Backlash

After Wednesday's sweetness and light, Barak turned into Monster Toddler on Thursday. I know, rationally, that he had been totally tired out after his trip (five hours of constant high-level transportation excitement, with treats) and had been too worked up to get to sleep Wednesday night. He woke up earlier than usual on Thursday, which unfortunately is what happens when he doesn't get to sleep on time--he doesn't sleep late, he does the opposite.

I was tired too, because for some reason that second-trimester burst of energy has yet to materialize even though I'm closing in on trimester number three. What I really wanted to do at 1 pm when it was time to go get Barak was crawl into bed and have a nap. But I still had an afternoon of fun and productivity planned: haircut for Barak (he needs it, his hair is long enough now that his kippa won't stay on), stop into produce store (because we have nothing edible in the house but the kinds of cereal nobody really likes) and trip to the park/J. I picked him up at gan with our neighbor's daughter, whom I also walk home, and when we went in our front gate Barak told her, "I gonna go dis way and you go dat way, 'kay Chanie?" meaning, I'll go around the building like this and you go like that.

Um, no, because the rule when we are outside is that you have to stay where Imma can see you all the time. And this applies to Chanie to. I told Barak no, we were both going to the door together. I took Chanie in the direction that he wanted to go, meaning that he didn't just run around the building the other way, but he didn't follow us either. I called Barak, "Come on, Barak, we're going inside." He didn't come.

There are a few cardinal sins around here--not many. But one of them is refusing to come when Abba or Imma asks you, especially when you are outside. If I can't trust him to come when called, that really limits what we can do outside, and so I am a stickler. Barak knows this.

"Barak, come here please. I'm asking you to come here." Now in my I-am-Imma-and-I-mean-it voice. He didn't come.

"Barak, that's one. Please come here. If I get to three and you're not here, we're not going to go anywhere today. We're just going to stay home."

Nope.

"That's two. Please come here."

Nope. Sigh.

"Okay, that's three. No walk today." I put the brakes on Iyyar's stroller, went back to the front of the building where Barak was on his knees sidling in extra-slow motion in my general direction (which does not count as coming here) and bore him bodily to the back of the building. He, like any self-respecting toddler, threw himself down on the grass and had a tantrum. So I took him inside, went back and got Iyyar, and then put Barak in his room for a timeout. I closed the back door and was in the kitchen in time to hear, "I pished in my unnerwear! AhhhHHHHH!"

Oh, it's shaping up to be a great afternoon...

He's really pretty well toilet trained now but when he's really having a fit he does sometimes lose it--although it's been a few weeks since it's happened--and now that it's a fairly rare occurrence he gets even more upset when it does happen. Lots of screaming. No I will not take off my shoes, no I will not take off my soaking wet pants, no I will not take off my underwear. I went and mopped up the floor while the fit continued in the bathroom and Chanie ignored it entirely in favor of the dollhouse and Iyyar looked on with great interest at this educational experience. Suffice it to say that AN HOUR later, after Chanie's Imma had come to pick her up and Barak had been naked from the waist down screaming that I had to put his underwear on for him because he CAN'T PUT ONNA UNNERWEAR, he finally got his underwear on (by himself). I got his pants on. I got his socks on. It was 2:15. And I wish I could say everything was fine from then on, but, um, no.

Sigh.

By around four, after three hours of almost nonstop screaming and nap-refusal and every kind of defiance, I had a crashing headache and was so at the end of my rope I had put Iyyar in his crib, left Barak playing in the living room, and called MHH, asking him through gritted teeth to come home early from kollel (which I have not done since Iyyar was born). He came home and I turned around and went into my room, closed the door and hid under the blankets for the next hour. I couldn't quite sleep, though, as much as I needed it. Our walls aren't thick enough to keep out that kind of noise. In fact, the only walls I can think of offhand that might be are the three-foot-thick stone walls of a Lithuanian monastery-turned-youth-hostel I stayed at in 1995. But I digress.

They did both get into bed at a reasonable time. MHH gave them baths, I made dinner, and I did a little writing and a little knitting after they were asleep. They both slept through the night, with the exception of Iyyar waking up for a little cuddle once around 1, which is unusual for him.

I think I am generally pretty patient with my kids. At least I try. But sometimes I just get to the end of my rope. I have never hit or even been strongly tempted to hit either of them, but on days like that I have a better understanding of how people get to the point where they do. And I have more sympathy, too. I've never been there, B"H, but yesterday I just had to walk away and let someone else take over, because I was out of patience, energy, everything.

Today, fortunately, is off to a better start. Barak is at gan, Iyyar is off playing with Ada, and I'm ostensibly working. But I thought I'd just get that off my chest first.

Trip

I took Barak on a trip today. He's been talking about trains for a while, and I was thinking I would take him on a short train trip (commuter rail) from where I work to, um, a yarn store I've been wanting to visit. So I took him with me first to the midwife (aka "baby doctor") and then to the yarn store, via bus and train.

I don't have time to do it justice, because I have to do all the writing I didn't do this morning, but oh my gosh we had fun. At the midwife's I asked the nurse to let him listen to his own heart with the stethescope. I wasn't sure he'd be able to hear anything through his sweater, but from the look on his face it was obvious he could. Then he listened to my heart. Then the nurse left. "Barak, did you hear your heart?" "Yeah." "What did it sound like?" "Boom boom boom."

And then the midwife came in (the same one who delivered Iyyar, whom I have not seen since. "You look different!" she chirped. Yeah, just wait another three months or so...) She pulled out her Doppler and we listened to the baby's heartbeat. I think at that moment it sank in with Barak that something really is up with the expanding tummy that he isn't supposed to squish. He does know that dere's a new baby in dere, but I think it somehow clicked a little bit more today.

We took the train out to the yarn store afterwards, which took more than an hour. But it was fine--great, actually. Barak is just so much fun to travel with. And he was enjoying himself so much. Every so often he'd burst out with, "I likea trip! I like going on buses and trains!" or just start laughing like mad out of nowhere, which he does when he's really having fun. He ate his Bamba and crackers very neatly (you know, in the scheme of things) while looking out the window and mostly sitting still. He did object a little when the train kept slowing down, but I pointed out that a slow train offered enhanced opportunities for truck-spotting, of which there were many. We saw a number of excavators, some forklifts, a few cranes, a bulldozer and an articulated bus. We also saw an old building with gargoyles ("Goblins!")

And my son, bless him, reminded me on the way to the yarn store, "Gotta buy lotta yarn, Imma. You need a lot of yarn. You don't have enough yarn. Iss very important ta have a lotta yarn."

Do you think he's my kid? Yeah, me too.

More bits and bobs

Nothing major to report, just little things with the kids. The usual, you know. How about a list?

1. Iyyar must be in some crazy growth spurt, because the child eats all. the. time. The day before yesterday he woke up from his nap and ate half an avocado, two scrambled eggs with vegetables and cheese, a full cup of milk, some challah, and a huge banana. And he was still asking for more. I told MHH about this later. "That was lunch?" he asked incredulously. "No," I said. "He'd already had lunch. That was his midafternoon snack. And he had dinner later." Last checkup, he was in the 15th percentile for weight. I'm interested to see what it will be next time. He looks to me like he's chunking up, but he's still a pretty skinny baby.

2. Except, of course, that he is less and less of a baby every day. Gone are the days when Barak could take any toy away from him just by dint of handing him something else. Now Iyyar holds it far away and hollers, "na na na!" Today when the were taking a bath I had to laugh. Iyyar wanted nose turkey baster thing, which has inexplicably morphed into a bath toy (well, it isn't so inexplicable--it does squirt, after all). Barak had it. So Iyyar scooped up a little plastic Tigger, held it out to Barak, and grabbed the baster out of his hand. He's catching on.

3. For the last seven months or so, Barak has been sleeping on a crib mattress on the floor. I didn't want to get him an actual toddler bed (which takes a crib-sized mattress) because he is such an, ah, athletic sleeper that I was sure he'd fall out no matter what kind of a crib rail I used. Often I'd go in there to check up on him and find him sound asleep on the wood floor halfway across the room from his bed. The trouble was, of course, that eventually he'd wake up and find himself not in his bed, and get disoriented and cry. So I thought, right, I really need to find him a bed. I started trawling the local craigslist and found him a used train bed. On Friday, the guy I bought it from dropped it off. Barak now refers to him as the "train man." The train man brought the pieces of bed up our back stairs, into their room, and started setting it up. Barak watched in fascination.

"Dass where da steam gonna come out," he informed me, point at the smokestack.

"Right, that's the smokestack," I agreed, not quite getting where he was headed.

He frowned at the front piece. "Dere's no steering wheel on dere, Imma. It needs ta have a steering wheel."

"Trains don't have steering wheels, sweetie. They run on tracks. They just have throttles. Grandpa can tell you all about it."

Then the sides went on. Barak looked even more disturbed. "Imma," he said, worried, "I sink dose wheels are not gonna work." I looked at the wheels. Indeed, they were only about 3/5 wheels. The bottom part was flat on the floor. Ohh. I get it now.

"Barak, you can't drive this train."

He looked pained. "Iss gonna go chugga chugga choo choo?"

"No, it doesn't drive. It's a train bed. You sleep in it."

"No, I not gonna sleep in it. I needa just drive it."

I thought abou this. "Well, Barak, look. What would happen if you tried to drive it? Where would you go?" He looked at the train. I could see him thinking. "You'd drive right into the rocking chair and the armoire, wouldn't you? You'd go crash. That wouldn't be good." He seemed to accept this. Later, after Abba had put in all the screws holding the bed together, he went to bed very happily, with no complaining at all (probably a first) and stayed in bed all night. In the morning when he woke up, I asked him if he liked his train bed.

"Yeah," he said happily. "I like da train bed. You can't drive it. You can just sleep in it." Indeed.

4. Iyyar, on the other hand, is showing no inclination to try to drive the train bed, but oh my does he love climbing on it. He did initially have some trouble getting off, though. He tried getting off it the way he goes down the baby slide at the J: holding onto one side with both hands and sort of hanging off. It didn't really work so well. "Barak, can you show Iyyar how to get off the bed? Show him how to go on your tummy and put your feet down." Barak demonstrated, Iyyar watched, and he did it himself right away. Now the train is his oyster.

5. Last night, both Iyyar and Barak slept incredibly well, and incredibly late. They woke up at 8:15. It was fabulous--I got to sleep for seven hours straight (I'd been up writing speeches the night before). However, putting Iyyar down for his usual 10 am nap clearly wasn't happening. When he was still awake an hour before I had to go pick up Barak at gan, I told Asnat not to put him down for a nap at all. I put him down after I came back with Barak, and then thought, well, what the heck--Iyyar's asleep, let's do a little baking. I made pizza dough and bagel dough and put it to rise, and then Barak and I made cookies. I took out the hand mixer and gave him my usual safety lecture. "Okay, so where are your fingers when Imma is using the mixer? Do you put your fingers anywhere near the mixer?"

"No!" said Barak. "Cause you could hurt yourself wif da mixer! You could hurt your fingers!"

"Right. You could really hurt your fingers a lot."

"Yeah," he said, a little too enthusiastically. "You could break your finger!" And then, very earnestly, "Chas v'shalom." ("God forbid.")

6. Iyyar has discovered Bamba. Bamba, in case you are among the uninitiated, is a sort of Israeli snack/junk food for babies. It's basically ground peanuts, corn oil, and a lot of added vitamins. I don't think there's anything in there that's actually bad for you, but it's pretty highly processed and not something I would ordinarily buy for a 17-month-old. The little boy who is here in the morning sharing Ada and Asnat with Iyyar, however, is Israeli, and his Israeli mom packs him Bamba. So now Iyyar knows about Bamba. He knows all about Bamba.

When Barak was a baby, starting at around nine or ten months, he had something of a fixation with Yobabies. He is still, for the record, extremely fond of yogurt, but at the time it was the only thing he got with added sugar and boy was it big. It was big to the point where if I was shopping with him and I wanted to buy Yobabies, I had to sneak them into the cart and, more difficult, through the checkout without him seeing. I remember piling them onto the conveyor camouflaged behind a box of Cheerios turned sideways. If he saw them, forget it--he'd scream and scream and SCREAM until he got on, and more than once I had to find a spoon and feed him one right there in the store because I couldn't handle the 35-minute walk home with him howling the whole way.

Iyyar is now like this with Bamba. He sees that shiny little blue bag. He knows just what is in there. And he WANTS IT. Yesterday we went grocery shopping and I bought three little bags of Bamba, for a planned bus/train trip I was going to take them on (fun for Barak, not so much for Iyyar, hence the distraction.) But he saw them. Now there are two bags of Bamba.

7. Barak is pretty much toilet trained now. He hasn't had an accident in a while, and now I only occasionally need to remind him to go to the bathroom. If he says he doesn't need to go, he's usually right, and most of the time he will take the initiative to go by himself. He does, however, have a habit of telling me he doesn't need to poop potty before going to bed, saving this ace card for a bed escape route later. So we often have a situation where I put both boys to bed, am on my way out of the bedroom, and hear Barak behind me piping up, "Imma, I needa poop potty."

That's what happened tonight. So he went off to the bathroom, I sat down to read email and knit, and MHH came home from work. "Where's Barak?" "On the potty," I said. We both heard Barak's running monologue coming from the bathroom. Ten minutes or so later, I heard Barak calling me. "Why don't you go see what he wants? You haven't seen him all day." MHH went off to the bathroom. I didn't hear the details, but I did hear, "I want Imma!" and then "I need IMMA!" and then "I NEED IMMA" and the sound of the bathroom door slamming. MHH slouched back into the office. "Chopped liver," he said. "He wants you." I didn't really like how Barak had spoken to Abba, so didn't quite leap up to his assistance. I finished the sock round I was on, then another one, as Barak's wails got louder and more hysterical. Finally I felt bad for him and went in. Barak, naked on the potty, covered in tears and snot, holding his little yellow metal schoolbus--which is maybe two or three times the size of a Matchbox car.

"Imma!" he hiccuped tragically. "I need you ta help me! I need you ta take da paper out of da bus. Iss stuck in dere." I look and, indeed, the entire bus is stuffed with tiny bits of toilet paper. That must have taken him a while. I take the bus. "Barak, that wasn't such a nice way to talk to Abba. Abba could have helped you take the paper out of the bus."

"Noooo," he said, very earnestly (for Barak is always earnest.) "He can't do dat. Hiss fingers are too big." For the record, my fingers were also too big for the schoolbus door, which was at most 1/4 inch across. I used a dental tool to get the shreds out.

when what in my mailbox should appear...

Chol ha'moed is hard. Why is chol ha'moed hard? Because you're not supposed to knit, of course.

And what did I just get in my inbox to distract me from this terrible state of deprivation? None other than a ravelry invite.

Oh, dear.

Another recipe!

Whole wheat challah with sprinkles (or not)

I get four huge loaves and a dozen rolls out of this recipe. I do it in a Bosch with the seven-quart bread bowl; I wouldn't attempt it in anything smaller.

4 cups warm water
3 T yeast
1 cup sugar (sometimes I use brown)
generous squirt of honey or maple syrup
1 cup oil
heaping tablespoon salt
8 eggs
full 5-lb bag King Arthur white whole wheat flour (possibly a little bit more or less, depending on the weather)
Sprinkles, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or all three

Throw everything but the flour and one of the eggs in the mixer bowl. Then dump in a cup or two of flour and mix until, well, it's mixed. Let it sit there for a few minutes. Then add in most of the rest of the flour and mix some more. If the dough seems too wet, add a bit more flour until it seems right. (Very scientific, I know.) Then mix on the lowest speed you have for about ten minutes. Dump the whole glob of dough--it will be a large glob indeed--into an oiled bowl and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.

(If you are going to be mafrish the challah, do it now, and if you're going to burn the separated piece on the bottom of the oven floor, for heaven's sake check that you haven't stuck anything in there like, oh, say, your entire set of Pyrex with the lids, because if you turn your oven to 525 all the plastic will melt, filling your apartment with appalling toxic smoke and setting off all nine of your smoke detectors. Wait--what do you mean, you don't have nine smoke detectors?! Doesn't everyone have at least that many?)

Summon your local three-year-old for the fun part, if he's wandered off during the rising stage. Shape the challah however you like and put it into or onto pans lined with parchment paper. (Note to those who have been mafrish the challah but not put it in the oven yet: do not, DO NOT, leave the little separated glob where local three-year-old might see it and innocently lob it back into the bowl of dough. If he does, you will find yourself unpleasantly surprised by the answer to your shaila.) As soon as you've shaped them, beat the remaining egg with a bit of cold water and smear it on top of the loaves. A pastry brush is nice for this, but since I lost mine three moves ago I can attest to the fact that fingers, while messy, work fine.

Sprinkle with topping of your choice. If your sous-chef is a preschooler, dispatch him or her to a different work surface with the challot he or she is authorized to coat with sprinkles, or you may find yourself with six challahs all covered with technicolor sugar. Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, of course.

Preheat oven to 350 if you have light-colored pans, or 330 if, like me, you use dark Chicago Metallic nonstick pans. If your oven is big enough, just use the middle rack; if, like me, you don't have an industrial-sized oven, you'll probably have to move the challah around mid-bake because the bottoms of the challahs on the bottom rack might start to burn. How long it will take to bake them depends on how big you've shaped them--anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour. If you're not sure if they're done, leave them in for another 5 minutes. Burned bottoms are better than gooey middles.

Let them cool on wire racks. If you're not going to use them right away, freeze them the moment they're cooled in tightly sealed plastic bags with all of the air squeezed out.

Recipes

I've noticed that pretty much the only topic of discussion that reliably gets me comments on this here blog is anything pertaining to food, cooking, and/or recipes. Even a direct and blatant plea for reassurance that somebody is actually reading this thing didn't do it. (It wasn't the contractor, by the way--I'm sure of that now--but I still have no clue who it was.)

So, I'll try this. Here, in case you are interested, is Barak's favorite dinner: the only non-diarrhea-inducing vehicle through which carrots are considered acceptable for consumption.

Carrot pancakes a la Barak

1.5 cups whole wheat flour (I use King Arthur white whole wheat)
1.75 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients together, or get your handy local three-year-old to do it for you.

3 slightly beaten eggs
3 T melted butter
1.25 C milk

Mix liquid ingredients together, then mix them quickly with the dry ingredients.

Then add in two big carrots, peeled and grated on the finest side of your grater. You can't get lazy with this--if you use the coarser side, the carrots will still be semi-crunchy when the pancakes are done. Ick.

Melt butter in your pan and cook pancakes as per any other pancake. I like these with strawberry jam, since they are not really sweet at all. If you want sweeter pancakes, add a couple of tablespoons of sugar with the dry ingredients. Barak also likes these cold, in his lunch.

Department of mysteries

I would like to politely request that anyone about to read this post please leave a comment with their theories. Thank you very much.

This afternoon, I went downstairs to check the mail. When I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, the door hit a box. I looked behind the door at the box and saw that my first name, spelled wrong, was written on all sides of the box in blue magic marker. The box was a rear-facing infant car seat box, containing, the label promised, one Evenflo 5 carseat, in a pattern of little bears.

I brought the box up, it having my name all over it and all, and left it in my living room and went back to work. My first thought was that a friend, possibly the divorced mother of two small kids across the street, was passing along a used car seat. The box had been opened and retaped, so I assumed it was used. You can't use a used carseat if you don't know where it's from, since it might have been in an accident, so I called the friend and left her a message asking if she knew anything about it. Then I emailed a friend saying what had just happened. "Are you sure it's a carseat?" she asked. Hmm. Good point. The box had been opened, after all--maybe somebody returning a borrowed object before Yom Kippur?

I opened the box and found a brand-new car seat, in gender-neutral colors, with the tags still on--and 13 cans of Nestle Good Start Supreme milk-based baby formula, stuck in the empty spaces around the box. No card. No note. No identifying information at all. A tracking label on the side indicates that it passed through a Wal-Mart shipping center, so it was bought at either Wal-Mart or Sam's Club--neither of which is very close to us.

Huh?!

All the reasons why this is weird:

1. Anonymous gift. Okay, not that weird--it could happen.

2. Baby gift four months before the baby is due. Very un-Jewish thing to do, and almost all my friends in town are either Jewish or work friends who, presumably, know how to spell my name.

3. Anyone who knows us would probably know that a) we don't have a car, b) we have two kids, so probably already have a carseat or two, and c) I nurse my babies. Anyone who knew us but not well would probably have written our last name on the box--or gotten my first name out of the community directory, in which case they'd have spelled it correctly.

4. Anyone who knows us knows that I work at home, so am usually here in the mornings. Not the best time to sneakily leave a gift, although I suppose it could have been left last night without our knowing.

Possibilities: random ba'al chesed (charitable person) in the community. Probably not--like I said, very un-Jewish to give a baby gift pre-arrival of baby.

Random friend? Maybe. But who isn't Jewish and doesn't know how to spell my name? If it were someone from MHH's work, s/he would have written our last name, not my first name.

The contractor who is fixing up our house from all the water damage. The most likely possibility, as a) he is not Jewish, b) he seems to like us, since his mother is Hungarian and he heard me speaking Hungarian to Barak, and c) he commented on my being pregnant "again." He has only heard my name, not seen it written, and I don't think he knows our last name at all, since he was hired by the condo association. Plus, formula feeding is very standard in his part of the world--he is Romanian. He is a friendly guy, and I know he has a young daughter, because he mentioned it. But. That was a very expensive gift--a $50 carseat plus 13 cans of formula. Thirteen is an unlucky number in Romania, so why thirteen cans? Plus, we're Jewish and he's not, he's Romanian, etc., etc. He does not know us--I've talked to him only a few times. The handwriting on the box does not match the handwriting on the estimate he wrote us. The box was left out by the mailboxes, where anyone could have stolen it, and not in front of our door--a part of the building to which he has access. I know where he lives, and it is the opposite direction to Wal-Mart. And why on earth would he do that? Besides which, he has been in our basement, where we've got the carseats, which are in pretty good shape, our not having a car and all. And even if he's just randomly an extremely nice person, that's still... weird. He may be the only person I can think of, but I can't imagine it was actually him.

Family? No. Unknown friends? I'm pretty sure I don't have any. Secret admirers? I'm a little on the fat and pregnant side right now for that. Neighbors? No--either we don't know them, or they know our names. I mean, our name is on the mailbox!

I gave away the formula already--the cans were sealed so I saw no reason to be suspicious. The carseat will, IY"H, come in handy--it's often nice to have a spare.

But... huh???

Theories, wild or otherwise, are most welcome.

Feeling better about the kitchen

My house is often a mess. It's not a horrible, cataclysmic, unhygienic mess (often), but it is rarely as clean as I would like. There are usually dishes in the sink, or in one of the dishpans. There are usually toys on the floor. There is almost always a backlog of laundry, to be washed or to be folded and put away. There's usually something on the floor and/or the counters that I should have wiped up hours ago.

I feel bad about this. I like my house to be clean. It makes me feel more in control, and I think it's just a better way to live one's life. And just having kids is no excuse for the mess--I know people with many more kids than I have who manage to keep their houses pretty much spotless, pretty much all of the time, without full-time cleaning help or even husbands who are around much. I won't lie. Sometimes it makes me feel a little bit, um, inadequate in the housekeeping department (and really, more reasons to feel inadequate are just what I need, aren't they?)

Last night, I went with a friend to help set up for another friend's new baby's bris. This friend lives across the street from me, was Barak's morah last year, and is one of my closest friends in town. She made the shalom zachor for Iyyar, takes me along on Trader Joe's runs, and was the one I called when we had water pouring out of our light fixtures and needed somewhere else to spend the night. She has twice as many kids as I do, who are always clean and usually pretty delightful, and not only is her house impeccably tidy and organized, but she cooks genuine meals with more than one dish out of healthful food every night. She has a job, not quite as many hours as I work, but still.

I was telling her that Iyyar had stopped nursing, and she was commiserating. "I can't wait to start nursing again," she said. (She's expecting a new baby IY"H in a couple of weeks.) "It makes me pay attention to them. If I did formula, I'd never pay attention to my kids."

I said something about not paying as much attention to my kids as I wish I did. She was driving, but looked at me sideways like I was crazy. "You pay so much attention to your kids!" she said. "You pay much more attention than I do. You talk to them all the time. I'm always running around doing things. As soon as they're self-sufficient, they just go off and do their own thing, and I'm off doing whatever. I never pay attention to my kids."

This last, by the way, is totally untrue; I'm just relaying the conversation. "Well, then that's why my house is always a disaster!" I said. "I'm too busy paying attention to my kids!"

"Well, which is more important, your kids or your house?!"

True enough. It's not a license to let everything fall apart, because when it does I'm miserable; but I have to admit it did make me feel better about my kitchen floor.

Car pajamas!

Is he styling or what?

...and other highlights of the chag

I thought over the course of the chag of about a dozen things I wanted to blog about, and have forgotten most of them. Well, let's see how many I can remember.

1. Iyyar stopped nursing on Shabbos. That's the big one. Up until a few weeks ago he was still pretty much nursing whenever he felt like it, which was often, all day long. I was starting to think that maybe we should put a limit on things when he got the toxic diarrhea attack, and I was worried about him not drinking enough, so for a couple of weeks there he was even nursing more than usual, not less. When he started feeling better I started trying to distract him from nursing when he wasn't waking up or going to sleep; it went okay, although he did periodically climb into my lap, grab the neck of my shirt with both hands, and peer down in there just to check that everything was still where it should be. Kind of like checking the refrigerator to see what's in there, even when you're not actually about to eat. Last week, he went to sleep without nursing a couple of times, so I started putting him to bed with just a cuddle, and that went over fine; over Rosh Hashana, my husband got him out of bed, and instead of wailing inconsolably until handed over to Imma, he just got down on the floor and started to play. On Shabbos, I picked him up to nurse him and he sort of latched but didn't really nurse; he just kind of looked at me, looked around, and then slid off my lap in search of toys. All done.

It's always a little sad, but it's definitely time; he's halfway through his seventeenth month, I'm well into my fifth, and I can't imagine he was getting much anyway. It's nice to be able to just sit and snuggle without him campaigning to nurse. Still... sniff.

2. Barak and sleep.... argh. Those who have been reading this blog for more than, oh, a week, will know that Barak was born and remains a terrible sleeper. He hates going to sleep and has never yet gone to sleep without a few declarations of "I don't wanna go night-night," usually at volume. Our original round of potty-trained was abandoned when he figured out that bedtime could be postponed indefinitely by crying "Poop potty!" from his crib; his standard sleep avoidance repertoire now includes at least one potty trip, plus drink of water, book, other book, etc. A few months ago, when he woke up at night (which he generally does a few times, every night) he would wake up calling "Imma! I needa pish potty!" I told him that if he needed to pish potty at night, he did not need to yell, cry, or call for me; he could just get up and go.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Yeah, well. This is Barak we're talking about. So for the last couple of months, whenever he's woken up, he's a) screamed about pishing potty for a while, often waking up Iyyar, before b) going into the bathroom by himself and screaming for help pishing potty, which he patently does not require, and c) coming into our room, finding a spare blanket and going to sleep on our floor. In principle I have no objection to the occasional visiting toddler on our floor, as long as said toddler does not have territorial ambitions including our bed. However, I do not want it to become standard. Also, while I can do fairly well on quite little sleep if it is uninterrupted, I do very badly indeed with even seven hours' sleep if I get woken up every hour or two all night long, even if only for a couple of minutes.

Yom tov got particularly bad. Instead of one or two wakeups a night, we were up to, oh, I don't know, a lot. Iyyar woke up, Barak woke up, they woke each other up, they woke me up. They also woke up my husband, who has a tendency to get sort of enraged when woken up by howling small people who are in no obvious pain. Then he gets angry, the kids get more upset, and there's more howling, etc. So the last night of yom tov I told Barak that he was not sleeping in Imma and Abba's room, he was not going to come out of his room, and he should not call for Imma because Imma was going to be asleep. (I am not an idiot, by the way, and have tried variations of "ignore your child when he cries" many, many, many times. They haven't worked. Ever. My kids just assume I can't possibly be hearing them and cry louder, till dawn if that's what it takes.)

However, this time things seemed to be marginally more successful. Iyyar woke up twice, but with dirty diapers, so can't blame him for that; Barak woke up and cried, I ignored him, and for what was possibly the first time ever, he just went back to sleep.

Seven hours! of sleep! in a row! Wow.

3. (Hey, this is getting long already.) Iyyar's vocabulary has recently expanded to include the essential toddler word "no." When he says it, it sounds like "nah," and he shakes his head vigorously for emphasis. He enjoys saying it so much that he says it to most things, sometimes even things he clearly wants. "Nah," he tells me emphatically, before stretching out his hand to the cup of milk I'm holding.

4. Iyyar's walking is now much much better, and he rarely crawls. He still does the flat-footed, splay-legged toddler lumber, but not with the zombie hand position. It's funny to notice the things he does like Barak did at this age, like walk around the house banging two Lego together, or pointing at Abba's books on the shelf that he knows he is not allowed to remove, asking politely, "Dis? Dis? Dis?" about each in turn. How about this Gemara, Imma? Can I pull this fifteen-pound tome off the shelf? No? How about this one?

5. Remember the Little Tikes car I got a couple of weeks ago. Barak likes it, but Iyyar loves it. It is his go-to toy, any time he sees it. He gets in, he gets out, he climbs in through the driver's entrance and then through the window, he pulls out the steering wheel and puts it back in. He puts Little People in the trunk. Sometimes he gets lucky and Barak pushes him around in it. He loves it, and spends a lot of time cackling with delight.

6. Speaking of delight, I bought Barak new pajamas yesterday. I am a big devotee of LL Bean's heavy polarfleece pajamas for toddlers, and that's what my kids have slept in in all previous winters. This winter, Iyyar is almost ready for Barak's 2T PJ's, but Barak is pretty thoroughly out of his 3T pajamas--and those nice LL Bean ones won't be on sale till December. I looked online, thinking I might buy them anyway--we keep our thermostat low in the winter--but quickly discarded that idea when I realized I'd be spending upward of $25 a pair. No way. So I decided to get him a couple of pairs at Target ($11.98 for two pairs, totally flimsy and cheap), hope they lasted till the December sale, and stock up on the really warm pajamas then. I went to Target yesterday and got a set that had one light blue pair with a car on the front, and one dark blue pair printed all over with little cars.

You have never seen joy and glee until you have seen a three-year-old boy with a motor vehicle obsession put on pajamas with cars! all! over! He literally cavorted around his room, dancing and singing (ai nai nai!) for a good fifteen minutes. Car pajamas! I gotta car pajamas! Iss got little cars! Iss got yellow ones and green ones! The joy, the joy!

Somehow I don't think I'm going to be replacing those with plain red LL Bean pajamas anytime soon, no matter how much warmer and better-made they may be.

Halakhic Man Does the Dishes

When halakhic man approaches reality, he comes with his Torah, given to him from Sinai, in hand... And when many halakhic concepts do not correspond with the phenomena of the real world, halakhic man is not at all distressed.

-Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halachic Man

[Note: Some details and identities have been changed, for narrative flow and to protect the innocent.]

My husband and I have fairly clearly defined roles within the running of our household. In some ways it might look as though the division of labor runs along traditional male/female lines: I do the cooking and most of the housework, I am the one primarily in charge of the children, and my husband spends most of his time out of the house either learning, davening, or earning a living. In fact, though, the apportioning of responsibilities is made on a somewhat different basis. Me, I deal with the physical world; my husband deals with everything else.

Do you want to know how one of the rishonim paskened on some issue in taarovos? Ask my husband--he passed the bechina. Do you want to know where the fleishig forks are, and whether the bottom of that bowl you just put on my treif counter was at yad soledes bo? Ask me. You want to know all about a hetter iska and who paskened how about levying interest? Ask my husband. Want to know how much our mortgage payment actually is, and how much we paid in interest last year? That would be me.

When the yamim noraim are on the way, my husband is the one up at all hours going to selichos. He's the one getting in the extra learning, working on the teshuva, asking mechila and making sure to have his house in order (spiritually, that is). He's the one who put the poster about how to have a more meaningful Rosh Hashana with your kids on the fridge. He's the one who thinks, yom ha'din is coming, and I'm not ready.

Me, I think something a little different. I think, guests are coming, and I'm not ready. I am the one who fills foil pan after foil pan for my husband to haul down to the basement freezer. I'm the one making the soup and the cakes, and the kugels and the knaidlach. I'm the one laying in supplies of non-perforated tissues (Target brand are the best) and wipes (Target brand again), making sure we have enough paper plates and little paper cups for kiddush, enough grape juice and tablecloth covers. I make sure everybody has clothes that fit, that the paper towels are torn, that there are new books for the kids to keep them busy over the three-day yom tov. I invite the guests, and figure out who is davening when so we know when we're liable to start eating. And I'm the one trying to keep the kids more or less sane, when everything about their normal schedule is completely blown apart by a three-day yom tov.

I did hear shofar. I got that far. Barak and I went to hear shofar, and I was the only mother there who had forgotten to bring pekelach to keep him quiet with; every other child there had a little plastic bag of candy and treats with at least one lollipop, distributed with stern instructions not to open until shofar-blowing. He watched lollipops being passed out, and accepted my whispered, "I'm so sorry, I forgot to bring you, but if you can be quiet when they're blowing shofar you can have a treat when we get home." He listened completely silently, and with interest; when we got home, he had a peanut butter granola bar from Trader Joe's.

That was the entire spiritual aspect of my Rosh Hashana. I am ashamed to admit that not once did it even occur to me to crack open a machzor. When my husband and his father, who was with us for the holiday, were at shul and Iyyar went down for his morning nap, I did not even think of davening; instead, I made salads, or cleaned the kitchen, or lay down on the couch to rest while Barak played. On the first night, I did all the dishes and had the entire kitchen clean before I went to bed, even though it was late and I was collapsing. It is the only sane way through a three-day yom tov--you cannot let any mess accumulate. First day lunch, after our guests left, I cleaned up the living room (we don't have a dining room, and when we have more than six people for a meal set up a long folding table in the living room--which is almost at the absolute opposite end of the apartment from our kitchen, down a very long hall). I moved into the kitchen and started scraping and stacking dishes. MHH, who had a sefer open in his hand, came into the kitchen.

"Are you sure you should be doing that? Isn't that hachana? You shouldn't be preparing for the second day before the first is over."

"I'm not preparing for the second day. I'm doing the dishes so that we don't get ants in the kitchen, and so that all the food doesn't dry on, and it isn't all gross in here."

"It's not all gross in here. The kitchen's clean. It's just the dishes."

"I can't leave dirty dishes in my sink."

"Do we need them before dinner?"

"No."

"Leave them. I'll do them tonight."

Now, when my husband makes an offer like that, he is invariably totally sincere. He has every intention of doing the dishes. He may even intend to do all the dishes, possibly even emptying the dishrack before beginning. He means well, there is no doubt about that. But his batting average so far as actually getting everything done to where I would consider it done is, well, let's just say he's not getting out of the minors. Or in them, probably.

"Just let me do the dishes."

"Go rest. You need to go rest. I'll do them!"

"Will you really do them? I'm sorry to doubt you, but I really don't want to wake up to dirty dishes."

He looks miffed. "I'm telling you I have every intention of doing them. I'm not going to lie to you on Rosh Hashana. Bli neder I'll do them. Now go lie down."

I don't think I actually went to lie down--I think I took the kids to the park. But I did not do the dishes. There weren't that many; we'd had a family with lots of kids for lunch and I'd decided to keep my good china in the cupboard and use paperware. It was just serving dishes and utensils, water glasses for the adults, the kiddush cup and so on.

I put the kids to bed. I lit for the second night. I warmed up the food, set the table, waited for my husband and his dad to get home from shul. Kiddush, motzi, meal, bentching. Time for me to go to bed--or start cleaning up.

"Are you still planning on doing the dishes?"

"Oh, right. The dishes." My husband looks around, and his father, who is praiseworthy in both his willingness to do dishes and his willingness to refrain from touching anything in my kitchen when I've asked him not to, looks up. Aha! his father is clearly thinking. I will help do the dishes, because my son will know what is milchig and what is fleishig and what goes where!

I look at the dishes. I look at my husband. "Can I just be sure before I go to bed that it's all going to be done when I get up?"

My husband begins to look visibly uncomfortable. We have a long track record of very different approaches to dishwashing and kitchen-cleaning. I think of it as a perfective verb: I have washed the dishes, and the dishes are clean. My husband, he does some dishes, or spends time washing dishes, or does a bit of dishwashing. He wants me to be happy. He has no idea what he is supposed to be doing.

"Can you just specify for me exactly what I should be doing here?"

I try very hard not to heave a long-suffering sigh. I mostly fail. "Put away all the food, in covered containers. Wash all the dishes. There shouldn't be anything left on the table at all. Wipe down the table and the counters. There are paper towels torn up in that bag over there. There shouldn't be anything on the counters related to this meal or lunch."

My father-in-law seems to take this with equanimity. My husband's brows start to pleat. He looks intently at the sink. He looks at the dishrack, which has a few dry dishes in it from lunch. "Am I going to have to empty the dishrack?"

"Yes, you're going to have to empty the dishrack."

"Can I do that? Isn't that borer (sorting)?"

"No, that's not borer."

"How is that not borer?"

"Because you can do it on yom tov. Every family I have ever known has put away dishes on yom tov. It is okay."

His gaze travels to the sink. "What should I wash the dishes with?"

"The shabbos scrubber, right there. It's that plastic bristled brush, marked 'meat.'"

"Isn't that s'chita (wringing)? Are you sure that's okay for yom tov?"

"It's fine."

"How do you know it's fine."

"It's a plastic bristle brush. It doesn't absorb water. There's nothing to wring."

We went on like this for a while, establishing that yes, it was entirely muttar to clear the table, put the food away, wipe the counters and so on. After a while, my father-in-law interjected, to my husband.

"You know where all the dishes go, right?"

My husband starts looking even more uncomfortable. He has no idea where anything in the dishrack goes. I can tell just by looking at him.

"Those are Shabbos china," I tell him. "It all goes in the hutch in the living room, the white hutch in the corner of the hall."

Eyebrows go up. "We need to carry those dishes all the way to the living room?"

My eyebrows go up. I have, after all, been serving entire meals from the Siberia of my kitchen to the Moscow of my living room. "It's not that far. I'm pretty sure it's within t'chum (the distance permissible to walk on Shabbos or yom tov.)"

"Okay, okay," he says hastily. "I just wanted to be sure."

At this point, I am pretty confident that things will be okay. My father-in-law will not let my husband go to bed without finishing up, and reason and cleanliness will probably prevail. "Don't forget that the back burner is on," I remind him. "Don't go putting any of the dishwashing tubs on the back of the stove."

"We won't," they assure me, and I go to bed.

At about 3 am, Barak woke up crying, and woke up Iyyar. I got them back to sleep, and then peeked into the kitchen, just to see. It looked pretty good. The water pitcher was still on the table, the counters needed work, the sink wasn't wiped, but all the dishes were definitely done and all the food was definitely put away. I felt a little bit guilty for my lack of faith. I went back to bed.

A few hours later, I was woken by my husband, hissing in my ear, "I'm really really sorry, but I think everything's okay." This is never the ideal way to be woken, especially not on yom tov.

"Are the kids okay?"

"Yeah, the kids are fine. It's the kitchen."

"I saw the kitchen. It's fine. What's wrong?"

"Well, we cleaned the kitchen. But I forgot about the burner. And I put the high chair tray on the back of the stove..."

Do you know what I think? I think it just didn't register--because bishul (cooking) is muttar (permissible) on yom tov.

From the mouths of kinderlach

Sitting on the couch tonight with Barak, post-story, pre-bedtime:

"Barak, do you like tom yov?"

"I likea little bit yom tov. I don't likea lot. I likea little bit."

I think he speaks for us all.

Erev chag

Last year, my Yom Tov preparations were, shall we say, somewhat lacking. Iyyar was still in the phase (that six-month-long phase) of nightly screamfests, I was catching up at work from twelve weeks out, Barak was still waking up hourly all night long, and I was in that state of advanced sleep deprivation where you are seeing double for hours on end and don't even notice anymore.

This year is better.

Okay, the last couple of weeks have been pretty chaotic. I haven't slept much, and the kitchen has been in a pretty constant state of disaster. I don't think Barak's had a vegetable since Sunday and all the male members of the household had blueberry waffles and milk or yogurt for dinner. But you know what? My kitchen is completely clean. My kids' room is clean. The back bedroom is ready for my FIL, who should be here IY"H within the hour, and there are vegetables and brown rice for him cooking on the stove (macrobiotic etc.) The freezer in the basement is loaded with foil pans and the 11 loaves of challah and a dozen rolls that Barak helped me make (he only put sprinkles on some of them.) We have broccoli kugel, pumpkin kugel, mushroom-barley kugel, and all of their kin; we have roast, and meatloaf, and chicken soup, and cabbage stuffed and fried; we have pumpkin cake and brownies and chocolate peanut butter Rice Krispie treats. The bottom shelf of the closet is full of grape juice and seltzer. We are stocked with tissues and diapers and wipes; I bought two new sippie cups for fleishigs; MHH made it to the keilim mikva with my new cookie sheets.

It's not totally perfect. Our bedroom is a mess, I haven't put away the laundry, and I have a billion work-related things to do tomorrow. We're out of cat litter, and I haven't made matzo balls, and I still have to make salads and the fresh vegetable-type dishes I couldn't do ahead; I didn't invite all the guests I probably should have, and I know that erev yom tov will be a scramble, because it always is.

But hey--it's a whole lot better than last year. Shana tova, everyone. May you be inscribed for a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year, with lots of good sleep, a minimum of screaming, only leak-free roofs, and lots and lots of nachas.

O to be in England (and other tales)

In the late nineties, I lived in England for a year, getting a master's degree in Russian. (As I said to everyone who asked, "I'm the only person ever to study in England for the great food and fabulous weather.") I'm still good friends with a few people from that year, and one of them paid us a brief visit last weekend while in the country for an academic conference.

She's not Jewish, and has stayed with us before on Shabbos so knew the drill. Our front door (we live in an apartment building, remember) is not Shabbos-friendly (electric lock) but our back door opens directly into the backyard. So I told her to come right in the back. Friday night, right before MHH got home, I heard the doorbell ring. The front doorbell. Hmm--did she forget? Weird. I couldn't buzz her up, obviously, so I propped open our door, and ran down to let her in.

"It IS the right house! I was so worried!"

"Why? Didn't you see the number?"

"I did, but you said that I should come in the back. I couldn't find your back door, so I thought this must not be it!"

"What?" We live in a square building surrounded on all sides by a fenced-in grass yard. How could she not find the back door?

"I couldn't find the back of the building! I was walking up and down the street, and I went in the alley but it was dark, and my bag was heavy, and I didn't know what to do and couldn't find anyone to ask."

I was totally confused. "You saw the number on the house, right? Why didn't you just walk around the building to the back?"

Blank pause. "Well there's no path, or anything!"

I start remembering that she is not only English, but very very English.

"You just walk on the grass."

"Walk on the grass?" Stare of shock and disbelief. "Oh. Right." Pause. "People do that?!"

Ah, England.

I don't miss England generally, but I do miss certain things about it: Cadbury Dairy Milk with Caramel (she brought me two five-packs!), Minstrels (two bags!) and Marmite (big fat jar!) I don't eat Marmite that often, just because I rarely eat toast, but when you want Marmite nothing else will do. (Speak to me not of Vegemite, for it is but a pale wimpy imitation.) I do, however, have a rather strange modus operendi when it comes to Marmite consumption. A little backstory:

I developed my taste for Marmite before living in England, when I lived with a few English people with a penchant for the deliciously tarry goop. Then I went to Russia for the summer. The weather was fine, but there was almost nothing I could eat. I ate a lot of toast. A LOT of toast. And pancakes. With sour cream. Fattening food, but you get sick of it fast, and I lost about thirteen pounds in two months. Two weeks before I left, I was staying in a Moscow youth hostel and met a woman from Britain who was there for a week or so doing field work for her degree. In her bag was... a pot of Marmite. I definitely did not ask her to do this or even hint, but I guess my look of starved longing was such that she took pity on me and gave it to me. For the rest of the summer, I ate pancakes with sour cream--and Marmite. I am probably the only person in the world who thinks that sour cream and Marmite on pancakes is absolutely the perfect combination.

Fast-forward to today. This afternoon, Barak needed some Imma activity (more later on our, ah, behavioral issues these days) and we made carrot pancakes. I ate them with Marmite and sour cream. Then I gave some to Iyyar. He thought they were great.

In other Iyyar news, have I mentioned that this kid climbs? Yesterday I heard him toddling up the hall and remembered that Barak had just been in the bathroom, so went to check that the door was closed. It wasn't, and Iyyar was already in there. As I turned the corner to the bathroom, he was clambering up on Barak's potty stool. By the time I had my hands out to grab him--four feet later--he was standing on top of the closed toilet seat, hands out to clear the reading material off the top of the toilet tank so he could get up there. I had to relocate all the plastic drawers from under the crib, because he's been using them as stepping stools to climb up the crib's sides. And the activity table that we got as a baby gift for Barak, that Barak to this day has never thought of climbing? Yeah, he climbs up on that too. Gleefully.

The transition to toddlerhood will not be complete until Iyyar starts yelling "no!" but we are getting there. Yesterday he threw his first full-on toddler tantrum when I took something away that he wasn't quite done with--not "Hey, I want that back!" but "YOU ROTTEN EVIL MOTHER, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST TOOK THAT AWAY FROM ME! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!" He is still in a big phase of putting things into other things: blocks into bags, toys into bins, puzzle pieces into drawers, anything at all into the garbage can. You really have to watch him with the garbage can--a few days ago he threw out a shoe without my noticing. I was taking out the trash when I saw something suspiciously blue and leathery-looking in there. I would have been looking for that shoe for months, if not years.

And Barak--well, where to start? Let us just say that Barak is in something of a defiant phase. Let us hope, anyway, that it is a phase. "Barak, please put that book back on the shelf." "I don't want to. I'm busy." "Barak, I asked you to put that on the shelf. Please put it on the shelf." "I don't want to." Etc. I feel very strongly that it is not wise to let such behavior go, but naturally do not want to be in a state of constant battle. It's especially difficult because Barak is normally pretty amenable to suggestion, likes helping, etc., and we get on very well--so I don't like escalating things, always counting and using time-outs and leaving him alone in his room while he tantrums himself out. But what else to do? Yesterday we went over to Morah Shapiro's house and, on the way down her high, steep, and treacherous spiral back stairs, Barak decided he did not want to go home and threw a fit RIGHT ON THE STAIRS. There I am, holding a 16-month-old Iyyar squirming in one arm, Barak endangering life and limb on these stairs, and I can't even grab him and bear him bodily homeward. I did get pretty angry, though, and got in his face to tell him so when I finally got him down the stairs.

Parenting suggestions?

The updated tally

Three broccoli kugels (two huge, one 8" round, made with four and a half pounds of non-bodek broccoli and a semi-functional hand blender, so imagine the mess at your peril). One corn kugel. One more pumpkin kugel. One 8" square meatloaf, still in oven. Cholent. Parve cream of asparagus soup, which MHH and I ate for a late supper (so! green! the first green thing I have eaten in days!). Green beans and onions, in the fridge for tomorrow night. Gefilte fish--that I just unwrapped and baked. I'm looking around my kitchen to see if I missed anything. I might have--there are too many dirty dishes around to be able to see many surfaces in here.

I did not get to making challah. I might do it tomorrow, or I might not. I didn't make the chicken for tomorrow night, but I should have time in the afternoon. What I really need to do now (well, sleep, but besides the obvious) is clean my kitchen so that all the fleishig dishes aren't out when my babysitter arrives in far too few hours.

Eh

I have, besides the Rice Krispie Treats (chocolate and peanut butter chocolate) that I made this afternoon: one pan of turkey meatballs, two pans (one large and one small) of onion kugel, one pan of pumpkin kugel, and two pans of brownies (still in the oven). It could have been better, but it's late, I didn't get much sleep last night (did I mention Iyyar's toxic diarrhea? no? probably just as well), and I have an incredible amount of work to do tomorrow, followed by (yes!) more cooking tomorrow night. We are having guests this Shabbos, one sleeping here and three more just here for lunch. And I still need to clean, etc.

But I did get all the shopping done, and at least now I've made a start on the cooking. It's much better than still being in denial. I've got almost two weeks--IY"H it'll all get done, one way or another.

Here we go

About to start cooking. I spent $230 on groceries today, and it's 9:23 pm and my kids are asleep and the cookbooks are out and I have about a billion aluminum pans, and about eight things on my list for tonight. And that's not even going to cover me for the first round of yom tov.

It's been a week and we have still not been visited by our claims adjustor. Oh, and the roofers? They are not insured. The ones I wanted to hire, of course, are, but I was outvoted by the rest of folks in the building.

Okay. To the kitchen. Right now.

Random

I'm barely conscious, because I went to bed waaay too late this morning and Iyyar woke up at 5. I should be writing speeches, but I'm not quite sentient enough for that, so I thought I'd sort of warm up with a blog post.

About, um, something.

[...]

Oh, let's have a list. Why not a list?

1. Anybody have any idea what is up with the price of dairy? Is all dairy like this, or just cholov yisroel stuff? The absolute rock-bottom cheapest cheese I can buy, which is a one-pound block of cheddar, colby, or what I gripingly but more or less accurately refer to as extra-sharp mozzarella, is now $5.49. That cheese, which I can only find in one store, is very substantially less than the second cheapest cheese, which is $3.99 for 8 oz, or almost $8 a pound! And those are the cheapest cheeses I can get anywhere in town. (I am not counting "American cheese product" as a cheese, although even that has gone up--I think it was $16.99 for a 3-lb block. More expensive than the real stuff.) I used to buy Barak string cheese to take to school. It's never been cheap, and has always been verboten as a kitchen snack, but now it's absurd--$11.99 for a bag of 18! This is string cheese, not imported Parmesan.

2. Can I just say how much I love buying used toys for my kids? I don't spend much money, I don't have to feel (as) guilty about the environmental impact of the plastic, and they don't care a bit. Last week I bought a used Little Tikes Cozy Coupe car. I paid the woman I bought it from $10 for the car and an extra $5 for driving it three miles to my house. Before she stopped by, I told Barak that a lady was going to come over and bring a new car for him and Iyyar to drive. Barak was pleased, but perplexed.

"Who's gonna bring the car?"

"A lady's going to bring the car."

"Who's da lady?"

"You don't know her. I bought the car from her."

"You don't know her?"

"No, I don't really know her either."

"Shess gonna give me a car?"

"Right."

Pause.

"I like da lady!"

And he likes the car. So, of course, does Iyyar, who is now quite good at opening the door and climbing in and out. He also managed immediately to peel off the speedometer sticker and remove the steering wheel, which I still can't find. The sharing is going, well... it is going. Sort of. Sometimes we get nice cooperative play, and one kid drives while the other pushes (no motor, after all. Will I date myself if I tell you I remember my father waiting in line for gas in a blue VW bug during the OPEC crisis, and everyone pushing their cars along the line to save on gas?) Sometimes, the car gets a time-out, although come to think of it that's only happened once so far.

3. Yesterday was not one of Barak's better days. He was pretty whiny and cranky, didn't listen well and said "no" a lot. He missed out on a trip to Target with Imma because he wouldn't go to the bathroom. I had to send him out of the kitchen while I was cooking dinner because he kept kvetching for things. And when I went grocery shopping with him in the morning, all he did was pull stuff off the shelves and campaign for candy, which he knows perfectly well I am not going to buy. I knew rationally that he had not been getting much Imma time with all the water- and insurance-related, ah, distractions that have been going on--my psychic energies are pretty drained right now. By the time I put Iyyar to bed, he was sulking in the living room.

"Barak, do you need some attention?"

"Yeah. I need some attention."

"Okay, I'm going to go wash my hands [I'd changed a diaper] and then I'm going to come pay attention to you. Should we read some books and cuddle on the couch?"

"Yeah. I need you ta pay attention to me please." Pause. Then, in the labored and thoughtful, pause-ridden kind of sentence that comes out when Barak is really struggling to express himself at the outer limits of his vocabulary, I got this.

"I need you to pay attention to me. I didn't get very much attention today. I need you to come and pay attention to me a lot. I need you to pay attention to me or else I'm gonna cry."

Ouch.

Later, on the couch:

"Barak, did you have a good day today or not such a good day?"

"Not such a good day."

"How come?"

"I had not such a good day because I had a hard time."

"You were having a hard time? I'm sorry. Are you feeling better now that you're getting some attention from Imma?"

"Yeah. I'm getting attention and now I feel better."

Well then.

Where to start?

I can't really say what happened this week, because if I did it would be like giving you a map to our house.

But, well, if you've been hearing about any rather extreme natural phenomena happening this week, which you would really, really not want happening while your building was being re-roofed and had tarps instead of a roof, it was probably happening on our heads.

We live on the first floor, and our apartment is basically okay. We are back in our building, after a night spent elsewhere on the advice of the fire department ("Turn off the breakers and vacate the building.") The people upstairs have ceilings on the verge of collapse, and we don't know yet if the roofers that were hired instead of the ones I wanted to hire have insurance. If they don't, our insurance company may or may not decide that's a reason not to cover the damage. The roofers say that they will deal with the internal damage, but it is so extensive I'm not sure how adequate that will be. We already had an electrician come in on Friday and check the wiring, and say that it's safe to be here (after he took all the light fixtures and fans out upstairs--they have power, but only to the wall sockets, not the ceiling). But this could go any number of ways, especially since two of the four families in this building are not terribly inclined toward ongoing maintenance, may or may not have insurance on their individual units, and may not think of things like, oh, mold, when considering whether or not to rip out and replaster their ceilings.

Oh, and our toilet seat broke off today. That too. And I haven't made it to Target since our guests left, so we are out of, um, pretty much everything I think, including laundry detergent, and I got speech requests this past week from two countries that are, if I may say it, insane, adding ELEVEN full-length speeches to my list, three of which were due yesterday (I did those) and eight more of which are supposed to be done by Sept. 7th (you can just laugh at that one.)

Yom tov? Yeah, that's coming up too.

But... Grandpa M sent me flowers on Monday. Bright yellow ones. And right before Shabbos, I got a huge box from a friend, full of desperately needed, um, I'll tell you what exactly in a few weeks, and FOUR bags of chocolate-covered pretzels from Trader Joe's (very, very handy since I had not exactly had opportunity to do any Shabbos preparation the previous week). And the boys were ridiculously cute and funny this week, and we went to friends' for lunch, and Barak was amazingly well behaved. He asked for a second piece of cake, and I told him yes, but then he was not to ask for any more, and when he finished it he hopped off his chair and went off to play and did not ask for any more. And Iyyar went up and down our friends' stairs, accompanied by their ten-year-old daughter, and on one of the trips down started repeating after her on every step, "down... down... down..." Oh, and he's just starting to say "ma ma," too.

It could be worse.

Big boys

Latkes

I made latkes for dinner tonight, just for me and my husband, after the kids had gone to bed. (I fed them first, don't worry.) I made a lot considering only two people were going to eat them: two big potatoes, a zucchini, four eggs. Which made me remember the following.

A couple years ago--no, more--Sarah came to visit. I asked her what she wanted for dinner and she said she wanted latkes. (I think it was June, but whatever--I made them tonight and it's August, which feels even farther away from Chanuka even though it isn't really.) I said okay and started rummaging around in the crisper for potatoes. I pulled out two and then stuck my head back around the refrigerator door.

"How many latkes do you want?" I asked.

"Oh, I can eat them till I die," she said matter-of-factly.

I looked at the two potatoes in my hand. I looked back in the crisper. "Four potatoes?"

One more thing

I forgot about this conversation between me, Barak, and Nephew #3.

Scene: Back bedroom. Barak is about to dump some toys on top of Uncle Yaakov's nice black hat, which is sitting on top of a plastic chest of drawers. I stop Barak.

Me: No! Barak, don't do that. If you put things on Uncle Yaakov's hat, you'll squish his hat.

Nephew #3: It's okay. My tatty has lots of hats.

Me: Well, he still might not like it if one gets squished.

Nephew, to Barak: Does your tatty have a hat?

Barak: I not gonna squisha hat.

Me: He has hats, but he doesn't have a big black hat like your tatty.

Nephew #3: Why not?

Me: Because if he did he would probably squish it.

Overheard from my office

Now that I am working at home, I get a different perspective on my kids. In a word, I get to eavesdrop on them when they are not with me. I also get to hear them without seeing them, which, as those of you who have had babies may know, sometimes gives you a Eureka! moment when you realize that those sounds the baby has been making are not actually gibberish.

Asnat is here today, and when she is here she tends to put in Barak's Meah Shirim Rishonim (Hundred First Songs) CD. There are two CDs in the set: a green one and a yellow one. Barak likes the green one better. Somewhere on the green CD there is a song about the letter lamed which he likes very much, and on days when Asnat has been here he can frequently be heard singing "la-amed! la-amed!" A few minutes ago, he was singing the lamed song in the kitchen. Then I heard Iyyar, singing, "a-ama! a-ama!" with exactly the same inflection. Barak, in delight: "Hiss singing a green song!"

Other things I've noticed recently: I think I mentioned a while back that when Barak categorically does not want to do something, he announces, "I can't." It makes sense. When I say "I can't," it means I'm absolutely not doing it. I can't turn the light on because it's Shabbos. I can't read you that book because I'm going to work now. I can't give you milk because you're in the middle of eating a hot dog. So it's logical that Barak would add to his vocabulary "I can't eatta green," when I have neglected to peel his cucumber, or "I can't pish potty" when he is too busy playing for a bathroom trip.

And it makes sense that he has now started objecting to anything that someone else is doing that he doesn't like by saying, "Iss very dangerous!" Because once Imma has declared something dangerous, that child is categorically not getting to do it. Iyyar can't eat grapes, they're dangerous. You can't run down the street by yourself, it's dangerous. You can't cross the insane intersection near where we live on your feet, it's dangerous. So, logically, when he was in competition with his cousins for his treasured ride-on backhoe loader "Menucha can't sit onna backhoe loader! Iss very dangerous for Menucha!" Or, "Iyyar can't touch my airplane! Iss very dangerous for Iyyar!"

There was one other thing... what was it? I can't remember. Oh, right. Iyyar, as I might have mentioned, was never a huge fan of his pacifier. He always chewed it more than sucked it, and didn't find it that comforting. He ditched it entirely by about nine months. A few weeks later, I noticed distinct sucking sounds coming from his crib as he went to sleep, and investigated. He was sucking on his blanket, one of those cheap fleece blankets from Target. Then, a few weeks later, I realized that what he was doing specifically was sucking on the label. Now if he wakes up in the night, I go back in there and find the label for him and he goes back to sleep. The other day I saw on Etsy that someone was making and selling blankets with folded-over bits of satin and grosgrain ribbon sewn on all around the edge, like a blanket with fifty labels. So my baby can't be the only one doing this. Right?

Unsolicited advice

If, at some point, you decide to go on a trip to a Very Exciting Destination, where you plan to meet a friend whom you have not seen in two years, and this is to be a day completely without children that has been on your calendar for oh, say, two years, and you bought your Amtrak tickets online and have your bag packed with a whole day's worth of glorious knitting, and you are over the moon because you are about to have more knitting time in one day than you usually get in six months, and you have nursed the baby and made your lunch and are happily bopping your way out the door at 6:20 am in the pouring rain for the hour-and-a-half bus trip to the train station, because you do not drive, well, please take a moment to double-check your bag for your passport. Why? Because it might not occur to you that you would need a passport to take a train two and a half hours to the next state, but if you do not drive and do not carry a driver's license, you are going to need your passport, because otherwise Amtrak will not let you on the train. So bring your passport, because otherwise you will find yourself standing at the train station in tears as the train goes away without you, even though you have already paid for your ticket, because there was not anything like enough time to go home and get your passport and come back in the 45 minutes left before departure, and all the rest of the trains that day will be sold out, but it won't matter because if you even if you did wait four hours for the next train it'd be pointless because you would miss the excitement at your destination and you'd only have a couple of hours before you'd have to turn around and go back. And you will find yourself trying to figure out how to get back home on the bus, because you didn't figure out the schedule that way before you left, and if you are super unlucky you might get onto the totally empty bus and pick the one seat on the bus directly under a leak in the roof (pouring rain, remember) and sit right in a puddle so deep it will actually splash as you sit down in it. And then, instead of spending your day wallowing in wool with friends with similar wool-wallowing inclinations, you will spend it wallowing in self-pity as you fold laundry and clean your house and change dirty diapers. Which, under ordinary circumstances, you would be perfectly happy to do, but having been done out of the trip you were planning, you will be something less than excited about.

So, yeah. Save yourself the grief. Pack the passport.

Speechless

You know that you have been doing the speechwriting thing for a while when you vaguely recall a good line you put in a speech, want to quote the person you wrote it for in the speech you are currently writing, and google the half-remembered phrase to find out who you wrote it for--

and get 190 hits quoting the person who gave the speech.

It's not like I want the credit. The paycheck is all I am after, believe me (well, that and the health insurance). It's just... weird.

Babysitting

When I decided to go back to work, Barak was about five months old and I was scheduled to start my new part-time job when he would be a day short of 7 months. I was working five days a week from 9-1:30, a 25-minute bus ride from our house. At the time he was breastfeeding exclusively, sleeping, ah, badly, and a pretty high-maintenance baby in general. He was also, as probably would go without saying, the most precious baby in the whole wide world. And I had to figure out who was going to take care of him for those 4.5 hours a day, if it wasn't going to be me.

I didn't know anyone in town, and couldn't imagine leaving him with a babysitter who was a stranger. Family, yes, a friend, yes, but a stranger, no. So I looked into daycares, and found that there was a licensed daycare about three blocks from where I worked that had an opening for a baby Barak's age. It was expensive, oh, was it expensive--about 75% of my takehome pay. I would be working for little more than health insurance, but that was why I was working to begin with. Yes, it seemed a little crazy to spend that much, but I don't think I even hesitated at all--I signed him up, because it was clean and safe and the babies were well cared for and happy, and the teachers knew what they were doing and I would be five minutes away.

Barak stayed there for a little less than a year, until some things happened with the administration that I didn't like, I got pregnant with Iyyar, and his lead teacher, Ada, who was the one who kept the room running so smoothly, got into an altercation with the director (who had failed to report an incident in which a child wandered out of the building to Child Protective Services, and had forbidden the rest of the staff, mandated reporters all, from doing so themselves) and decided to leave. And offered to come babysit for us while she went back to school.

I couldn't come close to matching her pay, but I did the best I could. I paid her as much as she usually earned babysitting, which I managed by finding another baby to come here during the day whose mother paid part of Ada's salary. And I did pay her a salary. It was the same every week, Yom Tov or holiday or no. I said at the beginning that she would get a lot of paid time off because of Jewish holidays, and that once in a while I might ask her to stay late if I had a meeting to balance things out slightly--but she got paid for the full week, every week, no matter what. I didn't ask her to do housework, other than cleaning up after the kids. I depend on my babysitter for the health and safety of my kids and for my ability to work--and I need her to be reliable. So, I felt strongly that I needed to treat her like a real employee, not some kind of casual laborer.

When Ada needed health insurance of her own and got a job working nights at a local hospital, I rearranged my work hours slightly to keep her three days a week. Over this past summer, I also hired Asnat, who is now here three days a week and will be taking over when Ada goes to nursing school next semester. Asnat asked for a dollar an hour more than I was paying Ada; I decided to give it to her, and of course that meant I gave Ada a raise as well--even though the person I'm sharing babysitting with in the fall thought that that was crazy, because after all, Ada didn't have to know what Asnat was earning, did she?

Yesterday the wife of one of my husband's friends called me to ask if I knew any babysitters looking for jobs. She had called Asnat (Asnat had posted an ad in the local kosher grocery) but Asnat was already working for me by then. I said I didn't, and asked what had happened to hers. "She quit," she said. "She wanted too much--she wanted a raise, and she wanted to be paid for when she wasn't working. And she was old." My friend works at the same Jewish school where my husband works, and they get a lot of time off. "Did you pay her for vacations and yom tov?" I asked. "Of course not! Why should I pay her when she's not working?" I knew that babysitter #1 had been with them for three years, but didn't want to ask if she'd ever gotten a raise.

"Well, they need to pay their rent every month," I said. "It's hard if you don't get half your month's pay whenever it's Succos or Pesach."

"I'm not paying a babysitter for when she's not working."

"Okay, well, I'll tell you if I hear of anything."

"Well, I just need someone reliable," she said. "How did you find Asnat?" I told her. "I guess you just got lucky."

Umm. What to say? That she would not have worked for you under those terms anyway? If you expect a babysitter to accept that she will get paid some weeks but not others, that she will have unpaid vacations of up to two weeks during the school year and then the whole summer, and you still expect her to be totally available for you whenever you need her, and never ask for a raise, well--how is she supposed to be able to live on that? Unless she's also getting Social Security (in which case, yes, she'll probably be old), or has enough money that she doesn't really need to be working, she's not.

I know that most of the women in town who work hire babysitters on that basis--they only pay for the hours the babysitters come, and they pay a lot less than I do, and they are always having trouble with babysitters quitting or not showing up or whatever, or being retired Russian women who can't keep up with their kids (the babysitting mainstay around here--because babysitting is not their only source of income, they can handle the patchy pay schedule better). And the people who know that I pay my babysitters a salary think I'm nuts, or just very careless with my money, or foolishly generous.

But I'm not. It's total pragmatism. I need my babysitters, and I need them to be good and reliable and I need them to value their jobs. They are helping me raise my kids, and in babysitters as in all else, you get what you pay for. I want them to be here because they want to be here, not because it's the only job they could get without a green card. If I want reliable employees, I need to be a reliable employer. No?

To be fair, not everyone can afford to do what I do--I have a good job, and I'm not paying tuition yet. I know I'm sounding critical, and I'm not trying to be critical of people who need to work and can't afford good child care--not at all. I'm saying that if you choose to work, or if you have no choice but to work, then whoever is taking care of your children is acting in loco parentis for you. Treat them as you would like to be treated yourself.

(Yet another argument for extended maternity benefits, government-assisted child care, and... oh, a subject for another post.)

Sick boy

One of the many advantages to working at home is that when your baby starts vomiting and running a fever and needs his Imma, you can be there in ten seconds, not forty-five minutes.

On Thursday I was working away and heard, a few rooms down, crying followed by wailing followed by constant, hysterical shrieking. I try to stay out of my babysitters' way when they are here--if I pop out of my office for every crisis, it undermines their authority as well as the work/home separation for my kids. But once in a while I do it. When I came out of my office on Thursday, on my way to the source of the noise I passed a large pool of vomit followed by smaller pools of vomit before coming to a vomit-covered baby with more vomit coming out of his nose, in the bathtub being de-vomited by Asnat. (She has been in the Israeli army. She is not fazed by a little puke.) I took over, calmed him down, nursed him, gave him Tylenol, and got him to sleep while Asnat (the fabulous) got out a bucket and rags and cleaned up. Then I went back to work.

He seemed basically okay later, if not his usual self. Friday, I had to go in to the office, but felt okay leaving him. I checked in with Ada mid-morning: low fever, not quite his usual self but basically happy. Friday afternoon, he was warm and cranky, and I gave him some more Tylenol, which helped; he ate bananas and macaroni and cheese, went to bed content and slept all night.

Saturday, he woke up under the weather but not alarmingly so. We went to shul and he ate a gallon or two of cholent. Afternoon, fever was back and he wasn't happy. Crying, some napping, much misery. More Tylenol.

Sunday, he woke up with a loaded diaper (cf. cholent, above) unhappy and subdued. He was playing a little, but not walking--just crawling around a little, looking lethargic. We all went to the bagel store, where he happily snarfed a whole bagel. On the way out, he started crying in the stroller and was asleep by the time we got to the park; he had a nap while Barak and his cousins played. Then he woke up. Crying. A lot

He either cried, wailed, or howled for the next six hours, except for the times he was lying on my chest with glazed eyes half-open. I called the pediatrician and got my Least Favorite Doctor Ever, the one who tells you without need for details or information that there is nothing wrong with your miserable suffering child and if there is, it is all your fault. I don't think I am either negligent, stupid, or inclined to health-related hysteria, but I would like to be able to say more than "My baby has a fever" before being told that he's Fine.

A few hours later I started wondering how long this would have to keep up before I took him to the emergency room. (Bear in mind that the only time I have ever taken a child to the ER was when said child had stopped breathing.) He just looked so, so, so sick. Limp, miserable, not caring what was going on around him, not really awake or asleep. Tylenol did absolutely nothing to make him feel better or bring the fever down.

And then at around 5, he started perking up, and watching his cousins, and saying, "guh duh duh" a few times. He drank some water. He ate a banana. He played a little. He nursed. He went to sleep. He slept through the night.

This morning, he seemed fine again, but I had had it--I took him to walk-in hour at the pediatricians, where one of the 4 doctors I like (there are 5 in the practice, including Dr. Awful) took a look at him. By the time he got there he had the charm turned on full blast. "Hi! I'm Iyyar! You may not know it yet but guess what--I'm your new best friend!" Every time she looked away from him, or I talked to her and didn't look at him, he'd lean waaay over to get directly into the line of sight and give a big cheesy grin. "Hi! It's ME! The reason we're all here! So how about if you smile at ME, please? Great!"

She thinks it a virus, of course--come back in two days if he's still feverish. I think she's right, but there was no way I wasn't having him looked at after yesterday. Right now he's off napping, after some more bananas and yogurt and observing of the chaos that is six children eating breakfast.

And I need to go write a speech.

Big party

My DSIL, soon to be my CSIL (Canadian sister-in-law) is here with her husband and kids for a couple of weeks while their worldly goods and van are loaded on a very large truck and transported to a cold city far, far away. We are sad that they will not be in driving distance anymore, but are consoled by the good long visit, which Barak has been excited about for weeks.

I first told him that they were coming about a month ago. I made the mistake of saying that Tanta Sara was coming. He seemed pleased, but dissatisfied. "I don't wanna just Tanta Sara. I want everybody to come." Ever since, when mentioning their visit, he has specified, by name, every member of the family, lest Imma leave someone off the invitation list (we wouldn't want the baby left behind in Ohio, would we?!) On Sunday, we hauled mattresses out of the storage space, put everything else down there that we possibly could, rearranged furniture, and made sleeping space for six in the boys' room (one twin mattress, one crib, two toddler mattresses and two pack and plays.) The excitement built.

"Everybody's gonna sleep in here?" "Yep, everybody's sleeping in here. Is it gonna be a big party?" "Yeah!"

Tuesday morning. "I want everybody to come!" "Everybody is coming. They're coming tonight, okay?" "Okay." For whatever reason, Tuesday afternoon Barak was tired and took a long and unaccustomed nap on my bed. Tuesday evening, we went for French fries. Tuesday night, Iyyar went to sleep and Barak, unsurprisingly, did not.

"I'm not gonna go night-night. I'm just gonna wait for everybody."

"Barak, they won't be here until midnight. You can't wait up for them. But you don't have to go to bed yet. You can come sit on my bed and read while I fold laundry." Barak went and got his sefer (The First Thousand Words in Hebrew) and read while I folded, commenting periodically on the impending visit. "Iss gonna be a big party, right?"

At 8:30, and hour and a half past his usual bedtime, he was showing no signs of tiredness, but I thought bedtime was in order anyway. "Okay, Barak, you can sleep on Abba's bed if you want, and you can have your book, and I'll leave the hall light on. When everybody gets here I'll come get you and you can go in your room with all the kinderlach, okay?" "Okay."

I went off to my computer to work. Iyyar was quiet. Barak was quiet. I finished a speech. At 10:30, I went past my bedroom door.

"Hi, Imma! I'm waiting for everybody!" Indeed he was. He was sitting bolt upright on my bed, in the dark, in his undershirt and pull-up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He had, by every indication, been sitting like that for the last two hours, just... waiting. Hmm. They were supposed to arrive within the hour...

"Barak, do you want to come lie down with Imma in the back bedroom? You can listen to Uncle Moishy while I work." This suggestion was received with great enthusiasm, and he got comfy on Tanta Sara's bed with his own blanket, his own pillow, and Uncle Moishy on Abba's discman. I did some more work. At quarter to 11, Abba got home. He pulled out the laptop and sat there working in the half-dark as Barak listened to his music, positively vibrating with excitement.

And then I saw headlights pull into the driveway. I picked Barak up (he obviously wasn't wearing shoes) and we went out into the yard to greet Everybody. Four children giggling wildly, one baby who had been quite happy sleeping in the carseat, thank you. The kids went inside, Uncle Yaakov and Abba started unloading the van (which was like one of those sketches where forty people pour out of a Model T--how did they get six people, even mostly small ones, and All That Stuff in one eight-seater minivan?) and the pajama hunt began. Well, the pajama hunt began for the grownups. The kids, they had found toys. Loud toys. And were happily playing in the living room. By the time they were in bed, it was after midnight; by the time the stuff was put away and the adults were in bed, it was well after one.

What time did the first baby wake up? Umm, about five, I think. Yesterday, needless to say, everyone was a wreck, but today they seem pretty much recovered.

And on Sunday, the long-awaited event is finally scheduled to occur: Barak's tzitzis party. Stay tuned.

whine and moan

The morning started off extremely well with both kids sleeping till 7:30--that one was close to a miracle, since Iyyar's usual wakeup time lately is more in the neighborhood of, oh, 5 or 5:30. They got up, MHH went off to do his thing, I settled the boys down to breakfast and started cleaning, getting ready for my SIL and her family who are coming on Tuesday.

It's not like I didn't get anything done. I did. I cleaned the kitchen, and got the boys' room more organized than it was, although it seemed like every time I got something put away some small person would pull out something else. But I made space in the armoire and under the crib, and rearranged furniture to allow for the addition of one adult-sized mattress, one crib mattress, and two pack-and-plays. I got Iyyar down for a nap at about 10:30, and went with Barak into my room to start folding laundry.

And I don't know if it was just that he was tired, or not feeling good, or in a Toddler Mood, but ugh. Everything I asked him to do, he said no, everything was testing testing testing. When Iyyar got up, any time Iyyar touched a toy Barak would rip it out of his hands; any time Iyyar came close to Barak Iyyar would lose it completely, screaming, "Iyyar can't touch it! He can't touch it! Hiss gonna break it!" or worse, he would ask me to put toys away that he wasn't even playing with, just so Iyyar couldn't have them. That I really don't like. I can understand it if he doesn't want Iyyar messing up his Lego structure, and it's fine with me if he wants to take a toy into the living room and play with it by himself. But taking toys away from Iyyar l'shma, no.

I had started a batch of challah dough while Iyyar was napping, even though Barak, bizarrely, refused to help (he did scream for honey, and sugar, of course, though.) When MHH came home for his afternoon break, I handed him the baby and started braiding like mad; the challah I was mafrish I set aside, and then remembered that wait, I just baked pizza in that oven at 500 degrees, so if I want to bake a pareve batch of challah I have to preheat it to 525 before I can bake my challah at 350. On goes the oven, in goes the separated piece of dough to burn on the bottom. At 525 degrees, it burned in spades, setting off all the smoke detectors. At this point Barak had been dispatched to my room with Abba to read a book and, hopefully, fall asleep (ha. ha ha ha. ha.) Challah half-braided, I ran around opening windows and fanning smoke detectors to get them to stop beeping, and found Barak and Iyyar playing in the pack and play while MHH was reading HP7. "I don't think a nap is happening," he said apologetically. No, guess not. So Barak followed me into the kitchen and started making snakes with the challah, which would have been fine except that he kept pulling globs of dough off my dough to add to his concoction, which didn't really help with the baking of the actual challah. Ordinarily, he is really good to bake with, and accepts the "this is my dough, this is your dough" edict with equanimity. Not today.

In about six seconds flat (or so it seemed) MHH was back out the door, and the major meltdown began. I need to nurse! Now! No, I need Imma now all to myself! I need you to hold me! I need you to hold ME! And have I mentioned Iyyar's emerging violent streak? It doesn't matter how short I clip his nails, he manages to gouge me at least once a day, and tonight when I was finger-sweeping his mouth to get rid of the wodge of fresh challah he was actively choking on, he BIT ME.

Grrrrrr.

They are both in bed now. Barak, after screaming pitifully that he didn't want to go night-night, was out in three minutes flat; Iyyar protested a little but seems to be asleep now. (In the middle of typing that sentence, I heard a sad little wail.) I'll pay tomorrow morning for putting them to bed early tonight, but... um, I had had it.

Sorry. After a whole day of asking Barak to PLEASE STOP KVETCHING, what am I doing? Yeah. Well. At least I'm not doing it loudly, and I'm not whacking you over the head with a juggling club while I'm at it.

I'm feeling like my blog hasn't been all that interesting lately--it's been ages since I wrote anything that was actually entertaining. As so often happens, though, the more is going on in my life, the less goes into the blog. Last weekend I took Iyyar a couple states away for a wedding, and that sort of derailed the rest of the week--I didn't get much sleep for two nights running, and since I had so much else to catch up on, catching up on sleep didn't really happen till Shabbos. Work is getting intensely insane, to the point where I open up my Excel log in the morning and, for the first time since I started this job three years ago, seriously doubt whether everybody will have all the speeches they need before they have to actually give them. I told my boss this a couple of weeks ago. "I have great confidence in your ability to churn out copy," she told me serenely. Great. You have great confidence in my ability to.... wait a minute. Don't you mean, pen deathless oratory?

She knows I will do it because even though mine is ostensibly a part-time job, I have a track record of staying up all night (and Toto, I am definitely NOT in grad school anymore) to finish speeches that are needed for oh, you know, peace summits between war-torn countries and that sort of thing, that I get told about 30 hours in advance. But doing that once in a blue moon because of last-minute schedule changes or other people's mistakes is one thing; doing it as a matter of course because my workload is so out of hand is another.

My DSIL and her husband and kids are coming on Tuesday, for a couple of weeks while their worldly possessions are loaded on a truck and shipped far, far away. We are all looking forward to this and fully cognizant of the level of chaos that will reign around here. As Barak says, "Iss gonna be a big party!"

Okay, here endeth the whining. To reward you for your patience (anyone? anyone?) here is a Small List:

1. Today, my friends, today was a red-letter (yellow-letter?) day. For today, while Iyyar was napping and I was cleaning the kitchen, Barak silently disappeared down the hall. And I heard no noise from the living room or our bedroom, which instantly made me suspicious. A minute or two later I followed him, only to find him... emerging from the bathroom, pulling up his underwear.

Yes!! The first-ever totally unprompted-by-any-adult trip to the bathroom to pish! Woohoo! Break out the simcha band...

2. Iyyar continues to be the master of the dirty look. His favorite is putting his chin down and glaring up at you through his furrowed eyebrows. Then I do it back, and then he giggles, and then I giggle, which spoils the threatening effect somewhat but is very entertaining for both of us.

3. I went to college somewhere with a Jewish student population that was [barely] large enough to support a kosher dining hall. At the time, it was completely student-run, and the food quality was, well, let's just say it varied. There were, however, a few items that were fairly reliably tasty, and one of them was the challah. It was doughy, it was chewy, it was squishy, it was everything challah is supposed to be, and if you went into the dining hall with three dollars on a Friday afternoon you could make off with a whole loaf of it, warm, all for yourself and your friends. It is probably the single food item from that dining hall that anyone who went there remembers with any nostalgia.

I have the recipe, but nobody in my house eats white bread and it doesn't get used much. However, I am pleased to report that after a year or two of recipe-twiddling, I now have a version of this recipe down that uses all whole wheat flour and tastes, if whole-wheaty, every bit as heavenly and, well, squishy. Four loaves and fourteen rolls are now in the freezer, awaiting next Shabbos. By which point I will, I fervently hope, be in a much better mood.

If anybody still has faith in the Times...

Check out Sarah's post, here. And be sure to follow the link to the Jewish Week article.

Kitzer version, for those who are sick of this: Feldman and his girlfriend were not Photoshopped out of the article. They were cropped, along with quite a few others, because there were too many people to fit into one frame. He knew this before the article was published, and so, it appears, did the Times. But they ran the article anyway, knowing that the, ah, rather inflammatory lede about him being edited out of the picture was false.

And you know, while it's sad, it really doesn't surprise me.

Ooh ooh ooh!

Thanks to Israel Mom, I now have most of the answers to my HP7 questions. Do not look if you are spoiler-averse, but all manner of goodies can be found here.

Courtesy of Treppenwitz

If all you know about the history of Israel comes from network TV, click here.

and Harry Potter

No spoilers here, but if you care enough to care, you've probably finished it.

Book 7 showed up on Shabbos, and was delivered to our front door by the mail lady. "Here's your book!" she said cheerily. So I was spared having to leave it outside all of Shabbos, but the torture was even more exquisite having it in my hands. "Put it away," MHH pleaded. "It's Shabbos!" I ignored him, "C'mere, Iyyar," I said coaxingly, "Come drool on the box and soften up the cardboard. Come chew on the cardboard. It's nice and tasty!" Nothing doing, and I had to wait till after 9 to open it up. I got through about 200 pages motzai Shabbos (in bed by 12:45) and broke it out again Sunday night, finishing at 1:45 Monday morning.

And what the... we STILL don't know the answer to my most burning question! Although I hear that there are JK Rowling interviews coming up in which more beans will be spilled. Right now, my babysitter is having her turn with the book, and I will wait until I get through my current mound of work before taking a second read.

In other news, Eris is finished, except for end-weaving, and my long-suffering DSIL finally has a sweater in progress! I'm making her a Spiral Yoke out of sage green Montera I had in my stash, and I now have one sleeve and about 5 inches of the body ( 17 sts/4 inches on size 8, if you are interested in such things.) They are coming on the 7th and staying for almost 2 weeks, so I'm hoping to have it done by the time they leave.