and here is the sweater I made for Iyyar, before he was born, with the leftovers of all the socks I made on bedrest.
Here's the ice cream sweater she made him, and here's my spiral yoke. That's Noro around the neck; the body is made out of some natural ly colored Austermann I got off Elann. And here's a nice overexposed shot of Barak's winter hat, made of Koigu.
I have a bunch of other pictures, but apparently Blogger only lets you put five up per post. All right then, I'll save the rest for another time. Maybe later tonight--we'll see how the cooking goes.

Pterodactyl

Iyyar has this screech that you would not believe when he gets excited. It's loud, but that's not it--it's the pitch, and the sound, which is something like castrato-cum-nails-on-chalkboard. He sounds like I imagine a ticked-off baby pterodactyl might.

Just thought I'd share.

So, I have 14 comments, but more than 35 people have looked at that post! Come on, now. If you don't want yarn I'll send chocolate, and yes, I'll mail it to you wherever you are. (I mail things to distant continents all the time. My friends have this very expensive habit of moving all over the place and still expecting me to send them things, so I'm used to it.)

More destashing fun

My blog vanished for most of today. Did anybody else notice that? Very weird.

While we're on the subject of my blog...

According to sitemeter, yesterday I hit my all-time high number of hits. (Don't ask for the number, it's embarassing. Let's just say it is far, far into double digits.) In honor of this noteworthy occasion, I would like to hold a celebratory destashing event.

Who are you people? Leave me a comment, and be entered in a highly scientific drawing, the winner of which will receive one (1) mystery package of handspun yarn from the Shelf of Destashing, absolutely free. (If you're Cyndy, you might already be over your head in the stuff, but you can still comment and get your name in the hat.)

The fine print: You are ineligible to win if you are me or live with me. If you know who I am, or have lived with me in the past, or are related to me, you are still eligible. (I can be fair. And if you're in those categories, you can just ask for some yarn and I'll give it to you.) If you live in Australia, well, I send packages there all the time, so I guess you can still be eligible.

It's nice yarn. Just ask Cyndy. So comment, please, and say hi.

Now I have to get back to what I was doing, which was begin (begin!) the 1500 word speech that has to be done tomorrow morning. For point of reference, when we send speeches of that length to freelancers the expectation is that they will take 8-10 hours to write.

It's going to be a long night.

testing

I do like this blogging thing

The day after I posted my offer of handspun to swap, I saw that someone named Cyndy had posted a comment saying she was interested and had sent me an email. Neat, I thought, and when I had a chance, looked at my email. She had sock yarn that needed a new home, and would like some of mine. Since I couldn't find the battery charger I needed to take a picture of what I had on offer, I suggested a good-faith blind-date type of swap--she'd decide how much to send by weight, and I'd send her an equal amount by weight of handspun. This idea was approved. Good good.

Then I got another email. Er, this is rather embarassing, but I have quite a lot of sock yarn, Cyndy said. How much is too much?

There is no such thing as too much sock yarn, I assured her.

Do you know how many pairs of socks' worth of sock yarn I am getting?

Guess.

No, guess.

Twenty-five.

Yup.

I was so overcome with excitement that I packed up 25 skeins of handspun in an empty diaper box that very (this very) morning. Now, I have no car, and the post office is over a mile away over some big scary intersections. What did I do? I took Barak to playgroup. Then, instead of doing any of the things I should have been doing, I put Iyyar in one half of the baby stroller, buckled in the enormous box which, fortuitously, just exactly fit in the other, and off I went. I also posted, finally, a bag of goodies for Penny (you know who you are) and Sara (you know who you are too) and my Israeli SIL, who just had a new little boy (mazal tov!)

And I still have about four pounds of handspun left. Anyone? Anyone?

Grumble

When I was pregnant with Barak, I gained weight. Okay, everybody gains weight when they're pregnant, but I gained a LOT of weight. And, having just gotten married and started cooking dinner every night, I had already gained weight before I got pregnant. At my first prenatal, when I was maybe 8 weeks pregnant, I looked at the scale in shock. "I already gained that much from being pregnant?" I asked the LPN. "No, honey, that's all you," she said. Uh-oh. And I went on to gain 41 pounds from there. Yup yup.

Eventually, I lost all but 5 of that, gaining back another five the summer I kept getting pregnant for a few weeks at a time. By the time I had my first prenatal with Iyyar, I was up 15 pounds from what I weighed when I got pregnant with Barak (which, though it was so horrifying at the time, I would consider not a terrible weight for now.) From my first prenatal to giving birth, I gained 30. When I went back to work, I'd lost 20 of that. The last time I checked my weight on a reliable scale, I'd gotten back to my first-prenatal point.

Last weekend, I picked up some bug the kids had had earlier in the week and spent Shabbos in bed shivering with a fever. Sunday morning I thought, hmm, I think I lost some weight from that. And since we didn't have one, I thought, well, maybe it's time to buy a bathroom scale. Which I did.

The scale told me I'd lost seven--seven!!--more pounds. This number would me to "lost all weight related to Iyyar."

Really?!

I was suspicious.

So today at work, I went up to the ladies' room with a balance scale and checked.

Feh.

Not seven. Two. The new scale weighs light.

I mean, I'll take it, obviously. But seven would have been nicer.

I think we'll all go for a walk now.

Warning: Knitting content ahead

First, though, a baby update. Last Tuesday through Sunday--Sunday a week ago now--Iyyar slept, relatively, really well. (I won't get specific about what that means, because it's embarassing, but really well for him.) Monday night, it all went to gehennom, and nobody got any sleep all week. Friday night was better, and Saturday night he slept from 12 till almost 6 without nursing--by far his longest stretch ever. He did wake up, but his abba got him back to sleep without any of the good stuff. He's asleep now, and hopes around here are running high.

What does this have to do with knitting, you ask? Well, a sleeping baby can mean only one thing--knitting time! My friend and knitting buddy Cecilia came here last weekend, and the two of us wallowed in wool (and bagels, and Hungarian noodles) from Saturday night till she left Monday morning. She lives pretty far away, so we don't get to see each other very often and consider a visit an excuse for a lot of late-night knitting and carbohydrates. (I bought a five-pound bag of flour in anticipation of her visit. It ran out.)

If I had a functioning camera, I would show you glorious photographs of Barak's new spiral yoke sweater with Noro yoke, or the gloves I made my DSIL out of the loveliest yarn ever. I would show you pictures of the socks I made for the boys (two pairs out of a single ball of Regia!) and the Celtic Dreams top-down Aran that Sarah has nobly agreed to put sleeves on for me (it's been in a bag since January 1999). And I would definitely show you pictures of the sweater Cecilia made Barak, adorned with a picture of his favorite thing ever. And I would show you a picture of the basket of fish.

What's that, you say? Basket of fish? Well, it'll just have to wait till I find the charger for the camera battery.

In the meantime, with thoughts of aliya on our minds I have decided it is time to downsize my yarn cache. The trouble is, though, that almost everything I want to offload is handspun. Specifically, about ten pounds of naturally dyed, breed-specific wool, with only 100g of each breed/dyelot combination.

Maybe I should backtrack a little.

So, in the late 90s I was in grad school in England. I had just been through a spectacularly painful breakup with someone I had thought I'd marry (may I now say that I'm very pleased indeed that I didn't) and was living with a bunch of strangers in a terraced house in the West Midlands. What's a depressed post-breakup girl to do? Well, for the first semester I knitted. But then I discovered gan eden.

I quickly realized the purpose of my stay in the British Isles, and it wasn't more degrees. Clearly, it was sampling wool from every single breed of sheep to be found in England (I then expanded that to Scotland and Wales, just because).

There are forty million sheep in Great Britain. Just so you know. I don't remember how many breeds of sheep there are, but I could tell you by counting the number of skeins on my shelf. When I got back from England, Grandma E hosted a spin-in for me, and I brought my haul in a huge backpack. At some point during the proceedings, I emptied it out into a mountain on the floor. Nobody actually stopped spinning, but the conversation did have a noticeable lull.

That summer, I lived in Washington, DC. It was their hottest summer on record, and I didn't have air conditioning. What was the natural response to this? Why, buying an enormous natural dye sampler kit and dyeing the whole shebang, of course. (Oh, my roommate loved me, you can be sure of that. Especially when I started with the cochineal. "You're cooking your wool? In BUGS?!" We haven't kept in touch...)

So, where does this bring me? Now I have this yarn, which is very near and dear to my heart. It took a lot of time and effort to produce, and the materials weren't cheap either. But I've had it for, um, going on eight years now. I'm not going to knit it anytime soon, and I've carted it around enough. Clearly, it needs to go. But how do I put a price on this stuff? I've put some yarn on destash, to spectacular lack of success--such that I'm almost embarassed to try that again.

I'm inclined to put it all up there saying "Will swap for equal weight of interesting sock yarn" being that socks are all I want to knit these days anyway. Of course, first I'd have to find my camera...

Anybody out there interested? Will swap for interesting sock yarn. Any takers have to promise to love and cherish my handspun, and remember the immortal words of my favorite ever bumper sticker, courtesy of the British Wool Board:

Buy British Wool. Forty million sheep can't be wrong.

Blogging is a funny thing

Not last summer but the summer before, my friend Sarah came to visit. She stayed for three days, during which time we knitted, chatted, played with the baby and ate lots and lots of latkes. This would not have been strange at all, but for the minor detail that we'd never met. I'd read her blog, she'd read mine, we'd emailed, and eventually we talked on the phone. Our husbands thought we were nuts. "What if she's a serial killer?" her husband asked. "What if you don't like each other in person?" mine asked. I'm not, we did, and I'm still trying to get her to come back.

I'm thinking a lot about blog-based friendships now, because I just checked one of the knitting blogs I read and found that Brynne's lump is benign. And I was immensely relieved, because it had been worrying me all week, such that I was checking her blog almost hourly to see if she'd posted. Last May, one of my other blogging friends died of cancer, and the experience of writing her last few posts for her is not something I want anyone else to have to go through. (And I still can't get TypePad to take the thing down. Support? What support?) I'd never met her either, despite fifty billion emails and however many phone calls and pieces of physical mail.

Blogging is so weird. It's opening your life--only as much of it as you want to share, but still--to anybody who cares to read about it. I have about ten blogs I read regularly. Some are knitters, some are Jewish, some are both or neither. Some of them are just really, really weird; some of them are people I think I'd love to be friends with. And some of them are people I have become friends with, through a comment turned email exchange turned what I can only term a real friendship, even though the two of us are states away.

Strange thing, isn't it.

2.5

I just looked at the calendar and realized that Barak is two and a half years old today. Wow.

Recent things he's done that I want to remember: stopping and noticing piped-in elevator music, pointing at its source and exclaiming "Uncle Moishy!"; snuggling up to me right before bedtime and requesting "More cuddle please," (how could I say no?); pointing at an empty Diet Coke can lying under a bush in the park and asking, "That's Imma's?" (ouch!)

Too fast. This is all happening too fast...

They are both asleep.

They slept last night, too. Amazingly well, bli ayin hara etc.

Did I sleep? Um, no, not really. I didn't even go to bed till, er, about 4 am.

And it's around quarter to one, and I'm still up.

Why?

Because I have a knitting buddy visiting whom I see, on average, one day every two or three years. All we've done all day has been knit, talk about knitting, and eat. (That sentence sounds so wrong. I'm so out of it I can't even tell why.) The kids have had father-son bonding day, and we're holed up in the back bedroom with yarn up to our ears.

I think this is the one thing I'd actually rather be doing than sleeping.

The latest

This morning: the usual. Lots of wailing, 30-minute nap.

This afternoon: who is this and where is my baby? Two and a half hours, not a peep.

This evening: took both boys to pick Abba up at school. Iyyar started to lose patience with the stroller so I carried him home. (Ow. That boy is getting big!) He fell asleep on the way, I put him down in his crib and he stayed asleep. For half an hour.

Tonight: I went to put him down at nine. He nursed himself to sleep with no howling. Ten p.m., he woke up. I gave him his doggie, wrapped his blanket back around him, and walked away. That was eleven minutes ago. He's still asleep.

I'm not even daring to hope. I'm just enjoying it.

The sounds of waves crashing and seagulls cawing are kind of nice too.

I really really shouldn't be blogging now

because Iyyar is napping and I have work to do. But since this blog is also my only form of baby book, and I don't want to forget:

1. Iyyar got his first tooth last Friday morning. Bottom right. The other one is almost through. He was not happy for a few days, but it doesn't seem to be bothering him now. Tooth! Five and a half months! I'm not ready for this...

2. Essential back story: when Barak asks for something I can't or won't give him, I often offer an alternative. As in, "Juice please Imma!" "We're not having juice now. How about water?" Got that? Good.

Yesterday, he asked for a cup of milk to go with his green noodles. (Spinach noodles--not more nutritious, but more interesting.) I gave him a cup of milk. "No top. Straw!" I didn't give him a straw, but I did give him a cup with no top, along with admonishments to drink nicely, please. Which he did, initially. Then he started pouring his milk into his bowl, out of the bowl with noodles and into the bowl with cheese, etc. He made a fairly substantial mess, which I don't mind so much, and wasted a lot of expensive organic milk, which I do. Then he ran out of milk. "More milk please!"

"Barak, are you going to drink the milk or pour it in the bowl?"

"Pour it in the bowl." At least he's honest.

"Well, if you're going to pour it in the bowl I'm not going to give you milk."

"More milk please!"

"No, no more milk."

Pause while Barak considers this.

"How about water?"

3. Another word I apparently use a lot is "just." Do you want this and this, or just this? We try to give choices around here as much as reasonably possible. (Did I blog about this already? I can't remember. My mind is as mush. As very mushy mush.)

A few weeks ago, in a moment of weakness, I offered Barak some chocolate milk. He studied it, identified it as weird, and declined. "Barak, you're nuts. This is chocolate milk. It's delicious. You don't want chocolate milk?"

"No milk. Just chocolate please."

Update

Well, it all fell apart at around 1:30, but it's still the best night he's had in months, not counting that one night in Columbus that he almost slept like a normal baby. I went to bed after I posted, and just as I fell asleep I heard a little fussing. 1:30, he woke up desperate to nurse, an hour an a half after the last time he'd eaten, and then wouldn't be put down, and so I just took him into bed with me. (Not that I mind this in principle--but I do need him to be able to sleep without me there.) He woke up a few more times that night (have I mentioned the Pancake Principle? Yeah, remind me about that too) but then stayed asleep till nine, when I had to wake him up so I could take Barak to playgroup.

So, did Imma actually get any sleep out of all this? No, I didn't. But. My kitchen no longer reeks, the counter and sink (newly fixed) are shiny and clean, there are four loads of clean laundry (washing machine also newly fixed--two weeks without washing machine, bad news with two little boys) waiting to be folded, and I feel much more refreshed by this than I would be with a little extra sleep. Really.

shhhhhhhhhh

It is 12:03 am.

It is quiet.

(Well, except for the breast pump, which... we'll save the topic of hearing voices in your breast pump for another time, okay? I know I'm not the only one who does this, since everyone in the lactation room at work has admitted to it. But I have more important matters to blog about tonight. We might even say... momentous.)

Tonight I went to Target with a friend. (Fun, but not momentous. Just wait for it, please.) It was a quick run, so I left Iyyar at home with MHH, with instructions to do whatever made his life easy and not to try to get Iyyar to sleep. I came home 45 minutes later, a little before 9, armed with a new puchase: a small CD player with a white-noise function. I set that up in the bedroom, and also put the little plush doggie in Iyyar's crib--Ada, otherwise known as Our Amazing Babysitter, had suggested that maybe he needed something more substantial than his blanket to grab for comfort. I took the bouncy seat, which used to be good for getting him to sleep but is now not age-appropriate, and put it on my bed such that the vibrating mechanism sat on the side of his crib. I picked him up and nursed him. Fifteen minutes later, he was asleep. I put him down, and walked away.

Fifteen minutes later was the normal time to hear the first howl. Nothing. I went in and checked. He was snoring. 9:30 pm.

9:45--still breathing, not howling.

10:00--we have howls.

I tried to get him to hold the doggie, which worked for a few minutes. Howls. I tried the pacifier. Howls. He got more and more worked up, as per usual, and so I picked him up and cuddled him till he calmed down. Then I swaddled him (which I've tried a million times before with no success) and put him down. He woke up howling. Multiple tries to put baby down, such as usually occupy my entire evening--but then he went back to sleep.

Let's synchronize our watches, shall we? The time then was 10:30.

Ten minutes ago now, at midnight, he woke. And nursed, halfheartedly, for five minutes.

And went back to sleep. Without howling.

He's still asleep.

This. Is. Huge.

I didn't do anything that different from usual. The noise machine is the only thing that's new, and I don't think it's making much difference over the sound of the bouncy seat. And I'm not going to be foolish enough to set myself up for disappointment by thinking aha, he's learned how to sleep! But still. Just one evening of not fielding screams--one evening to clean the kitchen, fold laundry, tidy up the guest room for an impending guest--

I'll take it.

Too tired to blog

I had a whole amusing post written in my head about what happened this afternoon, when Barak discovered the half-pound Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar that a friend brought back from England and that was stashed in my bag for stealthy transport to my office. But Iyyar is asleep, and I am not in any position to waste any potential sleep time myself. So suffice it to say that Barak found my great big secret chocolate bar. He found it when I was not looking. He had a very glorious time with it, right there on the living room couch, my little boy who knows very well that a) we do not snarf food that we happen to find without asking Imma first, b) we do not eat anywhere but in the kitchen, and c) chocolate is a Treat, reserved for birthdays, Shabbos, and suchlike. So when he heard me coming, he put it down as though it had just come to his notice, put his hand on it, and looked up at me, face smeared with chocolate almost to the eyebrows, and asked sweetly, "Barak hold it chocolate please Imma!"

How could I be mad? I almost want to save the chocolate for posterity, baby-tooth marks and all.

The traveler

Running

When I was seven or eight, my father decided to lose some weight. He posted a chart on the side of the refrigerator that graphed his progress over the weeks. He probably did watch what he ate a bit, but mainly he lost weight by exercising: specifically, by jogging, four times a week, with a group of his friends. My father was 40 when I was born and most of his friends were older than he, some of them retired. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, they'd all get up at 5:15 and jog, slowly slowly, through the suburban darkness.

After a while, they all started running together in 5k races whenever there was one nearby. Once or twice a year, some of them would even do a half-marathon, coming home with nearly all the ribbons not because of speed--even in races they moved always at a snail's pace--but because there were so few entrants in their age class.

I was never particularly athletic, always the last girl picked in gym. My senior year in high school, I decided to start running, and never went out until it was well and truly dark. I didn't want anyone to see me. In college, I ran regularly, three or four miles a few times a week and nine on Sundays. One summer, a friend was going to run a 5-mile run and invited me along. I ran it to keep her company, at my usual sedate pace of nine minutes per mile. That pace was my pace for years, and never really changed. If I ran faster I got tired, if I ran slower I got bored. I always ran a nine-minute mile. At that point, I'd been running for about three years. I had good running shoes, read a running magazine or two, was thinking about training for a marathon. I wasn't fast, but, like my father, I enjoyed it.

I finished that 5-mile run in exactly 45 minutes. A week or so later, I spoke to my father on the phone. I don't think he had any idea I'd taken up running, and was impressed with my time. "But I guarantee you," he said--En garantalom Neked--"that your first mile was six and a half minutes. Your second mile was seven, and your last was twelve. You didn't pace yourself. You have to pace yourself. If you paced yourself, you could have run the five miles in forty minutes."

Logically, the remark wasn't really nasty. He might just have been trying to be helpful, not denigrating. He'd been running much longer than I had, and he didn't know how long I'd been running at all. But it enraged me as few things have. He knew nothing about my running times, my training habits, my experience as a runner, and very little about me. But he assumed, based on nothing, that I didn't know how to run. I had to bite my lip, hard.

It's a similar feeling, I think, when people who don't know me or my kids assume that if I only tried X my kids would sleep with no trouble at all. Because their kids slept through the night after they did this, or this, or this. Because if I only established a routine, let them cry, gave them a bath, tried a white noise CD, got them warmer pajamas, rubbed their backs, made them tea, went to them every time they cried, never went to them at all, or went to them every five minutes like clockwork--if I only did that, they'd sleep. Nekem garantalnak. They guarantee me.

You know your kid is a frummie when

We just got home from the home of my DSIL (domestic sister-in-law), where we spent the first days of Succos. Barak, as always, had a blast--all those kids, all those treats, all those toys! We have been talking about the trip for a while, telling Barak that we were going to go on an airplane ("Hairplane? Hairplane go zoom? Barak go innair hairplane?") We flew there via Chicago, which, if you have not been through O'Hare, is quite an experience for a two-year-old with two parents harboring Luddite tendencies. The escalators! The moving walkways! The HAIRPLANES! And the walkway from terminal whatever to whatever, with those flashing neon lights! Oooohhh.

Before we left I dug up an old, small orange shoulder bag--more of a purse really--from Steve's Packs in Jerusalem. I told him he could pack it himself, which he did, with a stack of paper cups, two combs, and an empty raisin box. I added a sippy cup of water and a full box of raisins, which didn't even make it out the door (the raisins, that is). The bag was a good move. When we got to the airport, it was just so obvious that he felt so... grownup. There he was, walking along just like everyone else, hand on his bag like everyone else. Iyyar was in the sling, other babies were in strollers, but he was walking. The look on his face was something else, and I really really wish I had thought to bring a camera.

He wasn't so pleased, at security, by the idea of giving up bag, shoes, and--horrors--his monkey, but calmed down as soon as he got them back. The flight was fine. And when we got there, he immediately inquired, "Hairplane again?" Not for a few days, sweetie. We walked through the arrivals area, and he was dragging his car blankie along the floor. MHH stopped him and put it around his shoulders. "Why don't you wear it like a tallis?" he suggested. "Yeah," said Barak, agreeably. "Go shul!"

On the way back, we were on a smaller plane, and when we took off the cabin lights were dimmed. Barak didn't like that. "Light on!" I told him I couldn't turn the light on. "Light on please!" "Barak, I'm sorry, I can't turn the light on now. " He thought about this one. And he thought he had it. "No light on Shabbos?" Umm. Not exactly, no. But he liked that idea. And ran with it. "Shabbos ice cream! Shabbos ice cream cone eat it!"

Later, when we finally got back, and Iyyar was asleep and Barak was having a late-night snack of yogurt before bed, and I was in the other room putting things away, I heard him singing. He had asked for ice cream when we got home, but I had said no, as usual, and not thought much of it. And then I realized what he was singing. Sort if like a hint, maybe?

He was singing l'cha dodi.

Admitting the obvious

At first, I thought Iyyar was different from Barak. I thought he'd be an easier baby. And he was, in that he let me put him down occasionally, and slept more--although to be honest, he slept more because by the time Iyyar came around I could sleep while holding a baby, which I couldn't do when Barak was new. It wasn't really that he was an easier baby--it was just that I was better equipped to deal with him, because he was so like Barak.

But in the matter of sleep resistance I have finally acknowledged reality. If anything he is worse than Barak.

Just as sweet, cute, healthy, bright, and gorgeous, B"H. I have my blessings counted. But he hates to sleep even more.

In an act of kindness and chesed, and because he realizes that his wife is teetering dangerously close to the edge (well, not right now, but sometimes) MHH has agreed to field the nightly screamfest. During which Barak hollers for crackers, water, his monkey, poop potty, raisins, and anything else he can think of, and/or monologues in his crib while kicking the side, from anywere from one to four hours; during which the baby wakes up every three to fifteen minutes and screams, because sleep, well, sleep is the enemy, isn't it?

I have the unsavory habit of getting mad at my husband when the kids won't sleep. Even when he's not even home. I can't rationally get mad at the baby, so who is there to get mad at? The person who provided him with the sleep-resistant genes, of course.

Right now, they are taking turns screaming, MHH is trying to ignore Barak but periodically has to go to him to get him to shut up so the baby has a chance, and I am hiding in the back bedroom wondering if I should have mercy on them all. I mean, most nights it's just me, while MHH is out learning. Most night Iyyar does not sleep until I finally give up and take him into bed with me, at which point he looks up at me adoringly through puffy, tearstained eyes, after four or five hours of fighting sleep like the devil itself, grins the most pathetic, heart-melting, frustrating, guilt-inducing grin imaginable, snuggles up to me, and passes out.

MHH said I could have a scream-free night, or at least a night free of dealing with the screaming. But still. He's clearly suffering out there. I guess I should go help out.

Maybe I'll knit another couple of rows first, though.

Talking

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that Barak took a, how shall we say, relaxed approach to meeting his milestones. Have you seen the What to Expect book for the first year (I forget the title and am not going to bother to google it)? There's a list of what your baby may possibly be doing, what s/he might be doing, what s/he will probably be doing, and what, if they're not doing, they're doomed to a lifetime of remedial reading, math, and shoe-tying classes. Barak rarely, if ever, did anything in the last category on time. He didn't babble till almost nine months, he didn't sit up unassisted till eight and a half months, he didn't crawl until almost eleven months. He didn't pull up, he didn't stand--nothing. Oh, and he didn't talk.

That last one had me worried. I wasn't that bothered by the motor skills, because I figured he'd get those eventually. But that he wasn't even saying mama when he was one... well. That had me nervous.

His first word was "Abba," at around, I don't know, maybe thirteen months. After that was "yeah," and then "cracker" and "bubbles." "Amma" came a while later (that was me) followed shortly by "Amama" (that was the cat.)

At two and almost-a-half, he is now talking up such a storm that he is more and more clearly not a baby every day. Before I forget, here are some recent ones:

1. He's just learned about "just." As in, "No yogurt. Just granola" and "No poop potty. Just ice cream." Yesterday, in a moment of weakness, I offered him some chocolate milk. His reply: "No milk. Just chocolate please."

2. His standard formula for "Give me that" is "Barak hold it please." I never really thought about how this came about. But over Rosh Hashana it hit me. My FIL was here and mentioned that he thought I pushed the please and thank you a bit too much. (I respectfully disagreed.) He told me about a cousin who was forbidden to ever utter the phrase "I want." And then I remembered how I'd reacted when Barak first said "Gimme!" and "Mine!" I said, Barak, we don't talk like that! So now, instead of saying gimme or mine, he says "Hold it!" and "Barak's!" Which, for whatever reason, bother me less. Not really rational now that I think about it, but there you go.

3. The way Barak formulates his sentences bears the distinct signs of someone just figuring out pronouns. "Barak hold it duck, 'kay?" or "No Imma nurse it baby!" or "Imma help you Barak please!" or "Barak go innair room?" or "Polar bear go splash! Polar bear watch it!"

4. In the fabulous box she sent some months ago, Grandma E. included a copy of "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins." Never has a book been loved so much by someone so small. Those goblins, they are so scary! Goblins so scary terrifying! Goblins huge! Hershel crush it egg, squeeze it! Door whoosh open Hershel goblins so scary! Goblins Hershel so scary Imma read it! Imma read it please!

Oh, the baby just woke up. I'll add to the list when I think of more things, bli neder.

This post is not about poop

Well, not until the end, anyway. Most of it is about vomit.

When Barak woke up Shabbos morning in a foul mood, I didn't think much of it. We'd let him stay up far too late the night before for the seuda, and he was, of course, tired. When he opened his mouth and a huge amount of yellowy mucous came out (oh yeah, this post is about mucous too, I forgot), I didn't think so much of that either. He is permanently congested and his nose always runs. No biggie. The fact that he had never vomited once in his life, and as a baby spat up twice (yup, twice, because I remember both times) probably had something to do with my state of denial.

The state of denial ended abruptly about ten minutes after breakfast, when what seemed like gallons of orange juice and Cheerios abruptly appeared all over the rug. And when Barak, my resister of sleep par excellence, told me he wanted to cuddle, climbed into my bed and went to sleep, it was pretty clear that something was wrong.

When he woke up, I tried to get him to drink some watered-down juice. No dice. Pedialyte? Forget it. When he just played with the two (TWO!) popsicles I gave him, I started to worry, because it was close to 24 hours since he'd kept any liquids down, he wasn't drinking anything, and visions of ER visits too recently past were starting to dance in my head.

By late afternoon, he was playing and seeming happy, although still refusing to drink. I called the doctor as soon as Shabbos was out. "If he throws up again, or if he doesn't drink anything by midnight, take him to the ER." Ohh boy. And he'd have to go with MHH, too, because with me nursing Iyyar it would either be all of us or none of us. And the very idea of MHH being asked to hold Barak down for a possible IV... oh, bad bad bad. Very bad.

So I tried. I offered juice. Popsicles. Pedialyte. I sent MHH to the store for Sprite. I even briefly considered offering it to him in a Diet Coke can (he is always angling for a taste, never with any success, strange to report) but thought better of it in fairly short order.

Finally, the offer of kiddush juice--that once-a-week-treat--was met with acceptance. He drank about three ounces of half grape juice, half water. He went to sleep.

And threw up.

He was, of course, hysterical, as I changed his sheets and cleaned him up and steeled myself for the ER trip that seemed inevitable. But he was crying real tears. Big wet ones. I saw hope. I called the doctor back. "He's crying real tears, and his diaper wasn't totally dry. Do we still need to take him in."

And he said no.

Ahhh.

Barak went back to sleep. MHH bedded down in there for the night. I went back to sleep in our room with Iyyar (more on this tomorrow). All good.

This morning, Barak seemed fine. MHH took him to the doctor for walk-in hours (hour, really) and he was pronounced cured from what was probably a virus. He ate popsicles with abandon. He cheerfully accompanied me in the stroller for a walk to get out of the house so MHH could have some time to do pre-Yom Kippur stuff. I put him down for a nap. And about half an hour later, heard a little voice calling "Imma... change diaper please... Imma... change diaper..."

Because his diaper, pants, and crib were full of diarrhea.

G'mar chasima tova, everyone. Have a sweet, healthy, and diarrhea-free new year.

The orange hat

I don't normally post pictures of my kids, but since a) you can't see much in these, b) the hat is cute (I made it) and c) I did promise pictures ages ago, here is Barak, modeling Iyyar's new orange Koigu hat. You can see our orange-and-yellow kitchen in the background.

Note the shaping on the top. I didn't use a pattern for this one--I made it up as I went along, modeling it on a hat I saw briefly on a passing baby on my way to work. I like how the cables come together in some kind of explosive orange flower on top.

And here is Iyyar, in a rare moment of sleep. This picture was taken at least a month ago. He's now outgrown the bouncy seat (as well as those pants he's wearing there), and now that I can't put him in a vibrating nest in front of the dishwasher, he's decided to go on sleep strike. But I think I may have mentioned that already.

And yeah, I know that the picture of the hat is overexposed and terrible, and the picture of Iyyar is, well, sideways. What do you expect? I haven't slept through the night since January!

My new favorite blogger

You might not have guessed it from reading this blog, but I have a few unusual habits. (Stop it with the snorting. Please.) No, really, I do.

For one thing, I like Finnish folk music. Twelve years ago, living in DC for the summer while interning at a stuffy magazine that is usually seen in stacks in people's attics, I heard an interview with Varttina on NPR. I went to Tower Records the next day and bought two CDs. (Very unlike me. I am too cheap to buy music.) I listened to those CDs all summer long, only turning them off when my roommate got home. (She was too polite to complain--instead, she would suddenly invent urgent errands if those CDs went in the player, and I figured it out fairly quickly.) At the end of the summer, we (roommate and I) had a friendly chat about how even though we were very unlike each other and would never have become friends, we had been perfect together as roommates (which was true). She then paused. "Except for that song." What song? "That Finnish song that you played over and over and over. You know, that one track that kept repeating. I thought I would lose my mind." That song? That was two whole CDs, twelve songs on each! To her, they all sounded the same, and equally irritating.

Well, I liked them. Sing it with me, now:

Miun sisoini somaiset,
neijot nuoret naapurista.
see-e-ee-linni-koi,
see-e-ee-laja...

How could you not like that? How??

Beats me. Moving on...

Today, one of my coworkers stopped by my desk to ask for something. He is from Uganda. We both speak English, but just for fun, I greeted him in Swahili, and ran through the whole greeting exchange in Swahili. How are you? How is your work? How is your home? How is your family? etc. (The answer to all of these questions is always, "Fine." If the honest answer is that things are un-fine, you say, "Fine, but..." So, if you are asked, "How is your family?" you might reply, "Fine, but my wife was eaten by a mountain lion last night.")

I know this little tidbit of Swahili because a friend studied in Kenya for a semester and taught me when he got back. Thirteen years ago. I remember it. I also can spout strange tidbits of Mandarin, Kikuyu, Japanese, Polish, Lithuanian, and a bunch of other languages, along with the four or five or six languages I can more or less speak. I like languages.

I also like knitting. So when I was reading the latest issue of knitty, and followed a link to a knitter's blog, and started reading said blog of said fellow knitter, it did not strike me as strange that there was someone else who liked to knit. I mean, there are a lot of us these days (even though I WAS KNITTING LONG LONG LONG BEFORE IT WAS COOL. In fact, I knitted in the days when it was downright geeky to knit. And I revelled in my geekiness, and am slightly irritated that knitting is now cool. I mean, really, what's next? Will everyone else be drop-spinning on the bus too? Pfff.)

But this knitter also likes languages. Preferably strange ones. I realized I was onto something when I found that she also listens to Finnish music. That was enough for a bookmark on my computer's browser, right there. But then I read on, and discovered that this person had also been pregnant in an environment where being pregnant was considered about as socially acceptable as walking around with visible nose hair coated in big goopy boogers. And she probably has a collection of reference books at least as big as mine. Because she... writes the dictionary.

Swoon.

Okay, so, my new favorite blog is here. But I'd start by reading this post.

I really should be working

But I just wanted to post this, to get it off my chest.

First: I have a new double jogging stroller. (I bought it before they increased the price, fortunately--it's been in a box in the basement since last winter.) It rocks. It was not cheap, but since I don't have a car, and my stroller is how I get my kids everywhere, I can't deal with junky strollers. I had the same model single stroller for Barak, originally, and it was the best stroller ever. (Those of you familiar with the Stroller Curse narrative--this one got stolen.) It powered over snowbanks, broken sidewalks, anything, and rolled with so little friction that it came with a wrist leash so it wouldn't get away from you. And you needed that leash, too.

Anyway. Yesterday afternoon, MHH and his father put it together for me. Barak played in the box (actually scaring me slightly, because I didn't see it when he got in there, he pulled it shut after him, he was very very very quiet, and for a minute I really didn't know where he'd gone). This was at around 4, after MHH had come home from school (early dismissal because of the fast day).

At around 4:30, Iyyar started yawning and rubbing his eyes. I took him into the bedroom, nursed him, and tried to get him to sleep.

Let's just skip over the next three hours and say that at 7:30, Iyyar was STILL not asleep after three hours of effort on my part. Exhausted wailing, red eyes, but every time he was almost asleep he'd snap out of it. And howl. "Wait a minute! I know what you're trying to do! You're trying to make me SLEEP! AAAHHHH!!!!"

My nerves were, shall we say, frayed. And MHH and his father had to go to maariv. And I had to put Barak to bed. And I knew I could not deal with two howling children. Fine, I said grimly. We will take the advice of Grandma E. We will go for a walk. I bundled everyone into pajamas, supplied them with blankies and pluggies as appropriate, and asked MHH to take the stroller down. At which point we discovered that it did not fit through the back door (which is the only way to get from our apartment to the outside world with only one door). He and his father managed to get it out the front door (which means out three doors), turned sideways, with a lot of grumbling and banging. I buckled a still-howling Iyyar and a very excited Barak ("No night-night? No night-night, Imma, 'kay? Go trip? Go innair stroller?") into the double stroller.

Ahh. This stroller is great. This stroller rocks. This stroller also rolls! It is absolutely effortless to push, even with two kids. I can move! I can walk fast! Okay, there is no basket to speak of, so I can't do much shopping with it, but I can move again! Woohoo! Imma's mood starts to lift considerably, despite all the screaming still issuing forth from the rockin' stroller.

I follow MHH and his dad to shul. I walk up and down the main shopping street. I go into the kosher grocery to check that the stroller fit through their door (and once inside feel compelled to buy something, namely, a diet coke.) And then I figure, well, what the heck. It's a gorgeous night. Let's walk to the supermarket.

The supermarket, ladies and gentlemen (do any men read this blog besides my husband?) is two miles away. I had already wandered around for about a mile. I decided I might as well get some exercise, and started walking fast. I walked all the way there, bought a couple of things, walked all the way back. By the time I got home, it was after 9:30, and I had walked five miles and change.

And they were both still wide awake.

Random

1. I was wrong when I told the doctor that the cut on my hand hurt worse than anything since childbirth. The yeast infection I got when nursing Barak hurt worse than the hand. Just for the record.

2. You know what to do with limp celery, don't you? Cut off the bottoms and put the stalks in a glass of water, like flowers. Doesn't everyone know that? I thought so, but a big eater of celery did not know this so maybe it is a secret I should share.

3. Iyyar has not had a bath since Thursday. He smells like cheese. He smells like very smelly cheese.

4. Barak pooped in the potty yesterday. That part was great. The part that wasn't great was that he started pooping in his room. Without a diaper. Then he realized that he wasn't supposed to poop on the floor (my screaming "NO! NO! NO!" probably had something to do with that) and started running toward the bathroom. Pooping as he went. (How is that possible?!) By the time I got him up on the toilet, there was poop on the floor in his room, the floor of the hall, on my shoe, on the bathroom floor, on the side of the toilet and all over him. And oh yeah, it was Shabbos, so no hot water and no baths. By the time I got it all cleaned up (and bleached, and had changed out of my only shabbos outfit that fits, because I sure as heck wasn't wearing it anywhere) I was thinking dark thoughts indeed. That was when Barak slid off the potty, pointed inside, and proudly announced "Poop potty! Cookie please!"

What could I do? I gave him a cookie.

5. How am I supposed to have a spiritual experience on Rosh Hashana? Please tell me. Does anybody out there with little kids manage it? Shul is out of the question. You're lucky if you get to hear shofar. It's all about cooking, cleaning, trying to keep the kids entertained and presentable, and cleaning up after everyone too young or too, er, distracted to clean up after himself (um, I meant, themselves. Not pointing fingers at any particular gender or anything. Besides, the only female in the house is the cat, and to be fair, MHH deals with the litterbox, because he's holy that way. If distracted.) Where was I? Oh yeah. Does anybody out there with little kids, but no kids big enough to help with them, ever actually a) make it to shul, b) daven or c) devote any significant time or spiritual energy to, oh, teshuva or anything? Do you?

6. The ants are out of control. I need to get traps down. I got a few but they make me nervous with the kids. I have to figure out a way, because after we ate in the living room on Shabbos and I did not sweep till this morning, there were SWARMS of them on every crumb of challah. It was vile.

7. This is the cute thing Barak did after Shabbos lunch. Our guests, their kids, and the rest of us (me, MHH, his father and our kids) were all milling around the house, having benched but not quite moving on. The table was still set up, but mostly cleared. The basket of benchers and the kiddush cup were still there. Barak, quietly, so as not to draw attention to himself, climbed up into MHH's seat and took the kiddush cup. Looked at it intently. Opened a bencher, and intoned, "Shabbos. Ad'nai elokainu. Amen."* Then he slid down from his chair, ran off, and yelled, "Gotta go to shul!" I guess that's the kitzer version of his father's Shabbos, so far as he's concerned. (*Jacque: That's "Sabbath. God. Amen!")

And I was supposed to be doing what during the month of Elul?

Last year, I was prepared. I cooked ahead. I froze. I planned menus. I had stacks and stacks of disposable aluminum pans in the basement freezer, all manner of paper goods, grape juice and gefilte fish bought on sale and pulled out when needed. It was calm. It was organized. It was good.

This year, I have a baby and I had stitches in my hand. Nothing happened ahead. And Marika Neni is back in R0mania, and her friend who was supposed to come yesterday did not show. Nothing has been cleaned. There is nothing in the freezer. Nothing nothing nothing.

So today, the day before Rosh Hashana, I woke up, thought about what I'd like to cook, went to the store, bought some groceries, came home, and cooked. I had already done the chicken soup and one batch of challah (okay, almost nothing happened ahead). I made two pans of stuffed cabbage, a big pot of rice and barley and onions and mushrooms for my macrobiotically inclined father in law, franks in blanks for the non-macrobiotically inclined children who will be here for Shabbos lunch, a bowl of bean salad, and, um, another batch of challah. Tonight, I made carrot salad. That was it. I had both kids here, and, well... it was one of those high-volume days. Meaning, a lot of screaming. Iyyar refused to nap all day, and since he wasn't kvetchy about it and I simply had too much to do to spend the whole day trying to get him to sleep, I let him stay awake. With the predictable result of complete hysterical meltdown by 5 pm. He was so exhausted that even when he finally did fall asleep, he would jerk himself awake crying every few minutes. I spent the hours of 4 till 7 trying, completely futilely, to get him to sleep (at least half of that time with him crying alone in the crib or bouncy seat, because he was just as hysterical in my arms and there seemed to be little point). Misery. Miserable baby, miserable Imma.

I tried everything I could think of, and then remembered something a friend had told me once. Sure, it's weird, but I'm desperate. So I ran a warm bath and got in there with him. Magic. He splashed, he wiggled, he thought, hey, this is fun! He pushed his feet around experimentally in the water, looked at me, watched for my response, snuggled into the water and into me. Maybe it's like the womb? All those tense little muscles melted. Happy baby. I changed his diaper, put on his pajamas, got into bed with him and nursed. Happy happy. And he finally... fell... asleep. And I put him down. And walked away. And he stayed asleep. And I exhaled. It was eight o'clock. Still time. Still time to send MHH to the store, still time to pull it off. Still time to do everything I needed to do before my FIL was expected, sometime around 10:30, and I could no longer reasonably expect MHH to be swabbing floors. Then I could finish cooking, and if MHH could clean in the morning when I'll be at work, maybe maybe, I think we can just swing it, I think...

And then...

The doorbell rang. And there I was, totally not dressed to open the door. And it couldn't be my father in law, because we weren't expecting him for HOURS. But it was. So I had to buzz him up. And we have the loudest buzzer on the planet. I closed my eyes and hoped, and buzzed, and

"aaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

woke up the baby.

Pretend you don't know me

Hey, it's post number 201!

I have a knitting buddy on the other side of the planet with whom I email, er, let's say rather frequently. It helps that we both keep funny hours and she is 17 hours ahead of me. Every so often, maybe once a year, the question will come up: how much money would we have that we now do not have if we had never learned to knit (or spin or weave or...) The answer is usually something along the lines of "it doesn't bear thinking about," followed by, "besides, if we didn't knit we'd probably have found some other, equally expensive hobby."

I can't help but wonder: how much other, more necessary stuff could I have gotten done if I weren't spending time writing this blog? It isn't really bothering me--I like writing it, MHH likes reading it, and it continues to fulfill its primary purpose of allowing me to write something while not pretending to be someone other than myself. Besides, I'd probably have written half of what's here in some email or another anyway. Because my scores of daily readers (well, almost scores--usually about 37) are mostly people I know. Except for the person from Owings Mills, Maryland who spent more than an hour reading this yesterday, in the middle of the night. Who are you, and why weren't you asleep? I can't possibly be that interesting.

Anyway... about the title of this post. Could you, please? You might know who I am. You might have gone to school with me, you might knit with me, you might be the father of my children. (Hello, dear.) But in the comments section, could you please try not to post anything really really identifying of who I am or where we live? Because, you know, our jobs are such that it would be a lot better if you didn't. Thanks for the understanding and so on.

Okay, I'm going to go to bed now. Really. Because Iyyar is asleep, and Barak is asleep, and I must take full advantage of this.

The third thing

I just got out of bed, site of far too little sleep, and came back to the computer (if my husband were awake he'd kill me) to say that I remembered that the third thing that made me think of Jasmin was this movie. Which I enjoyed, even though the only words I understood were baba (daddy) and salaam aleikum (shalom aleichem), courtesy of a friend with an Iranian husband.

Okay, back to bed now that I've got that off my chest. Oh, and one other thing. This morning, I was kneeling on the floor of Barak's room, my mouth full of bobby pins, trying to affix his new kippa, adorned with 'cairy dinosaurs, to his head. And I feel like there must be something to say about that, but I'm not sure what. Except that his new word for the day is "terrifying!"

Good night.

As promised

So, over the last couple of weeks, three things have made me think of Jasmin. Her blog is the reason I started this blog. I've never actually met her, but she is a friend of a friend and now my friend as well, via email and mail and that kind of thing. She speaks lots of languages, she has a little boy, she likes chocolate--you know, my kinda woman. Unlike me, she's in the National Guard, on post somewhere in the middle of the desert--the American desert, not the Iraqi one, fortunately.

Anyway, here's the list.

1. The finger. Jasmin is currently working in the ER on post and at one point posted something along the lines of, If you find yourself with an urgent medical problem, go to your doctor or call an ambulance. Don't go to the emergency room if you can possibly avoid it. I was thinking this as I stood in my kitchen, dishtowel clamped tightly over hand, blood dripping on the floor. It was not a big cut--maybe an inch and a half, but it was deep, and definitely was going to need stitches. So, I thought, what on earth do I do now? Iyyar's in the bouncy seat wanting to be picked up (no way), Barak's in his booster seat finishing his post-nap snack, it's three in the afternoon and my husband won't be home for another three hours. And I can't use either of my hands. What do I do??

What I did, after some panicked blank looks at my kids, was call my husband's cell. No pickup of course--he was in class. Then I called my friend Chana across the street. No pickup, but she has a lot of kids and almost never picks up her phone during the day. I can't believe it--I'm going to have to call 911 over a stupid little finger cut. Just as I was about to feel like the biggest idiot in the world, Chana called back. She came over, and then I called the school office, and they pulled my husband out of class and sent him home. He took Barak over to Chana's house where they waited for her older kids' bus, and she put Iyyar in the carseat and took us both to the ER. Where we waited for HOURS, while Iyyar flipped out wanting to nurse the right way, and I could barely hold him at all. Maybe 911 would have been better? But I would really have felt stupid calling an ambulance over a three-stitch cut. But let me tell you, walk into a busy ER with a small hand laceration and oh BOY are you on the bottom of their list, along with the sore throats and sniffles. Starving baby or no starving baby.

Oh, well, I don't need to tell the whole saga, but it turns out that I just nicked some very sensitive nerve (the cut was at the base of my first finger, between finger and thumb--right across the side of my hand) which was why a cut that looked like it should have been nothing hurt more than anything I've experienced short of having a baby. That sounds melodramatic, but it's actually true. It derailed my entire week--I couldn't do anything, and I was constantly jumping out of my skin when one of the kids bumped or kicked it. The stitches came out yesterday, but it's still taped up and still pretty uncomfortable. Oh, and because I haven't been able to get it wet, and haven't been able to use it much, I have not even started cooking or cleaning for the chagim. Which are in, um, six days. Right.

2. Barak had his own balloon heartbreak this week. We went to Trader Joe's, where of course he got a nice helium balloon at checkout. It was yellow. I tied it to his wrist. (You can see where this is going, right?) He didn't like that. I moved it to his overall straps. He liked that less. So I tied it to something else--I forget what--and a moment later saw the balloon sailing up, up past the extended roof of the store, up up up into the sky and away. Barak was hysterical. "Bawoon! Bawoon up! Bawoon!" I asked him if he wanted another one, and he didn't. "Is the ballong going up? Is it going bye bye? Bye bye balloon!" He waved at the balloon, not wanting another one but still distressed--I think because in his mind, things do not get lost in the direction of UP. Things do not fall UP. It was a violation of nature, more than the loss of the balloon, that seemed upsetting.

Fast forward a week. We were walking down the street, Iyyar in the sling, Barak holding my hand. It was a gorgeous day. Barak looked up and said, "Sky blue!" Right, the sky is blue! Pause. "Sky white?" Right, the clouds are white! Good job, you know so much! Pause. "Balloon lellow. Balloon go bye bye sky. Up up sky. Sky blue!"

Indeed.

3. Oh my gosh. There were three things. There WERE. What was the third thing? Um. Uh. I can't remember. Okay, when I remember I'll come back and add it. Stay tuned.

Ouch

In an act of incredible stupidity and flagrant disregard of fundamental rules of knife safety, I gashed my hand on Thursday. Three stitches, and it seems like it shouldn't be that big of a deal--but it still hurts, a lot more than I would have expected, and it's pretty hard to type right now (let alone change diapers). So probably no real posts till the stitches come out (Friday, I hope).

Just letting you all know. Next up: three things this week that made me think of Jasmin (yes, Jasmin, that would be you. And yes, the emergency room trip was one of them.)

We're back

An hour earlier than scheduled--I made it to the airport so early (I was worried about Boston rush-hour traffic and left much more time than I needed) that we were in the departure lounge two hours before our flight. Early enough that I heard the final call for the flight preceding ours, and managed to get on that one. We had a row to ourselves each way, and I got to take the car seat on. It was quite relaxed as these things go. Total travel time was 18 hours. We left at 4:30 and got home at 10:30. Not bad at all, really.

Iyyar was amazing. Really. It's not that he didn't cry, but he cried so much less than I expected. And he did a lot of cute smiling and flirting and, I hope, some cheering up of my friend. In addition to the shiva visit that was the purpose of our trip, we also saw a few friends very very very briefly--a former coworker, a former neighbor, another friend. It was nice to see them, although obviously I would have preferred a longer, happier, more relaxed visit. Maybe another time.

Iyyar is asleep now, after a nice bath (he loves baths. He also is the only baby in the world who loves diaper changes. Really.) And after I have a quick snack, I intend to be asleep too.

The curse of the sleep-resistant males

It is 3:20 pm and my nerves are shot. Totally, completely shot.

I have spent the last four hours trying to get the boys to sleep. It is finally qu**t. I don't dare type the word, lest one of them wake up. Or both of them.

MHH is a resister of sleep par excellence. Before we were married, he had three roommates in a one-bedroom apartment. Two guys in the living room, two in the bedroom. For a naturally sleep-resistant person, this is hopeless; someone is always up, there's always something going on that one might miss by going to bed. He regularly went to sleep at 2 am or later. Next day, he'd fall asleep mid-sentence, or over a book, or sitting on the subway. I don't think he ever consciously put two and two together on that one. Really. He told me, very earnestly, that he just didn't need as much sleep as most people. His roommate said that he didn't understand how anyone survived on so little sleep, and that if he (MHH) ever got any sleep, he'd probably have superpowers. He (roommate) didn't seem to be aware that he (MHH) regularly fell asleep all kinds of places he shouldn't, without really realizing it. You know, like, in shiur.

About a week after we got married, when I discovered this about him, I (I thought reasonably) started suggesting he maybe try to go to bed a little earlier. (I was a 10:30 girl myself.) You'd think I had suggested he sleep naked on a park bench covered in peanut butter. It was the most freakish and disturbing suggestion anyone had ever made, and I was clearly just trying to get rid of him. Oh-kay, I thought, not the way to start on the right foot with the shalom bayis. I'll just keep quiet on this one. But a few months later, he had a job that required him to get up at 6 am at the absolute latest. He started having to get to sleep earlier. We had a few gentle wifely chats about this and he seemed to get it. He asked me, earnestly, to please try to make sure he got to bed every night by 11 at the absolute outside. He promised, bli neder, not to get mad at me for attempting to make sure he did not stay up all night, thereby falling asleep in front of [his own] shiur, losing his job, and impoverishing his new family. Etc.

Every night--every single night--I'd try. And fail. It didn't matter how tired he was. He could be literally falling asleep at the table, in his chair, walking around the living room staggering off course with fatigue. He didn't. Need. To. Sleep. Not tired! No!

I only really realized what I was in for when his father came to visit for Rosh Hashanah. And despite the exhausting trip, and the fact that he was almost too tired to talk--he didn't go to sleep. I came out into the living room in the wee hours to find both of them passed out on the couch in identical poses--heads back, books on chest, bare feet on floor next to four discarded socks. The same way MHH falls asleep every night, if he has the chance.

Then I realized. It was genetic. I was doomed.

And then Barak was born. Barak, whom even the pros at daycare despaired of getting to nap. Barak, whose most oft-repeated phrase is "no night night!" Barak, who discovered power naps at the age of two months, falling asleep after hours of refusal, sleeping for ten minutes, waking up bright-eyed and perky, and then screaming in exhaustion (again) twenty minutes later.

Iyyar is exactly the same. Exactly. Our babysitter, who started taking care of Barak aged seven months, says it over and over. "He hates to sleep. He fights it tooth and nail. He's just like his brother. It's spooky. He just... hates to sleep." And he does, except even worse than Barak--he won't fall asleep in a stroller. He'll scream himself silly first. No stroller, no carseat. NO NIGHT-NIGHT! Of course he can't say that yet, but you can hear it in the howling.

Today, playgroup started. Iyyar was asleep when we needed to leave, having nursed himself into a stupor about half an hour earlier. Rashly, I tried to transfer him into the carseat. No dice. He woke up, and started to howl. We got to playgroup with a distraught and, naturally, now starving baby, and I sat there nursing him and trying to calm him down. Eventually he did settle down, and watched the goings-on, wide awake. But then he started to peter out, and when I put him in the evil evil carseat for the five-block return trip, started to howl again. And howl. And Barak started to rub his eyes, and asked to be carried. Fine, I thought. It's noon. Barak didn't sleep much last night (he jumped around in his crib till 9:30 and woke up at 7). He could do with an early nap. So I put him down. And closed the door. And-

Barak fell asleep half an hour ago. That would be three in the afternoon. He just fell asleep. He was crying with tiredness, but would not sleep--he was climbing around his crib, asking for books, talking to himself, singing, playing, etc. I ignored it, until I heard "Imma change diaper!" I changed his diaper, which needed it, and tried to explain to him that he was dooming himself to an entire afternoon in his crib with his antics. "No night-night!" Sigh.

Meanwhile, Iyyar was fighting the good fight in our room. The eyes would droop. He'd be almost out, snuggled against me with the soft blanky on his cheek, being rocked, sung to, nursed. And then it would hit him. "Wait a minute! You're trying to make me sleep! AAAGGH!" And he'd be up again. After an hour I did get him to sleep--long enough to fold half a load of laundry. Then he was up again. And happy for ten minutes. And then he started to rub his eyes and cry. Again.

I'm sure there are fifty things I should be doing right now--I'm going to Boston for the day tomorrow for a shiva visit--but I don't even want to make the noise of walking around the apartment on our creaky floors. I think I'll just sit here and knit. Very very quietly.