1. Yesterday I was making chocolate chip cookies with Barak, something we haven't done in a while. As per usual, I held up the eggs I had cracked into a glass measuring cup, for him to check.
"What color are the eggs?"
"Yellow!"
"Just yellow?"
"Just yellow. Dere's no spots in dere. Iss just yellow."
Then it hit me. Yellow, not lellow. He's never said that before.
2. Iyyar is just beginning to talk, albeit sort of reluctantly. When he's done eating and wants to come out of his high chair, sometimes he'll repeat "all done!" or even say, "up!" What he does with great enthusiasm, though, is say, "hi." Yesterday, he was in his high chair eating breakfast as I moved around the kitchen emptying the dishwasher and cleaning up. Every time I broke eye contact with him, two seconds later I'd hear, "Hi!" I'd look at him and say "hi!" and he'd giggle. Then I'd put another dish away and hear, from behind me, "HI!"
3. And Iyyar's really walking now. He stands up in the middle of the room and walks halfway across it before toppling, and yesterday walked straight into my arms, collapsing in giggles. He's a lightning fast crawler, though, and still seems to see walking as an entertaining activity, while crawling is the primary means of locomotion. I predict this will change in about two weeks.
4. Barak, B"H, is finally in the realm where I would call him toilet trained. The only accidents he has had in the last two weeks have involved falling asleep in the stroller. We're thinking tzitzis party when his cousins come, the week after next. Woohoo! It only took a year...
5. I have a number of more serious posts in mind, since I feel like things have been kind of frivolous lately. I don't know if I'll get to them, though, since right now I am wading through a neck-deep swamp of the writing for which I actually get paid.
In the meantime, though, what I will say about the Noah Feldman article in last Sunday's NYT magazine (if you haven't read it, don't bother): this is the guy who, of his own initiative, offered to represent the city of Tenafly pro bono (to the tune of $75,000 in legal fees, by the city's accounting) to fight the Orthodox community's eruv (a more or less invisible halachic boundary, consisting of pieces of plastic tape on telephone poles, allowing Jews to carry on the Sabbath.) He also turned up at the reunion of his Orthodox high school with a non-Jewish girlfriend--sort of like turning up at the reunion of your Bible Christian high school with a same-sex partner, and introducing him to all of your old teachers--and couldn't understand why their picture wasn't in the newsletter, or the news of their later marriage. And now he's published a full-length feature piece in a national newspaper, saying about the students at his high school, "... our aim was to seem to outsiders — and to ourselves — like reasonable, mainstream people, not fanatics or cult members." And this is an article in which he says that he has not rejected his upbringing, an article that was on the most e-mailed list for days, an article that has probably put thousands of Jews in the awkward position of trying to explain to non-Jewish friends what exactly is so warped about the whole thing.
And yet, "As best I know, no one, not even the rabbis at my old school who disapprove of my most important life decisions, would go so far as to refuse to shake my hand."
He doesn't really realize how lucky he is, does he.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Unimpressed
I know that weather forecasting is not an exact science but really! Days and days of thunderstorm watches and flood watches, for heaven's sake, with hardly a drop of anything. Then today, after a whole day of vapid clouds, a too-close-to-bedtime trip to the grocery store with Iyyar in the stroller and Barak holding on--and one door away, the sky cracked open and all those thunderstorms happened at once, one on top of the other from the sounds of things.
Really.
And in a similar category, what on earth is with the New York Times? (Besides their Israel coverage, I mean, but I make it a policy not even to get into that because I just get too enraged and that probably isn't good for me.) They published a review of Harry Potter Book 7 today--three days before the publication date! With a glib appositive, "well the book is embargoed till Saturday but copies were available today" followed by a whole heck of a bunch of spoilers.
Why?? Would it have killed you to at least, say, publish the review ON the publication date? Oh it would have? Well, it would not have been a terribly great loss. I have a friend, one of my oldest friends in fact, who now lives in Turkey. She was saying, yes, I like the New York Times but their coverage of all things related to Turkey is misinformed and inaccurate. I said, hmm, I feel the same way about their coverage of all things related to Israel. She paused and said, it's funny, my dad, who is a biologist, thinks their science coverage is appalling, and actually his friend who does X says the same thing about...
Did you read the article about knitting they had a few days ago? The one where they mixed up knitting and crochet? You did?
Well, in mostly unrelated news, I've been knitting too--and here's a shocker, it's something for myself! And a full-size adult sweater at that! I have not made a sweater for anyone over the age of three since, umm, I have to think about this one... I think the last one I made was for my (tiny and impossibly skinny) Israeli SIL, almost two years ago now. It took me six months to finish, even though she is (see above) tiny and impossibly skinny. My current sweater, which I started, oh, I don't know, early spring sometime, is an Eris; I finished the body a while ago and did the first sleeve in one evening's marathon of knitting. I started the second sleeve last night and am looking forward to having a new sweater when it gets cold one of these days. Before that happens though I should probably knit a sweater for Barak, who put in his very first knitting request this week: "Imma, c'you make me a orange sweater please?" I had already acquired red and blue yarn for that very purpose, but no; he had his eye on a few skeins of orange Lamb's Pride. And he can have them.
The back bedroom, no longer known as the Loom Room, is still looking extremely spacious to me, although MHH commented last night that "it looks like it's always been this way." The spinning wheel is now in its own corner, the comfy chair is strategically situated next to a Flat Surface For Piling Things On, the better to encourage MHH to hang out here with me in the evenings; and the Piles of Undifferentiated Stuff that were jammed behind the loom are now transported, courtesy of MHH, to the storage space in the basement.
Okay, my allotted blogging time is two minutes past over and it's time to head back to that Annual Report I need to finish up. Tune in next time, same bat channel.
Really.
And in a similar category, what on earth is with the New York Times? (Besides their Israel coverage, I mean, but I make it a policy not even to get into that because I just get too enraged and that probably isn't good for me.) They published a review of Harry Potter Book 7 today--three days before the publication date! With a glib appositive, "well the book is embargoed till Saturday but copies were available today" followed by a whole heck of a bunch of spoilers.
Why?? Would it have killed you to at least, say, publish the review ON the publication date? Oh it would have? Well, it would not have been a terribly great loss. I have a friend, one of my oldest friends in fact, who now lives in Turkey. She was saying, yes, I like the New York Times but their coverage of all things related to Turkey is misinformed and inaccurate. I said, hmm, I feel the same way about their coverage of all things related to Israel. She paused and said, it's funny, my dad, who is a biologist, thinks their science coverage is appalling, and actually his friend who does X says the same thing about...
Did you read the article about knitting they had a few days ago? The one where they mixed up knitting and crochet? You did?
Well, in mostly unrelated news, I've been knitting too--and here's a shocker, it's something for myself! And a full-size adult sweater at that! I have not made a sweater for anyone over the age of three since, umm, I have to think about this one... I think the last one I made was for my (tiny and impossibly skinny) Israeli SIL, almost two years ago now. It took me six months to finish, even though she is (see above) tiny and impossibly skinny. My current sweater, which I started, oh, I don't know, early spring sometime, is an Eris; I finished the body a while ago and did the first sleeve in one evening's marathon of knitting. I started the second sleeve last night and am looking forward to having a new sweater when it gets cold one of these days. Before that happens though I should probably knit a sweater for Barak, who put in his very first knitting request this week: "Imma, c'you make me a orange sweater please?" I had already acquired red and blue yarn for that very purpose, but no; he had his eye on a few skeins of orange Lamb's Pride. And he can have them.
The back bedroom, no longer known as the Loom Room, is still looking extremely spacious to me, although MHH commented last night that "it looks like it's always been this way." The spinning wheel is now in its own corner, the comfy chair is strategically situated next to a Flat Surface For Piling Things On, the better to encourage MHH to hang out here with me in the evenings; and the Piles of Undifferentiated Stuff that were jammed behind the loom are now transported, courtesy of MHH, to the storage space in the basement.
Okay, my allotted blogging time is two minutes past over and it's time to head back to that Annual Report I need to finish up. Tune in next time, same bat channel.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The end of an era
In a few short hours, I will no longer be the owner of a loom.
I posted it for sale a few weeks ago and this morning someone drove up here with a production weaver friend to check it out; she's buying the loom and all my weaving equipment for about what I paid for it over the years. The two of them have gone off to have lunch while we wait for MHH to come home for lunch to help us get it in their van.
It's time; I haven't done any weaving since Barak was four months old, and even that was weaving off a warp that had been on there since before I got married. I haven't done a thing with it since then--it's just been sitting there naked and lonely, taking up about a quarter of the space in the back bedroom.
I'm a little bit sad about this, but not terribly; it will be nice to have the space, the money will come in handy, and like I said I really wasn't using it. And we wouldn't exactly be taking it along on aliya, either, so it was going to have to go sooner or later. And as MHH said last night, of all my fibery pursuits, I do like weaving the least; I enjoy it, but not in the same way that I enjoy spinning and knitting. Weaving is cool, it's fun, but it takes a lot of brainpower and a lot of time and space, and those aren't things I have surpluses of at the moment.
And it's going to a good home--the woman buying it is obviously giddy with excitement, and is about to start a graduate degree in textiles. So, good for everybody.
It doesn't mean I won't be sniffling just a little as it drives away, though.
I posted it for sale a few weeks ago and this morning someone drove up here with a production weaver friend to check it out; she's buying the loom and all my weaving equipment for about what I paid for it over the years. The two of them have gone off to have lunch while we wait for MHH to come home for lunch to help us get it in their van.
It's time; I haven't done any weaving since Barak was four months old, and even that was weaving off a warp that had been on there since before I got married. I haven't done a thing with it since then--it's just been sitting there naked and lonely, taking up about a quarter of the space in the back bedroom.
I'm a little bit sad about this, but not terribly; it will be nice to have the space, the money will come in handy, and like I said I really wasn't using it. And we wouldn't exactly be taking it along on aliya, either, so it was going to have to go sooner or later. And as MHH said last night, of all my fibery pursuits, I do like weaving the least; I enjoy it, but not in the same way that I enjoy spinning and knitting. Weaving is cool, it's fun, but it takes a lot of brainpower and a lot of time and space, and those aren't things I have surpluses of at the moment.
And it's going to a good home--the woman buying it is obviously giddy with excitement, and is about to start a graduate degree in textiles. So, good for everybody.
It doesn't mean I won't be sniffling just a little as it drives away, though.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The kindness of bicyclists
This morning, I loaded the boys in my double jogging stroller and set out on the hike to Target. We were out of tissues and in need of another baby lock (the one on the pareve cabinet in the kitchen broke over Shabbos). My ISIL, incidentally, mentioned this morning that her husband thought it was silly how many people are pushing around jogging strollers who never ever jog. I said no no, they are the most practical things imaginable: easy to push, good tough wheels, the best thing when you have a long way to walk and want to move fast. (As long as you're not planning on using any public transportation along the way--they're awful to get on buses.)
The trouble is, though, that you do have to keep the tires pumped.
I'm not so good about that.
A couple of blocks away from our house, I noticed that the stroller was veering off to one side. Was the front wheel out of alignment? No. Was Barak, who was walking holding one side of the stroller, pulling on it? No. Was the... oh. Yeah. That back tire was totally, completely flat.
Hmm. I didn't have my pump with me, because it's really too heavy to carry everywhere. And I really, really didn't want to go home, unload everybody, bring the stroller back up the stairs and inside, pump up the tires, and start over. It was getting hot already and I'd lose 45 minutes that way, easily.
That was when I spotted, across an intersection, a whole horde of spandex-clad, spiffily helmeted bicyclists on fancy bikes, obviously about to start biking a billion miles or so.
What could be better? I crossed the street.
"Excuse me," I asked the closest woman, "This is kind of a silly question, but does one of you have a bicycle pump?"
It was sort of like asking me, in my own home, if I have any yarn. I was converged upon by bicyclists with every manner and type of bicycle pump, pump attachments, and, um, whatever you call the little thing that has to fit just right on the little thing that you pump on the tire. Some of them pumped air. Some of them actually had little CO2 cartridges, like the kind you use to make soda water. They were all ridiculously tiny and high-tech-looking. I had sort of expected someone would say, "Here, I have a pump," and hand it to me--no no no. The tires were examined and their dire state of flatness exclaimed over in tones of horror. They were then expertly pressure-gauged, pumped, pumped with a different pump, poked, tested, and found good. There were at least six people working on my stroller for me. It was like having my own personal pit crew. I said as much.
"Barak, are they helping us fix the tires?"
"Yeah! They're very smart."
(Now, in all honesty I should point out that that he says this because his mother has him totally indoctrinated into the necessity of wearing bike helmets. If he sees anyone with a bike helmet, he tells me, "He's wearing a helmet. That's very smart." Woe unto the rider who isn't: "Ohhh. He's not wearing a helmet. He's not very smart. He could fall and hurt himself! Go boom on his keppy! That would hurt a lot.")
The bicyclists, of course, did not know the background to this (and were, as I said, all helmeted to the nines). Once our tires were pronounced road-worthy, we all wished each other a good ride and set off, me with my three wheels and all of them with their two.
Two blocks away, Barak realized what he was missing. "Imma? I needa helmet please. I needa be smart."
Maybe it's time for a tricycle.
The trouble is, though, that you do have to keep the tires pumped.
I'm not so good about that.
A couple of blocks away from our house, I noticed that the stroller was veering off to one side. Was the front wheel out of alignment? No. Was Barak, who was walking holding one side of the stroller, pulling on it? No. Was the... oh. Yeah. That back tire was totally, completely flat.
Hmm. I didn't have my pump with me, because it's really too heavy to carry everywhere. And I really, really didn't want to go home, unload everybody, bring the stroller back up the stairs and inside, pump up the tires, and start over. It was getting hot already and I'd lose 45 minutes that way, easily.
That was when I spotted, across an intersection, a whole horde of spandex-clad, spiffily helmeted bicyclists on fancy bikes, obviously about to start biking a billion miles or so.
What could be better? I crossed the street.
"Excuse me," I asked the closest woman, "This is kind of a silly question, but does one of you have a bicycle pump?"
It was sort of like asking me, in my own home, if I have any yarn. I was converged upon by bicyclists with every manner and type of bicycle pump, pump attachments, and, um, whatever you call the little thing that has to fit just right on the little thing that you pump on the tire. Some of them pumped air. Some of them actually had little CO2 cartridges, like the kind you use to make soda water. They were all ridiculously tiny and high-tech-looking. I had sort of expected someone would say, "Here, I have a pump," and hand it to me--no no no. The tires were examined and their dire state of flatness exclaimed over in tones of horror. They were then expertly pressure-gauged, pumped, pumped with a different pump, poked, tested, and found good. There were at least six people working on my stroller for me. It was like having my own personal pit crew. I said as much.
"Barak, are they helping us fix the tires?"
"Yeah! They're very smart."
(Now, in all honesty I should point out that that he says this because his mother has him totally indoctrinated into the necessity of wearing bike helmets. If he sees anyone with a bike helmet, he tells me, "He's wearing a helmet. That's very smart." Woe unto the rider who isn't: "Ohhh. He's not wearing a helmet. He's not very smart. He could fall and hurt himself! Go boom on his keppy! That would hurt a lot.")
The bicyclists, of course, did not know the background to this (and were, as I said, all helmeted to the nines). Once our tires were pronounced road-worthy, we all wished each other a good ride and set off, me with my three wheels and all of them with their two.
Two blocks away, Barak realized what he was missing. "Imma? I needa helmet please. I needa be smart."
Maybe it's time for a tricycle.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Clean
My husband is a member of the local kollel for the summer, and he is now doing the usual brutal kollel schedule: he leaves at 7:45 am and doesn't get home until after 11. (That's 11 pm, in case you were thinking otherwise.) In theory there are breaks, but since he doesn't have a car the only one it is worth coming home for is the afternoon one. He gets home at around 2 and is home till about quarter to four, then he's gone again. Friday is a half day, and obviously Shabbos is off, but from Sunday through erev Shabbos we won't be seeing much of him for a while.
I miss having him around in the evenings, obviously, but the kids are actually seeing more of him than usual (since he usually gets home right before their bedtime) and in a way this schedule works out really well. It's really nice for me to have him home in the middle of the afternoon, so that I can have a break and get dinner started; he's eating with the kollel, so I don't feel like I have to make an adult meal every night (not that I always do, believe me); and, um, the house is kind of an awful lot tidier now.
It's not that he deliberately goes around messing the house; it truly is that he just doesn't notice the cloud of material chaos that he leaves in his wake. On Shabbos morning, being the sweet husband that he is, he tends to get up with the boys and let me sleep in a little. I like this very much and am not complaining at all; however, I can always follow the course of the morning and where they've been by the trail of discarded diapers and clothing, toys, food, dishes, etc. that wends its way through the apartment by the time I'm up. A small price to pay, but there's usually quite a lot of cleaning to do once Shabbos is out.
So, this week, being temporarily on my own in the evenings, there has been a lot of cleaning going on. A lot. This evening, I made good on a long-standing threat and cleaned out his closet, otherwise known as the Pit of Bottomless Chaos. I did find the bottom (and the crisp $20 bill that was wedged behind a lone plastic flip-flop); other bonuses included his old cell phone, a lot of tea bags, several pounds of scrap metal and enough recycling paper to save a small forest. I took out the garbage already, and set out the billion metal hangers for the scrap-collecting guys who pass by early in the mornings; the twenty is sitting on the kitchen counter for him, and the phone is charging.
As for the Dove chocolate I found in there... what chocolate? Finders keepers on that one.
I miss having him around in the evenings, obviously, but the kids are actually seeing more of him than usual (since he usually gets home right before their bedtime) and in a way this schedule works out really well. It's really nice for me to have him home in the middle of the afternoon, so that I can have a break and get dinner started; he's eating with the kollel, so I don't feel like I have to make an adult meal every night (not that I always do, believe me); and, um, the house is kind of an awful lot tidier now.
It's not that he deliberately goes around messing the house; it truly is that he just doesn't notice the cloud of material chaos that he leaves in his wake. On Shabbos morning, being the sweet husband that he is, he tends to get up with the boys and let me sleep in a little. I like this very much and am not complaining at all; however, I can always follow the course of the morning and where they've been by the trail of discarded diapers and clothing, toys, food, dishes, etc. that wends its way through the apartment by the time I'm up. A small price to pay, but there's usually quite a lot of cleaning to do once Shabbos is out.
So, this week, being temporarily on my own in the evenings, there has been a lot of cleaning going on. A lot. This evening, I made good on a long-standing threat and cleaned out his closet, otherwise known as the Pit of Bottomless Chaos. I did find the bottom (and the crisp $20 bill that was wedged behind a lone plastic flip-flop); other bonuses included his old cell phone, a lot of tea bags, several pounds of scrap metal and enough recycling paper to save a small forest. I took out the garbage already, and set out the billion metal hangers for the scrap-collecting guys who pass by early in the mornings; the twenty is sitting on the kitchen counter for him, and the phone is charging.
As for the Dove chocolate I found in there... what chocolate? Finders keepers on that one.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Housekeeping
I just checked the list of permissions from this blog and noticed that some people were not there who I'm almost sure I put there. And the list seems shorter than it once was. I don't think you can remove yourself from reader status once you've accepted an invite, so I'm wondering what went on. I'm not sure why I'm posting this, because obviously if you can't read my blog you can't read this, but... weird.
Maybe that's why I'm not getting many comments anymore. Ahem. I'm happy to entertain you with tales of hats and woe, but it'd be nice to know if anyone was out there reading...
Maybe that's why I'm not getting many comments anymore. Ahem. I'm happy to entertain you with tales of hats and woe, but it'd be nice to know if anyone was out there reading...
And a milestone
Iyyar took his first independent steps yesterday. Go Iyyar! He will now walk around the house quite well holding on to one of my fingers, and yesterday pulled himself up on the rocking chair, took two tentative steps, and went boom. And then did it again. And again. He won't walk if you try to get him to do it--just gives you this completely innocent blank look--but once he thinks you're not paying attention, off he goes.
Oh, and in the stroller this morning? He wore the hat.
Oh, and in the stroller this morning? He wore the hat.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
The hat wars
Iyyar hates hats. He doesn't like winter hats, he doesn't like things with hoods, and he most certainly and definitively does not like any of the summer sun hats that Imma cruelly and unreasonably insists he wear on any outing during daylight hours when the UV index is above, oh, 5 or so. Since it's been stuck at 9 for the last two months, we've been having a number of disagreements on this front lately.
Barak, back in the day, felt the same way about hats, but eventually, after enough iterations of Barak removes hat, Imma replaces it, repeat, learned helplessness took over and he was okay with the hat. These days, he has a very cool firetruck hat, and often wears it around the house on his own. Iyyar does not seem to be coming to any kind of similar state. The invariable routine whenever we leave the house is that I put on the hat, he takes it off, I put it back on, he takes it back off and flings it on the ground. I stop the stroller again, put it back on again, tell him no no again, and he--you guessed it--takes it off and flings it on the ground. Again. It takes us a while to get anywhere in the stroller these days.
This morning, at around 8, I took the boys out for bagels. It's been really hot here lately and if you don't go out early in the morning, you're not going out at all, so when Barak woke up I told him that if he could get ready very very fast we could go get bagels. "First go to the French fry store?" he asked, hopefully. "No, just the bagel store. The French fry store is closed right now."
He considered this. "Iss locked?"
"Yeah, it's locked. The French fry store doesn't open until later. That's why when we go there, we go right before night-night time. Do you want to go night-night?"
Barak, alarmed: "No! Go bagel store." Pause. "When Grandma comes, then go to the French fry store."
"Right, we'll go to the French fry store when Grandma comes. Right now though let's go get bagels, okay?"
"Kay."
Barak got dressed, Iyyar was already dressed and ready, I got the hats and my bag together and brought down the big stroller. Stage one of the hat battle begins. Every house we pass, I look down through the window in the stroller canopy and see a hatless Iyyar. I stop the stroller, put it back on as securely as possible, and off we go. Sometimes I try it without the tie, thinking that's what's making him uncomfortable, but when I do that I don't even make it back to my side of the stroller before it's off again. Grr. Do you want sunburn and skin cancer, chas v'shalom, little boy?!
We stop at the corner grocery for tissues--we ran out over Shabbos--and a bottle of water. We go to the bagel store. Mini bagels for Barak and Iyyar, an everything bagel with tomato and cream cheese for me. Barak eats and watches the people; Iyyar eats and watches Barak watch the people. A good time is generally being had by all, until I notice Iyyar shove a piece of bagel the size of a very large grape into his mouth. Choking hazard and all--I reach in with the Choking Hazard Removal Finger and scoop it out.
I swear to you he gave me the most deliberate dirty look I have ever seen. It was absolutely, "Now that was a really rotten trick and I hope you know it!" He screamed and wailed, all while fixing me with a glare that would have been alarming if it had been on the face of anyone over two feet tall. As it was, though, it was just really, really funny, and I couldn't help it. I laughed. He didn't like that much either.
On the way out I spied a sign for a garage sale, starting in ten minutes, another couple of blocks away in the opposite direction from home. It promised "tons of toys." Hmm. It was already 10 am, and getting hotter and hotter. I considered. Maybe they had another Little Tikes car, to replace the one foully smashed by vandals a few weeks ago? I turned the stroller away from home, and toward the garage sale. Except that I turned the wrong way, because I misjudged where we were in the street numbers and wound up on the wrong side of a condo development. Grr. Thirty minutes later, we were at the garage sale, where we saw no Little Tikes items but did score, for the sum of three dollars, a Fisher-Price barn (complete with animals) and airport identical to the ones I had myself lo these thirty years. Now, imagine this: It is climbing into the nineties. We're a mile and a half from home, and I've got two kids in the double stroller, a fully occupied barn in the stroller basket and an airport terminal balanced in the lap of my three-year-old. I am soaking with sweat, and the bottle of water is almost gone. I want nothing more than to be back home in air conditioning. Now.
Iyyar, he wants to take off his hat.
So it went the whole way home, stopping and replacing the hat, stopping and replacing the hat. I don't think I am an inflexible person in general but I don't bend on the hats, and I know that if Iyyar wins a few battles he'll know what it takes to win the war. Stop and replace, stop and replace. Drip, drip, drip.
Two blocks from home, I hear Barak. "Imma, I can't holda airport anymore. Iss too heavy." It is heavy, and I'm surprised he managed so far. "Should I put it on top of the stroller?" "Yeah." I balance the airport on top of the stroller canopy, blocking the window and my view of Iyyar's head. But he's had his hat on for a few blocks now without any sign of resistance--maybe he's finally twigged?
We get home. It's about 11 am, and easily a hundred degrees. I take the airport and the barn and lug them up the back stairs, and come back down to get the kids and see--Iyyar, bareheaded. And the hat is nowhere to be seen
He looked right at me, put his hands on his head, and grinned. Stinker. There was no way I was going back to get it, not in that heat with the kids. And MHH was out until the afternoon.
When he did get home, though, I retraced my steps, heat or no heat. I found the hat, in the middle of the road and covered with tire marks. And guess who's going to be wearing it tomorrow morning, like it or not? You guessed it. Iyyar. If it takes a whole bottle of Elmer's, that hat is going to be on his head.
Stay tuned.
Barak, back in the day, felt the same way about hats, but eventually, after enough iterations of Barak removes hat, Imma replaces it, repeat, learned helplessness took over and he was okay with the hat. These days, he has a very cool firetruck hat, and often wears it around the house on his own. Iyyar does not seem to be coming to any kind of similar state. The invariable routine whenever we leave the house is that I put on the hat, he takes it off, I put it back on, he takes it back off and flings it on the ground. I stop the stroller again, put it back on again, tell him no no again, and he--you guessed it--takes it off and flings it on the ground. Again. It takes us a while to get anywhere in the stroller these days.
This morning, at around 8, I took the boys out for bagels. It's been really hot here lately and if you don't go out early in the morning, you're not going out at all, so when Barak woke up I told him that if he could get ready very very fast we could go get bagels. "First go to the French fry store?" he asked, hopefully. "No, just the bagel store. The French fry store is closed right now."
He considered this. "Iss locked?"
"Yeah, it's locked. The French fry store doesn't open until later. That's why when we go there, we go right before night-night time. Do you want to go night-night?"
Barak, alarmed: "No! Go bagel store." Pause. "When Grandma comes, then go to the French fry store."
"Right, we'll go to the French fry store when Grandma comes. Right now though let's go get bagels, okay?"
"Kay."
Barak got dressed, Iyyar was already dressed and ready, I got the hats and my bag together and brought down the big stroller. Stage one of the hat battle begins. Every house we pass, I look down through the window in the stroller canopy and see a hatless Iyyar. I stop the stroller, put it back on as securely as possible, and off we go. Sometimes I try it without the tie, thinking that's what's making him uncomfortable, but when I do that I don't even make it back to my side of the stroller before it's off again. Grr. Do you want sunburn and skin cancer, chas v'shalom, little boy?!
We stop at the corner grocery for tissues--we ran out over Shabbos--and a bottle of water. We go to the bagel store. Mini bagels for Barak and Iyyar, an everything bagel with tomato and cream cheese for me. Barak eats and watches the people; Iyyar eats and watches Barak watch the people. A good time is generally being had by all, until I notice Iyyar shove a piece of bagel the size of a very large grape into his mouth. Choking hazard and all--I reach in with the Choking Hazard Removal Finger and scoop it out.
I swear to you he gave me the most deliberate dirty look I have ever seen. It was absolutely, "Now that was a really rotten trick and I hope you know it!" He screamed and wailed, all while fixing me with a glare that would have been alarming if it had been on the face of anyone over two feet tall. As it was, though, it was just really, really funny, and I couldn't help it. I laughed. He didn't like that much either.
On the way out I spied a sign for a garage sale, starting in ten minutes, another couple of blocks away in the opposite direction from home. It promised "tons of toys." Hmm. It was already 10 am, and getting hotter and hotter. I considered. Maybe they had another Little Tikes car, to replace the one foully smashed by vandals a few weeks ago? I turned the stroller away from home, and toward the garage sale. Except that I turned the wrong way, because I misjudged where we were in the street numbers and wound up on the wrong side of a condo development. Grr. Thirty minutes later, we were at the garage sale, where we saw no Little Tikes items but did score, for the sum of three dollars, a Fisher-Price barn (complete with animals) and airport identical to the ones I had myself lo these thirty years. Now, imagine this: It is climbing into the nineties. We're a mile and a half from home, and I've got two kids in the double stroller, a fully occupied barn in the stroller basket and an airport terminal balanced in the lap of my three-year-old. I am soaking with sweat, and the bottle of water is almost gone. I want nothing more than to be back home in air conditioning. Now.
Iyyar, he wants to take off his hat.
So it went the whole way home, stopping and replacing the hat, stopping and replacing the hat. I don't think I am an inflexible person in general but I don't bend on the hats, and I know that if Iyyar wins a few battles he'll know what it takes to win the war. Stop and replace, stop and replace. Drip, drip, drip.
Two blocks from home, I hear Barak. "Imma, I can't holda airport anymore. Iss too heavy." It is heavy, and I'm surprised he managed so far. "Should I put it on top of the stroller?" "Yeah." I balance the airport on top of the stroller canopy, blocking the window and my view of Iyyar's head. But he's had his hat on for a few blocks now without any sign of resistance--maybe he's finally twigged?
We get home. It's about 11 am, and easily a hundred degrees. I take the airport and the barn and lug them up the back stairs, and come back down to get the kids and see--Iyyar, bareheaded. And the hat is nowhere to be seen
He looked right at me, put his hands on his head, and grinned. Stinker. There was no way I was going back to get it, not in that heat with the kids. And MHH was out until the afternoon.
When he did get home, though, I retraced my steps, heat or no heat. I found the hat, in the middle of the road and covered with tire marks. And guess who's going to be wearing it tomorrow morning, like it or not? You guessed it. Iyyar. If it takes a whole bottle of Elmer's, that hat is going to be on his head.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Overheard
Barak, after five straight days of going to bed in the same clean dry underwear he started the day in, had a couple of, ah, accidents today. Wet, not dirty, but still. After the second pair went in the laundry I reached for a diaper.
"I needa underwear."
"No, sweetie, I'm not going to give you underwear if you're going to pish in it. You can wear underwear tomorrow."
Later, in the kitchen:
"If I pish in my diaper I getta pullup."
"No, sweetie. Pullups are just for trips." (Pullups are, in my opinion, no different from diapers. He had them, though, when he went to Tanta Sara's for the week with Abba--I didn't want Tanta Sara to have to deal with more potty intervention than absolutely necessary.)
"If I pish inna Pullup just getta rash. Get ice cream inna cone. Then ca' have a Pullup..." Barak meandered on in one of his monologues for a while, and I lost him completely. Then he stopped.
"Does that make sense?"
"No, sweetie, I don't think that made any sense." I couldn't help it. I giggled. So did he.
"I don't make any sense!" he crowed, and ran off into the living room to tell Abba. "I don't make any sense..."
"I needa underwear."
"No, sweetie, I'm not going to give you underwear if you're going to pish in it. You can wear underwear tomorrow."
Later, in the kitchen:
"If I pish in my diaper I getta pullup."
"No, sweetie. Pullups are just for trips." (Pullups are, in my opinion, no different from diapers. He had them, though, when he went to Tanta Sara's for the week with Abba--I didn't want Tanta Sara to have to deal with more potty intervention than absolutely necessary.)
"If I pish inna Pullup just getta rash. Get ice cream inna cone. Then ca' have a Pullup..." Barak meandered on in one of his monologues for a while, and I lost him completely. Then he stopped.
"Does that make sense?"
"No, sweetie, I don't think that made any sense." I couldn't help it. I giggled. So did he.
"I don't make any sense!" he crowed, and ran off into the living room to tell Abba. "I don't make any sense..."
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Annoying
I was so pooped by the time the kids were in bed tonight that I decided to put off Shabbos cooking till tomorrow and go to bed. Surprise! I can't sleep. This hardly ever happens to me--sleep deprivation does wonders for that--and now I'm very irritated because I was hoping to get up early tomorrow and go for a walk before everybody got up. Now it's looking unlikely. Grumble grumble.
It was One of Those Days. A lot of kvetching, a lot of wailing, a lot of fighting over toys and needing things from Imma NOW. We went on our usual pre-Shabbos shopping run and, since it was so sunny and hot today, I shmeared both kids pretty liberally with sunblock (in addition to the regulation sunhats). Somewhere between the grocery store and the produce store Barak rubbed some of it into his eyes. Tear-free, my Aunt Tillie! It hurt him so much he screamed and screamed and screamed, and I absolutely cannot remember the last time Barak screamed in public. Probably the last time he rubbed sunblock into his eyes, last summer. He lost it entirely, and of course everyone around thought he was having a tantrum, not that the poor kid was in pain, so lots of unhelpful comments. I tried to wash his eyes out with a bottle of water on the sidewalk, and it helped for all of thirty seconds. "My eyes are hurting me again! AaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" When we got home he got ice cream, purely for distraction's sake, once I'd washed his eyes out as well as I could. Then he got a popsicle. An hour later, he was telling me, "My eyes were hurting and I gotta ice cream. Then I gotta popsicle. Then I eat dinner. Then I pooped potty, get a jellybear!" A red-letter day, clearly. Red eyes too.
I should note in passing though that for the first time ever Barak had a full-blown screaming fit without pishing in his underwear. And today was the third--third!--day in a row of ending the day in the same clean dry underwear he started with in the morning. Could we be on the brink of a breakthrough? Here's hoping.
It was One of Those Days. A lot of kvetching, a lot of wailing, a lot of fighting over toys and needing things from Imma NOW. We went on our usual pre-Shabbos shopping run and, since it was so sunny and hot today, I shmeared both kids pretty liberally with sunblock (in addition to the regulation sunhats). Somewhere between the grocery store and the produce store Barak rubbed some of it into his eyes. Tear-free, my Aunt Tillie! It hurt him so much he screamed and screamed and screamed, and I absolutely cannot remember the last time Barak screamed in public. Probably the last time he rubbed sunblock into his eyes, last summer. He lost it entirely, and of course everyone around thought he was having a tantrum, not that the poor kid was in pain, so lots of unhelpful comments. I tried to wash his eyes out with a bottle of water on the sidewalk, and it helped for all of thirty seconds. "My eyes are hurting me again! AaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" When we got home he got ice cream, purely for distraction's sake, once I'd washed his eyes out as well as I could. Then he got a popsicle. An hour later, he was telling me, "My eyes were hurting and I gotta ice cream. Then I gotta popsicle. Then I eat dinner. Then I pooped potty, get a jellybear!" A red-letter day, clearly. Red eyes too.
I should note in passing though that for the first time ever Barak had a full-blown screaming fit without pishing in his underwear. And today was the third--third!--day in a row of ending the day in the same clean dry underwear he started with in the morning. Could we be on the brink of a breakthrough? Here's hoping.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Things I keep meaning to blog about
1. This morning (well, this isn't something I've been meaning to blog about for long, obviously) Barak was walking around the house holding his blue wooden toolbox, full of Lego. He offered me one.
"Want one? Iss food candy."
"Really? Ooh! Thank you."
I asked him what bracha it was. He considered. "Iss baruch." Well, that's multi-purpose. He wanted to take it to camp with him and I suggested this was not the best idea.
"Barak, if you take all that Lego to school with you, what's going to happen? Are the other kinderlach going to want to play with your Lego?"
"No! Iss not Lego. Iss food candy. Kinderlach gonna say, ooh! Iss food candy!"
I thought about it later and I realized why it's food candy. In our house edible items come in two categories: "food" and "nosh," the equivalent of Sesame Street's "anytime food" and "sometime food." I guess food candy is candy you can eat whenever you want. Makes sense.
2. More on food: Barak has been campaigning to do a lot of baking lately. Since it is, ah, rather warm around here now, I haven't been so into that idea. Today he's been asking to make banana bread. MHH, who is on vacation till tomorrow, made a face. "I'm not so into that."
"Why not? You like banana bread."
"I don't like the leaving the bananas around till they're mushy."
"You don't have to. You can buy them from the half-price rack at the back of the store."
"Oh. That's okay."
MHH has a thing about "slimy" food. Tomatoes are slimy. Mayonnaise is terminally slimy, polluting everything it touches with its slime. Cucumbers are slimy, while macaroni and cheese, inexplicably, is not. So two of the four vegetables Barak will eat, Abba won't touch--go figure. Iyyar will still eat anything; Barak has lately become a fan of bologna; there are currently no vegetables acceptable to everyone in the household except spinach.
3. Iyyar has started saying "hi." It's very cute. He also says "Barak," but that's pretty much it. And he's getting more interested in walking--he won't have anything to do with it if you encourage him, but if you leave him alone you can see him thinking, hmm, I could get from point A to point B a lot faster if... I have a feeling, and so does his babysitter, that one day he'll wake up walking and talking. We'll see.
UPDATE: After dinner tonight, Iyyar said "all done!" It sounded a lot like his usual "ah da!" but different enough, and in context enough, that I think he really meant it.
"Want one? Iss food candy."
"Really? Ooh! Thank you."
I asked him what bracha it was. He considered. "Iss baruch." Well, that's multi-purpose. He wanted to take it to camp with him and I suggested this was not the best idea.
"Barak, if you take all that Lego to school with you, what's going to happen? Are the other kinderlach going to want to play with your Lego?"
"No! Iss not Lego. Iss food candy. Kinderlach gonna say, ooh! Iss food candy!"
I thought about it later and I realized why it's food candy. In our house edible items come in two categories: "food" and "nosh," the equivalent of Sesame Street's "anytime food" and "sometime food." I guess food candy is candy you can eat whenever you want. Makes sense.
2. More on food: Barak has been campaigning to do a lot of baking lately. Since it is, ah, rather warm around here now, I haven't been so into that idea. Today he's been asking to make banana bread. MHH, who is on vacation till tomorrow, made a face. "I'm not so into that."
"Why not? You like banana bread."
"I don't like the leaving the bananas around till they're mushy."
"You don't have to. You can buy them from the half-price rack at the back of the store."
"Oh. That's okay."
MHH has a thing about "slimy" food. Tomatoes are slimy. Mayonnaise is terminally slimy, polluting everything it touches with its slime. Cucumbers are slimy, while macaroni and cheese, inexplicably, is not. So two of the four vegetables Barak will eat, Abba won't touch--go figure. Iyyar will still eat anything; Barak has lately become a fan of bologna; there are currently no vegetables acceptable to everyone in the household except spinach.
3. Iyyar has started saying "hi." It's very cute. He also says "Barak," but that's pretty much it. And he's getting more interested in walking--he won't have anything to do with it if you encourage him, but if you leave him alone you can see him thinking, hmm, I could get from point A to point B a lot faster if... I have a feeling, and so does his babysitter, that one day he'll wake up walking and talking. We'll see.
UPDATE: After dinner tonight, Iyyar said "all done!" It sounded a lot like his usual "ah da!" but different enough, and in context enough, that I think he really meant it.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
I had to do it, didn't I.
I had to say that Iyyar slept well.
What was I thinking??
Something is bothering him now, maybe a new tooth, maybe something else, and he is doing a lot of waking up crying and a lot of waking up way, way, way too early in the morning and not going back to sleep. He's also constipated, and he's got a little rash on his back and cheek--very minor, doesn't seem to be bothering him, doesn't seem itchy. I thought it was a little heat rash but the weather's been cool now for almost a week and it hasn't gone away. The only thing different in his diet is that since coming back from Hungary I've been giving him whole milk in a cup instead of pumped milk--he's fourteen months and all so it seemed about time. I wonder if that's it. If he doesn't seem better in a couple of days I'll pull the milk and see what happens.
There was something I wanted to blog about Barak this morning and now that I am sitting here with an open Blogger window I can't think of it.
Hmm. What was it? Barak wanted honey on his Chex this morning and that turned into something of a showdown but that wasn't it. Umm. I forgot. Maybe I'll think of it later.
Halfway into my worktime, I have gotten very little done. It's not the working at home, it's the standard-issue occasional blockage. Probably caused by lingering exhaustion from the trip. The truth is that I do have a bed back here and could theoretically take a nap, but so far guilt has prevented me from doing that. It has not, however, prevented my writing the occasional blog post. So there you go.
Today is a fast day, but not for me (hooray nursing!) So I need to think of something to do with the kids this afternoon so MHH can have some quiet time. I need to take my granny's watch to get a new battery, but that doesn't take long; I should also take some things to the keilim mikva, but that's not really practical with a double stroller (stairs and all).
Dum dee dum. What was it I wanted to blog about? It was a cute Barakism. Umm...
I have it now. (I confess, I saved the post and came back to it later. it's bedtime now--Iyyar's in his crib, Barak's in the living room playing with Abba a little bit.) So, Barak is much better on the potty front these days but he still expects ice cream for every success of the poop variety. This is okay with me; he is skinny and a little ice cream every day will not do him any harm. Of course, the operant modifier here is "a little." Apparently, Abba sees it differently.
Last night, Barak had pooped and bounded into the kitchen demanding his reward. I pulled the ice cream out of the freezer--it was a new half gallon of Breyer's chocolate chip. I don't think we'd had that kind in a while. Barak frowned.
"What kind ice cream is that?"
"That's chocolate chip. It's very yummy. It's my favorite ice cream."
"Oh." Pause. "There's chocolate chips in there?"
"Yep, chocolate chips in vanilla ice cream."
"Oh. I likea chocolate chips! Iss very yummy. I likea chocolate chips inna ice cream."
"So do I." I gave him a regulation Imma-sized scoop of ice cream in a bowl. It's a generous soup-spoon-sized scoop--maybe a quarter of a cup, or a bit more. He sat down and ate. Then the negotiation and commentary.
"C'I have some more?"
"No, that was enough."
"No, iss not was enough."
"Yeah, that was enough."
"I needa more."
"No, you don't."
"Yes needa more!"
"Barak, is that how you behave when you get a treat? Is that nice or is that rude."
Pause.
"Iss rude."
"Right."
Pause. Then, in the general direction of the empty ice cream bowl, this:
"Abba givea lot ice cream. Abba givea ice cream like dat." [Hands indicating full bowl.] "Imma givea little bit but Abba givea lot. I likea lotta ice cream. Likea lot. Nooooot a little bit [shaking head earnestly]. A lot."
Got that, Imma?
(Oh, and Iyyar is up and crying. Again. On the third attempt at bedtime, after two failed attempts at afternoon naps. Think I should delete that last post?)
What was I thinking??
Something is bothering him now, maybe a new tooth, maybe something else, and he is doing a lot of waking up crying and a lot of waking up way, way, way too early in the morning and not going back to sleep. He's also constipated, and he's got a little rash on his back and cheek--very minor, doesn't seem to be bothering him, doesn't seem itchy. I thought it was a little heat rash but the weather's been cool now for almost a week and it hasn't gone away. The only thing different in his diet is that since coming back from Hungary I've been giving him whole milk in a cup instead of pumped milk--he's fourteen months and all so it seemed about time. I wonder if that's it. If he doesn't seem better in a couple of days I'll pull the milk and see what happens.
There was something I wanted to blog about Barak this morning and now that I am sitting here with an open Blogger window I can't think of it.
Hmm. What was it? Barak wanted honey on his Chex this morning and that turned into something of a showdown but that wasn't it. Umm. I forgot. Maybe I'll think of it later.
Halfway into my worktime, I have gotten very little done. It's not the working at home, it's the standard-issue occasional blockage. Probably caused by lingering exhaustion from the trip. The truth is that I do have a bed back here and could theoretically take a nap, but so far guilt has prevented me from doing that. It has not, however, prevented my writing the occasional blog post. So there you go.
Today is a fast day, but not for me (hooray nursing!) So I need to think of something to do with the kids this afternoon so MHH can have some quiet time. I need to take my granny's watch to get a new battery, but that doesn't take long; I should also take some things to the keilim mikva, but that's not really practical with a double stroller (stairs and all).
Dum dee dum. What was it I wanted to blog about? It was a cute Barakism. Umm...
I have it now. (I confess, I saved the post and came back to it later. it's bedtime now--Iyyar's in his crib, Barak's in the living room playing with Abba a little bit.) So, Barak is much better on the potty front these days but he still expects ice cream for every success of the poop variety. This is okay with me; he is skinny and a little ice cream every day will not do him any harm. Of course, the operant modifier here is "a little." Apparently, Abba sees it differently.
Last night, Barak had pooped and bounded into the kitchen demanding his reward. I pulled the ice cream out of the freezer--it was a new half gallon of Breyer's chocolate chip. I don't think we'd had that kind in a while. Barak frowned.
"What kind ice cream is that?"
"That's chocolate chip. It's very yummy. It's my favorite ice cream."
"Oh." Pause. "There's chocolate chips in there?"
"Yep, chocolate chips in vanilla ice cream."
"Oh. I likea chocolate chips! Iss very yummy. I likea chocolate chips inna ice cream."
"So do I." I gave him a regulation Imma-sized scoop of ice cream in a bowl. It's a generous soup-spoon-sized scoop--maybe a quarter of a cup, or a bit more. He sat down and ate. Then the negotiation and commentary.
"C'I have some more?"
"No, that was enough."
"No, iss not was enough."
"Yeah, that was enough."
"I needa more."
"No, you don't."
"Yes needa more!"
"Barak, is that how you behave when you get a treat? Is that nice or is that rude."
Pause.
"Iss rude."
"Right."
Pause. Then, in the general direction of the empty ice cream bowl, this:
"Abba givea lot ice cream. Abba givea ice cream like dat." [Hands indicating full bowl.] "Imma givea little bit but Abba givea lot. I likea lotta ice cream. Likea lot. Nooooot a little bit [shaking head earnestly]. A lot."
Got that, Imma?
(Oh, and Iyyar is up and crying. Again. On the third attempt at bedtime, after two failed attempts at afternoon naps. Think I should delete that last post?)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
I'll take it
From one of the screamiest babies on earth, Iyyar has evolved into a baby who... just sleeps. Tonight, as per usual, I took him into his room at bedtime, nursed him, cuddled him a bit and put him in his crib with his blankie. He shoved a fistful of blankie in his mouth, started sucking it, and just... went to sleep.
Naptimes are pretty much the same. Once he starts rubbing his eyes, I just nurse him, put him down, and walk away. Usually he doesn't even cry. Yesterday, probably in recuperation from the trip, he fell asleep for a second nap at 2:30 in the afternoon. The day before he'd done the same thing and I'd finally woken him up at 5; yesterday I figured he probably needed it and just let him sleep. He slept through till quarter to 4 in the morning, nursed, and went back to sleep till almost 6.
It's odd. I'm not complaining, obviously; I'm incredibly grateful. Especially when I remember what the first six months were like: a blur of screaming, fitful bursts of sleep, more screaming, waking up Barak, who would then scream a bit himself, and... yeah. That. It was pretty bad. But tonight, as of five minutes past bedtime, it was all just quiet.
Iyyar is being incredibly funny lately. He's started saying "hi," which is really the only word he says that anyone who doesn't live with him would immediately understand. He also says Barak's name, sort of. But he imitates everything. If I put something on my head, he wants to put it on his head; today I was making funny faces at him, putting my head down and squinting up at him through my eyebrows, and he did the same thing. Oh, and he'll still eat just about anything. Tonight I put peas and grated mozzarella on his high chair tray, and he ate it with great lip-smacking. So far as I know there's only one thing he doesn't like, and that's sharp cheddar cheese. He spits it out. Go figure.
Barak's talking is also pretty entertaining. My favorite is when I ask him to do something and he heads off, all serious-like, on his Mission for Imma. Barak, can you go get me my pink bag please? Barak furrows his brows, says, "Umm, yeah, sure," very importantly, and runs off.
This morning I was putting a new box of cereal on top of the refrigerator, and should have taken the time to rearrange all the boxes but didn't. It was a little precarious, and Barak noticed. "No, Imma! You can't do that! It's gonna fall. It's gonna fall on right there," pointing at the counter below. He was right. I fixed the cereal boxes. "How about that? Is that better?" He studied my efforts and found them good. "Yeah. Thass okay."
What's not okay, though, is his hearing. The tubes in his ears are either clogged or they've fallen out; his hearing isn't quite as bad as it was pre-tubes, but almost. I'm not sure what to do about it. I most emphatically do not want to do tubes again; I'm not putting him through that (surgery followed by six weeks of night terrors) for eight weeks of better hearing. Plus as I think I've mentioned I really don't like the doctor who did it. I'm thinking I'll take him back to his pediatrician and see if he has any other ideas. Do you?
Naptimes are pretty much the same. Once he starts rubbing his eyes, I just nurse him, put him down, and walk away. Usually he doesn't even cry. Yesterday, probably in recuperation from the trip, he fell asleep for a second nap at 2:30 in the afternoon. The day before he'd done the same thing and I'd finally woken him up at 5; yesterday I figured he probably needed it and just let him sleep. He slept through till quarter to 4 in the morning, nursed, and went back to sleep till almost 6.
It's odd. I'm not complaining, obviously; I'm incredibly grateful. Especially when I remember what the first six months were like: a blur of screaming, fitful bursts of sleep, more screaming, waking up Barak, who would then scream a bit himself, and... yeah. That. It was pretty bad. But tonight, as of five minutes past bedtime, it was all just quiet.
Iyyar is being incredibly funny lately. He's started saying "hi," which is really the only word he says that anyone who doesn't live with him would immediately understand. He also says Barak's name, sort of. But he imitates everything. If I put something on my head, he wants to put it on his head; today I was making funny faces at him, putting my head down and squinting up at him through my eyebrows, and he did the same thing. Oh, and he'll still eat just about anything. Tonight I put peas and grated mozzarella on his high chair tray, and he ate it with great lip-smacking. So far as I know there's only one thing he doesn't like, and that's sharp cheddar cheese. He spits it out. Go figure.
Barak's talking is also pretty entertaining. My favorite is when I ask him to do something and he heads off, all serious-like, on his Mission for Imma. Barak, can you go get me my pink bag please? Barak furrows his brows, says, "Umm, yeah, sure," very importantly, and runs off.
This morning I was putting a new box of cereal on top of the refrigerator, and should have taken the time to rearrange all the boxes but didn't. It was a little precarious, and Barak noticed. "No, Imma! You can't do that! It's gonna fall. It's gonna fall on right there," pointing at the counter below. He was right. I fixed the cereal boxes. "How about that? Is that better?" He studied my efforts and found them good. "Yeah. Thass okay."
What's not okay, though, is his hearing. The tubes in his ears are either clogged or they've fallen out; his hearing isn't quite as bad as it was pre-tubes, but almost. I'm not sure what to do about it. I most emphatically do not want to do tubes again; I'm not putting him through that (surgery followed by six weeks of night terrors) for eight weeks of better hearing. Plus as I think I've mentioned I really don't like the doctor who did it. I'm thinking I'll take him back to his pediatrician and see if he has any other ideas. Do you?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
More reasons why my husband is a saint and there will never be an Artscroll biography written about me
The scene: the back bedroom, half an hour ago. I was sitting on the floor organizing my sock yarn stash, Barak was sitting in the big chair listening to the Uncle Moishy playing on iTunes, MHH was learning and Iyyar was asleep. It was bedtime for Barak.
Me: Barak, it's time to go to bed. Or do you want to go potty first?
Barak: Gonna go poop potty.
Me: Are you going to go by yourself?
Barak: No. Needa help you please.
Silence.
Me, to MHH: Are you reading something you can take into the bathroom?
MHH, who obviously has a sefer in his lap: No.
Barak: Abba can't takea sefer inna brafroom?
Me: No, sweetie, you can't take Torah books in the bathroom.
Barak: Why?
Me: Hashem doesn't like it. He says no no, you can't do that.
Barak. Oh. Can takea Torah in Barak Iyyar's room! Can do that! That's okay!
Me: Right, that's okay. As long as there's no poop in the garbage can, that's fine.
Pause.
Me (to MHH): How terrible is it that I want you to stop learning and take Barak to the bathroom so I can finish organizing my sock yarn?
(MHH, without comment, closes his sefer, gets up, and trudges out the door.)
MHH: Come on Barak, let's go poop potty and get some ice cream!
Me: Barak, it's time to go to bed. Or do you want to go potty first?
Barak: Gonna go poop potty.
Me: Are you going to go by yourself?
Barak: No. Needa help you please.
Silence.
Me, to MHH: Are you reading something you can take into the bathroom?
MHH, who obviously has a sefer in his lap: No.
Barak: Abba can't takea sefer inna brafroom?
Me: No, sweetie, you can't take Torah books in the bathroom.
Barak: Why?
Me: Hashem doesn't like it. He says no no, you can't do that.
Barak. Oh. Can takea Torah in Barak Iyyar's room! Can do that! That's okay!
Me: Right, that's okay. As long as there's no poop in the garbage can, that's fine.
Pause.
Me (to MHH): How terrible is it that I want you to stop learning and take Barak to the bathroom so I can finish organizing my sock yarn?
(MHH, without comment, closes his sefer, gets up, and trudges out the door.)
MHH: Come on Barak, let's go poop potty and get some ice cream!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Roundup
So, the trip.
The trip was okay. All in all, it could have been a whole lot worse: none of the things I was really worried would happen did happen, and the thing I was worried wouldn't happen, did. Like I said, I'm glad we went, and it was good to see my granny, but traveling with an extremely perky and mobile 13-mo has its drawbacks.
Truthfully, Iyyar did great, all things considered. He did. But the 10-hour flight there with him in my lap trying to scale me like a mountain so he could smile at and flirt with every single passenger in the rows behind us... well. And the daily 50-minute bus rides to and from my grandmothers with him raging and shrieking in frustation weren't really a high point either. While we were at myy granny's, he did fine in the sense that he didn't cry much and actually even napped a couple of times, and had the charm turned on full-blast (and let me tell you, 200-proof Iyyar charm is a thing with which to be reckoned) but as you might imagine a 100-year-old rural Hungarian nursing home is one of the less baby-friendly environments you could come up with. So I felt bad, because at the end of it I felt as though I'd barely talked to my grandmother at all. I mean, I talked to her, but every two sentences I had to interrupt myself or her to pull Iyyar off a drawer, cabinet, tablecloth, cane, walker, or other verboten item. And every time the door was left open, there was the immediate splat-splat-splat sound of little hands and knees making a beeline for the corridor where all those little old ladies were waiting to pinch his cheek and smile at him and tell him how cute he was. The last day we were there, I said I was sorry that we'd barely gotten to talk, but she was glad I'd brought the baby, wasn't she? And she said yes, of course, and we agreed we could always chat on the phone. So.
Among the things for which I must be grateful is that Iyyar did phenomenally well with the time change. The flight over was rough, but he did sleep a few hours, and then stayed awake most of the next day (I think he did pass out in the stroller a couple of times). I put him to bed at around 7 the first night we were there, and other than an hour of screaming at 9 or so he slept straight through till 10 am. I suspected this earlier but I really think that Iyyar wakes up when it gets light much more than he wakes up in response to any internal clock. The hotel room had those typical thick Hungarian blackout shades, and he slept way later than he ever sleeps here. At home he is usually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5 am, though if I am lucky he will go back in his crib for a little bit after he nurses. Anyone else think I need to get thicker curtains for the boys' room?
I did end up taking the car seat, which I was glad for, because the friend who was supposed to meet me at the airport in Vienna got sunstroke from biking to Slovakia the previous day (this is the kind of thing that happens to her. All the time.) So her sister ran in from work to get me with her van, and it would have been awkward indeed if I hadn't had a carseat. It also came in handy on the way back, which was pretty much the ideal flight with baby. Iyyar got a seat to himself, we were in the bulkhead row, and I don't really remember what he did the whole 10 hours but there was very little crying involved. And we both had food for the flight, which also helped a lot. The whole week in Hungary was spent on a diet of plain yogurt, bread and butter, Twix bars (which, bizarrely, come with an Israeli hechsher in Hungary), and bananas. I got into Vienna at about 3 on Friday afternoon, and assumed that Kosherland (the bigger of the two kosher groceries in the second district) was closed. But I assumed incorrectly. As we were walking down the street (oh, I think that was right after Iyyar choked on a bread crust and vomited yogurt and breastmilk all over every part of himself, his clothes, and the stroller, and I realized I didn't have so much as a tissue in my so-called diaper bag) I spotted a guy with a kippa who, when I went up to him and asked, thought it was still open. And indeed, as we walked up to the corner the store is on the lights were still on. But as I walked up to the door they went off. I pounded on the door and pleaded and the door was opened by the proprieter, who told me sternly, "Funf minuten!" So I raced around in my allotted five minutes and bought pita, hummous, chatzilim salad, smoked turkey, cheese for Iyyar, rice cakes, and, um, gummy wheels. It was the seuda of kings.
Sorry if this is all a little incoherent. The trip was just, well, so incredibly exhausting. You don't really appreciate a baby-proof environment until you are without one and on your own with your kid for a week; every second he wasn't asleep I had to be either holding him or looking right at him, ready to pounce on whatever contraband was on its way into his mouth. Added to the heat and the jet lag and the hunger pangs it got to be a bit wearing. But he was a trouper and really it was all worthwhile seeing my granny read him books about Piglet in Hungarian, and seeing MHH and Barak waiting for us at the gate, and seeing Barak and Iyyar's reaction on seeing each other. To wit, giggles. Lots and lots of giggles. You're back! And I'm back! Woohoo!
The trip was okay. All in all, it could have been a whole lot worse: none of the things I was really worried would happen did happen, and the thing I was worried wouldn't happen, did. Like I said, I'm glad we went, and it was good to see my granny, but traveling with an extremely perky and mobile 13-mo has its drawbacks.
Truthfully, Iyyar did great, all things considered. He did. But the 10-hour flight there with him in my lap trying to scale me like a mountain so he could smile at and flirt with every single passenger in the rows behind us... well. And the daily 50-minute bus rides to and from my grandmothers with him raging and shrieking in frustation weren't really a high point either. While we were at myy granny's, he did fine in the sense that he didn't cry much and actually even napped a couple of times, and had the charm turned on full-blast (and let me tell you, 200-proof Iyyar charm is a thing with which to be reckoned) but as you might imagine a 100-year-old rural Hungarian nursing home is one of the less baby-friendly environments you could come up with. So I felt bad, because at the end of it I felt as though I'd barely talked to my grandmother at all. I mean, I talked to her, but every two sentences I had to interrupt myself or her to pull Iyyar off a drawer, cabinet, tablecloth, cane, walker, or other verboten item. And every time the door was left open, there was the immediate splat-splat-splat sound of little hands and knees making a beeline for the corridor where all those little old ladies were waiting to pinch his cheek and smile at him and tell him how cute he was. The last day we were there, I said I was sorry that we'd barely gotten to talk, but she was glad I'd brought the baby, wasn't she? And she said yes, of course, and we agreed we could always chat on the phone. So.
Among the things for which I must be grateful is that Iyyar did phenomenally well with the time change. The flight over was rough, but he did sleep a few hours, and then stayed awake most of the next day (I think he did pass out in the stroller a couple of times). I put him to bed at around 7 the first night we were there, and other than an hour of screaming at 9 or so he slept straight through till 10 am. I suspected this earlier but I really think that Iyyar wakes up when it gets light much more than he wakes up in response to any internal clock. The hotel room had those typical thick Hungarian blackout shades, and he slept way later than he ever sleeps here. At home he is usually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5 am, though if I am lucky he will go back in his crib for a little bit after he nurses. Anyone else think I need to get thicker curtains for the boys' room?
I did end up taking the car seat, which I was glad for, because the friend who was supposed to meet me at the airport in Vienna got sunstroke from biking to Slovakia the previous day (this is the kind of thing that happens to her. All the time.) So her sister ran in from work to get me with her van, and it would have been awkward indeed if I hadn't had a carseat. It also came in handy on the way back, which was pretty much the ideal flight with baby. Iyyar got a seat to himself, we were in the bulkhead row, and I don't really remember what he did the whole 10 hours but there was very little crying involved. And we both had food for the flight, which also helped a lot. The whole week in Hungary was spent on a diet of plain yogurt, bread and butter, Twix bars (which, bizarrely, come with an Israeli hechsher in Hungary), and bananas. I got into Vienna at about 3 on Friday afternoon, and assumed that Kosherland (the bigger of the two kosher groceries in the second district) was closed. But I assumed incorrectly. As we were walking down the street (oh, I think that was right after Iyyar choked on a bread crust and vomited yogurt and breastmilk all over every part of himself, his clothes, and the stroller, and I realized I didn't have so much as a tissue in my so-called diaper bag) I spotted a guy with a kippa who, when I went up to him and asked, thought it was still open. And indeed, as we walked up to the corner the store is on the lights were still on. But as I walked up to the door they went off. I pounded on the door and pleaded and the door was opened by the proprieter, who told me sternly, "Funf minuten!" So I raced around in my allotted five minutes and bought pita, hummous, chatzilim salad, smoked turkey, cheese for Iyyar, rice cakes, and, um, gummy wheels. It was the seuda of kings.
Sorry if this is all a little incoherent. The trip was just, well, so incredibly exhausting. You don't really appreciate a baby-proof environment until you are without one and on your own with your kid for a week; every second he wasn't asleep I had to be either holding him or looking right at him, ready to pounce on whatever contraband was on its way into his mouth. Added to the heat and the jet lag and the hunger pangs it got to be a bit wearing. But he was a trouper and really it was all worthwhile seeing my granny read him books about Piglet in Hungarian, and seeing MHH and Barak waiting for us at the gate, and seeing Barak and Iyyar's reaction on seeing each other. To wit, giggles. Lots and lots of giggles. You're back! And I'm back! Woohoo!
Monday, June 25, 2007
Home
Unscathed, but exhausted. I was glad to see my granny, and I'm glad we went, but I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon. It is an awful lot easier to travel with babies before they are mobile.
More details when I have the time, and the energy--it could be a little while.
More details when I have the time, and the energy--it could be a little while.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Three days
till we leave.
I'm packed, mostly, and the house is cleaner than it was. The laundry is caught up with, thanks to MHH. My bag is sitting in the hall ready to go, and so is my husband's; Barak's bag is packed with his snacks and new Matchbox trucks. The monkey, of course, stays out till the last minute. I'm about to start cooking for Shabbos because of course I couldn't say no yesterday when MHH asked me if we could have a couple of the bocherim. Oh, and I made dinner tonight for a family with a new baby--dinner for seven people in addition to the four who live here. And I delivered it, in a milk crate tied to the top of my Snap n Go. With handspun, because that was the closest thing at hand. I think I should get bonus points for that one.
Okay. Need to cook now. Really really. Right now.
I'm packed, mostly, and the house is cleaner than it was. The laundry is caught up with, thanks to MHH. My bag is sitting in the hall ready to go, and so is my husband's; Barak's bag is packed with his snacks and new Matchbox trucks. The monkey, of course, stays out till the last minute. I'm about to start cooking for Shabbos because of course I couldn't say no yesterday when MHH asked me if we could have a couple of the bocherim. Oh, and I made dinner tonight for a family with a new baby--dinner for seven people in addition to the four who live here. And I delivered it, in a milk crate tied to the top of my Snap n Go. With handspun, because that was the closest thing at hand. I think I should get bonus points for that one.
Okay. Need to cook now. Really really. Right now.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Honesty
This morning, nursing a just-woken-up Iyyar, I got a runny nose. "Barak, could you get me a tissue please?" Barak is a fabulous helper who, 90% of the time, really likes running errands. This time, however, he couldn't find the tissues--they were there, but not in the usual spot--and he came back with one square of toilet paper. I had a really runny nose to which said square of toilet paper turned out to something less than adequate. Barak watched my difficulties, impressed. "There's a lot of boogers in there," he commented. "Yep," I said. "Here," he said, offering me a longer piece of toilet paper. "Wanna have some more?"
Sunday, June 03, 2007
News
Nothing all that exciting, but here's what's new around here:
1. I am telecommuting now. Okay, fine, I lied, that is exciting. I have a fancy laptop with full network access, a separate phone line (which I am paying for, but it is half the price of my monthly bus pass so who cares), and explicit permission to take the laptop anywhere I need to work with it. So, theoretically, I could go work at the bagel shop or wherever. The laptop also, shockingly, has an enabled wireless card. I thought they would limit me to the secure internet connection I have at home, but no.
2. It really is true that the majority of what you teach your kids, you aren't aware you're teaching them. This week especially I've seen Barak do so many things that are just, um, me. Like after I put Iyyar in the double stroller, but before he got in, he went over to Iyyar and inspected his seatbelt, with an expression on his face that was, uh, pure me. "Are you all buckled in? Yeah? Kay." Or when he bumped into me this afternoon, and said, "Oops! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that." He is very into feeding the baby, and "sharing" baby yogurts (otherwise known as Yobabies.) One small taste on the spoon for the baby, one huge ladleful for him. At least he's not picking that one up from me--I don't like sweet yogurt.
3. This morning, while Iyyar napped, Barak and I made chocolate chip cookies for a friend who rescued me from a babysitting crisis last Thursday. He was standing on the chair assisting. He is usually quite reliable, so I sometimes get a little cavalier about watching him every second. Today I opened the new bag of brown sugar and told him to empty it into the brown-sugar canister. I went to get the eggs out of the fridge, and turned around just in time to see him stuffing a whole golf-ball-sized hunk of brown sugar in his mouth with a look of frenzied ecstasy.
4. Further to the cookie-baking, I think Barak must have dumped in some other extraneous ingredients when I wasn't watching, because the cookies, although tasty, were distinctly not my usual cookies. They looked very pasty, did not brown well, and burned on the bottom in an unaccountable pattern. White patches and black patches on the same cookie-bottom. At first I thought there was something stuck to the cookie sheets under the parchment paper, but no. Very bizarre. I have baked thousands if not tens of thousands of these very cookies, and have never had this happen before. I tried calling the King Arthur Baking hotline, but it's Sunday and they were closed. Then I had a truly radical idea.
When we went to California a few weeks ago, we happened to meet the sister-in-law of my most favorite cookbook author, Gil Marks. He wrote the most-used cookbook in my kitchen, which is one of those mysteriously charmed cookbooks in which all the recipes, um, work. I make recipes from his book for the first time for company, without testing them out on my husband first. (High praise indeed.) Said sister-in-law gave me some of his old Kosher Gourmet issues, and said offhandedly, "You know, you can call him if you have questions. He doesn't mind." I thought this was kind of odd. Great fabulous cookbook writer--just ring him up? No no. I would never do that.
But I did. I called this morning, and asked for Rabbi Marks. There was a pause. "What is this regarding?" I said, well, I know your sister-in-law, and she said you didn't mind occasional phone calls from perplexed cooks, and I had a baking conundrum, and could he answer a question? "I can try," he said. We spent twenty minutes on the phone hashing out the chemical details of chocolate chip cookies, and all the variables that might have made them turn out that way. It was glorious. He rocks. Go buy his cookbooks now, especially this new one.
5. Lately, I have occasionally been letting Barak watch little clips of Disney movies in Hebrew on YouTube. (The Hebrew is my hetter.) His favorite one is this, but today we watched this one instead. There's a scene where the animals are eating bugs. Barak said, "Eww! Bugs! They're eating the bugs!" Then, "Bugs are crawling. Bugs are crawling like Iyyar." Um, yeah, I guess so.
6. Lately, as the wearing of clean and dry underwear has become the rule rather than the exception, we have been discussing what will happen when Barak keeps his underwear clean and dry all day, every day: namely, he will get to wear not only underwear (now greatly preferred over diapers or a pull-up), but also tzitzit. And, um, he will get to wear a tie. It was his idea. We were discussing the merits of dry underwear, and what would be the ultimate reward of same. "Barak, what are you going to get to wear like Abba?" "Glasses like Abba!" "Really? And what else?" "Also a tie like Abba!" After he mentioned it a few times I went ahead and bought him glasses (sunglasses from Target) and, yes, a tie, on clearance at Lands' End. It's a kid's version, of course, but it is an actual silk tie, in blue and green plaid. It's on top of my wardrobe, waiting to be earned.
7. Yesterday (further to the above) Barak and I were walking down the street, on the way to a neighbor's. (Iyyar was home with Abba, napping.) Walking toward us was a very big, very bearded, very Litvak kind of a guy. Barak greeted him with an important-sounding, "Good Shabbos," which was returned. We passed him. Then Barak commented. "He's wearing a hat." "Yes, he's wearing a big black hat." Pause. "I sink he's also wearing underwear."
I'm pretty sure he didn't hear us. But I didn't look back to check.
8. Abba is finishing up his grading this weekend, so I did my best to keep everybody out of the house. One of our stops was at the supermarket, where I didn't really need anything, but I thought I would let the boys go in one of those shopping carts with the cars in front. I stowed the stroller in the stockroom, found a car cart, and off we went. Iyyar, Iyyar thought this was just beyond awesome. He drove, he helped Barak drive (which Barak did not appreciate), he hung out the side of his door (which made me a little nervous) and giggled. A lot. And then he started climbing out his window, even though he had his seatbelt on. Have I mentioned that this one is a monkey? So I took him out of the driver's seat (there were two steering wheels, so we were covered, and he doesn't have a license anyway) and put him in the seat on top. It didn't have a seatbelt, but that was never a problem with Barak--he always just held on. Not so Iyyar, whose instant reaction was, "Oho! I can climb out of this even more easily!" and in three seconds flat would have been over the side of the cart if I hadn't been grabbing his shirt. He doesn't even stand on his own much yet, but oh boy, he can climb.
Two weeks till Hungary. Think he'll be walking?
1. I am telecommuting now. Okay, fine, I lied, that is exciting. I have a fancy laptop with full network access, a separate phone line (which I am paying for, but it is half the price of my monthly bus pass so who cares), and explicit permission to take the laptop anywhere I need to work with it. So, theoretically, I could go work at the bagel shop or wherever. The laptop also, shockingly, has an enabled wireless card. I thought they would limit me to the secure internet connection I have at home, but no.
2. It really is true that the majority of what you teach your kids, you aren't aware you're teaching them. This week especially I've seen Barak do so many things that are just, um, me. Like after I put Iyyar in the double stroller, but before he got in, he went over to Iyyar and inspected his seatbelt, with an expression on his face that was, uh, pure me. "Are you all buckled in? Yeah? Kay." Or when he bumped into me this afternoon, and said, "Oops! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that." He is very into feeding the baby, and "sharing" baby yogurts (otherwise known as Yobabies.) One small taste on the spoon for the baby, one huge ladleful for him. At least he's not picking that one up from me--I don't like sweet yogurt.
3. This morning, while Iyyar napped, Barak and I made chocolate chip cookies for a friend who rescued me from a babysitting crisis last Thursday. He was standing on the chair assisting. He is usually quite reliable, so I sometimes get a little cavalier about watching him every second. Today I opened the new bag of brown sugar and told him to empty it into the brown-sugar canister. I went to get the eggs out of the fridge, and turned around just in time to see him stuffing a whole golf-ball-sized hunk of brown sugar in his mouth with a look of frenzied ecstasy.
4. Further to the cookie-baking, I think Barak must have dumped in some other extraneous ingredients when I wasn't watching, because the cookies, although tasty, were distinctly not my usual cookies. They looked very pasty, did not brown well, and burned on the bottom in an unaccountable pattern. White patches and black patches on the same cookie-bottom. At first I thought there was something stuck to the cookie sheets under the parchment paper, but no. Very bizarre. I have baked thousands if not tens of thousands of these very cookies, and have never had this happen before. I tried calling the King Arthur Baking hotline, but it's Sunday and they were closed. Then I had a truly radical idea.
When we went to California a few weeks ago, we happened to meet the sister-in-law of my most favorite cookbook author, Gil Marks. He wrote the most-used cookbook in my kitchen, which is one of those mysteriously charmed cookbooks in which all the recipes, um, work. I make recipes from his book for the first time for company, without testing them out on my husband first. (High praise indeed.) Said sister-in-law gave me some of his old Kosher Gourmet issues, and said offhandedly, "You know, you can call him if you have questions. He doesn't mind." I thought this was kind of odd. Great fabulous cookbook writer--just ring him up? No no. I would never do that.
But I did. I called this morning, and asked for Rabbi Marks. There was a pause. "What is this regarding?" I said, well, I know your sister-in-law, and she said you didn't mind occasional phone calls from perplexed cooks, and I had a baking conundrum, and could he answer a question? "I can try," he said. We spent twenty minutes on the phone hashing out the chemical details of chocolate chip cookies, and all the variables that might have made them turn out that way. It was glorious. He rocks. Go buy his cookbooks now, especially this new one.
5. Lately, I have occasionally been letting Barak watch little clips of Disney movies in Hebrew on YouTube. (The Hebrew is my hetter.) His favorite one is this, but today we watched this one instead. There's a scene where the animals are eating bugs. Barak said, "Eww! Bugs! They're eating the bugs!" Then, "Bugs are crawling. Bugs are crawling like Iyyar." Um, yeah, I guess so.
6. Lately, as the wearing of clean and dry underwear has become the rule rather than the exception, we have been discussing what will happen when Barak keeps his underwear clean and dry all day, every day: namely, he will get to wear not only underwear (now greatly preferred over diapers or a pull-up), but also tzitzit. And, um, he will get to wear a tie. It was his idea. We were discussing the merits of dry underwear, and what would be the ultimate reward of same. "Barak, what are you going to get to wear like Abba?" "Glasses like Abba!" "Really? And what else?" "Also a tie like Abba!" After he mentioned it a few times I went ahead and bought him glasses (sunglasses from Target) and, yes, a tie, on clearance at Lands' End. It's a kid's version, of course, but it is an actual silk tie, in blue and green plaid. It's on top of my wardrobe, waiting to be earned.
7. Yesterday (further to the above) Barak and I were walking down the street, on the way to a neighbor's. (Iyyar was home with Abba, napping.) Walking toward us was a very big, very bearded, very Litvak kind of a guy. Barak greeted him with an important-sounding, "Good Shabbos," which was returned. We passed him. Then Barak commented. "He's wearing a hat." "Yes, he's wearing a big black hat." Pause. "I sink he's also wearing underwear."
I'm pretty sure he didn't hear us. But I didn't look back to check.
8. Abba is finishing up his grading this weekend, so I did my best to keep everybody out of the house. One of our stops was at the supermarket, where I didn't really need anything, but I thought I would let the boys go in one of those shopping carts with the cars in front. I stowed the stroller in the stockroom, found a car cart, and off we went. Iyyar, Iyyar thought this was just beyond awesome. He drove, he helped Barak drive (which Barak did not appreciate), he hung out the side of his door (which made me a little nervous) and giggled. A lot. And then he started climbing out his window, even though he had his seatbelt on. Have I mentioned that this one is a monkey? So I took him out of the driver's seat (there were two steering wheels, so we were covered, and he doesn't have a license anyway) and put him in the seat on top. It didn't have a seatbelt, but that was never a problem with Barak--he always just held on. Not so Iyyar, whose instant reaction was, "Oho! I can climb out of this even more easily!" and in three seconds flat would have been over the side of the cart if I hadn't been grabbing his shirt. He doesn't even stand on his own much yet, but oh boy, he can climb.
Two weeks till Hungary. Think he'll be walking?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Lame
I feel like my blog has been kind of on the lame side lately. Not many posts, and the ones that I have put up have been hastily written and not really that well put together. What can I say--it's been busy, it's getting hot, Barak is in full-on kvetchy toddler mode and Iyyar is becoming quite the handful himself. Oh, and work is getting really really busy too.
So, sorry for the lack of quality blogging. Things at work should quiet down in about two years, so maybe it will get better then.
So, sorry for the lack of quality blogging. Things at work should quiet down in about two years, so maybe it will get better then.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Lest you think
that Iyyar does not figure prominently in the cast of characters around here, let me reassure you that that is not the case. It's just that he doesn't really talk much, so there's not as much to blog. He sort of says Barak's name, and sort of says his own, but that's it. No real developmental milestones lately--he pulls up but doesn't stand on his own, crawls and cruises on furniture but doesn't walk yet, even holding hands. He claps, he nurses, he understands more and more, and he spends a lot of time huffing and puffing his way around the house in search of things to bang, suck, and chew. He is more tolerant of the stroller than he once was, but I don't think he'll ever really be a fan. He'd just rather be on the floor. He gets very excited by drawers (Elmo underwear! Blankets! I can fling them on the floor!) and can now reach and empty the third shelf of the bookshelf in their room. He had his 12-month checkup last week, and is at 20 lb 6 oz--15th percentile for weight, and 76th percentile for height.
One thing he does do, however, is eat. A lot. Of everything, but preferably whatever I'm eating. Tonight, Barak was having couscous while MHH and I were having crockpot ratatouille and meatballs. I gave Iyyar couscous. Biiig mistake. Iyyar was completely outraged, because clearly whatever I had was better (he was right) and it is always preferable to be fed with a spoon over eating things with one's fingers, is it not? Clearly. So, I took off his (milchig) high chair tray and started feeding him eggplant and red peppers. First he started wailing hysterically, because usually the removal of the high chair tray means that mealtime is over. Then he got a mouthful of vegetables, chewed thoughtfully, and opened wide for the next one. And whenever I was a little too slow with the spoon, instead of his usual frantic "uh! uh! uh!" he reached over and tapped me politely on the knee. "Um, hi, I'm ready for more, please..."
His willingness to eat just about anything will be helpful in three weeks when I take him to Hungary, but his objection to being confined by arms, stroller, or carseat for any length of time will be, ah, inconvenient. It's not even the 10-hour flight I'm worried about; it's the week of hanging out in a Hungarian nursing home with my grandmother and her three roommates and their distinctly un-baby-proof setup of low drawers full of medicines and choking hazards. It's going to be... a challenge.
We're leaving b'ezrat Hashem in 19 days. I still have no idea how I will do this--I think I will attach his carseat (La-Z-Boy toddler sized) to the stroller with the Latch straps, put my big backpack on my back and my carryon under the stroller, bring lots of Cheerios (or Cheerioka as my grandmother calls them) and hope for the best. And try very hard to remember to say tefillas ha'derech.
One thing he does do, however, is eat. A lot. Of everything, but preferably whatever I'm eating. Tonight, Barak was having couscous while MHH and I were having crockpot ratatouille and meatballs. I gave Iyyar couscous. Biiig mistake. Iyyar was completely outraged, because clearly whatever I had was better (he was right) and it is always preferable to be fed with a spoon over eating things with one's fingers, is it not? Clearly. So, I took off his (milchig) high chair tray and started feeding him eggplant and red peppers. First he started wailing hysterically, because usually the removal of the high chair tray means that mealtime is over. Then he got a mouthful of vegetables, chewed thoughtfully, and opened wide for the next one. And whenever I was a little too slow with the spoon, instead of his usual frantic "uh! uh! uh!" he reached over and tapped me politely on the knee. "Um, hi, I'm ready for more, please..."
His willingness to eat just about anything will be helpful in three weeks when I take him to Hungary, but his objection to being confined by arms, stroller, or carseat for any length of time will be, ah, inconvenient. It's not even the 10-hour flight I'm worried about; it's the week of hanging out in a Hungarian nursing home with my grandmother and her three roommates and their distinctly un-baby-proof setup of low drawers full of medicines and choking hazards. It's going to be... a challenge.
We're leaving b'ezrat Hashem in 19 days. I still have no idea how I will do this--I think I will attach his carseat (La-Z-Boy toddler sized) to the stroller with the Latch straps, put my big backpack on my back and my carryon under the stroller, bring lots of Cheerios (or Cheerioka as my grandmother calls them) and hope for the best. And try very hard to remember to say tefillas ha'derech.
Talking more
Sometimes, when I think about things that Barak says, it occurs to me that if it weren't for the way he pronounces things, a lot of what Barak says these days sounds like normal adult speech. Fortunately for me, he does still sound like a toddler. A concrete mixer is still a "croncrete mixer"; the bathroom is still the "brafroom." If he needs something, he still asks me to "help you please," "can I" is still "C'I" and "th" still comes out "f." So I am still asked to "help you please wiffa socks," or "play wif Lego"; Friday night we "make kiddush motzi"; new and complex thoughts come out slowly, with pauses between words and great thought. "First go to the barbershop getta haircut, then getta lollipop. I'm gonna get a red lollipop, 'kay Imma?"
But there are now more and more sentences that make it clear that Barak is barrelling toward kidhood. "Abba, no no can't be late shul!" has turned into, "Abba, don't be late for shul!" (I admit it, I put him up to that one.) "Mamaksa" is now "popsicle," "ikeem" is "ice cream," "No no can't touch it baby!" is "Iyyar, you can't touch that, it's not for you! That's my backhoe loader!" "No can't touch my leg," is "Imma, he's touching my leg! Stop!"
We hear that one a lot, actually. And yesterday, the two of them had their first genuine brotherly fight--as in, not Barak grabbing a toy away and Iyyar crying, but Iyyar grabbing Barak's sunglasses, Barak objecting, and the two of them then whaling at each other in the double stroller. I solved it by taking Barak out and letting him walk. Shades of things to come.
Oh, and on the subject of the barbershop--we went this afternoon. (The barber, before I could stop him, offered Barak not one but two lollipops--a red one and an orange one. One lollipop was had at the time, another saved for a potty incentive. Because Barak can drag lollipop-licking out for hours, I set the oven timer; when it beeped, the lollipop went into a container. It's now sitting on the windowsill by Barak's bed, waiting for the morning.) Anyway--I asked the barber to do what he did last time. "Short, please. Keep his payes." The barber mamash SHAVED HIS HEAD. He has a shaved head and payes. He looks like he belongs in B'nai Brak, except for the, um, L. L. Bean plaid pants, croncrete mixer shirt and excavator kippa. I don't think they have a lot of excavator kippas in B'nai Brak. Although, who knows, I could be wrong.
But there are now more and more sentences that make it clear that Barak is barrelling toward kidhood. "Abba, no no can't be late shul!" has turned into, "Abba, don't be late for shul!" (I admit it, I put him up to that one.) "Mamaksa" is now "popsicle," "ikeem" is "ice cream," "No no can't touch it baby!" is "Iyyar, you can't touch that, it's not for you! That's my backhoe loader!" "No can't touch my leg," is "Imma, he's touching my leg! Stop!"
We hear that one a lot, actually. And yesterday, the two of them had their first genuine brotherly fight--as in, not Barak grabbing a toy away and Iyyar crying, but Iyyar grabbing Barak's sunglasses, Barak objecting, and the two of them then whaling at each other in the double stroller. I solved it by taking Barak out and letting him walk. Shades of things to come.
Oh, and on the subject of the barbershop--we went this afternoon. (The barber, before I could stop him, offered Barak not one but two lollipops--a red one and an orange one. One lollipop was had at the time, another saved for a potty incentive. Because Barak can drag lollipop-licking out for hours, I set the oven timer; when it beeped, the lollipop went into a container. It's now sitting on the windowsill by Barak's bed, waiting for the morning.) Anyway--I asked the barber to do what he did last time. "Short, please. Keep his payes." The barber mamash SHAVED HIS HEAD. He has a shaved head and payes. He looks like he belongs in B'nai Brak, except for the, um, L. L. Bean plaid pants, croncrete mixer shirt and excavator kippa. I don't think they have a lot of excavator kippas in B'nai Brak. Although, who knows, I could be wrong.
Monday, May 28, 2007
?
Lately, Barak has taken to wanting to sleep in Abba's bed. He's never been a big one for sneaking into our bed, although he has had phases where he does it occasionally. For the last couple of weeks though, he's wanted to go to bed in our room. I've been letting him, because if it's taking Iyyar a while to fall asleep it's sometimes just easier to have Barak in another room. He gets transferred back to his own bed when it's time for us to go to bed, and is fine with that (although he does sometimes reappear in our room at around 6 am and clamber back in). Last night, he went to bed in our room, and at around 10 or so I went in there to get something.
And he was not in the bed. Just as I was trying to absorb this without panicking, I noticed a strange hand-shaped smudge on the footstool of the glider rocker. And that was when I realized that Barak was, in fact, asleep in the most awkward-looking position imaginable--half sprawled on the floor, half draped on the glider footstool, completely out.
All I can think is that he woke up enough to get up out of bed, started walking, got to the footstool, and fell back asleep rather than navigate around it. Not something I'd be able to do, myself, but I guess he's got those toddler powers.
And he was not in the bed. Just as I was trying to absorb this without panicking, I noticed a strange hand-shaped smudge on the footstool of the glider rocker. And that was when I realized that Barak was, in fact, asleep in the most awkward-looking position imaginable--half sprawled on the floor, half draped on the glider footstool, completely out.
All I can think is that he woke up enough to get up out of bed, started walking, got to the footstool, and fell back asleep rather than navigate around it. Not something I'd be able to do, myself, but I guess he's got those toddler powers.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Beeg animals
First a word of background: bugs, they are not kosher. At all. Worse than pigs, in fact. Got that? Good. So, one checks bug-prone produce for bugs, and either they are buggy or they are not. It is very rare to find a single bug, in my experience anyway.
On Purim, as you may recall, we ate by the home of some friends of ours from Israel. The father of the family, who is from Bnai Brak, got up and gave, while not entirely sober, a Purim drasha, on whether or not it is muttar to eat in the homes of people who you know do not sift flour. In Israel, everyone sifts flour, because there are bugs and we do not eat bugs. But here, here in chutz la'aretz? People do not sift flour. Why? Is it because there are no bugs in the flour? No! There are bugs! Here, my wife sifts the flour, and we have seen them! Animals in the flour! Beeg animals! Beeg animals in the flour! And here, the people ARE EATING THEM!
I sat there listening and thought, hmm, I don't sift my flour. I used to, because I used to live in a place where grain moths are endemic. But where I live now I have never found a bug, except for once when the entire bag was clearly infested. There's never been a case where I had a bag of flour that looked fine but, when sifted, turned out buggy. Sifting a five-pound bag of flour by hand every week when you are not finding anything gets old fast. So a couple of years ago, I stopped sifting.
This made me feel guilty, though, and on my next trip to Target I bought a sifter. Then, we invited the family over for Shabbos. I made challah. I thought, okay, I'd better sift the flour.
And what did I find?
You guessed it.
A beeg animal in my flour!
I was so excited I called my friend. "You'll never guess what I found! I found an animal in the flour!"
"Ma?"
"I found a big animal in the flour, like your husband was talking about!"
"Ani lo m'vina."
I explained, and I still think she thought I was nuts. Especially when I put the bug in a ziploc bag to show my husband. "Look! A beeg animal!" My accent got distinctly Israeli. "A beeg animal in da flowa!"
"Yes, and so, there are always bugs in flour."
"But I would never have sifted it if it hadn't been for your husband's drasha! He saved us all from eating treif challah!"
"Pshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
I still haven't tossed the ziploc. Because it is not every day that one finds beeg animals in one's flowa.
On Purim, as you may recall, we ate by the home of some friends of ours from Israel. The father of the family, who is from Bnai Brak, got up and gave, while not entirely sober, a Purim drasha, on whether or not it is muttar to eat in the homes of people who you know do not sift flour. In Israel, everyone sifts flour, because there are bugs and we do not eat bugs. But here, here in chutz la'aretz? People do not sift flour. Why? Is it because there are no bugs in the flour? No! There are bugs! Here, my wife sifts the flour, and we have seen them! Animals in the flour! Beeg animals! Beeg animals in the flour! And here, the people ARE EATING THEM!
I sat there listening and thought, hmm, I don't sift my flour. I used to, because I used to live in a place where grain moths are endemic. But where I live now I have never found a bug, except for once when the entire bag was clearly infested. There's never been a case where I had a bag of flour that looked fine but, when sifted, turned out buggy. Sifting a five-pound bag of flour by hand every week when you are not finding anything gets old fast. So a couple of years ago, I stopped sifting.
This made me feel guilty, though, and on my next trip to Target I bought a sifter. Then, we invited the family over for Shabbos. I made challah. I thought, okay, I'd better sift the flour.
And what did I find?
You guessed it.
A beeg animal in my flour!
I was so excited I called my friend. "You'll never guess what I found! I found an animal in the flour!"
"Ma?"
"I found a big animal in the flour, like your husband was talking about!"
"Ani lo m'vina."
I explained, and I still think she thought I was nuts. Especially when I put the bug in a ziploc bag to show my husband. "Look! A beeg animal!" My accent got distinctly Israeli. "A beeg animal in da flowa!"
"Yes, and so, there are always bugs in flour."
"But I would never have sifted it if it hadn't been for your husband's drasha! He saved us all from eating treif challah!"
"Pshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
I still haven't tossed the ziploc. Because it is not every day that one finds beeg animals in one's flowa.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Saturday night
Okay, first the important stuff: Harry Potter. Jasmin, I agree that JKR has been dropping hints, but I think it is more about his fallibility than anything more nefarious. Has everyone looked at mugglenet? There was an interview with JKR right after #6 was published that was very enlightening. I think Dumbledore is as we saw him--good, human, and imperfect. Snape, he is trouble. Oh, and I think Malfoy is going to do tshuva in the end.
That out of the way...
Has anyone been to the post office since the rate increase? Okay, has anyone tried to mail anything internationally since the rate increase? If you have not and plan to do so soon, you may be in for the same nasty surprise I got yesterday. International rates have more than doubled, and so far as I can tell, surface shipping for most things has been abolished. I used to make good use of those little Global Priority mailers, that were $5 for a little one and $9 for a big one. I had bought and packed a big one to send to my knitting buddy in Sydney, and discovered that those little mailers are now $13 and $21!!! And if you have something big and heavy to send, there is no longer any option of sending it by slow boat to save money. A couple of months ago, said knitting buddy was in at the beginning of job-search season, which is always one of your more stressful life experiences. So I put together a Lovely Box, and sent it by ship for--well, I don't remember how much it was, but considering how much it weighed and how far it was going, it wasn't bad. Now there's no way to send a box that size for less than sixty dollars. Yikes! I am going to have to insist that anyone who plans on requiring a care package in future relocate to the lower 48. Thank you for your cooperation.
Time to clean up the kitchen. Shabbos was good, we had guests, they'd already eaten too much at kiddush and the kids had stashed candy in the stroller, so we are leftover city around here. Anyone up for some cold chatzilim, chicken and cholent? Stop on by.
That out of the way...
Has anyone been to the post office since the rate increase? Okay, has anyone tried to mail anything internationally since the rate increase? If you have not and plan to do so soon, you may be in for the same nasty surprise I got yesterday. International rates have more than doubled, and so far as I can tell, surface shipping for most things has been abolished. I used to make good use of those little Global Priority mailers, that were $5 for a little one and $9 for a big one. I had bought and packed a big one to send to my knitting buddy in Sydney, and discovered that those little mailers are now $13 and $21!!! And if you have something big and heavy to send, there is no longer any option of sending it by slow boat to save money. A couple of months ago, said knitting buddy was in at the beginning of job-search season, which is always one of your more stressful life experiences. So I put together a Lovely Box, and sent it by ship for--well, I don't remember how much it was, but considering how much it weighed and how far it was going, it wasn't bad. Now there's no way to send a box that size for less than sixty dollars. Yikes! I am going to have to insist that anyone who plans on requiring a care package in future relocate to the lower 48. Thank you for your cooperation.
Time to clean up the kitchen. Shabbos was good, we had guests, they'd already eaten too much at kiddush and the kids had stashed candy in the stroller, so we are leftover city around here. Anyone up for some cold chatzilim, chicken and cholent? Stop on by.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
*snort*
In America, people think I am something of a linguist because I have some ability to speak in more languages than I have fingers on one hand. In other parts of the world, I am just an American who can't speak the local language very well, and is not really fluent in anything but English, and how lame is that? Having spent a lot of time living and working and traveling in other countries, I am exquisitely familiar with the humiliation of not being able to say what you want to say, or, worse, saying something that is exactly not what you wanted to say.
An example:
When I lived in Hungary in the mid-90s, I arrived with pretty good pronunciation, a fairly good intuitive sense of the language, atrocious grammar and a vocabulary that was all but useless anywhere but my grandmother's kitchen. This was, in a way, even worse than speaking with a bad American accent, because a) what I could say sounded Hungarian, b) the phrases I did know were correct and idiomatic, and therefore c) whenever I did mess up, people would not leap to the conclusion that I was in fact a foreigner (especially since those were fairly thin on the ground in those days, but) assume that I was deranged. And Hungarian, as a language, offers unparalleled opportunities of making a fool of yourself. In what other language could a simple toast turn into a celebration of your drinking partner's entire anus with a fatally shortened vowel? I ask you.
Anyway, one day I was at the library with my roommate, studying. On the way out you had to present all of your books to the checkout lady, whether or not you were checking anything out; no high-tech theft prevention here, you just left your bag at the door and showed her all your books as you left to demonstrate that they were your own. As I waited, I chatted with my roommate, in normal Hungarian, probably not making any immediately noticeable mistakes. And, as one does, I mentally plotted what I would tell the checkout lady. This is my own book [not the library's.] Ez a konyv--this book-- a sajat konyvem. This book is my own book. Well, I could shorten it and say, "This is my own." Ez a sajatam. Oh, no, wait. Postpositions like those, elide the vowel, it shortens to "Ez a sajtam." Doesn't it? No, no, it doesn't. See "fatally shortened vowel, above." That's why the checkout lady, who had already heard my seemingly normal Hungarian, was a bit taken aback when I proudly showed her my book and announced, "This is my cheese."
Ah, the memories.
What made me think of this, you ask? This. Read it and weep (in a good way.)
The only way to learn a language is to make a fool of yourself, early and often. Take it from me. I've been there.
An example:
When I lived in Hungary in the mid-90s, I arrived with pretty good pronunciation, a fairly good intuitive sense of the language, atrocious grammar and a vocabulary that was all but useless anywhere but my grandmother's kitchen. This was, in a way, even worse than speaking with a bad American accent, because a) what I could say sounded Hungarian, b) the phrases I did know were correct and idiomatic, and therefore c) whenever I did mess up, people would not leap to the conclusion that I was in fact a foreigner (especially since those were fairly thin on the ground in those days, but) assume that I was deranged. And Hungarian, as a language, offers unparalleled opportunities of making a fool of yourself. In what other language could a simple toast turn into a celebration of your drinking partner's entire anus with a fatally shortened vowel? I ask you.
Anyway, one day I was at the library with my roommate, studying. On the way out you had to present all of your books to the checkout lady, whether or not you were checking anything out; no high-tech theft prevention here, you just left your bag at the door and showed her all your books as you left to demonstrate that they were your own. As I waited, I chatted with my roommate, in normal Hungarian, probably not making any immediately noticeable mistakes. And, as one does, I mentally plotted what I would tell the checkout lady. This is my own book [not the library's.] Ez a konyv--this book-- a sajat konyvem. This book is my own book. Well, I could shorten it and say, "This is my own." Ez a sajatam. Oh, no, wait. Postpositions like those, elide the vowel, it shortens to "Ez a sajtam." Doesn't it? No, no, it doesn't. See "fatally shortened vowel, above." That's why the checkout lady, who had already heard my seemingly normal Hungarian, was a bit taken aback when I proudly showed her my book and announced, "This is my cheese."
Ah, the memories.
What made me think of this, you ask? This. Read it and weep (in a good way.)
The only way to learn a language is to make a fool of yourself, early and often. Take it from me. I've been there.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
You heard it here first
So, as I hope you are all aware, we are in the serious counting-down phase here. Two more months till... oh, come on, you know what I'm talking about... Harry Potter, Book The Seventh And Final.
For posterity's sake, this is what I think:
1. Snape is evil. Anyone who thinks otherwise is (not to be overly harsh here) delusional.
2. Dudley was born a wizard and Aunt Petunia had him Squibified. This is the terrible memory he relived in Book Six, at the beginning when you you-know-whats came to Little Whinging. (Being vague here in case you haven't read Book Six.)
3. MHH thinks that in the last chapter, in which we are told we will find out what eventually happens to the surviving character, we'll find out that Hermione will become headmistress.
That's it.
For posterity's sake, this is what I think:
1. Snape is evil. Anyone who thinks otherwise is (not to be overly harsh here) delusional.
2. Dudley was born a wizard and Aunt Petunia had him Squibified. This is the terrible memory he relived in Book Six, at the beginning when you you-know-whats came to Little Whinging. (Being vague here in case you haven't read Book Six.)
3. MHH thinks that in the last chapter, in which we are told we will find out what eventually happens to the surviving character, we'll find out that Hermione will become headmistress.
That's it.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
From the mouths of babes
Dinner tonight was chicken soup and knaidlach, or, in Barak's case, knaidlach with an absolute minimum of chicken soup. Definitely no carrots, thanks. In the middle of soup-eating, I got this gem:
"Hashem say hafta eat chicken soup and knaidlach on Shabbos."
And hundreds of thousands of yiden probably agree with him.
* * *
This afternoon, Barak was on the toilet and I was in my bedroom (adjacent to bathroom), nursing Iyyar, who has a little fever, threw up this afternoon, and is on permanurser status. The conversation with Barak, room-to-room, went something like this:
"Wassa mem say?"
"A mem says mmmm. What starts with a mem?"
"Moishy starts wiffa mem!"
"Right! And also?"
"I don't know."
"Also Menucha starts with a mem?"
"Yeah!"
"And also Menachem starts with a mem?"
"Yeah!"
"What does Imma start with?"
"Imma start wiffa aleph!"
"Right! How about Abba?"
"Also Abba start wiffa aleph!"
"Right!"
"What does broom start wif?"
"Umm. Broom starts with a B."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. See, there are two kinds of letters. There are aleph-beis letters, and ABC letters. Aleph and mem are aleph-beis letters. Broom starts with a B. That's an ABC letter."
Pause, during which I wonder if he is actually processing this. Then,
"What are you talking about?"
* * *
Yesterday, I made ravioli for dinner. I put herbs and cheese on the ravioli, and did not take out Barak's before the application of the dread "green." (No, I didn't forget. I just didn't.) I put some in Barak's bowl, and some in mine. Barak inspected the contents, and was not pleased.
"I no want it. I just want a clean one please."
* * *
This isn't really a talking post, but it's definitely a communicating post. As you may know, if you want to take a nursing baby off the Source of All Good Things, you can't just pull him off if he's actively sucking. That will hurt. What you have to do first is slide a finger in his mouth to break his latch.
Today, after Iyyar nursed and nursed and nursed, I'd had enough and went to take him off. But he saw the dreaded latch-breaking finger coming, grabbed it, held on, and wrenched it as far away from his mouth as he possibly could. Can't you see I'm busy here?
"Hashem say hafta eat chicken soup and knaidlach on Shabbos."
And hundreds of thousands of yiden probably agree with him.
* * *
This afternoon, Barak was on the toilet and I was in my bedroom (adjacent to bathroom), nursing Iyyar, who has a little fever, threw up this afternoon, and is on permanurser status. The conversation with Barak, room-to-room, went something like this:
"Wassa mem say?"
"A mem says mmmm. What starts with a mem?"
"Moishy starts wiffa mem!"
"Right! And also?"
"I don't know."
"Also Menucha starts with a mem?"
"Yeah!"
"And also Menachem starts with a mem?"
"Yeah!"
"What does Imma start with?"
"Imma start wiffa aleph!"
"Right! How about Abba?"
"Also Abba start wiffa aleph!"
"Right!"
"What does broom start wif?"
"Umm. Broom starts with a B."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. See, there are two kinds of letters. There are aleph-beis letters, and ABC letters. Aleph and mem are aleph-beis letters. Broom starts with a B. That's an ABC letter."
Pause, during which I wonder if he is actually processing this. Then,
"What are you talking about?"
* * *
Yesterday, I made ravioli for dinner. I put herbs and cheese on the ravioli, and did not take out Barak's before the application of the dread "green." (No, I didn't forget. I just didn't.) I put some in Barak's bowl, and some in mine. Barak inspected the contents, and was not pleased.
"I no want it. I just want a clean one please."
* * *
This isn't really a talking post, but it's definitely a communicating post. As you may know, if you want to take a nursing baby off the Source of All Good Things, you can't just pull him off if he's actively sucking. That will hurt. What you have to do first is slide a finger in his mouth to break his latch.
Today, after Iyyar nursed and nursed and nursed, I'd had enough and went to take him off. But he saw the dreaded latch-breaking finger coming, grabbed it, held on, and wrenched it as far away from his mouth as he possibly could. Can't you see I'm busy here?
Monday, May 07, 2007
Psychic
It was nice and sunny today and I decided to take the boys out in the double stroller so I could get some exercise and we could all get some air. I needed to stop at the bank (got my tax return, woohoo!) and on the way realized I was hungry. Hmm. The thought of French fries crossed my mind--I have not been to the pizza (and French fry) shop since my maternity leave, nor have any other members of the family. On mature reflection, I decided it was probably better that way. Then I heard Barak say something.
"K'I havea French fries please?"
????????????!!!!!!!!!!!
Did I mention that we have not gone for French fries since AUGUST?!
What could I do? We went for French fries. Iyyar got his first taste of the dread delicious "food" item. We sat there munching. Barak said, pensively,
"I likea French fries. Iss very yummy."
"Yeah. I like them too. Do you know who else really likes French fries?"
"Yeah?"
"Grandma. Grandma really likes French fries. Whenever she comes to visit, we go get French fries."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Grandma likes a French Fries?"
"Yup."
Pause for consideration.
"Grandma's very nice."
"Yup, she is."
Speaking of grandmas (the other one this time), our plane tickets came in the mail today, and I got our hotel confirmation e-mailed. Five weeks and six days to go.
"K'I havea French fries please?"
????????????!!!!!!!!!!!
Did I mention that we have not gone for French fries since AUGUST?!
What could I do? We went for French fries. Iyyar got his first taste of the dread delicious "food" item. We sat there munching. Barak said, pensively,
"I likea French fries. Iss very yummy."
"Yeah. I like them too. Do you know who else really likes French fries?"
"Yeah?"
"Grandma. Grandma really likes French fries. Whenever she comes to visit, we go get French fries."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Grandma likes a French Fries?"
"Yup."
Pause for consideration.
"Grandma's very nice."
"Yup, she is."
Speaking of grandmas (the other one this time), our plane tickets came in the mail today, and I got our hotel confirmation e-mailed. Five weeks and six days to go.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Yet another list.
1. This conversation was related to me by Ada, our babysitter, when I got home from work on Friday.
She had Iyyar on her lap, and he was playing with her necklace. She told him no and got it away from him, he went for it again, and she told him no, don't do that. Barak was watching this.
"Ada say no no, don't do that."
"Right, I told Iyyar no."
"Also Imma say no no."
"Right, Imma says no sometimes too."
Pause.
"Abba don't say no."
Ooh. He noticed.
2. Barak wore underwear all day yesterday, with pretty good success, and today, as of 3:15 pm, was still all clean and dry. Abba took him to the bathroom when we got back from our walk and a good three hours without a potty trip. Still dry! Abba gave him a high five, while I was in the other room nursing Iyyar and listening in.
"Barak, are you the man?"
"No, I not the man. YOU the man."
"No, I'm not the man. You're the man."
"No, you! You the man!"
And so on.
3. Iyyar has discovered the hall. He is very good at crawling now and has decided that his room is just, you know, so last week. So every time I put him down on the floor he immediately rotates toward the door and heads out to explore, making funny little "ha! ha! ha!" sounds as he goes.
4. After checking fifty billion heads of lettuce and spinach and whatever for bugs, without ever finding anything (this is supermarket produce, not organic farmer's market stuff), I finally found a genuine bug on Friday in a head of Romaine. It had legs and everything.
5. I had guests for Shabbos for the first time since, um, Iyyar was born I think. And really, I have to remind myself of this--it is not as bad as it seems on Tuesday night. I made gefilte fish, mock chopped liver, chicken, rice, sweet and sour celery, a vat of a Sephardic vegetable dish I can't remember the name of (guvetch? something like that), challah, chocolate chip cookies, guacamole, green salad (see "Romaine with bug," above) with homemade Caesar dressing, cholent, challah kugel and, um, that may be it but I'm probably missing something. I started at 8:30 on Thursday and was in bed by midnight; I also did another two hours or so Friday afternoon. I did have my faithful dishwashing assistant helping me, but otherwise I did it on my own. And it was fun. I forget, in the craziness of making dinner every night, that I really do like to cook. And we liked our guests (people we didn't know, that a friend of my husband's had asked if we could host) and it was all good.
6. Last week, my friend Chana came over and helped me organize my loom/guest/computer room. It has been a wreck, off and on, since we moved here--it is the only room off-limits to kinderlach, and so inevitably it is where everything gets dumped. One trip to Target, an unconscionable amount of money spent on Sterilite boxes, and three late nights of mad organizing later, it is transformed. The closet now has shelves, the floor is naked and bare, and everything I own is tucked away in neatly labeled and stacked plastic boxes. Or that's how it feels, anyway.
7. Iyyar is getting quite good at feeding himself, after resisting this useful skill for quite some time. On Friday I came home from work to find him in his high chair chowing on a bowl of grated cheese, literally shoveling it into his mouth with both hands. He was so into the cheese he didn't even care I was home. Who needs Imma, when I have cheese?
She had Iyyar on her lap, and he was playing with her necklace. She told him no and got it away from him, he went for it again, and she told him no, don't do that. Barak was watching this.
"Ada say no no, don't do that."
"Right, I told Iyyar no."
"Also Imma say no no."
"Right, Imma says no sometimes too."
Pause.
"Abba don't say no."
Ooh. He noticed.
2. Barak wore underwear all day yesterday, with pretty good success, and today, as of 3:15 pm, was still all clean and dry. Abba took him to the bathroom when we got back from our walk and a good three hours without a potty trip. Still dry! Abba gave him a high five, while I was in the other room nursing Iyyar and listening in.
"Barak, are you the man?"
"No, I not the man. YOU the man."
"No, I'm not the man. You're the man."
"No, you! You the man!"
And so on.
3. Iyyar has discovered the hall. He is very good at crawling now and has decided that his room is just, you know, so last week. So every time I put him down on the floor he immediately rotates toward the door and heads out to explore, making funny little "ha! ha! ha!" sounds as he goes.
4. After checking fifty billion heads of lettuce and spinach and whatever for bugs, without ever finding anything (this is supermarket produce, not organic farmer's market stuff), I finally found a genuine bug on Friday in a head of Romaine. It had legs and everything.
5. I had guests for Shabbos for the first time since, um, Iyyar was born I think. And really, I have to remind myself of this--it is not as bad as it seems on Tuesday night. I made gefilte fish, mock chopped liver, chicken, rice, sweet and sour celery, a vat of a Sephardic vegetable dish I can't remember the name of (guvetch? something like that), challah, chocolate chip cookies, guacamole, green salad (see "Romaine with bug," above) with homemade Caesar dressing, cholent, challah kugel and, um, that may be it but I'm probably missing something. I started at 8:30 on Thursday and was in bed by midnight; I also did another two hours or so Friday afternoon. I did have my faithful dishwashing assistant helping me, but otherwise I did it on my own. And it was fun. I forget, in the craziness of making dinner every night, that I really do like to cook. And we liked our guests (people we didn't know, that a friend of my husband's had asked if we could host) and it was all good.
6. Last week, my friend Chana came over and helped me organize my loom/guest/computer room. It has been a wreck, off and on, since we moved here--it is the only room off-limits to kinderlach, and so inevitably it is where everything gets dumped. One trip to Target, an unconscionable amount of money spent on Sterilite boxes, and three late nights of mad organizing later, it is transformed. The closet now has shelves, the floor is naked and bare, and everything I own is tucked away in neatly labeled and stacked plastic boxes. Or that's how it feels, anyway.
7. Iyyar is getting quite good at feeding himself, after resisting this useful skill for quite some time. On Friday I came home from work to find him in his high chair chowing on a bowl of grated cheese, literally shoveling it into his mouth with both hands. He was so into the cheese he didn't even care I was home. Who needs Imma, when I have cheese?
Thursday, May 03, 2007
What I bought today
Two tickets--one adult, one infant--to Vienna. From there, we'll go by train and bus to the lovely and scenic and laughably titled "town" of Pervatpuszta. (Don't bother looking on the map. It's not there.) We'll be there for a week, leaving on Sunday and coming back the following Sunday. Never in my life have I bought such an expensive ticket--it was four times (four! times!) what I used to spend ten years ago, or even seven years ago.
Right, so, I'm going to the backwaters of Hungary by plane, train, and bus, I'm going to be bringing a 13-mo on a nine-hour flight, I have no idea what I will feed him or me or how I will do this, and I will be dispensing with my entire tax return and then some But right now, I don't really care. I just can't wait until it's 8 am in Hungary and I can call my granny and tell her we're coming!
Right, so, I'm going to the backwaters of Hungary by plane, train, and bus, I'm going to be bringing a 13-mo on a nine-hour flight, I have no idea what I will feed him or me or how I will do this, and I will be dispensing with my entire tax return and then some But right now, I don't really care. I just can't wait until it's 8 am in Hungary and I can call my granny and tell her we're coming!
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Rainy day fun in the Uberimma household
Just turn your head sideways--it's easier than my figuring out how to rotate the picture. And for those wondering, it is the entire Hebrew aleph-beis made out of challah dough. Educational and tasty (and only a couple of them fell apart after baking).
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Now hiring
The position of Travel Companion to Hungarian Nursing Home is currently open, with the possibility of a second position. Potential candidates must be willing to travel light, hang out with little old ladies who don't speak English, and smile. A lot. Duties include baby-holding, polite nodding, and endless double-cheek-kissing. The ability to ride Hungarian buses without throwing up is a must; the ability to knit is a definite plus. Position start date: sometime in June. Benefits: the chance to see a part of Hungary you ain't never seen before. Salary: none, but aren't the benefits enough?
Interested applicants please leave details in the comments section.
Interested applicants please leave details in the comments section.
jiggity-jig
When I took my third year of Russian, almost everyone else in my class was actually Russian--almost all engineering students taking the class for an easy A. I am not Russian, and was finding it hard to keep up--and not getting much out of it either. A couple of weeks into the semester, I pointed this out to the instructor, a really wonderful Russian guy-with-beard named Slava. "Okay," he said. "We will do one-on-one." For the rest of the semester, that's what we did, meeting up in one of the campus eateries for an hour to go over whatever I'd translated during the week--mostly five-year tractorization plans and that kind of thing. Every so often, I'd have a sentence that would make no sense at all. He'd look at it, and chuckle. "Oh no," he'd said, "but there's no way you would know that. This sentence here refers to a medieval Russian nursery rhyme, and it is the last three words of the fourth line. So the reader is supposed to know that really, what the writer means is this completely different thing." I'd grumble about these ridiculous Russians, fix my translation, and grumble some more.
Anyway, now I've done the same thing. Jiggity-jig--we're home. Again.
Oh, wait. I didn't mention we went anywhere, did we.
Well, we went out of state for the weekend, for the unveiling for the friend who died right after Iyyar was born. Having a brand-new baby who had just gotten out of the hospital, and no one else to take care of Barak, there was no way I could have gone to the funeral (which was, in addition to being a plane ride away, the day before the bris). She was a good friend, and I wanted to go to the funeral, and since I couldn't do that we all went to the unveiling. Yup--all four of us. It was on Sunday morning, and we couldn't get flights that would get us there in time leaving after Shabbos, so we stayed Shabbos with friends of friends who turned out to be absolutely lovely and very hospitable people who, incidentally, happened to live three houses away from the brother of one of my favorite cookbook authors. (Funny world, isn't it.)
The weekend, the whole thing, was just so... not real. Shabbos was lovely, and every time someone asked us why we were in town I said, um, an unveiling actually. I had never been there before. My friend was someone I met through her blog, and whose blog I took over for the last few months when she was too sick to write it herself. She was, as I have mentioned here, Jewish but not observant; when it was clear she wasn't going to recover, I was the one who had the conversation with her about vidui, a Jewish tahara and funeral, what the chevra kadisha does. We changed her name. I talked to her, a few days before she died, when Iyyar was back in the hospital with jaundice and she was at home, knowing we wouldn't talk again--it was, I found out later, the last real conversation she had with anyone. She was my age. In a few weeks, I'll turn 34, which she won't get to do; a few months ago, I had a wedding anniversary she never got to either.
Even though she and her family and her illness were so much a part of our lives here, they were still, physically, very distant; I had known for months that she wouldn't get better, but had no sense of how imminent it was until I was back in the hospital with Iyyar and completely wrapped up in my new and suddenly very sick baby. I never saw her sick, never saw her house, didn't go to the funeral, and never even met her husband or parents until after she died (although I had met her sister). I met them a month or two later, while I was still on maternity leave, but it was all so... removed.
Going to the unveiling, seeing her name on a piece of stone, standing in her kitchen without her in it, and seeing all the people who I knew only in context of her now in a context of absence--it made it suddenly real. Not that it hadn't been before, not that I hadn't been aware that she had died, but my only real loss in a day-to-say sense had been of a cherished email correspondent. It wasn't in my face--I didn't wake up in the morning to an empty bed, or sit down to breakfast across from an empty chair, or even walk past a house I'd once gone into. When things happen that I want to tell her about and can't, I can still just write the email anyway, and send it off into email oblivion. For her husband and her parents and the rest of her circle of family and close friends, the ones who lived nearby and saw her often, things are very different.
And of course, in the middle of trying to connect with these people, and assimilate all of this, and be there, I was also trying to keep Barak from tipping over the chairs at the cemetery, and convince him that their doggie was not going to eat him, because he was a nice doggie, and change Iyyar's diapers behind a car, and make sure we had a ride back to the airport, and navigate the minefield of being the only Orthodox Jews in a group of Catholics, Reform Jews, same-sex partnerships and everything else, all while keeping Barak from climbing on the white couches with his shoes on, and preventing Iyyar from eating dirt.
I guess that's why I'm up at 1 am, the day after coming back, just sitting here and blogging in the late-night quiet. Her first yahrzeit is past, and my husband has finished saying kaddish for her. The year of aveilus is over. The blog is deleted. Her Hebrew name is there on the headstone, the way we changed it two summers ago, and I am here.
Anyway, now I've done the same thing. Jiggity-jig--we're home. Again.
Oh, wait. I didn't mention we went anywhere, did we.
Well, we went out of state for the weekend, for the unveiling for the friend who died right after Iyyar was born. Having a brand-new baby who had just gotten out of the hospital, and no one else to take care of Barak, there was no way I could have gone to the funeral (which was, in addition to being a plane ride away, the day before the bris). She was a good friend, and I wanted to go to the funeral, and since I couldn't do that we all went to the unveiling. Yup--all four of us. It was on Sunday morning, and we couldn't get flights that would get us there in time leaving after Shabbos, so we stayed Shabbos with friends of friends who turned out to be absolutely lovely and very hospitable people who, incidentally, happened to live three houses away from the brother of one of my favorite cookbook authors. (Funny world, isn't it.)
The weekend, the whole thing, was just so... not real. Shabbos was lovely, and every time someone asked us why we were in town I said, um, an unveiling actually. I had never been there before. My friend was someone I met through her blog, and whose blog I took over for the last few months when she was too sick to write it herself. She was, as I have mentioned here, Jewish but not observant; when it was clear she wasn't going to recover, I was the one who had the conversation with her about vidui, a Jewish tahara and funeral, what the chevra kadisha does. We changed her name. I talked to her, a few days before she died, when Iyyar was back in the hospital with jaundice and she was at home, knowing we wouldn't talk again--it was, I found out later, the last real conversation she had with anyone. She was my age. In a few weeks, I'll turn 34, which she won't get to do; a few months ago, I had a wedding anniversary she never got to either.
Even though she and her family and her illness were so much a part of our lives here, they were still, physically, very distant; I had known for months that she wouldn't get better, but had no sense of how imminent it was until I was back in the hospital with Iyyar and completely wrapped up in my new and suddenly very sick baby. I never saw her sick, never saw her house, didn't go to the funeral, and never even met her husband or parents until after she died (although I had met her sister). I met them a month or two later, while I was still on maternity leave, but it was all so... removed.
Going to the unveiling, seeing her name on a piece of stone, standing in her kitchen without her in it, and seeing all the people who I knew only in context of her now in a context of absence--it made it suddenly real. Not that it hadn't been before, not that I hadn't been aware that she had died, but my only real loss in a day-to-say sense had been of a cherished email correspondent. It wasn't in my face--I didn't wake up in the morning to an empty bed, or sit down to breakfast across from an empty chair, or even walk past a house I'd once gone into. When things happen that I want to tell her about and can't, I can still just write the email anyway, and send it off into email oblivion. For her husband and her parents and the rest of her circle of family and close friends, the ones who lived nearby and saw her often, things are very different.
And of course, in the middle of trying to connect with these people, and assimilate all of this, and be there, I was also trying to keep Barak from tipping over the chairs at the cemetery, and convince him that their doggie was not going to eat him, because he was a nice doggie, and change Iyyar's diapers behind a car, and make sure we had a ride back to the airport, and navigate the minefield of being the only Orthodox Jews in a group of Catholics, Reform Jews, same-sex partnerships and everything else, all while keeping Barak from climbing on the white couches with his shoes on, and preventing Iyyar from eating dirt.
I guess that's why I'm up at 1 am, the day after coming back, just sitting here and blogging in the late-night quiet. Her first yahrzeit is past, and my husband has finished saying kaddish for her. The year of aveilus is over. The blog is deleted. Her Hebrew name is there on the headstone, the way we changed it two summers ago, and I am here.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Why children need mothers
The scene: our friends' house in New Jersey, the last day of Pesach. I stopped by a friend's house with the baby, and MHH took Barak to a playground. It was a very nice playground with a shiny new climbing structure. A couple of hours later, I met up with them at home. The characters in the following dialogue: me and MHH.
Me: "How was the park?"
MHH: "Good."
"Did he have fun?"
"I think so."
"What did he do?"
"Played."
Sigh.
"Did he play on anything in particular, or just run around?"
"Um, just ran around mostly."
[Barak walks in.]
Me: "Barak, did you have fun at the park?"
Barak: "Yeah! Play onna slide."
Me: "Oh, you went down the slide?"
Barak: C'I go play inna masement?
Me: Sure, go play in the basement. [To MHH] He was into the slide?
MHH: Oh yeah. He went down a bunch of times. Both ways.
Me: Both ways meaning on his back and on his stomach?
MHH: Yeah.
Me: Or head first and feet first?
MHH: That too.
[Pause.]
Me: You let him go down the slide headfirst?
MHH: Yeah, he did it a lot.
Me: Um, did you think maybe you shouldn't let him go down headfirst?
MHH: Why not?
Me: "How was the park?"
MHH: "Good."
"Did he have fun?"
"I think so."
"What did he do?"
"Played."
Sigh.
"Did he play on anything in particular, or just run around?"
"Um, just ran around mostly."
[Barak walks in.]
Me: "Barak, did you have fun at the park?"
Barak: "Yeah! Play onna slide."
Me: "Oh, you went down the slide?"
Barak: C'I go play inna masement?
Me: Sure, go play in the basement. [To MHH] He was into the slide?
MHH: Oh yeah. He went down a bunch of times. Both ways.
Me: Both ways meaning on his back and on his stomach?
MHH: Yeah.
Me: Or head first and feet first?
MHH: That too.
[Pause.]
Me: You let him go down the slide headfirst?
MHH: Yeah, he did it a lot.
Me: Um, did you think maybe you shouldn't let him go down headfirst?
MHH: Why not?
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Big boy
He does usually wear a kippa now--that was one of the big milestones we hit over Pesach. All the other men and boys in the house wore one, and Barak had his new excavator kippa, so he started wearing one automatically. If he drops it, he exclaims, "My kippa!" and puts it back on. If he realizes he's not wearing, he'll ask for it; if I tell him he's not wearing it, sometimes he'll ask for it, although sometimes not. And if I just plunk it on his head, he says "Thank you," and adjusts it how he likes it--back on his head.Black velvet kippa, back on his head, with his name. And payes. And an excavator. He's going to be the frummest construction worker in town.
Another one of those list posts
1. This was the boys' birthday Shabbos. Barak turned three on Friday, and Iyyar turned one on Shabbos, so we combined the celebration. Barak got a birthday hat and party at playgroup, and Iyyar, well, Iyyar kind of did his usual. Presents were opened Friday morning (Duplo and sandbox toys) and Ada took them to get a doughnut in the afternoon. She let him have a whole doughnut, with sprinkles AND chocolate icing. I called in the afternoon to see how it was going and got no answer. When I tried her cell, she picked up. "We're outside, running laps around the building," in an attempt to burn off the sugar high. Oh well, it's been a while since he's OD'd on sugar--since Purim. He'll survive.
2. Our apartment was originally conceived as a poorly laid out 2-bedroom with a kitchen, dining room adjacent to kitchen, and living room at the opposite end. A previous owner walled off the dining room to make a third bedroom, and this is now the boys' room. It is now an even more awkwardly laid out apartment, with a closetless bedroom. A closetless bedroom is not an issue when the occupant of said bedroom is a single baby or small boy--you don't need to hang up baby clothes and they don't need that much stuff. Now that there are two kids' worth of clothes, and two ages' worth of toys, it's gotten a little out of hand.
So, for the last couple of months I've been trawling message boards, physical and online, in search of some used furniture. Last month I got a small dresser, which now holds pajamas, socks, and underwear, and has provided Iyyar with endless hours of pleasure as he stands there holding the open drawer with one hand and emptying out the Elmo underwear with the other. Having the short-term memory of a goldfish, the experience of smashing his fingers in the drawer has done nothing to dissuade him from pursuing this activity; now I turn the dresser around during the day so that the drawers are against the wall. Iyyar saw me do it, and gave me a look that said very clearly, "Well, that was a mean trick."
This past week, I finally, after a lot of headaches with the movers I won't go into, got an armoire for their room. It's a used one from Ikea, but one of the largest and most solid things from Ikea I've ever seen. It's huge. There are two doors (latchable with a baby latch) that open to a bunch of shelves and space to hang clothes, with two drawers underneath, and the whole thing stands on legs that leave enough space underneath to slide a few Rubbermaid containers of toys. The room is looking much more tidy now, and I'm quite pleased with my purchase.
It arrived while MHH was at work, and Barak helped me move things in. The bottom drawers are now for blankies--one has Iyyar's, one has Barak's. While we were doing that we talked about being careful with the drawers, not climbing inside, how climbing on furniture is dangerous, what things we do and don't climb on, etc. So when MHH got home from work, Barak ran in to show him the armoire. "Issa armoire. Iss got drawers and dere's blankies inna drawers anna money inna drawer. You can't climb on it. Gotta be very careful."
3. Back on the subject of blankie drawers--Barak has his preferred night-night blankies (yellow fleece blankies from Target, the first of which was a gift from Savta and subsequent versions of which were purchased by Imma), his quilt from Mrs. Peasley (knows as the blue blankie, for the blue flannel back), and his knit-by-Imma wool blanket, which is usually scorned and tossed on the floor. When I was putting blankies in the drawer, I left the blue blankie on the bed (it's hands-down the prettiest) and folded the rest and put them away. Barak, when he saw me put away the knitted blankie, instantly objected. "No can't put it inna drawer! Iss pretty. It goes onna bed."
Aww.
2. Our apartment was originally conceived as a poorly laid out 2-bedroom with a kitchen, dining room adjacent to kitchen, and living room at the opposite end. A previous owner walled off the dining room to make a third bedroom, and this is now the boys' room. It is now an even more awkwardly laid out apartment, with a closetless bedroom. A closetless bedroom is not an issue when the occupant of said bedroom is a single baby or small boy--you don't need to hang up baby clothes and they don't need that much stuff. Now that there are two kids' worth of clothes, and two ages' worth of toys, it's gotten a little out of hand.
So, for the last couple of months I've been trawling message boards, physical and online, in search of some used furniture. Last month I got a small dresser, which now holds pajamas, socks, and underwear, and has provided Iyyar with endless hours of pleasure as he stands there holding the open drawer with one hand and emptying out the Elmo underwear with the other. Having the short-term memory of a goldfish, the experience of smashing his fingers in the drawer has done nothing to dissuade him from pursuing this activity; now I turn the dresser around during the day so that the drawers are against the wall. Iyyar saw me do it, and gave me a look that said very clearly, "Well, that was a mean trick."
This past week, I finally, after a lot of headaches with the movers I won't go into, got an armoire for their room. It's a used one from Ikea, but one of the largest and most solid things from Ikea I've ever seen. It's huge. There are two doors (latchable with a baby latch) that open to a bunch of shelves and space to hang clothes, with two drawers underneath, and the whole thing stands on legs that leave enough space underneath to slide a few Rubbermaid containers of toys. The room is looking much more tidy now, and I'm quite pleased with my purchase.
It arrived while MHH was at work, and Barak helped me move things in. The bottom drawers are now for blankies--one has Iyyar's, one has Barak's. While we were doing that we talked about being careful with the drawers, not climbing inside, how climbing on furniture is dangerous, what things we do and don't climb on, etc. So when MHH got home from work, Barak ran in to show him the armoire. "Issa armoire. Iss got drawers and dere's blankies inna drawers anna money inna drawer. You can't climb on it. Gotta be very careful."
3. Back on the subject of blankie drawers--Barak has his preferred night-night blankies (yellow fleece blankies from Target, the first of which was a gift from Savta and subsequent versions of which were purchased by Imma), his quilt from Mrs. Peasley (knows as the blue blankie, for the blue flannel back), and his knit-by-Imma wool blanket, which is usually scorned and tossed on the floor. When I was putting blankies in the drawer, I left the blue blankie on the bed (it's hands-down the prettiest) and folded the rest and put them away. Barak, when he saw me put away the knitted blankie, instantly objected. "No can't put it inna drawer! Iss pretty. It goes onna bed."
Aww.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Skulduggery
You may have noticed the strange silence on the knitting front lately. That's because I've been feverishly working on this. You can read all about the story of its inception here.
And for those of you to whom the title of the linked-to blog is a mystery, I offer this excerpt from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which Sarah obviously needs to read:
And for those of you to whom the title of the linked-to blog is a mystery, I offer this excerpt from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which Sarah obviously needs to read:
'But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.'
'Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.'
'But the plans were on display ...'
'On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.'
'That's the display department.'
'With a torch.'
'Ah, well the lights had probably gone.'
'So had the stairs.'
'But look, you found the notice didn't you?'
'Yes,' said Arthur, 'yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.'Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Droop
I don't really have the energy to post right now. I feel, to be honest, like a jellyfish. My knees are jelly. My hands are jelly. I'm amazed I'm not spattered on the floor right now.
Why, you ask?
I just drove a car. In traffic. In the notoriously bad traffic of the neighborhood where I live.
The car was a stick.
I have not driven a car regularly since 1992, and I have not driven one at all since 1999. I dislike driving intensely, and have such strong driving anxiety that even at my peak of driving comfort (relatively speaking) I could not enjoy being anywhere I had driven, because all I could think about was the drive home. Add my dislike of driving to a fondness for walking, a generally urban lifestyle, and a generally tight budget, and you have the car-free lifestyle of which you have heard tell.
However.
Barak is headed, IY"H, into preschool this fall. His third birthday is this weekend. I think he is past the basement playgroup stage, and I am not that comfortable with the basement playgroup concept in general. The available playgroups are not my thing--close, convenient, and affordable, but waaay too hefker for my liking. There is, however, a good Jewish preschool in town. It is well and professionally run, and though expensive, it could be managed.
However.
It's a little under a mile away. That's not a bad walk in general, but four times a day, every day, with one or two kids (and who knows, maybe even a third by the end of the next school year, by which time Barak will be four and a bit) it is clearly Too Much. I could take him on the bus, but that's not a big improvement. I could pay someone else to take him. Or I could learn to drive. Again.
A friend of mine had offered, a few months ago, to give me some driving practice on her car, which is a stick. On Sunday, I took her up on it, and we spent a couple of hours driving around a parking lot. It was fine. I was fine. She was very impressed with my ability to start the car in first and second, the infrequency with which I stalled out, and my general comfort with the concept of a clutch. "You've got really good hand-leg coordination!" she said. "You've really never tried a stick before?" I assured her I had not. She pondered. "I know!" she said. "I bet it's the loom!" And I bet she's right. That or spinning--what spinner does not remember the difficulty, the first time you try out a wheel, of preventing the wheel from spinning backward?
Anyway. Be all that as it may, the parking lot part was fine. So tonight, we went ou driving. In traffic.
It was fine, in that I met my primary goal of killing no one, my secondary goal of inflicting no damage to man, beast, or property, and my tertiary goal of avoiding being the object of road rage. However, the heart-pounding moments, the gutwrenching fear, the stallouts at red lights--verily they were there, and in spades.
It's not the machine I don't like. It's the people in the other machines, and their unpredictability, and the people on sidewalks and strolling obliviously across streets, and the potential, unknown in my ordinary existence, of bumping someone off without actually meaning to.
Gah.
There's other news, I'm sure, but I'm a little too jellylegged to think of it right now.
Why, you ask?
I just drove a car. In traffic. In the notoriously bad traffic of the neighborhood where I live.
The car was a stick.
I have not driven a car regularly since 1992, and I have not driven one at all since 1999. I dislike driving intensely, and have such strong driving anxiety that even at my peak of driving comfort (relatively speaking) I could not enjoy being anywhere I had driven, because all I could think about was the drive home. Add my dislike of driving to a fondness for walking, a generally urban lifestyle, and a generally tight budget, and you have the car-free lifestyle of which you have heard tell.
However.
Barak is headed, IY"H, into preschool this fall. His third birthday is this weekend. I think he is past the basement playgroup stage, and I am not that comfortable with the basement playgroup concept in general. The available playgroups are not my thing--close, convenient, and affordable, but waaay too hefker for my liking. There is, however, a good Jewish preschool in town. It is well and professionally run, and though expensive, it could be managed.
However.
It's a little under a mile away. That's not a bad walk in general, but four times a day, every day, with one or two kids (and who knows, maybe even a third by the end of the next school year, by which time Barak will be four and a bit) it is clearly Too Much. I could take him on the bus, but that's not a big improvement. I could pay someone else to take him. Or I could learn to drive. Again.
A friend of mine had offered, a few months ago, to give me some driving practice on her car, which is a stick. On Sunday, I took her up on it, and we spent a couple of hours driving around a parking lot. It was fine. I was fine. She was very impressed with my ability to start the car in first and second, the infrequency with which I stalled out, and my general comfort with the concept of a clutch. "You've got really good hand-leg coordination!" she said. "You've really never tried a stick before?" I assured her I had not. She pondered. "I know!" she said. "I bet it's the loom!" And I bet she's right. That or spinning--what spinner does not remember the difficulty, the first time you try out a wheel, of preventing the wheel from spinning backward?
Anyway. Be all that as it may, the parking lot part was fine. So tonight, we went ou driving. In traffic.
It was fine, in that I met my primary goal of killing no one, my secondary goal of inflicting no damage to man, beast, or property, and my tertiary goal of avoiding being the object of road rage. However, the heart-pounding moments, the gutwrenching fear, the stallouts at red lights--verily they were there, and in spades.
It's not the machine I don't like. It's the people in the other machines, and their unpredictability, and the people on sidewalks and strolling obliviously across streets, and the potential, unknown in my ordinary existence, of bumping someone off without actually meaning to.
Gah.
There's other news, I'm sure, but I'm a little too jellylegged to think of it right now.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Overheard
Barak, in the living room, is making a huge amount of noise. He is banging on his xylophone with sandbox toys, stomping his feet, and singing "rah! rah! rah!" at the very top of his very able lungs. It is earsplitting. I am in the kitchen considering asking him to tone it down when suddenly it stops, and I hear, in a conversational tone, Barak, telling himself quietly,
"I being very loud."
Pause, and then the racket begins again.
"I being very loud."
Pause, and then the racket begins again.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Jiggity-jig
We're back, and Barak is at playgroup and Iyyar sounds like he is just waking up from his nap. The house is beyond catastrophic--it was more or less tidy when we left, really it was, so how is that possible?!--and I have SO MUCH TO DO between now and Monday I have no idea even where to begin. Shabbos is coming, in its regularly scheduled way, and there are speeches to be written and mountains of laundry to fold and the taxes to file (they are done, don't worry) and a very major other project about which I am not at liberty to blog that absolutely, positively must get done tonight.
But, you know, first a little blogging...
Pesach was B"H fabulous. Barak really wants to be the youngest of a huge family. The friends we stayed with have, KA"H, seven, and Barak immediately became buddies with their youngest, who just turned four. Everyone else was always wanting to hold the baby--at one time I counted eight hands stretched toward me, or rather, him. The oldest daughter in the household (aged 12) took it upon herself to teach Iyyar to stand on his own, which he is now doing, with great glee. He spent the week, when not being held by others or woken up by all the noise, eating. Eating everything. As I said more than once, "You're not a baby. You're a bottomless pit!" He ate knaidlach. He ate chicken soup. He ate Pesach cholent and vegetable soup and potato kugel and yogurt and shmura matzo and even a couple of jars of baby food, because he was just that hungry. He nursed and ate and ate and nursed and ate some more. But not in the high chair. No, no, because we don't do high chairs, because why would anyone sit in a high chair when there are so many willing laps? Strangely, he doesn't look any bigger, although maybe he's taller and I'm just not seeing it.
And when you have a mother of seven and aunt of twenty-two (three sisters, 29 kids!) confirm for your that your children, when it comes to sleep, are Not Normal, you can feel better that it really isn't you. Erev Pesach, I told Barak that if he took a nap in the afternoon with everyone else, he wouldn't have to go to bed. At all. I knew that the seder tended to go till 3 am, so I figured he would have to crash by then, right?
Wrong. So, so wrong. He did nap, and woke up joyously crowing, "I not gonna go night night! All done night night!" while dancing the happy no night-night dance. And as the seder went on (after Ma Nishtana, during which he spilled the entire contents of a full glass of grape juice on my brand new skirt), all the other children started to flag, and resettled themselves on the couch, their mother's lap, etc. Not Barak. Barak--I kid you not--started dancing jigs and singing (loudly) in the middle of the living room floor. At 1 am. At 1:30, I thought, this is insane, and sent him for a potty trip, thinking a little quiet time with a book might be a good lead-in to winding down. Wrong again. Instead, at 1:50 am, as the afikoman was being sought, Barak came barrelling back into the dining room, totally naked except for the red feetie pajamas around his ankles, shrieking, "I pished!" while pumping fists of victory. "I pished! I pished and I POOPED!"
More as I remember and have time, but that was a highlight. We now return to our regularly scheduled speechwriting.
But, you know, first a little blogging...
Pesach was B"H fabulous. Barak really wants to be the youngest of a huge family. The friends we stayed with have, KA"H, seven, and Barak immediately became buddies with their youngest, who just turned four. Everyone else was always wanting to hold the baby--at one time I counted eight hands stretched toward me, or rather, him. The oldest daughter in the household (aged 12) took it upon herself to teach Iyyar to stand on his own, which he is now doing, with great glee. He spent the week, when not being held by others or woken up by all the noise, eating. Eating everything. As I said more than once, "You're not a baby. You're a bottomless pit!" He ate knaidlach. He ate chicken soup. He ate Pesach cholent and vegetable soup and potato kugel and yogurt and shmura matzo and even a couple of jars of baby food, because he was just that hungry. He nursed and ate and ate and nursed and ate some more. But not in the high chair. No, no, because we don't do high chairs, because why would anyone sit in a high chair when there are so many willing laps? Strangely, he doesn't look any bigger, although maybe he's taller and I'm just not seeing it.
And when you have a mother of seven and aunt of twenty-two (three sisters, 29 kids!) confirm for your that your children, when it comes to sleep, are Not Normal, you can feel better that it really isn't you. Erev Pesach, I told Barak that if he took a nap in the afternoon with everyone else, he wouldn't have to go to bed. At all. I knew that the seder tended to go till 3 am, so I figured he would have to crash by then, right?
Wrong. So, so wrong. He did nap, and woke up joyously crowing, "I not gonna go night night! All done night night!" while dancing the happy no night-night dance. And as the seder went on (after Ma Nishtana, during which he spilled the entire contents of a full glass of grape juice on my brand new skirt), all the other children started to flag, and resettled themselves on the couch, their mother's lap, etc. Not Barak. Barak--I kid you not--started dancing jigs and singing (loudly) in the middle of the living room floor. At 1 am. At 1:30, I thought, this is insane, and sent him for a potty trip, thinking a little quiet time with a book might be a good lead-in to winding down. Wrong again. Instead, at 1:50 am, as the afikoman was being sought, Barak came barrelling back into the dining room, totally naked except for the red feetie pajamas around his ankles, shrieking, "I pished!" while pumping fists of victory. "I pished! I pished and I POOPED!"
More as I remember and have time, but that was a highlight. We now return to our regularly scheduled speechwriting.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Chol ha'moed
We're in New Jersey, and went to Borough Park today by way of a train, a ferry, and the R. If you saw a family walking along the edge of lower Manhattan past the heliport, and said family included a small boy screaming, "Hock clockter! Issa hock clockter!", that was us.
Remind me to tell you about Iyyar flirting on the subway and the train, Barak's stunning announcement in the middle of afikoman-eating, what time Barak finally went night-night on the first seder night, and just how much potato kugel Iyyar scarfed this afternoon.
Stay tuned. And a guten mo'ed.
Remind me to tell you about Iyyar flirting on the subway and the train, Barak's stunning announcement in the middle of afikoman-eating, what time Barak finally went night-night on the first seder night, and just how much potato kugel Iyyar scarfed this afternoon.
Stay tuned. And a guten mo'ed.
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