Tantrum management

For the last couple of weeks, Barak seems to have been experimenting with tantrums as a way of either expressing his frustration or getting what he wants. The golden rule of tantrum management, of course, is never to let there be a positive outcome to throwing a fit. I've got that one down. Once you know what you're not going to do, of course, you then have to figure out what exactly what you are going to do with the kicking screaming three-year-old on the floor. That part is more of a challenge.

When I can, I walk away and ignore him. Sometimes he escalates what he's doing so he'll have to get my attention, by doing something so totally illegal that I won't just let it slide. A favorite for a while was, when put in his room for a time-out, picking up the biggest, heaviest toy he could get his hands on and slamming it into his door. I ignored that too until I saw what the inside of his door looked like. Earlier this week, he tried that one. I went in there and told him, scarily, to STOP. I left and he did it again, and I didn't quite lose it but I certainly used more volume and anger than he's ever heard before to tell him "That. Is. Not. Okay." He hasn't done it since.

But I don't like the idea of escalating my response to match his. I try, I really do, to stay calm. And last night, I actually managed it.

We went over to my friend Chana's house last night. She had a baby a few weeks ago and I'd told her kids I would make them pizza this week. So at around 4 we trooped over there with a big bag of pizza dough, a jar of sauce, a bagful of vegetables and some cheese. (I forgot, and had to run back for, my pan and the parchment paper. A manifesto on the fine art of home pizza-making may be forthcoming--stay tuned). A fine time was had by all; much pizza was eaten (Barak held out for the sauceless vegetableless albino version I made last), and Iyyar ate more than anyone else, as usual. Barak spent about two and a half hours making trouble with Chana's three older boys, the youngest of whom is about a year older than Barak. Bedtime around here is usually around 6:15. By six, I realized that Barak was so worked up, and so wound up, that going home was liable to not be so easy. And I had a lot to carry. So I called MHH (this is why we have cell phones) and asked him to stop by and get us on his way home (we live across the street, so this is not a big deal). He did.

MHH got there at around 6:15. I handed him Iyyar and Iyyar's hat and fuzzy suit, and got Barak's coat and hat. And I tried to get them on Barak, but Barak was not interested in anything but running around in circles being silly. Never mind that all the resident children were already in pajamas--Barak wanted to jump around and scream some more, not go home. I managed to get him into his coat, with minimal cooperation from him. Then it was time for shoes.

"Barak, go get your shoes please." No dice. I was sitting on the floor and had no interest in getting them myself, so I asked one of Chana's kids to get them for me (the shoes were behind the couch, where they had been discarded for semilegal couch-jumping activities.) He did. "Barak, come here and put on your shoes."

Barak stopped what he was doing, looked at me, and instantly collapsed into a fit of hysteria. "I wanted to find my shoes! I wanted to find them! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

There are a few categories, I think, into which tantrums fall. There are the tantrums of pure frustration that cannot be expressed in any other way. There are the tantrums of experimentation and trying to get one's way--one might call those the manipulative tantrums, although I don't like that word. And then there are the tantrums that happen when a kid is so tired or so worn out or upset about something or not feeling good that the tiniest little thing will set him off. This was one of those.

"I WANTED TO FIND MY SHOES! I WANT TO DO IT! AAAAHHHHH!!!!"

Sigh.

I gave MHH all the stuff, and he carried it all down to the stroller. Then I gave him Iyyar, and he took Iyyar down as I manhandled Barak into his shoes--the size differential between the two of us is such that I can still do things like that. Then I picked up my coat and walked out the door. Barak, still standing there screaming, suddenly stopped, and a look of alarm spread over his face. "I needa pish potty." Good for you! I thought. Usually when he gets that worked up, he loses control and pees himself. "Okay, go potty. I'll wait for you." Barak went to the bathroom, came back, and started screaming again. "I WANTED TO FIND MY SHOOOOOOOES..."

I started down the stairs, and Barak came after me. "Barak, do you want to go in the stroller or do you want to walk?" "I wanna go in the stroller. I'm a baby." However, being a baby did not prevent him from wanting to buckle the seatbelt himself, which he was too worked up to do. I did it for him.

"I WANTED TO DO IT! AAAAHHHHH!!!!"

Barak at this point was kicking and screaming and flailing, but I was pretty sure he couldn't get out of the stroller by himself. We went home. I asked MHH to take Iyyar inside and get him ready for bed. "I'll take care of Barak. Don't worry." I parked the stroller and sat down on the back steps in my coat. And waited.

"Barak, I'm going to wait right here until you're done screaming. You let me know when you're all done."

"AAAAHHHH I WANTED TO FIND MY OWN SHOES!!!"

Then I took my knitting out of my bag. And started to knit a pair of gloves in sock yarn on size 0 needles.

Barak stopped. He looked at me. Clearly, he was thinking, this could go on for a while. And it's really pretty cold and dark out here.

"Imma, I needa find my own shoes."

"I know, sweetie. Are you all done screaming now?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

The power of knitting, right there.

Why is it

that when presented with an extensive tasting menu of woollen hats, mittens, scarves and gloves packed away for the winter in the back of the closet with only herbal moth repellent, moths will ignore everything but the handknit baby hat made in cashmere and baby alpaca (what else do you do with one 50g skein?) with patterning in Koigu? I guess the cashmere didn't taste as good, because they just chewed out the Koigu. In five places.

Sigh. I fixed it, of course, but there's something about a darned cashmere baby hat that just seems... wrong somehow. Especially given how long it takes to knit a baby hat, and the size of my stash.

More knitting

Not mine, though. Check out the green cabled hoodie, courtesy of Tanta Cecilia in Sydney. And the hat. That picture had to get taken fast--I put the hat on and Iyyar turned around, ran a few steps away, and pulled it off. You can see his hands poised for the hat-yank right there.

This sweater used to be Barak's. It was a gift for his first birthday, and he wore it right through last spring. Now, though, it's really too small, and has been passed on to Iyyar. But is Barak hoodieless? No! Because Tanta Cecilia sent another, identical handmade sweater--identical except that it is two sizes up, and in bright purple. (I tried to get a shot from the back of Barak wearing it, but he is too wise in the way of cameras--he kept turning around and posing.) And yet another cabled hoodie (a Rogue, for those in the know enought to be impressed by such name-dropping) in size XXXXXXXXXXXXXL for me, designed for maternity wear. When we all go out together, boy are we styling. :)

Random

1. There haven't been many posts lately because we just had a lovely lovely visit from Grandma E. Housework was neglected, laundry was left to pile up, and much knitting was accomplished. Oh, and perhaps a doughnut or two were eaten. Iyyar was fairly mellow despite a raging diaper rash that is just now starting to go away after almost two weeks. Barak, on the other hand, was on the worst tantrum hairtrigger I've ever seen. Every time anything went even slightly not his way, he was down on the floor screaming, including his first-ever public tantrum (brief, but still) at Target. He lost just about every treat I had planned--we didn't go to the zoo or even the doughnut store. And in addition to the tantrums there was a significant amount of just general obnoxiousness--like, when he was ignoring my telling him to do something, I told him to look at me, and he turned his face to me with his eyes squinched shut. Charming.


Grandma E was very nice about it and genuinely does not seem to have left with the impression that I have raised a monster, but... when you have a child who is sweet and charming 80% of the time, why does the entire other 20% have to happen when you really would like him to be at his sweetest and most charming? I know that all small children have phases like this occasionally. I know that he is really a great, wonderful kid, that he is not spoiled and not a brat. And I know that it is unreasonable for me to expect him to behave perfectly all the time. Rationally, I even know that he wasn't actually screaming the whole time Grandma E was here, and she did get to see the sweet and charming Barak I insisted does exist. But... sigh.



2. Did I mention that knitting was accomplished? Yes indeedy. Grandma E made a lovely Fibonacci baby blanket out of Plymouth Encore (which, I will note, she felt was too thick for a baby blanket and also noted was hard to weave ends in on). I need to block that before I take pictures. I made the most ridiculously cute spiral yoke sweater I have ever seen, out of a mere 79g of Opal Hundertwasser:




I cannot even tell you how much this picture does not do justice to the sweater. I should have put something in the picture for scale (other than the cord of the iron I was using to block it). It is about a 3-month size, and possibly the cutest thing I have ever knitted. If I saw one that someone else had made I would have to instantly drop whatever I was knitting at the moment to make one for myself (well, not for myself, but for a baby of my acquaintance. You know what I mean.)

Before Grandma E got here, I had just finished a pair of socks made out of the skein of Trekking I bought while on the baby doctor/yarn store expedition with Barak a few weeks ago (because, you know, I don't have enough sock yarn etc.)



And what did Grandma E find in her bag but this very terrifying crocodile scarf that Deb made for Barak. Roar!

While I was taking crappy pictures of lovely knitting, I also took a couple of the Eris sweater I finished a month ago and which I got to wear once before I was too big for it.





Neck detail:

Knitting I can do. Knitting photography... not my strong point. Sorry.

3. In a general Iyyar update, I should mention that Iyyar is currently obsessed with balls. The box of little balls that usually lives in the armoire has not been put away in a week, and the two playground balls (one blue, one red) that I bought at Target a week or two ago are in pretty regular use. Iyyar's favorite thing right now is to pick up his ball, carol "Upf! Upf! Upf," carry it a few steps while cackling maniacally, drop it, and then chase it to pick it up again.



And as predicted by my babysitter, Iyyar does indeed appear to be progressing directly from nothing to complete sentences. Well, sort of. The thing I hear from him the most right now is "I don't want it!" which sounds sort of like "Ah na wa na!" But believe me, his meaning is clear. We are also hearing "Drop it!" (from his high chair, usually); "Open it!" (regarding the gate to the kitchen); and "Ah yah!" which means Barak. And yesterday, Ada reported a very clear "Abba's books," pertaining to those books which he is forbidden to pull from the shelves in the living room.



4. I mentioned above that Iyyar had the worst diaper rash I've ever seen, caused by a couple weeks of diarrhea that left him happy, perfectly well hydrated, but pooping all night long. I tried the usual--zinc oxide, BRAT diet, acidophilus, multiple nighttime diaper changes, baking soda baths. It helped, but not enough. The second day Grandma E was here he was walking around he house miserably grabbing at his tush and wailing. Desperate times, desperate measures--I took his diaper off and let him walk around the kitchen (linoleum floor, how bad could it be?) commando. The difference was immediate. He was just so much happier. At bedtime, I smeared him up good with zinc oxide, put a clean diaper on him, and put him to bed with just one of Barak's shirts and his diaper, so that I could check if he was dirty without waking him up.


Iyyar, it seems, saw his opportunity and seized it. When I went in to check on him, I found him in the classic sleeping baby position--on chest, knees tucked under tummy, tush sticking straight up in the air. Tush, in this case, completely bare--he'd pulled off his diaper and was happily sleeping naked. Grandma E had just gone to bed but I couldn't let her miss that. I knocked on the door. "Are you asleep yet? You need to come look at something." She peeked in and laughed. "If it wouldn't wake him up, I'd say we'd have to take a picture." I was tempted, but not badly enough to risk a crying baby at 10 pm. Around 4 am, he woke up wet and cold, but not poopy (fortunately). And the rash was much better.



5. Oh, and one more thing--Barak can now tell the difference between a gasoline and a diesel engine by the sound it makes. I taught him that one, which I know courtesy of a friend who has driven a lot of tractors and can imitate a diesel engine with uncanny accuracy. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

You know you are a Jewish mother when

you are standing at your kitchen sink at 11 pm on Thursday night handwashing last week's grape juice out of your three-year-old son's miniature tie, because tomorrow is his turn to be Shabbos Tatty.

Rules

I don't think I am an obsessive, unthinking rule-follower type of person who cheerfully follows the path laid out for her by wiser people who have gone before. (Those of you know know me can stop snorting up your sleeves now.) However, I have a healthy respect for sensible rules made in everyone's benefit.

I am not talking about halacha right now, which is in a different category; I'm talking about things like "Stop your car when the light is red, whether or not you can see anyone coming." True, there may not be a car there that you can see. But when you get behind the wheel of a car, I feel that you have entered into a social contract that says that you will stop at that red light anyway. Why? So that everyone else on the road knows that if you have a red light, You Will Stop, regardless of your personal feelings on whether or not it might be necessary.

Remember the mat room, that I mentioned in my last post? It has a sign on the door. The sign has five rules. Five. They are:

1. The Mat Room is for children aged three and under only.
2. Children must be accompanied by a caregiver at all times.
3. Shoes may not be worn in the Mat Room.
4. No food or drink in the Mat Room.
5. Please do not change or dispose of diapers in the Mat Room. Diaper changing facilities are available in the restrooms. [Which they are--both men's and women's.]

What is so hard about any of that? Is it so difficult to see why these rules are in everyone's interest? Think about it, please:

1. A kid over age three is a lot stronger and wilder than kids three and under--and much more capable of accidentally injuring the barely-crawling nine-month-old he didn't notice when he jumped off the side of the slide.
2. Kids are a lot more liable to get wild and crazy when unsupervised--and it is not the job of other parents who ARE supervising their kids to supervise YOUR kid when you go to work out and leave him/her alone in the mat room.
3. Getting kicked hurts a lot more when the foot that kicks you has a shoe on it. And what's that that just fell of your shoe that my baby just put in his mouth?
4. Food makes a mess. Oh, and that nice clean carrot stick your kid is eating? It's a choking hazard when he leaves it stuck under a foam block.
5. I really shouldn't even have to address this one.

To be fair I have never seen a diaper being changed in the mat room (although it is the one thing that I can see being most tempted to do--if you are following all the rules, and have more than one kid with you, you have to pull your older child away from his/her play to accompany you to the bathroom for a diaper change. But I do this anyway--who else is going to go get me the garbage can and love doing it?)

Barak, when he sees other children in the mat room, is thrilled, because he knows there will be wild times afoot. Me, I groan, especially if any of them is over the age of three. Yesterday, there was a (very overweight) five-year-old in there with shoes AND a whole Twix bar (meaning a whole package of Twix bars, meaning two of them). Who gives a kid a Twix bar at 4:30 PM, right before dinner? The last time we were there there was an eight-year-old--not there watching a younger sibling, but trying to tightrope-walk on the roofs of the little crawling houses. While babies were crawling underneath.

Grumble. Grumble grumble.

End of grumble. We like, appreciate, and are very grateful for the Mat Room--it is a nice place to play that does not require me to be anywhere that is a) cold or b) more than two minutes from a bathroom. When people follow the rules, it is fabulous. It would just be nice if everyone who used it--or I should say, everyone who brings its users--could read.

Back to work.

Halachic preschooler

My husband was going to be home late today and I wanted to make sure he got to see the kids at least a little bit, so this afternoon Barak, Iyyar and I went to stop in and say hi to him at kollel. He teaches in the morning and learns in the school's kollel in the afternoon; that way, he's available to kids who need help and can do school prep and his own learning. It's a good deal, and nobody minds if he sits and learns aleph-beis with his son for a few minutes now and then.

Today, we went, bringing along Barak's Gadi Pollock aleph-beis book and the shtender with his name on it we bought in Meah Shearim almost two years ago now. We got there just as mincha was starting--bad timing, but Barak sat in the beis medrash with his sefer very nicely as Iyyar and I rolled his ball around outside in the hall. Iyyar, as I may have mentioned, is obsessed with balls right now. Never has it been so easy to direct him in the way I want him to go--I just kick the ball wherever I want him to head, and off he goes.

After mincha, Barak and Abba learned for a little while, and then we all headed off to the mat room. The mat room is a room at the J where you can take little kids (under-fours, although not everyone reads the sign) to play. It's full of mats (duh) and big foam blocks and a very baby-friendly play structure, and when I'm not up for chasing everyone around the park we go there. Part of the play structure is two little houses connected by a crawling tunnel. At one point, Barak was in one, Iyyar was in the other, and Barak wanted Iyyar to come through the tunnel to his house. "Iyyar, c'mere! C'mere! C'mere and learn in my beis medrash!"

The original plan had been mat room, park, and home for dinner by five, but we'd been derailed by the sight of men laying brick on the way. Half an hour of bricklaying-watching later, the park was scrapped, and then we spent longer in the mat room than planned, so by the time we got home it was already almost six. Okay, maybe we're scrapping baths tonight too. I put Iyyar in his high chair and cut up some cucumbers for Barak while I started dinner. Barak took his bowl of cucumbers over to the table, sat down, and frowned.

"Imma, is dis fleishig?"

"The cucumbers? No, the cucumbers aren't fleishig."

"Dere milchig?"

"No, they're not fleishig or milchig. They're parve."

"Oh." Barak considers this. "Da tablecloth is milchig. Iss da green one. Iss da milchig tablecloth. I can't put it on dere."

"Yes, you can. It's okay."

"No!" he told me, with great conviction. "Iss not okay. Da kookumbers," (holding out bowl) "are parve and da tablecloth" (pointing emphatically at tablecloth) "iss milchig. I can't put it on dere. I gotta move da tablecloth like diss." And what did he do? He did exactly what his father does when he isn't feeling, ah, energetic enough to actually change to the appropriate tablecloth: he folded part of the tablecloth back to reveal the (treif) table underneath. "I just gonna put it on dere, okay Imma? Now it's okay. Now I can eat it."

"Okay, Barak. You can do that. That's fine."

"No, iss not fine. I hafta do it like dat cause iss parve." No, it is not merely muttar, it is absolutely necessary!

Then, of course, I finished making the spinach noodles--which, being hot, could not go on the treif table. "Barak, you need to put the tablecloth back now. The noodles are milchig, so they need to go on the green tablecloth." Barak looks horrified.

"No, Imma! I can't do dat! Da kookumbers are parve!"

"I know, sweetie, but the noodles are milchig."

"But da kookumbers are parve! I can't put it onna milchig one!"

"Yes, sweetie, you can, because now that you're having noodles, your whole meal is milchig. So you put everything on the milchig tablecloth."

Barak's eyebrows are literally crunched together in concentration. He thinks about this. It makes sense. It is good.

"Okay," he said, and put the tablecloth back.

Halachic man, age three and a half.

* * *

As a postscript, I should mention that a couple of weeks ago I called Barak a toddler and Miriam said no, he's a preschooler. And I said no, he's still a toddler--I don't know when he'll stop being a toddler, but I'll know when it happens. And somehow or other, it seems to have happened. I'm not sure what it is, but it's something about the way he talks now--the way that most of the time, you can have an 85% rational conversation with him, and he mimics adult gestures and expressions, and gets himself dressed and undressed, and goes to the bathroom in public restrooms by himself (with me outside the stall, of course). He's not a toddler anymore. He's a little kid.

And this morning

Barak went to school completely without comment or incident. I went to Target last night and bought a box of fruit leathers (if you like them and miss the ones they no longer sell at Trader Joe's, the Archer Farms variety are the cheapest I have found--they work out to 30 cents each). So this morning, I told him that I was putting a school treat in his lunch and showed him. (My poor sugar-deprived child. He thinks a fruit leather is like candy. Let it last as long as it can...) The clothes went on in record time. I took him to school myself, and there was not a peep.

Also, I talked to his morah last night. It was a very nice conversation in which she did not mention last week's trip at all. She said he seemed very happy at school, never cried, did not cause any problems and pretty much just played. He does sometimes want to stay on the floor playing when it's time to do a project or something like that--he is still kind of young for so much structure--but I knew about that. The only thing about school that has changed in the last couple of weeks is that he is now supposed to be walking in with my neighbor--I think that's the problem. If it is I'll be relieved, because it's a fairly minor thing to deal with.

Grandma E is coming on Sunday (woohoo! Grandma is coming! Did I mention that Grandma is coming?) and I think there will be a sticker chart of morning school departures this week, to be rewarded with a trip to the doughnut store when Grandma is here (which we were going to do anyway, but don't mention that part, okay?) We'll see how it goes. Trips to the doughnut store are exceptionally powerful motivators. Next week I have a trip to the baby doctor (aka midwife) and I can take him along on that as another reward if it seems like a good idea.

Stay tuned.

This morning

when it was time for Barak to go to school, he point-blank refused to go. "I don't wanna go. I just wanna stay home." I tried for about ten minutes, and then said okay, Barak, but if you don't go now you're going to stay home all day, because I'm not taking you later. He seemed fine with that and I went back into my office. He's here now, hanging out with Asnat and the little ones. I don't hear any crying.

I called his school to say he wasn't coming. The assistant asked me if I'd tried bribing him to go. I said, well, he's always loved going to school and right now I'm more focused on why he doesn't want to go than on how to get him to go. Granted, he is three and it could easily be a one-day whim--but he wouldn't go on Friday either, which was why I was taking him in late. And on the way there he was asking if he could go to Morah Shapiro's school (last year's playgroup) instead.

I think we need to have a talk with the teacher. It could be nothing. It could easily be nothing. But it could also not be nothing, and I need to know if something is going on that shouldn't be.

Another recipe

This is my new favorite Shabbos side dish recipe. It keeps very nicely when made ahead and can be made on a yom tov morning without too much mess. I add the walnuts right before serving it, but when I eat the leftovers the walnuts aren't really soggy, so that's not totally necessary.

Black Bean Salad with Corn and Red Pepper
(based on the recipe of the same name in The Natural Gourmet by Annemarie Colbin)

1 14-oz can black beans
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bag frozen corn, cooked a little less than usual so it is still crunchy (I use the cut organic corn from Trader Joe's, which is a billion times better than any other frozen corn I've ever had)
1 red pepper, chopped
1 bunch scallions, chopped (per the OU, if you are checking for bugs you only need to check 3 in the bunch)
1/2 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I used the bagged baking walnuts from TJ's)

Dressing:

1/4 c olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce (I use shoyu, but tamari is fine too)
juice of one large lemon
2T mustard (from a jar, not powder)

This makes 8 cups of salad. The recipe and the finished product look like a patchke, but it's actually really quick to prepare. Leftovers are good on brown rice.

Things Iyyar Has Been Doing Since I Told The Doctor He Wasn't Doing Anything

1. On Friday, a day after I'd asked Iyyar to show me his nose and he did, I asked him again. "Iyyar, where's your nose?" He not only gave me a dirty look, but he stuck both hands under his high chair tray, squinched his eyes shut, and shook his head vigorously back and forth while saying "Na na na na na!" I'm not PLAYING that game now, Imma. Ohhh-kay, I get it. I think you understand me, though.

2. Today, I thought Iyyar had something in his mouth that shouldn't have been in there. I went to check. "Iyyar, what's in your mouth?" I said, reaching a hand toward him. He put out his hand in a "stop" gesture, opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Nothing, Imma--leave me alone.

3. We went to the park and Iyyar started climbing the stairs on the play structure. Nothing new there, except this time he climbed them while saying "Up! Up! Up!"

4. This morning, I asked Iyyar to say thank you, for about the millionth time. This time, he did. "Ta ta!"

5. And this afternoon, at the tail end of lunch, Iyyar started reaching for and making noises at some challah on the table he wanted. "Iyyar, do you want some challah?" I asked. "'allah!" he agreed.

He's also developed something of a fondness for that Boynton classic, "Moo Baa La La La." He doesn't identify any of the animals or make the noises yet, but he brings it to me to read at least a couple of times a day. He also has started spending a noticeable amount of time sitting on Barak's train bed reading books, occasionally even right side up. He goes over to the board book shelf, pulls off the books he likes and takes them to the train bed to read. His favorites are the ones with pictures of babies, which he'll just sit there and study for minutes on end.

The rash, by the way, is gone, except for a nasty and, I think, totally unrelated diaper rash that I'm having a really hard time getting rid of. I think tomorrow will be a day for a good long soak in the bathtub with a full box of baking soda in the water. The doctor said it was a virus, and said to expect that he'd get a fever before it went away. He didn't, but he'd felt pretty yucky the night before so that might have been the feeling-sick part of the virus. He was plenty perky today, B"H.

Tomorrow's agenda: trip to Target for new socks for Barak, who has, seemingly overnight, totally outgrown all of his. Maybe also a trip to the park. We'll see. Stay tuned for the further exciting adventures, etc., etc.

Bothered

So.

I should be working right now but something is really bothering me and I am too distracted by it to write, so I'm going to blog about it instead.

As I have said here before Barak goes to playgroup. It is a very Chassidic playgroup a few blocks from us. I walked by it many times last year and thought, whoa, I'm never sending my kid there, it's just way too unsupervised. A few times I saw kids outside out of sight (it is an l-shaped play area) of any adult. I have heard stories about parents coming to pick up kids and finding them on the swings by themselves, with the teacher having gone back inside. There is a teacher and an assistant, and the assistant, while very nice, seems to have some cognitive issues.

Fast forward to last spring, when I found myself needing to find Barak a preschool or playgroup for this fall. He needs to go somewhere--I know that plenty of three-year-olds are just fine at home, but Barak is intensely social and really needs other kids. He is not part of a big family and gets bored and nutsy at home with me/the babysitter and Iyyar all day. So I explored my options. And my options were... limited. The preschools were all extremely expensive, to the tune of $600 a month, and while that might have been manageable the distances were not. The closest one is a mile away, which means four miles of walking each day, and I am expecting a baby in the dead of winter. The few other local playgroups were, by the time I got to them, full--who knew that people start signing their kids up in January? So I was left with the local Chassidic one.

I called around and talked to parents who'd had their kids there before, and heard generally good things. I called the teacher and said I was interested in registering my son but had some concerns about how the kids were supervised outside. She seemed to take them seriously and assured me that the kids were never outside alone that she was aware of, and she would talk to her assistant. I decided to take her at her word, and I registered Barak, thinking, it's two blocks away, I have a babysitter, I am telecommuting, if it turns out to be a disaster I can take him out.

I did, however, come away with the clear impression that she thought I was a neurotic hovery crazy mother, an impression which was strengthened when she called me back later to remind me that she did have a waiting list, I could feel free to take him out, and--best part--that she didn't want to be "hounded."

Did I like this? No. But I tried very hard not to be apologetic, to say, "It's my responsibility as his mother to make sure he's okay, and I'm sure you respect that, and that we both want the same thing--for all the children to be safe." To which, of course, she had to agree, and the call ended cordially. I didn't pull him out, because, frankly, I had no better options. And the school year started.

So far, it's been fine. Barak comes home happy, he seems to really like it, and I have never seen a child outside unsupervised since I've been there. I was a little surprised to see cleaning products on the bathroom windowsill in easy reach of any three-year-old, but I know that Barak, at least, won't touch them and I decided to keep my mouth shut. She's been doing this for twenty years and nothing has happened yet, so either the kids know not to touch or they are not in there unsupervised (which I doubt, but okay.)

Last week, though, he got a note in his parsha sheet that the kids were going to go on a field trip to a park (Parshas Noach--duck pond and all). The park is a mile and a half away. At the end of the note was "Please bring a booster seat for your child and a permission slip."

Um.

Barak is not big enough for a booster seat. Even if he were, I would not put him in one, because a) carseats are so much safer at his age and b) I would not trust him not to wiggle out of the seatbelt. The park in question is huge, unfenced, and known to have unsavory activity going on--there was an attempted abduction there a few years ago. There are 17 kids, the two teachers, and the two mothers who were coming with their 10-seater vans. I don't like this. At all. And I can't take a day off from work to bring him myself.

I told the teacher that I would probably not be bringing him, since he wasn't yet in a booster seat. "Oh, we have extras," she said. "Well, it's that I haven't moved him to a booster seat yet. He's still in a car seat." She said she thought one of the mothers would have. Now, if you know me you know how I am about carseat installations. I do not just clip in the seatbelt and walk away--I treat every carseat installation as though I knew the car was about to get in a head-on collision (okay, if I knew THAT I wouldn' t be putting my kid in the car, but you get the idea.) I said, I'm sorry, but I'm very makpid about carseats and if I can't put it in myself I'm really not comofortable with it. I think I'll probably keep him home.

She looked... displeased. "Well, I'd hate for him to miss it," she said. I assured her that we go to the park plenty, and we left. The issue, honestly, was as much the park as the carseat--I won't go to that park myself without a 1:1 child-parent ration, because it also has a huge adventure playground in which children instantly disappear. And Barak is three. And he is... adventurous. And I did not want him to disappear.

The trip came and went. Today, I took Barak to school. I walked in the door and within seconds the teacher was there, holding a bunch of pictures. "Look, Barak! Here are the pictures of the trip you couldn't go on!"

Now, is it just me, or was that a little....!

I said, rather stiffly, "I'm not sure why you're showing him those." She said "I made a picture for all of the children. Would you rather I not give him one?" I said better not, and left.

Now, it's possible--possible--that she just happened to be standing there with the pictures, and didn't mean anything by it. (Possible, but unlikely.) I know she already doesn't like me, and don't want to a) escalate this or b) have her take it out on Barak. She hasn't done anything where I can justifiably pull him out without paying the rest of the year's tuition. And I'm not sure how I would begin to have a conversation about this, and I'm pretty sure that any conversation I did have would not be productive.

But I really, really don't feel good about it right now.

Hey, Wendy

If you're reading this, can you email me please? I mailed your yarn and it came back, so I need your address again.

:)

18 months

Iyyar had his 18-month checkup yesterday. Considerately, he chose that very morning to break out in a neck-to-toes bright red rash which would have impelled me to to take him to the doctor that day anyway--so he spared me a second trip. (Not really though--we didn't do any shots because of the rash, so I'll have to go back for those, but at least it will be a scheduled-in-advance visit.)

Iyyar, incredibly, is still only in about the thirtieth percentile for weight. Where is he putting it all? He eats Barak under the table, and me too sometimes. 55th for height. He weighs 24 lb 8 oz, which I need to remember the next time he gets a fever and I need to figure out how much Tylenol he gets.

Developmentally... well. I think he is fine, personally, and as I told the pediatrician, "My natural inclination is to worry myself sick over everything, and I think he's fine, so he probably is." Is he talking? Not really. A few words here and there, and you can't elicit anything out of him ever. Stacking blocks? No, but he attaches Lego. Will he kick a ball? No, but he can catch one if you throw it right. Does he know any body parts? Will he point at his nose if you ask him where his nose is? No. Any pretend play? Um, not really. He'll pretend to talk on the phone sometimes. Reciprocal play? I thought, but did not say, yes, he loves to drop things down the front of my shirt and goes into hysterical laughter if I do the same thing to him.

Then we come home. This morning, I put my finger on my nose. "Iyyar, where's your nose? Can you show me your nose?" Iyyar puts his finger on his nose and grins. Then, when I turn my back, he starts dropping things off his high chair tray, as per usual. Only this time, he's saying, "Uh-oh! Down! Uh-oh! Down!"

I really think he was just waiting till after the appointment to start.

Singing

When Iyyar was in his screaming-all-the time phase (you know, the first six months or so) I mentioned the unbelievable volume in a running email exchange with a knitting buddy who is also a musician. I complained about the constant ringing in my ear from having a 200-decibel baby's mouth three inches away. She reassured me that he was probably headed for a career in opera. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better.

Now I wonder. Because Iyyar--well, that child loves to sing. He sings and sings and sings. He sings in his high chair, sings in his crib, sings to his toys. He sings the diaper-changing lament and the song of cheese-eating joy. Right now I am in my office, having just shipped off a speech, and I am listening to him yodeling in the hall. "AH ya ya ya yay! AAAAAH ya ya ya yay!" and then, "Ah ya yee ya bee! Ah ya yee ba bee!"

He's got his 18-month checkup scheduled for this afternoon, and I know that the pediatrician will give me grief that he's not talking yet, other than the two or three words that he doesn't use consistently. He won't imitate anything anyone says, although he'll imitate anything you do--he'll throw and catch a ball, help you put books away, put anything he can get his hands on in the garbage. But then you'll have your back turned, you'll here the soft patter of feline feet, and from behind you in the high chair you'll think you've imagined a small voice distinctly saying "cat."

"Cat?" you'll say, hopefully. "Is that a cat?" And Iyyar will look at you blankly. "Di-d-d-d-d."

Same thing when you say "no." He insists he doesn't understand. "No, Iyyar! Those are Abba's books. You don't take those off the shelf. No no!" How's that, Imma? I don't understand. What is this word you use, 'no'? Well, whatever--here, have a Kahati. But then when Barak's trying to take a toy away from him, what does he do? Holds it as far away as possible while hollering, "Na na na na na!"

I know his hearing is fine, because if I say, "Iyyar, are you hungry? Do you want a snack?" right behind him, the next thing I know he'll be in the kitchen trying to climb into the high chair. I worry sometimes, because it's my nature, and I'll ask Ada what she thinks. "He's fine," she assures me. "I think he's just really, really stubborn. One of these days he'll decide to talk, and then it'll be full sentences from morning till night."

I have a funny feeling she might be right.

and Shabbos

Barak was back to his normal sweet self.

Today, while Iyyar was napping, Barak and I went with a friend to Target, in her car. For a child with a motor vehicle fetish but no regular access to a car, going to Target in a car ranks about 8 out of 10 in the Toddler Excitement Scale. Not as good as getting to peek inside a firetruck or a concrete mixer, but a heck of a lot better than anything that happens on an ordinary day. I brought along his car seat and buckled him in. When we pulled into the parking lot, I got out of the car and closed the door, about to open the back seat to let him out. Barak, not used to any kind of a car routine, was immediately alarmed--he thought I'd forgotten him.

"Imma!" he hollered. "Buckle me out please!"

Buckle me in, buckle me out. It makes sense.

Off to put the tissues and toilet paper away.

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?