In which I am still here

38 weeks and two days.

La la la.

We're in a pattern now where I have contractions, they step up, I start getting that feeling of impending-ness, I get my childcare arrangements settled, and then everything stops. This has now happened three times. It's nice to be predictable, don't you think?

In which I continue to twiddle my thumbs

38 weeks tomorrow. If I'm still not in labor it'll be the latest I've ever gone. Not that I'm complaining. Full term is great. I'm enjoying the extra sleep. It's just... different.

One of the kids said something cute yesterday that I wanted to blog about and now I can't remember what it was. Hmm.

Avtalyon is really into firetrucks right now ("Gie guck! Whoo!") but that wasn't it. Iyyar found a picture of Darth Vader on a 7-11 cup and told me he was a bad guy "but then he did tshuva." Also cute, but that wasn't it either. Umm. (Think think think.)

Oh, I don't remember. But motzai Shabbos I let Barak come out of bed and play little Lego in my office while I worked and while he was playing I heard him singsonging, "kapusta! kapusta!" Which, as you may know, is the Yiddish word for "cabbage." No idea where that one came from, although I agree that it is a really fun word to say.

I don't think that one is in the parsha song

I think it is an attribute common to 3yos that they are focused on a very black-and-white concept of right/wrong, wrongdoing/consequence. Din is big at that age. Lately, Iyyar has been talking a lot about how "Hashem gonna punish you!" Not me, per se, but whoever does something wrong.

Friday night, when Abba was at shul, I had the bigger two set up at the kitchen table with little Lego and Avtalyon in his high chair with a box of little animals. They were playing and I was reading their parsha sheets--Barak does noticeably better on the questions when he is happily playing and relaxed. I did his first (he got all of them right but one). Then I did Iyyar's. Iyyar goes to the same chareidi playgroup that Barak went to, where they do a lot of Yiddish. So the first question, naturally, is "Voss iz die nehmen fun die parsha?" What's the name of the parsha? Correct answer, as he knows from the song, being Chayyei Sarah ("Sarah lived for one hundred twenty-seven years...")

"Iyyar, voss iz die nehmen fun die parsha?"

"Bereishis Noach Lech l'cha!"

"No, we did those already. What's next?" [Singing] "Bereishis, Noach, Lech L'cha, Vayeira...?"

"Hashem gonna punish you!"

"I don't think that's actually the parsha this week, sweetie." [Thinking: although that's applicable to what, a quarter of them at least?]

Barak's latest thing with the little Lego is hands. One of the items in the Glorious Bin of Lego I bought from a friend at work's garage sale was a dragon--it was missing its tail initially but Barak solved this problem most resourcefully with the addition of a tail plundered from an unsuspecting crocodile. What does this dragon eat? Why, it eats hands. Naturally. Right now, none of the Lego menschies have hands. All the hands are in a clear plastic box on the back of a sort of cart that Barak has rigged up, together with a chain that attaches it to the dragon so he can drag his supply of hands, treasure, and weaponry anywhere he goes. Barak was explaining this to me the other day and I will confess to having expressed some degree of, well, disgust.

"Barak, that's gross. A boxful of hands is just gross."

Barak gave me a look that was half amused, half sympathetic. "Imma! It's okay!" Eye roll. "It's just little Lego, Imma."

37/4

No baby yet. Went to midwife yesterday and she said between 2 and 3 cm, 90% effaced. Baby is low ("Well, there's his head,") but I wasn't in early labor or anything like that. Having contractions but nothing that really appears to be heading anywhere. Of course, as she said, "Just remember that it's not that bad until it is." Um. Right. I'll bear that in mind.

Bad day

"Imma, I had a bad day today."

"Why did you have a bad day?"

"I don't know."

"Did it start out as a bad day or did it get bad later?"

"It got bad later."

"When did it get bad?"

"When I got in trouble."

Yeah, when you got in trouble for pitching a full-on tantrum on the floor.

I am so. Tired.

I chaperoned a class trip today for Barak's kindergarten, which was fun, even though it involved a couple of miles of walking and of course I had Iyyar and Avtalyon with me in the double stroller. That part was fun; Avtalyon slept through the whole thing and Iyyar had a blast. It was the rest of the afternoon that was... challenging. Without getting into all the details, by 6 pm I looked Barak in the eye and told him I was so angry at him that he was going to have to go into a different room, right now, and stay there for a while. I know. Mother of the Year, right here.

It was all okay in the end; Abba finally came home and wrangled them for a while, and then after he left I went in to the kids' room to find Barak still awake. I let him come into Abba's bed and we talked in the dark for a while and sort of talked things through; he was feeling better by the time I left and so was I.

But, yeah. Tired. Not the best day. Tomorrow should be better. As I said to Barak, "You know the best thing about bad days? When you go to bed, they're over! They're just over, and you can make tomorrow be a good day. Right?"

Irrational

Over on my hundred-things sidebar there, it says something like (I can't see it right now) "I buy yarn in inverse proportion to the time I have available to knit."

This is especially true at the very tail end of pregnancy.

I SO want to buy yarn right now. Specifically, I want to buy gorgeous hand-dyed sock yarn, with which to knit lacey shawls. Do I already have such yarn? Yes. Do I have other yarn? Yes. Do I have time to knit it? Not much, and IY"H I'm about to have a lot less.

Doesn't matter. I still have this terrible urge to buy yarn. Which I simply absolutely cannot do, because not only do I a) have yarn already but b) I can't spend any money right now. I'm about to take 12 weeks off and most of it will be unpaid; there is no way we will get through this without digging into our savings; ergo, I would be taking money out of savings to buy yarn I really don't need and there is no fathomable excuse for such behavior.

Doesn't mean I'm not spending time trawling etsy and ravelry, though. And today I stopped in to the yarn store by work and almost bought a Zauberball. I didn't. But it was close.

Seriously, what is wrong with me? Do you know how much yarn I have? And how little time I have? Why do I feel like I need more yarn?

DSM-V, anyone?

Anyway...

Barak's conferences were... okay. Nothing terribly negative, although both his moros and his rebbe commented that he seemed anxious and stressed. No kidding. He's five years old and has a school day longer than what I had as a senior in high school. Of course, if they're commenting that he's stressed he's obviously more stressed than the other kids. Which I can believe, because Barak, as I have mentioned here before, really, really needs his processing time. He needs time by himself, playing on the floor with his Lego or his trucks or what have you. If he doesn't get it, he can't deal, and what's his average school day like? He gets up at 7, eats breakfast, is out the door at 8, on the bus by 8:10, off the bus at 4, in the door at 4:10, is assailed by little brothers, has dinner half an hour later, and is hustled along through dinner/bathroom/bath/teeth/bed by 6:30 or 7. If he's not in bed by then, he doesn't wake up in time in the morning and ends up with a bag of Rice Chex for breakfast. Which is not a good start to the day.

This morning he woke up saying he didn't want to go to school. And I said fine. He stayed home and played little Lego and hung out with Asnat, and came with me to drop off and pick up Iyyar, and had a nice day generally. And still was in meltdown by the end of the day, although part of that I think was that Iyyar took an afternoon nap and wasn't ready to go to bed at the usual time, so they both went to bed later than they should have (around 7:45--yeah, tomorrow's going to be fantastic.)

His moros commented that he plays by himself a lot, not because he doesn't get along with the other boys but because he prefers to. Yeah, I know. He mentioned it to me. "I just want to play by myself but my morah won't let me. She says I should play with the other boys." His rebbe mentioned that he was socially immature because he did not a) play ball, preferring to dig in the dirt instead and b) engaged in parallel rather than interactive play with his best friend. I don't know. I mean, if he sees a problem I feel that I should take it seriously, but truly I think that this is more his personality--he needs space--than a maturity issue per se. And MHH is 37 and is still not mature enough to prefer ball play to... anything, actually, that I can think of. Maybe root canal. No, probably not.

Anyway. It's hard to know how concerned to be. Neither the moros nor the rebbe seemed hugely concerned and I've talked to both of them before without their mentioning issues. His rebbe said he would have called a couple of weeks ago instead of bringing it up during the hugely inadequate five minutes (!!!) allotted per child for conferences, but his wife just had a baby so clearly time has been tight in the evenings (not complaining, I understand this completely). Mostly it was said in the context of "things to be aware of and keep an eye on." Yeah, I am aware that Barak is intense, I'm aware that he gets overstimulated and overwhelmed, and I'm really very aware that he needs more down time than he's getting. I'm not sure what exactly I can do about any of it though, other than offer him the option of a day off when I feel he needs it. I talked to him today about the concept of a personal day, and how I thought everyone needed that option. I guess it's just a question of how often he chooses to avail himself of it, and whether I'm going to find myself in the position of drawing a line.

37 weeks and a day. Absolutely nothing is happening. Not a single contraction all day. Further bulletins, &c.

37 weeks, 37 minutes

37 weeks in another 29 minutes. Yay! Officially not having a premature baby!

So, remember how when Avtalyon was born, I posted something like, "The labor in brief: I am never doing this without drugs ever again"? I meant it, too. I did it without drugs twice. I am officially woman, hear me roar, yes, very nice, NOW GIVE ME THE GOOD DRUGS.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

Some of you know I had an incredibly awful experience with Barak. Part of the awfulness was five--count 'em, FIVE--failed epidurals. They slipped, they fell out, they never worked, and one time the lidocaine ran out but the alarm didn't go off and... yeah. Anyway. Epidurals and I do not have a good track record together. Part of the the problem appeared to be that I have scoliosis. I had a back brace for several years and while the curvature has mostly been corrected, some amount of spinal rotation is still there, and this of course presents a problem when someone is trying to, say, insert a needle into your spine in just exactly the right spot.

When I was in L & D a couple of weeks ago with the shingles, I started having a little bit of, ah, post-traumatic stress. As in, I said "I'm getting tense just being here" and, er, started to cry. My midwife, the next time I saw her, suggested I call the anesthesia department and get a consult. I did talk to someone, and it was a good, informative, open talk from a very nice anesthesiologist who told me openly that he couldn't give me an answer on whether an epidural would work for me until he tried. I tried to give him only the bare bones of what had happened and it made me feel better that he sounded completely horrified. He promised me that I would not get a resident (part of the problem last time) and also said he would only try once. "I would say that it should work but I can't make any promises, especially given what happened last time. I think you should talk about other options for pain control." So I did, on Friday, and you know... there aren't many and they aren't that great. Demerol, yeah, but it doesn't work that well and like any other drug the baby gets some of it if you have it in you for long enough. And hello, it's labor--things happen unexpectedly. My labor with Avtalyon really was ok until the last 37 minutes. I remember this, because I looked at the clock when I said I needed to push and he was born 37 minutes later and it was the intervening period of time that even I can't quite summon up the words to describe.

My midwife, when I said this to her, tried to make it positive. "I know it's awful, but even with Avtalyon it was only 37 minutes. You can get through it." Which... well, it sounded good at the time, but, sorry, no. As I said to my husband that evening while relaying the conversation, "It's like someone saying to you, I'm going to start hacking you apart with an ice pick now. But don't worry! I'll only do it for 37 minutes, and then I'll stop and it'll be all over!" Not so reassuring really.

There's nothing I can do really but just see how it goes. I'd like to try to get through it without attempting an epidural. Part of what was so hard about having Barak was that I had tried so hard not to have an epidural and when I finally agreed to one I already felt like I couldn't take it anymore, I was throwing in the towel and I needed it to just. stop. hurting. And then having it not work, multiple times, was more than I could stand--harder almost than not even trying. IV drugs, well... yeah. Also not an ideal option. But getting hacked apart with an ice pick isn't so awesome either. Even if it's only for 37 minutes.

Counting down

37 weeks tomorrow. For the record, I had Avtalyon at 37 weeks 1 day--he was born early in the morning, too.

I started having contractions on Shabbos that, by motzai Shabbos, were an ominous 6 minutes apart. Even though I was, as I insisted, NOT HAVING THE BABY. I drank a lot of water, took a hot shower, went determinedly to bed, and woke up the next morning to nothing. They've been starting and stopping ever since, sometimes getting stronger and, so far, always petering out. They are petering out because, as I think I just mentioned, I am NOT HAVING A BABY yet. Because I can't until tomorrow at the earliest, because that is when the pediatrician who has promised not to discharge a jaundiced baby comes back from vacation.

Got that, baby? Yes? Good. Glad you can read Blogger from in there.

Oh, and a poll--what are your favorite (Jewish) girl names? We have boy names settled (I think) but girl names are eluding us. You'd think by now we'd have a backlog stashed but no. With Iyyar I knew I was having a boy so never picked a girl's name; the name I had in mind when Barak was born I don't really like anymore. So... yeah. Open to suggestions here. MHH doesn't like feminizations of male names and I don't like the standard Bais Yaakov ChanaChayaBrachaRinaMiriamChavaSoraRivkaTovaShifraEstherMalka. And I'm hoping to figure out a name that won't instantly peg the bearer's position religiously in Israel. This is turning out to be a taller order than anticipated. Name your kid Yocheved? She can never leave Bnai Brak. Modern Israeli name? Ah, chiloni. There aren't a lot of names in between that aren't, well, ChanaChaya &c., and many of them we had to ding for other reasons (already got one, too similar to a sibling's name, etc.)

Now that's out of the way...

What else is new?

Avtalyon has a funny bump on his heel--it looks like a big callous, it's peeling very slightly, and I think it hurts a bit but not enough to cause major problems. I can't imagine what it could be--how does a baby get a callous an inch in diameter? Could it be a plantar wart? He told me about it yesterday by coming up to me and informing me, "Gock. Ow." What? Sock ow? Your sock... oh... oh your foot hurts!

Clever, isn't he? Saying "my foot hurts" without knowing any of the necessary words? He'll do well with foreign languages. His favorite thing lately is calling family roll from his high chair. "Imma! Abba? Abba? Aya? Eddie? Aya Eddie Imma Abba? Meow!" Then you try to get him to say his name. "Baby! Imma Abba Aya Eddie baby!" When you try really hard to get him to say his own name, he just giggles. Other cute Avtalyonisms include the comical look of shock (mouth open in a round O of surprise, hand pressed to check, then to top of head for variety) and telling you what sound an aleph makes (wide open mouth, nothing coming out--he got that one from Barak).

Barak is doing better with aleph-beis and his morah mentioned to me that he really knows his English letters well, which is great, although truth be told Iyyar knows them better at this point. Grandma E sent us a couple of fabulous board books--Mig the Pig and Pug the Bug--in which you turn each page and combine a different first letter with the same second and third letter to make new words (P-IG, D-IG, F-IG, J-IG etc.) It was great--I saw some light bulbs going on. There's no question that Barak is more motivated to learn to read English than Hebrew right now, which isn't surprising. I'm steeling myself for the parent conferences tonight. Remember last year's? These shouldn't be so much of a surprise, since I've talked to his morah and his rebbe a couple of times already, but I'm still expecting... something unexpected.

I let Barak stay up insanely late playing little Lego on Shabbos, this week and last week. I feel a little guilty letting my 5 yo stay up until the last adult falls, but he needs the processing/play time more than he needs the sleep. So I left the light on in my office over Shabbos and let him just play in there for hours--from when Iyyar went to bed at around 6:30 until... well. At 10 I was on my way to bed, and I told him he could play Lego until Abba started falling asleep and then he had to go to bed; half an hour later I came back there and saw Abba completely passed out with a sefer and Barak trying to make himself as small and quiet as possible. So I waited up a little more. What can I say? He gets home at 4. It's already almost dark. He walks in the door and is accosted by little brothers, then it's dinnertime, then bath and bed and he doesn't ever get any time to play by himself. He needs that, so we have to find the time somewhere.

Iyyar is still fine on the tummy front (tfu tfu), and although he is definitely three and a half I don't find him as challenging behavior-wise as I remember Barak being at this point. Maybe I've mellowed, maybe he's easier, most likely it's a combination. Wonder how he'll react when the baby comes. Even though school is only till 1 for him it's still a lot at his age and by the end of the week he's had it. This past weekend we never even left the house, despite the gorgeous weather. Nobody wanted to. They just wanted to hunker down and play, which was OK with me.

Oh, and I finished the shawl I made my midwife. Picture is rotten, shawl is lovely. Trust me on this one. Note attached i-cord, please.

PoxWatch 2009

Avtalyon's got a fever--haven't checked his temp but he's good and hot--and is miserable.

Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

NaBloPlonyMo

I was reading someone's blog on Sunday and thought, hey, November! Isn't that the "blog every day" month I never bothered with? I should try that.

Well, here it is the fourth already and... I... yeah. Oh well. So much for that. I can still try, though, right?

It's been a good week so far. Barak had a rough Monday--he got pushed on the playground and came home devastated by the discovery that there are people in the world who think it is fun to hurt other people. We spent a lot of time talking on Monday night and into Tuesday and then I talked to his morah. Things seem better now--she assured me that it did not seem part of a pattern and that Barak was not being bullied, and that from her perception (although definitely not from Barak's) it had been an accident. I'm not convinced she's right on that one, but she said he was fitting in well, making friends, playing with the other boys, etc., which is the important thing. However, from Barak's point of view, he could not possibly go back to school where there were mean people who thought it was fun to hurt other people. Which was the first thing to deal with, whether it had been an accident or no.

So Barak and I talked on Monday night (with lots of cuddles) about how everyone has a bad day sometimes, every bad day is over when you go to bed, and let's figure out how to make tomorrow into a good day. Barak thought this over and decided that a treat in his lunchbox would definitely help. I said OK. Then we thought that getting up a little earlier to sit and all have breakfast together would help, and even more if breakfast were, say, oatmeal, with maple syrup. I agreed to that one too. But really, he said (with a sad sigh) school was too much for him and he shouldn't go. Which I agree with the first part of--a day that starts with an 8:00 bus stop time and ends with getting home at 4 pm just as it's about to get dark is CRAZY for a 5yo. It IS too much. He needs more time to play.

"Well, if you want, I can come get you at lunchtime and you can come home. Should I do that?"

"No you can't!" he said, with conviction. "The kids aren't allowed to. You aren't allowed to go ANYWHERE when you're at school. You just have to stay until the bus comes."

"Barak, if your Imma comes to get you, and says, Barak is coming home with me now, they have to let you go."

His eyes got wide. "Really?"

"Absolutely. I can come get you anytime you want. And if you don't want to stay in the afternoon, you don't have to. You can tell me in the morning and I can come get you after lunch."

Now, I will point out here that I am pretty convinced that generally speaking, Barak loves school, and I think if I were to show up at lunchtime to take him home, he wouldn't want to go. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the offer, frankly. But the look on his face was something else. I think just knowing that he COULD go home if he wanted to was a pretty big deal for him. Hey, no, I'm NOT being held hostage! Neat!

I found out later, when talking to the school secretary--more on this tomorrow maybe--that there are parents who come sometimes to take their younger children to lunch. This would NEVER have gone over in my public school and frankly simply never occurred to me to do, but it seems that given the crazy long school day and families with many children, sometimes parents who feel that their kids need some 1:1 parent time will come during the day and take said kid out to lunch at the pizza place down the block. It gets harder when the kids are older, of course, but this seems to be an accepted, and acceptable, thing to do; just call me in the morning, she said, if you're going to come and get him, and she told me exactly what time lunch starts.

Now that's a good thing to know I can do. Even if I don't know if he'd actually want to do it, I think just the idea that we could do such a thing would really make him happy. Anyway--things to think about.

OK. Back to work. More tomorrow, maybe.

36

36 weeks tomorrow. Nothing seems to be moving at all--which is just how I want it right now, of course.

With daylight savings time over, the kids conked out earlier last night but then of course woke up earlier this morning. At around 6:30, I heard suspicious sounds of garbage-can-dragging in the hall. "Iyyar, what are you doing?" "I can't turn onna light inna hall! I can't reach it!" Oh dear. "Iyyar, do you want to come cuddle with Abba and Imma? Go get your blankie and you can come in bed with us. " This suggestion was from Abba, not Imma--I would have just gotten up, but fine.

Iyyar was quite delighted with this suggestion ("Yeah!"), ran to get his blankie and climbed, naturally, into my side of the bed, arranging himself cozily with his knee perilously close to my stomach. He did not, of course, have any interest in sleeping. "Where Abba go?" he asked me. (Abba has this totally inexplicable habit of sleeping completely under the blanket, head and all. How he breathes is beyond me.) "Abba's under the blanket. He's in there." "Dass his house?" "I guess--is he in there like a turtle? Is he hiding?" Iyyar liked this idea and we talked for a while about turtles and their houses, whether they had furniture and toys and yarn in there (probably not, no room), whether they could make bagels (no, they don't have hands, just four feet) and whether it was cozy in there (yes, probably). Abba had gone right back to sleep and for a while Iyyar and I just hung out under the blankets and schmoozed. We talked about turning lights on and off, who can do this, who can't (Avtalyon can't reach but he can do it if I hold him), various things he'd be able to do when he was bigger, especially if he ate lots of vegetables and got VERY big, etc. When Abba's alarm went off, and Abba's head emerged, Iyyar thought this was the funniest. thing. ever. "Dere's Abba! He came out! Like a turtle!"

Shabbos was nice--I never actually got dressed and nobody but Abba left the house, but sometimes that's kind of a good thing. For a few days last week I was having what felt like really terrible contractions that started every time I moved, but that's all completely stopped now--we're back to the occasional Braxton-Hicks and the occasional real one but nothing that gives any indication of imminency. Good in itself, plus I'm feeling much better now. It makes such a huge difference not only in my mood but in my mothering--if I can get up easily, I don't resent the five thousand times a day someone needs something RIGHT THIS SECOND.

Getting up is one thing; clambering under furniture, however, is another. So when, on Shabbos, Avtalyon dropped his very last pacifier behind his crib at the beginning of naptime, I was not entirely thrilled. No way could I go down on my stomach and crawl underneath the crib, of course, so I started trying to push it away from the wall, which was complicated by the presence of diaper-filled Rubbermaid drawers under the crib and two more drawers (one for blankies and spare wipes, the other one a holding tank for ironing) right next to it. It really wasn't working. And then inspiration hit. "Barak? Barak, can you come here and help me?" Barak, to his immense credit, dropped whatever he was doing and came running. "Barak, can you go under Avtalyon's crib and find his pluggies? They all fell down there." And he did, cheerfully scooting under the crib and retrieving not one, not two, but THREE pluggies for Avtalyon. Avtalyon grinned, I cheered, and I gave Barak a big kiss. "Barak, I wish you still had mitzvah notes in school! I'd write you such a mitzvah note."

And Barak STARTED TO CRY.

???!!!

Between the tears I heard something about rebbe and stickers and his name and mitzvah notes and the end of the year and a prize and OH NO I suddenly realized that even though I had never heard a word to this effect, clearly I was still supposed to be writing him mitzvah notes every day. And it sounded like there was an actual MITZVAH NOTE CHART at school. And that he, Barak, had not a single sticker on his chart and would get no prize because he had NEVER had a single mitzvah note.

Worst. Mother. Ever.

I felt awful, apologized profusely, and last night wrote Barak a veritable mitzva letter--one entire side of a sheet of printer paper, written on fairly small--wherein I fulsomely described the many mitzvos of the weekend, beginning with the pacifier episode and finishing up with his lovely sh'ma Sunday night. Underneath, I wrote a note to his rebbe explaining that I hadn't realized that Barak was supposed to have mitzva notes and please could he draw any other acts of maternal negligence to my attention. Thank you. Barak seemed quite happy about this this morning--we'll see what he says after school. I'm not sure where it's coming from but Barak has developed a couple of facial tics lately--eyebrow-wiggling mostly but also some funny throat noises. Google reassures me that this is nothing but I'm wondering if he's stressed about something. My feeling is that he's tired--the school day is long and he doesn't get enough time to play by himself. I could be wrong, though, and it's hard to extract that kind of information from him directly.

Oh, and funny Avtalyon story of the week: in our front hall we have doorbell chimes which the kids are not supposed to touch (they're only attached by a hook and can come off). Yesterday, Avtalyon realized he was tall enough to just tap them, just enough to make them chime. He was delighted by this, and immediately realized that he was, in fact, ringing the doorbell! After a few rings, some pieces clicked together in his head. Doorbell! Ringing! Means Asnat is here! So he rang the doorbell, gasped in mock surprise and opened his mouth into a round theatrical O, ran to the front door, and crowed, "Anee!" I honestly don't think he could make her appear by the magic trick of ringing the doorbell--I think he was being deliberately funny. And succeeding.

Wow

Barak and Abba were drawing pictures at the kitchen table while I was dishing out supper. Barak got a big piece of Abba's bristol board and drew a big bus for the Torah Team. Then I saw him frowning and scowling a lot.

"I'm trying to write 'stop' but I don't know how."

"I can tell you the letters, OK? First write an S."

[frowning and scowling]

"Then a T, like tree. Then an O. Then a P."

A minute later, he held it up. "Is that stop?"

And it was! The S was backward, but otherwise, he'd written STOP.

First written word!

Wow.

Unlisted

Thirty-five weeks today. After a few weeks of quiet gloating that I hadn't even had the first whisper of a contraction, I got walloped with a huge one on Sunday; they've been sort of on and off ever since. Not strong, but definitely noticeable, and they were quite clear on the fetal monitoring tape on Sunday night.

Hang on, you say. Why were you on a fetal monitor on Sunday?

Oh yes. Well. That. Very compressed version of events: a week of mild flu symptoms with no fever, followed by a freaky-looking rash that appeared on Friday morning and by Sunday was so itchy, painful, and generally distressing that I called my midwife. Who told me to come in to the ER. Which I didn't want to do, because our local ER is awful. But she was in L& D delivering a baby, so she said, come in here and I'll look at you. Which she did. As did the on-call OB. Who both said that the baby looked fine, but that I had, um, shingles.

Shingles?!

Seriously???

Yep.

So, now I am on antivirals, the kids had to get varicella shots because even though they're going to get chickenpox or not no matter what at this point, the shots should make it milder and make it less likely that I will come home with a newborn baby to a houseful of poxy children.

To say that I am wildly uncomfortable at this point would be an understatement. The shingles rash doesn't just hurt, it itches; the rash on my legs itches; I'm still, after seven months, congested and coughing at night; I'm having contractions, and, you know, I'm eight months pregnant, so I'm huge, slow, and I have to go to the bathroom every thirty seconds. But as much as I'd like this part to be over, I don't want it to be over for at least another two weeks and much preferably another three, so that nobody will be contagious anymore by the time IY"H the baby comes. We'll see how that one works out.

Kid updates:

Avtalyon's new thing is putting on his big brothers' underwear--one pair per leg, usually. He pulls them on, stands up, and they fall off. Then he tries again. Sometimes he takes underwear out of their drawer and brings it to me to put on over his clothes. Which, obligingly, I do. I'm happy to report that neither of his brothers really seem to mind this much, as long as he doesn't do anything like nab Iyyar's most bestest Super Grover underwear. He's very into fire trucks, especially the fire truck pages of one particular truck board book; he imitates Iyyar imitating firetrucks, and it can all get very loud. Phrase of the week: "Oh no!", accompanied by theatrical pressing of palm to cheek and, occasionally, dramatic intake of breath.

Iyyar is getting really good at the alphabet. He can identify most of the letters and today, out of nowhere, drew the letter R. Then he showed it to me. "Look! It's a R!" And it was. He is having a really hard time sitting still--I remember this from when Barak was in the same playgroup, that he'd come home and just want to wander/run around the house all afternoon. I don't mind this at all in principle but it's hard when I'm trying to feed him dinner or something like that. He still wants me to tuck him in at night and occasionally wakes up at night crying that he's not tucked in. Absolutely nary a whisper of any kind of tummy issues, which is still just so amazing to me. He goes to the bathroom on his own and doesn't even need reminding; no constipation, no diarrhea, just normal, quick, bathroom trips without commentary. He had his first hamburger tonight; after the shots, we all went to the "hot dog store" for a post-trauma treat, and he asked for a hamburger instead of a hot dog. Fine with me. But when he saw it, he started to cry: I want a hot dog! Then he took the top off the roll the better to explain his dissatisfaction and his expression changed. "Oh! It's churkey!" No, it's not actually turkey, but if it makes you happy to think it is, great. Half a gallon of ketchup and many bars of the Happy Food Song later, it was almost gone. He had French fries, too.

Barak is all about the Lego these days. I think I mentioned that we recently acquired a huge Rubbermaid bin of little Lego from a work friend's garage sale; it is the lifetime Lego collection of her two adult sons and I have no plans to ever purchase Lego in a store again. Barak had not been showing much interest in, or inclination to learn, aleph-bais; so I made him a chart, some flash cards, and told him that if he could fill in half the chart--meaning, he knew the letters cold on sight every time, and also the sounds they made--he could fill a plastic cup with Lego from the box. This was quite a powerful motivator and on Sunday he got all the way up to nun sofis. Reward: a dragon, a cannon, a bunch of storm troopers, and whatever else he could fit in there. He loves school and especially his rebbe, who I think is amazing. He currently prefers red grapes to green, and likes cutting his grapes in half with a plastic knife. He's started eating red peppers occasionally, but cucumbers are still the vegetable of choice; he loves grating cheese, so I buy it in blocks now whenever I can.

I think that's it. Knitting isn't happening nearly as much as I wish it could, but that's life. I have a lot of speeches to write and a lot of stuff to get done in the next few weeks (I hope it's that many...) It still hasn't really sunk in that there may soon be a new child around here. I'm kind of at that point of pregnancy where you feel like you've been pregnant forever and you always will be, and the baby idea seems just very very remote. Even though said baby idea is kicking me in the bladder right now. And on that note...

Overheard

The scene: Barak and friend are in the kitchen on Shabbos afternoon, playing little Lego and talking. I am in the living room with Avtalyon, listening in. I realize that the topic of conversation is how sneaky they are and how they can trick their imma/mommy. I am not sure I like this and pay closer attention. Then I hear, from Barak's friend, who is the son of a friend of mine from grad school:

"I'm so sneaky. I can trick my mommy. Sometimes she asks me if I brushed my teeth and I say I don't know. Even though I do know, I trick her and I say I don't know. Really I know that I didn't brush my teeth." Pause. "But then I tell her. Because I also don't like cavities."

Listerine

1. I should be posting more. I say this not out of any sense of bloggerly guilt but because I know I will want the reminders later--having recently spent time reading through all my old posts from before Iyyar and Avtalyon were born. For the record, I am 34 weeks today, and nary a contraction yet, except for the completely odd one here and there and an occasional Braxton-Hicks. Nothing that makes me think that things are even thinking about moving. Baby is kicking away; I am huge; Iyyar is asking me every few days how, exactly, the baby is going to come out. I tell him Hashem will take care of that and that seems to satisfy him. I suppose it should satisfy me as well, but it's hard not to worry about it. I had Avtalyon at 37 weeks, so I should probably be prepared for the possibility that there could be a baby in as few as three weeks. It doesn't really seem real yet, though.

2. I've been on a huge cleaning kick lately. A few weeks ago I seriously cleaned out my office, dealing with ALL the piles, and it still looks pretty good now (every time my husband dumps something back here, I turn right around and dump it in his closet. It's getting kind of hard to close his closet, but the office still looks snazzy.) I've washed a ton of sweaters, defrosted the basement freezer, cleaned and organized the kitchen shelves, cleaned the fridge/freezer in the kitchen to Pesach levels, gone through the toys, and cleaned and organized the armoire in my room, including the huge teetering pile of stuff on top. I still need to do my own closet but that's not such a big deal; I tried to do the storage closet in the basement but just couldn't. Too much heavy lifting. Another time.

3. Knitting! I am not knitting enough. I want to be knitting more or less all the time, but, well, there are speeches to be written and children to be looked after and laundry to be folded and so on. I have been doing some baby sweaters out of sock yarn--pretty much exclusively that lately. I've done three boy sweaters and three girl sweaters, and three of my friends have had boys in the last few months (actually, a fourth yesterday) so all I have left is baby girl sweaters. I guess I'll just have to have a girl.

4. Food. Guess what both Iyyar and Avtalyon have decided they love? Rice and beans. Seriously. As in, brown rice cooked in the rice cooker, a can of drained black beans, and some salsa, all mixed together. With some cheese for Avtalyon. They LOVE this and will empty bowlsful of it. And it takes almost no time. Barak will not touch it (salsa contamination, of course) but will eat rice and cheese and some cut-up red peppers (oh, that's a new one--have I mentioned that? That he eats peppers now?), which is not that far off nutritionally. I tried making everyone burritos one night a couple of weeks ago and while nobody wanted the wraps (nutritionally destitute anyway) everyone liked some combination of the fillings. So, there's one more meal they'll all eat in some form. We're up to two now.

5. I found out at my last midwife appointment that I am antigen E positive. I wasn't before, so this is new since Avtalyon. My midwife said that this is so unusual she's never seen it before, even though she's been delivering babies for something like 30 years. Apparently it means closer monitoring and if the baby seems to be having trouble they might need to deliver me early, but she said she really didn't know and was going to have to talk to the blood guy and get back to me.
I looked online and saw a few medical articles, which aren't very informative, and a few Q & As, which don't seem to match what she told me. Anybody know anything more about this?

6. The sink sprayer in the kitchen is broken. This makes cleaning high chair trays a pain. Someone's supposed to be coming to fix it any... minute... now...

7. Avtalyon is doing the bottomless baby thing that Iyyar did at this age. He eats and eats and EATS. Last week I went to Trader Joe's and did a massive stockup of everything that could be stored in a pantry or frozen. As in, about 20 boxes of cereal, as many boxes of Iyyar-friendly rice milk as they had, tons of peanut butter and jelly and oatmeal and crackers and raisins and granola bars and just about everything else. (Think I'm nesting? Yeah, me too.) We hadn't had granola in the house in ages and suddenly we had granola AND yogurt all at the same time. I gave some to Avtalyon and he ate a whole big bowl of it. Then he asked for more, and I gave him half a bowl, and he kept asking for more until I finally drew the line at the equivalent of THREE bowls. It was full-fat yogurt, too.

8. Did I mention I'd really rather be knitting right now?

9. One of the other apartments in our building (there are four) is being foreclosed on. At least, the condo association got notice of this last week--apparently they have not paid their mortgage in six months. This is the family that had a second family move in with them in the spring, and has not been paying their assessments either, even though the water bills have suddenly gone through the roof because a) they have 10 people in there at least and b) apparently they have some leaking plumbing that they are not dealing with because, well, they're not paying the water bill, so why should they care about the leak?

This will, of, course, mean that we will have a foreclosure/for sale sign in front of our building at some point, which will make it a lot harder for us to sell this place if we decide to. I'm trying to just accept that if and when we sell we will simply not see any money from the sale. And reminding myself that there are worse ways to lose, oh, $70k or so. Medical bills, for example, would be worse. Years of unsuccessful fertility treatments? Fleeing the country from religious persecution and having one's assets nationalized by Nazis? Running through all our savings because of unemployment? That'd be worse too--at least we both have good resumes to show for our hard work, if not a lot of money. And we've been living in an apartment that we like, with extra-large-capacity washing machines AND a dishwasher. Worth thirty or forty thousand right there, surely.

Oh well. It's only money, right? And we have enough of it every month to live and be well on. Gam tzu l'tova.

Negotiation: A Play in One Act

SCENE: the kids' room.
TIME: bedtime.

BARAK and ABBA are on their way to a simchas bais ha'shoeva. AVTALYON is in his crib, basking in pluggies and blankies, and IYYAR, in train pajamas, is sitting on his train bed, banging AVTALYON's light-up Spiderman shoes on the side of same. IMMA is sitting in glider rocker, attempting a normal bedtime with only 2/3 the usual contingent of children.

IMMA: Iyyar, should we say shma now?

AVTALYON: Maaaaa! Yellll!

IYYAR: Not yet.

IMMA: Let's say sh'ma and then you can listen to a CD. Which CD do you want to listen to?

IYYAR: Let's listen to the CD first.

IMMA: We can't listen to the CD first. If we put on a CD we can't say sh'ma. Which CD do you want to listen to after we say sh'ma? Do you want the pirate one?

IYYAR: No.

IMMA: Okay, so which one do you want?

IYYAR: I want a shark one.

IMMA [flummoxed]: We don't have a shark one.

IYYAR: C'I have a shark one anyway?

IMMA: Well, no, because we don't have a shark CD.

IYYAR: C'we buy it? C'we buy a shark CD in the store?

IMMA: I don't think so, sweetie.

IYYAR: Why not?

IMMA: I don't think there are any shark CDs in the store.

IYYAR [with conviction]: Ackshully there is. There is a shark CD.

IMMA: I don't think so. I'm pretty sure there isn't.

IYYAR: Why not?

IMMA: Sharks can't really sing.

IYYAR: Oh. Then I want a Dr. Doomshtein one.

IMMA: Okay.

I guess someone likes school

"Imma! Imma, can I run! Can I run, Imma?!"

I love watching three-year-olds run--they do it with all of their limbs at once.

One of these days there will be a post about just one thing

But this isn't it.

1. Flags. Every time Iyyar sees an American flag, he points it out. "Look! It's an American flag!" And then, if it is not windy, "It's not flagging." I love it too much to correct him.

2. If Avtalyon likes what he is eating, which is pretty much all the time, he tells me. "Mmm! Mummy!"

3. Just this morning, Avtalyon started experimenting with hitting. He didn't like what Iyyar was doing so whaled him one, with a hard plastic dog. It must have hurt. Iyyar was so surprised he just stared for half a minute before crying; I went right to Avtalyon and very firmly told him NO! several times. Avtalyon looked outraged and then flung himself on the floor and threw a tantrum. I laughed. Then Iyyar laughed too. Then Avtalyon was insulted and stomped off down the hall to find Abba.

4. One of Avtalyon's favorite things to eat right now is red pepper, cut into slices and preferably accompanied by a bowl of hummus. He can't quite say "pepper" though. It comes out, "Ah poo!" and if you didn't know better you'd be sure he was saying "apple!"

5. We're getting three pounds of raw honey next week, from the same local buying co-op we already use to get real eggs (six dozen every two weeks, and yes, we go through them all). So excited.

6. I am really really enjoying my knitting lately. I'm not doing anything that novel but I've been getting a lot done in the little bits and pieces of time I have available--waiting for the bus with Barak, sometimes sitting on the floor with the kids playing, and occasionally at night. I've stopped working extra hours if I can possibly avoid it--the money is not enough to be worth it right now. I'd rather be getting stuff done at home.

7. I haven't done any yom tov cooking and I'm not even worrying about it. It's only two days, and for the first days we've been invited out for lunch on Shabbos so really it's just one extra meal over Shabbos. And I can cook on yom tov if I need to. Current plan is to make a billion carrot muffins for the kids (give or take a few hundred million), stock up on Shabbos yogurts, some deli, and fruit and the vegetables they like raw, bake some salmon for MHH and some bagels and cake for the rest of us. Everyone will be perfectly happy and I will stay sane.

8. I was looking over my work to-do list and figuring out exactly how much time I probably have left. Being conservative, I put a goal date for finishing everything that needs to get done before I go on leave for the beginning of my ninth month, since Avtalyon was born at 37 weeks and each baby has been several days earlier than the last. Then I realized that this goal date was a mere five weeks away. Holy cats. Think I should go through the baby clothes one of these days? Clean out the bassinet and infant carseat? Maybe?

9. Yesterday I had a brief triumph. The very nice Mexican woman whom I cannot quite bring myself to refer to as my cleaning lady was here and I had done a lot of tidying before she came. I did more after she left and when I went to bed my living room, office, kitchen, both bathrooms and the kids' room were all clean AND tidy. It felt great.

When I got out of bed, there were toys all over the living room floor and down the hall, the kitchen had magically re-sprouted its usual mess, and the floor of the kids' room was covered in laundry. I was the last one up this morning by less than half an hour (Avtalyon, for reasons I cannot identify, was up until 2 last night, and I didn't get a lot of sleep). I know I can't actually give up, but it is kind of disheartening.

10. Miraculously, a friend from work has offered to be on call to watch the kids in case I have to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. She can stay until Asnat gets here at 9:15. So now I only need to figure out who's going to take care of Avtalyon in the afternoon, collect Barak and Iyyar in the afternoon, and... um... yeah. Yehudis has offered her assistance as backup but I need a Plan A; Yehudis's house would require someone to be watching Avtalyon every second, and with eight kids in the house that wouldn't be so practical. I guess absolute worst case I have had a baby without my husband there before, but it's not something I would want to plan on doing for lack of childcare.

11. MHH is scheduled for a colonoscopy on Friday. I am trying hard not to worry about this even though health concerns for him send me over the edge even more than they do with the kids. Rationally I know it is unlikely they will find anything seriously bad; the issues that he's having it for have been chronic for literally decades, and, as he was told a few years ago, "If it was cancer you'd be dead by now." I understand why it was recommended and agree that it's a good idea. Still, a colonoscopy is neither fun nor without risks.

12. And since I don't want to end with that... hmm... oh yes. Destashing! Because we have no idea where we will be next year, and chances are won't have any indication until March at the earliest, and we are hoping very much to be moving, I have been trying as much as possible to do all moving-related tasks that aren't moving-specific beforehand. As in, organizing, tidying, and downsizing. Part of this is trying to get rid of stuff that we do not need, for example, yarn that I will probably never knit. Which I am in the midst of photographing (badly) and am soon to post on ravelry. Stay tuned. Because you totally want a sweater's worth of hunter green brushed mohair, don't you? Don't you??

Listless

Just kidding. Here's a list.

1. I bribed the kids with Twizzlers to get them to behave on Yom Kippur. I'm not saying I'm proud of this, but it's true. And it worked really well.

2. Avtalyon's current preoccupation is with putting on clothes--any clothes that belong to someone older and bigger than him. Last week he struggled mightily to get on a pair of Barak's polarfleece pants; a few days ago, he spent half an hour trying to get two pairs of Iyyar's underpants on (one on each leg). He'd get them on, crow with delight, stand up, and look dismayed when they slid back off. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3. The other thing Avtalyon is very into these days are the matchbox cars (aka Columbus trucks) that live in a box in the bathroom. The original reason they took up residence there, lo a couple of years or so, was so that when Barak was engaged in one of his endless potty trips, he'd have a reason to stay in there. There they remained, since the bathroom, as an off-limits-to-babies locale, is a relatively good place to keep a choking-hazard toy. These days, however, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to hustle in there and rummage through the box, exclaiming, "Wooooow!" Then he'll plop down on the tile and drive them around, with the accompanying "vrroooooms" and "beep beeps!"

4. So far, Barak loves school. I think the long day is hard on him--he melts down pretty frequently after he gets home--but he gets on the bus without a backward glance and off the bus with a huge smile on his face. And when he talks about his rebbe, it's with an attitude that can only be described as adoring.

5. One of Iyyar and Barak's historic favorite Shabbos cereals are Puffins. For a long time I was buying peanut butter ones, but I switched to the plain ones when we started with the peanut-free classrooms--I was worried that someone would successfully lobby for them for breakfast, or they'd find their way into a schoolbag. This past Shabbos, though, Barak found an unopened box of the peanut butter ones and they were both breakfast and afternoon snack. Shabbos afternoon, Iyyar didn't seem so happy; that night, he woke up constantly for more than two hours, crying and going back and forth to the bathroom. At around 2 am, it suddenly occurred to me: I went into the kitchen and read the label. The regular Puffins are soy- and dairy-free; the peanut butter ones, which I guess I haven't given them since early August, not only contain soy but are processed on equipment that also handles dairy. Argh.

6. I'm 31 weeks tomorrow. Besides the itchiness and the puffiness and the usual third-trimester stuff, I feel fine. This is around when things started moving with Iyyar, though, and it wasn't much later with Avtalyon. Stay tuned.

7. My husband is a very great fan of the Rambam (otherwise known as Maimonides). "The Rambam says..." is a pretty common phrase around here. Last week, as I walked Barak home from the bus stop, Barak wanted to tell me something, some piece of utter and incontestable truth, that he'd learned at school. He started out with, "The Rambam says..." and then stopped. "I mean, the Torah says..."

8. Abba tells good bedtime stories. I read books but have no knack for the make-it-up-as-you-go-along serial. Lately, he has been much more in demand at bedtime than I have, and this is because the current serial is about--wait for it--the Torah Team. I would tell you the characters, which are fabulous, but I keep pushing Abba to write his own frum comic books (in his spare time, which is even more boundless than mine) so I won't. But they're fabulous. Really. Come over sometime at bedtime and listen.

Food today

One word: leftovers.

Food again

Lunches for the big boys: same as yesterday, except I didn't have strawberries. Iyyar got a plum and raisins instead, Barak got an apple and cinnamon cereal (he gets raisins at school for snack).

Lunch for Abba was instant oatmeal and an Odwalla almond protein drinkat school. He doesn't get a lunch break on Wednesdays--he does a lunch and learn.

Lunch for Avtalyon was what I made for Abba's dinner (onions and mushrooms with soy crumble and brown rice). I also made some pesto with the basil I had in the fridge. He ate that after Iyyar came home and Iyyar thought he wanted some too, but didn't eat it.

This afternoon was pretty mellow. Barak came home in a really good mood and there wasn't too much screaming. For dinner, I put out the leftover hummous, sliced red peppers, and cucumbers while I made noodles and finished warming up two pieces of barbecue chicken I had in the freezer. Avtalyon ate the vegetables while I was cooking, Iyyar and Avtalyon ate the chicken while Barak was having his vegetables, and then everyone was offered noodles with rice milk cheese and pesto; Barak turned down the noodles on the grounds that they were contaminated with pesto and asked for an apple instead, which request was granted. Then he asked for a plum. He's never had a plum before so I had no problem with this; he tried it and surprise! liked it! After that he really got my hopes up by tasting the noodles, but no dice there.

So everyone except Iyyar had vegetables (unless you're counting the pesto, which I'm not), and everyone except Barak had some form of protein. But Iyyar had a ton of fruit already today and Barak has had plenty of dairy, so that's OK. In retrospect I didn't really need the chicken, but I expected everyone to turn their noses up at the pesto. Nice surprise there.

Abba came home and ate the mushroom/soy crumble/rice stuff. He was nice about it, but it was kind of eh.

You know, I think I've figured out part of why other women with babies manage to cook real dinners every night and I have found it next to impossible. It's because other women with babies have baby nap time. I usually don't, because Avtalyon naps while I'm working. However, now that Asnat leaves at 12 and I don't have to go pick up Iyyar until 12:55, suddenly this has changed; she's been putting him down for his nap at 11 and I get anywhere from half an hour to 50 minutes of time to do stuff without either chasing him or imprisoning him in the high chair. You can get an awful lot done in that amount of time.

Cooking for yom tov, however--not so much. I haven't really done anything. But we're not having guests, we've been asked out for Shabbos lunch, and it's only two days, so really it's just one extra meal over Shabbos. I can do that tomorrow, right? Right? Right.

Food

See, here's the thing.

Nobody in this house is insanely picky. Nobody has only four foods that they can or will eat. But everyone has several things that they can't eat, or just won't touch. And they're all different things. So it just doesn't seem fair to me to say to anyone "Sorry, even though the only thing you don't like/can't eat is X, you're getting it because it's what everyone else wants." It doesn't sit well with me. I mean, the only things I don't like are green peppers, kasha, oatmeal and tongue. And I REALLY wouldn't appreciate it if someone handed me a plate of green peppers, kasha, oatmeal and tongue and said, "Sorry, I know you don't like it, but that's dinner."

But I also don't want anyone to be malnourished or made sick by the wrong food. And I want my kids to eat a variety of foods so that they grow up healthy and with a reasonably varied palate. And the problem with offering alternatives every night is that Barak, for one, will ALWAYS eat Cheerios if offered Cheerios. They need to be eating other things.

Last night, I ran out to the Other Produce Market (with the tastier produce and the narrow aisles) and bought a heavy backpack full of good tomatoes, fresh basil, apples, plums, red peppers, strawberries and mushrooms. I came home and packed lunches, consisting of:

Barak: sun nut butter sandwich, a cheese stick, strawberries, an apple, a small bag of soy crackers

Iyyar: sun nut butter sandwich, strawberries, a plum, a small bag of cinnamon cereal (he is out of school at 1, so although he eats the same quantities as Barak, he needs a smaller lunch bag)

Everyone had Cheerios and cow/rice milk for breakfast.

Dropped off Barak. Dropped off Iyyar. Came home to work. Midmorning, I took a break, chopped a couple of onions and put them in a pot on very low heat. When I was done working, but while Avtalyon was still napping, I washed and sliced some mushrooms and put those in there too, along with the cold baked sweet potato I had from yesterday (peeled, of course). Put up brown rice in the rice cooker. Halved an eggplant and a red pepper and put them in the oven to roast. Cleaned up from breakfast, and right before it was time to go get Iyyar, added some ginger, salt, pepper and soy milk to the pot and pureed the whole thing in the immersion blender.

At one, I woke up Avtalyon and went and got Iyyar. Abba called at around 1:30 to say he was coming home for lunch; I gave him a bowl of mushroom/sweet potato soup concoction and brown rice, and a bowl of the same to Avtalyon. Both were very happy. Iyyar wanted a snack too, so he had a plum. While they were eating, I scooped out the insides of the eggplant and pepper and mashed those with some olive oil, garlic, and fresh basil and put that back in the fridge; I also found a can of chickpeas and turned that into hummous. Iyyar squeezed the lemon for me.

At this point everyone was a mess so Iyyar and Avtalyon went into the bathroom for a nice long splashing session, even though I'd heard Asnat give Avtalyon a bath that morning. We played for a while, read a couple of books, cut everyone's fingernails and toenails and then at 3:45 it was time to go get Barak at the bus stop. We retrieved him without incident and came home, spotting the FedEx truck in front of our house with the replacement gaskets for my Bosch bread bowl. Aha! In the house, Barak and Iyyar sat down at the table with crayons to draw, Avtalyon went back in the high chair with some toys (much to his resentment) and I put the Bosch bowl together and quickly mixed an inauthentic but nevertheless delicious baguette dough. By the time this was done with it was around 5 PM; while the dough rose I cleaned up a little, pulled out the leftover soup from lunch and added some pureed carrots I had left from yesterday's soup. With the rice, it was enough for Abba. Sliced some red peppers and tomatoes and put those on the table with a bowl of hummous. Warmed up Abba's soup. Abba came home and about ten minutes later the bread was baked.

The kids noshed on red peppers while I got the food out; we had sliced peppers and tomatoes, the hummous, the eggplant/basil/pepper dip, the leftover soup, and two hot baguettes.

I had an eggplant and tomato sandwich on bread.
Abba had leftover soup and rice.
Barak ate a ton of bread, a slice of tomato and a few slices of pepper.
Iyyar ate a ton of bread, a slice of pepper and some hummous.
Avtalyon ate a ton of bread, some peppers and some hummous.

And everybody was happy. We all sat down together to eat, which is practically unheard of on a Tuesday night, and everyone finished up well fed and in a good mood. I checked the lunch bags later; they were both empty.

Nobody ate anything complicated. Homemade bread you could charge with being excessive for a weeknight meal but seriously, if you have a good mixer that takes almost no prep time. It was pretty simple food. And it made everyone happy.

But it still took me every spare minute of the whole day to put it together, and more patience than Avtalyon really has.

There has to be a better way. I think much larger batches is going to be part of it. This is a pointless thing to wish for right now but I really wish our apartment had a better layout--one of the families we visited in Maale Adumim had this awesome setup where the living room and kitchen were divided by half-height walls--too high for the kids to reach over on the living room side, counter-height on the kitchen side, so that you could cook AND supervise the kids. That'd be amazing, but I don't have it right now. I can only cook while Avtalyon is napping or trapped in the high chair.

And part of keeping everyone happy with simple food is good ingredients--good tomatoes, for example. Barak usually won't touch them but the real tomatoes I get at Produce Market #2 he really likes. Since I started going there for produce, he's started eating red peppers, too. And fruit, which is in season now, but won't be for long. I need to get them started eating root vegetables, I guess.

Listing, continued

What did I say for 2, 3, and 4? Jaundice, bus, and itchy, right?

Okay, so, true to my word:

1. Jaundice

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a long time (anyone?) may remember that we have a chazaka around here of jaundiced newborns. Barak had jaundice, which was taken care of in the NICU with an IV, but which probably contributed to the feeding issues that lasted well into his first year. Iyyar had to go back to the hospital for another three days to go under bililights; although he never needed to be in the NICU, this was scarier in a way because the bilirubin level that would have indicated he needed to be readmitted was lost by the lab, erev Shabbos, and we came frighteningly close to not hearing about it until it was too late. Newborn jaundice tends to be thought of rather casually because it's very well understood and usually easy to treat--but if it isn't caught in time, it can lead to brain damage and death. B"H we never went even close to that, but even that brush with it was too close for me.

By Avtalyon, you'd think we'd all have been on the lookout, especially since he had every single risk factor on the list: he was orange, he'd had a difficult delivery, he was a boy, he'd had siblings with jaundice, and he was early. Oh, and by the time he was discharged, he had an elevated bilirubin and was starting to get listless. Two days later, his morning bilirubin--I was taking him in twice a day for blood levels, in addition to using the bililight blanket at home--was 16. He was readmitted. Like Iyyar, his bilirubin shot straight through the ceiling by day four, and his level when he was admitted--around 3 PM--was 26. Not. A. Joke.

Time from lab test to time arriving in hospital and getting him under lights was about eight hours. What if that level had been taken at night? And I'd been called at, say, 10 am? And the doctor had left the same totally uninformative message ("This is Plony. Call me back." Thud.) followed by another game of phone tag? It would have been very bad news. And as it was, I was back in the hospital with a very sick four-day-old baby, in a highly contagious floor full of flu and RSV, with everybody who came in the room telling me how we had to get him out of there as fast as possible before he picked something else up. They hardly even let me nurse. He ended up losing a full pound, forgetting how to nurse, and... yeah. It wasn't fun.

So, hello! Here I am, pregnant with baby #4! And I went to my pediatrician with a simple request. "Do you think this time, if I have a baby with an elevated bilirubin at two days, we could skip the two days at home/peds admission thing and just PUT THE BABY UNDER LIGHTS already in the mother-baby unit? Lower infection risk, lower screw-up risk, less stress?" No. No, no, and no; insurance would never approve it. I asked pediatrician #2. Nope. He got angry just at the suggestion that he should take it up with insurance.

Pediatrician #3 was the pediatrician I haven't seen for a while, since he was the one who dropped the ball with Iyyar's lab results. It wasn't just him, obviously, but I haven't felt comfortable with him since. But I hoped he at least remembered it, and scheduled Avtalyon's 18-month checkup with him for yesterday. I reminded him of Avtalyon's history. And Iyyar's. And Barak's. I may possibly have gotten slightly emotional--not on purpose, but when I get stressed my voice shakes (this is why I write the speeches! and do not deliver them!) and it probably helped. I made my request. Two-day bilirubin of, let's say, ten. Will you have them keep the baby under lights instead of sending him/her home for monitoring?

"Well, usually you wouldn't even consider that. But obviously there's something going on with your kids that isn't normal. I think that'd be very reasonable."

Really?

"Yeah, I think that would be appropriate. I can't promise the insurance company's reaction but I'd call it medically necessary."

Wow! Wasn't expecting that.

2. Bus

Barak takes the schoolbus to and from school, with (like) the big kids. Barak loves the schoolbus. I love the convenience of the schoolbus, but I find it scary. He is very little to be riding the bus alone; there is no monitor on the bus; the kids on the bus have been in school from 8-something till 3:45 and are uniformly off the wall. And adding to this is that there seems to be a different bus driver every day, who does not know the kids, doesn't pay attention to the kids, and just drives. Which is his job. But stopping is also his job. Stopping at the RIGHT STOP.

On Friday, when I saw a bus stop opposite from Barak's bus stop, I hardly paid attention to it; three privately chartered school buses come that way at the same time, and I assumed it was one of them. Until I saw the fourth-grade boy entrusted with making sure Barak is OK on the bus get off it. Without Barak.

"Where's Barak?" I shouted across the intersection.

"I didn't see him!" he shouted back.

Oh. No. I looked up and saw the bus rumble past. Is Barak on that bus? Or not? I hesitated for about a second and then went into a full sprint after the bus. I am, let us not forget, in my seventh month. I was wearing crocs. And carrying shopping bags, which for some crazy reason I did not drop. I raced to the corner, where the bus slowed down for the intersection but did not stop, while screaming "Wait! Wait! Wait!" as loudly as I could. I got closer. The bus pulled away again. I kept running, as fast as I possibly could, while screaming, until after another block and a half the bus stopped and I slowed down and trotted the rest of the way, gasping. The bus waited, door open.

"My... kindergartner... is... on... this... bus!" I gasped. "You stopped at the wrong corner!" The bus driver just kind of looked at me, waiting for someone to get off the bus. Every kid on the bus, it seemed, was piled into the front of the bus, standing on the seats or in the aisle. "What's his name?" they--not the driver--asked me. I told them and they took up the chorus, and a few moments later Barak, face blotchy with tears, was produced.

"The stop is at the northwest corner, not the northeast!"I told him. "Please, stop at the right stop next time!" The bus driver looked unconcerned. "He should have known his stop."

WHAT?!?!

"He is FIVE YEARS OLD! He's in kindergarten! He knows HIS stop. You are also supposed to know where the stop is and stop there. He's not going to know to get off at the wrong corner just because you've stopped there! He's too little to even see out the window to the other side of the street! He doesn't see me standing there, he's not going to get off!" Especially not since I have pounded this into his head. And, I did not point out--but should have--he couldn't even tell that the bus was stopping to let kids off, because there were so many kids jumping around in the aisle he couldn't see to the door.

The bus rolled off and I tried to calm Barak down, all the time thinking, seriously, what would have happened if I hadn't caught the bus? What would he have done? Gotten off at the next stop, after the bus had turned, over a few streets, where I wouldn't have seen him or known where he was? Gotten off at the stop after, or the stop after that, or a stop a mile away? Hoped for a kind adult? He knows his address, but not when he's that upset. What if the adult that found him wasn't kind? What if he tried to find his house by himself? What then? Best case, maybe he would have gone home with another kid--whose mother would have looked up his last name, called out house, and found no one home, because I would have been trailing after the bus searching for him. Or maybe stayed on the bus till the end, when the driver would have done... what, exactly?

This morning I called the principal, who, to his credit, took it seriously, apologized, gave me his cell phone number, and told me that he, personally, stayed in the office until the buses finished their routes. He made sure he got the whole story and wanted to know exactly where the bus was supposed to stop and where it had stopped. He said he would talk to the bus company about the stop and to the boy entrusted with Barak to be extra-sure that Barak gets off where he's supposed to--not that this should really be his responsibility, but I have heard it from every mother that you have to have an older kid looking out for the little ones, so he's been enlisted. About the kids jumping around on the buses, though, he seemed to have no solution--apparently this has been a problem since busing started, three years ago now.

Friday night, by the way, my husband had run into one of the mothers who witnessed my Olympic performance chasing Barak's bus. "She said she'd never seen anyone run that fast." Pause. "Definitely not while pregnant, anyway."

3. Itchy

When I was pregnant with Barak, lo these six years, I had a Most Unpleasant Rash. It started as a few itchy bumps around my ankles at around 16 weeks, and slowly spread up my calves, getting itchier and itchier. By around my fifth month patches had appeared on my arms, and by my third trimester it was almost everywhere. By my eighth month it was all over my legs, including the tops of my feet; my arms, down to the wrists; and my shoulders and entire torso--dense patches of red bumps that itched indescribably. It was HORRIBLE. My OB had no idea what it was and called it eczema, telling me to cover myself with moisturizer; I hate lotions at the best of times but trying to cover your entire body with cream when you can't reach half of it... yeah. And anyway the cream didn't help. By a couple of weeks before Barak was born it was a disaster. I couldn't sleep or think straight or do anything but try not to scratch; I was bruised and bleeding and beyond miserable. At one point I even woke my husband up at 5 am crying, not that I thought he could do anything about it, but... I was SO ITCHY! And it was Pesach, so I couldn't even do oatmeal baths. Awful.

By the time Barak was a week old, it was almost gone; I had scabs, but no new bumps came out. A week or two later it was like it had never happened. When I got pregnant with Iyyar, I waited nervously for the first bumps, but they never came. With Avtalyon, I had a few itchy spots but they never turned into anything. I thought I was off the hook.

Until a couple of months ago, when I noticed itchy spots on my ankles. And they started to spread. I mentioned it to Shanna, who recommended this soap. (Which, by the way, smells exactly like Wrigley's Spearmint Gum.) I bought three bars and a jar of the lotion; I think it's helped, but it hasn't yet wrought miracles. (See the woman in the "before" picture? That was me, except without any of those clear patches she's got.) Right now I'm at 29 weeks, and so far the itchiness is limited to my ankles and calves and one patch on my left arm. If it doesn't get any worse, I can deal. It had better not.

Listing

1. I really am sort of listing. I am really really tired, although less so now than yesterday. This is what I did yesterday:

7:00: Woke up, got kids up and dressed and breakfasted.

8:00: Loaded Iyyar and Avtalyon into stroller and took Barak to bus stop. Put Barak on bus.

8:00-9:00: Went to bank, bakery, produce store, and fish store for Shabbos supplies, with Avtalyon and Iyyar in tow.

9:00: Dropped Iyyar off at playgroup.

9:15: Asnat came and took Avtalyon outside to play.

9:45: Heard huge screams from outside and found Avtalyon being carried in by Asnat, with blood pouring out of his mouth. Am told that he has smacked his face on stair while going up steps; examine tooth-shaped gash inside upper lip.

10:15: Took Avtalyon to doctor for conveniently timed 18-month checkup, and also to get his mouth looked at. Walked just over a mile to get there. Forget to bring paper order for my 1-hour glucose test, which I was going to do at the same time and is now about two weeks overdue.

10:45: Avtalyon's mouth pronounced close, but no stitches. The doctor thought about it for a little bit before deciding he'd be OK without. Also discussed issue of jaundice with doctor. More on this later. Got Avtalyon's polio shot #4, bringing him up to date on all immunizations.

11:30: Went to supermarket next to pediatrician to buy ice cream sandwiches, so that Iyyar's incredibly expensive dairy- and soy-free coconut milk ice cream sandwiches would not be the only ice cream sandwiches in the house when ice cream is to be distributed. His sandwiches are almost $1/each, and they are small. I bought 12 normal-sized ice cream sandwiches for $2.99. Avtalyon ate one of them on the way home, making a spectacular mess, but given his morning I felt he deserved it. Walked home, another mile and change.

12:30: Picked up Iyyar and went home.

1:00: Cleaned up Avtalyon and put him down for a nap. Spent next hour frantically cooking and cleaning. Made zucchini soup, salmon teriyaki, boiled potatoes for potato salad. Failed to fold laundry.

2:00: Went to meet Barak at bus stop. Bus did not stop at correct corner and ergo Barak did not get off; chased bus, screaming, at a full sprint for two full city blocks. (While in seventh month.) Caught bus and retrieved sobbing kindergartner. Gave bus driver piece of mind. More on this later, too.

2:15: Returned home with somewhat consoled but still traumatized kindergartner, turning him over to care of husband, who has promised to bathe children and mop kitchen floor. Hear Avtalyon waking up from nap. Leave for bus stop.

2:30: Get on bus to go to Target/supermarket #2. Poor timing, I know, but we were out of EVERYTHING.

2:45. Go to supermarket #2 for soy yogurts and the handful of other items only available at supermarket #2. Walk over to Target, buy a Diet Coke, and sit in the cafe for about twenty minutes feeling leg muscles seize.

2:45-3:30: Buy $130 worth of Target stuff: detergent, cereal, wipes, and other essential miscellany, including new sneakers for Avtalyon and Iyyar, which miraculously are available in the correct sizes in the same brand they already have. Knit two rows of glove cuff, then take cab home.

3:45: Walk into house to be mobbed by children demanding grapes. Appease children and start cooking IBS-friendly imitation of chicken marsala. Pleased to see that children have in fact been bathed and floor is mobbed. Praise husband fulsomely. Try sneakers on children and discover that despite being the correct sizes and the same brand of sneaker they just outgrew, new sneakers do not fit and will have to be returned.

4:oo-6:30: Finish chicken, rice and potato salad while appeasing children further. Wash dishes and floor again. Point out Shabbos yogurts and instruct older two children to pick up living room and bedroom of toys. Considering their ages, they do this pretty well--it takes less time than doing it myself, which is definitely a milestone. Reward said children with Shabbos yogurts. Feed Iyyar Iyyar-friendly piece of chicken, feed Barak and Avtalyon red peppers and cucumbers and cheese (on different tables). Eat snack-sized Mounds bar while nobody is watching. Slip one to Barak while nobody is watching with praise for fabulous cleaning job.

6:30: Realize what time it is and shriek in horror. Kitchen is clean but I have not showered. Shower at the speed of light, get dressed, and free husband from baby-monitoring duty. Light candles. Read Danny and the Dinosaur for the nth time and put children to bed.

7:00: Sit down in kitchen, fully resolved to never move again.

7:02: Two children come trickling out of room for potty/book runs and child #3 starts singing "boop! boop!" in his crib.

7:03: Get up, change diaper, and begin wrangling children back into bed. Meet with resistance. Offer resistance of my own. Begin World War III. Prevail.

8:00: Sit down again.

8:01. Husband comes home from maariv. Serve and eat dinner. It is yummy.

9:00: Husband's chavrusa comes over to walk with husband to oneg. Both leave at around 9:30. I clean up kitchen and silently pray that this is not the night that my neighbor goes into labor and I go over there to be with her kids while she and husband are at the hospital. Prayers are answered in the affirmative.

9:45: Collapse into bed, sweaty and exhausted.

12:00 AM: Wake up realizing that husband is not home and really really should be by now. Begin to panic in earnest at around 12:30 am. Husband comes home at 12:45. I am wide awake by now, in full neurotic terror mode and very very itchy (more on this later, too). He had no idea what time it was and apologizes profusely. Forgive husband. Go back to bed but can't sleep. Am still awake at around 3.

6:30 AM: Realize that Barak is standing next to my bed and probably has been for a while. Tell Barak through pillow that he can go into my office and get his little Lego and take it into the kitchen to play. Barak vanishes instantly and I get another hour and a half of near-sleep, during which I completely ignore sounds of chaos from throughout apartment, choosing to allow husband this vital bonding time.

8:00 AM. Drag self out of bed. Stumble into kitchen. Barak wants to know if we can go play.

"Where do you want to go?"

"To the Shapiros' house."

"Now?!"

"Can we?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm too tired."

"WHY?!"

Items 2, 3, and 4 TK. I'm too tired for those, too.

Gloveliness

I love sock yarn. I love the feel of it, the hand-dyed colors it comes in, and I love knitting it on those itty bitty needles (sick, I know, but true). I love how portable it is and how far it goes. What I don't love, however, is putting it on my feet, where no one can see it. So I don't knit a lot of socks.

I do knit other things with it, though. Baby sweaters and hats; sometimes kids' hats; and gloves. Oh, I do love gloves. They take forever and are incredibly fiddly--all those fingers! but when they are done they are, to my mind, about the nicest use to which sock yarn could possibly be put.

I just finished these. Nice gloves, awful picture. It's hard to see the colors but it's black and very dark reddish purple. Grandma E gave me the yarn, which she got in the Socks That Rock sock club and professed not to like. I can see the objection for socks--who wants to knit black socks?--but the colors show up beautifully outside, in sunlight.

Strangely, I myself have only two pairs of handknit gloves. I make them and then invariably think of someone who needs and deserves a really really nice handknitted gift and off they go. Just cast on a pair of these though, in some beautiful gold Koigu I got in the yarn swap with Cyndy lo these many years. (I'm still working my way through those boxes. It will take a while!)

Mmmm.

Mistakes

Last week, at Barak's kindergarten orientation, I heard--or at least I thought I heard--an announcement that on half-days there would be no busing for the kindergartners. This made perfect sense, since many of the bus drivers are not Jewish, half-days are mostly legal holidays, and of course the non-Jewish bus drivers are not going to be driving schoolbuses on Thanksgiving etc. So I told Barak last night that there would be no bus today, and this morning we all set out on foot on our way to his school--it's not far, much closer than where he was last year.

On the way, though, we saw--what's this? mothers and kids at bus stops. Hmm. I saw someone I knew. "Is there busing for [name of other school] today?" I asked, thinking her boys went there. It transpired that no, her boys (older than Barak) go to Barak's school, and there was his bus pulling up the street now. Um. Okay. Barak was perfectly happy about this and climbed on. I felt a little disconcerted but it was clearly his bus and his bus driver, so... okay. Off they went.

We were only a block away from home and it seemed silly to go straight back--nice day and all--so we went to the Other Produce Market, which is significantly farther away than our Usual Produce Market but has much, much better produce, and lower prices on some things as well. Unfortunately, the big drawback, much more than the distance, is its extreme unfriendliness to double strollers. The aisles are so narrow that if there is anyone else there with a cart you are stuck; more problematic, no one can pass you, and everyone who does want to pass you expects you to get out of the way for them, immediately, which I guess is not totally unreasonable but does make it extremely hard to shop--since you are always having to move away from the produce you are attempting to buy, you see.

At some point, after the third or fourth time relocating self and stroller, I had finally gotten myself within range of the black plums when the Mexican stock guy came past sweeping up fallen produce from the floor. I moved my stroller out of the way so he could go by, thereby putting the produce bins momentarily within reach of small hands, and then suddenly realized that Avtalyon had seized his opportunity. What's that in his mouth? A green... toy... no, not a toy... DEADLY GREEN JALAPENO PEPPER. Ack ack ack! I snatched it away from him at the same moment that the Mexican stock guy spotted it. I think he was at least as horrified as I was. Eyes wide, he shook his head at Avtalyon. "Bad idea, my friend." Avtalyon, of course, not having broken the skin of the pepper, was indignant. I eat peppers all the time! It's a great idea! What's up with this snatching away my pepper? It was right there in reach...

Anyway. I paid for my produce, we went home, I put Avtalyon down for a nap and Iyyar and I made pesto, cleaned up the kitchen, made lunch for Abba (for the record, white rice, sauteed-into-oblivion red peppers and onions, mushrooms, and a Trader Joe's fake Italian sausage--quite delicious if I do say so, and oddly reminiscent of paella) and folded some laundry. All the time, I was feeling uncomfortable about the bus. Would there be a bus in the afternoon? Maybe the announcement had just been "no afternoon busing?" That wouldn't make much sense, but... nightmare visions of Barak abandoned at school persisted. I decided to be on the safe side and called the office. "Is there afternoon busing today for the boys?" "Yes." "Okay. Thanks. Just wanted to be sure." So at ten to twelve, I woke up Avtalyon, stuck him in the stroller, got Iyyar into shoes and off we went to the bus stop.

Which seemed... strangely deserted. Why is no one else here? I sat there knitting at 12, 12:05, 12:10. Dismissal is at 12 and Barak is the very first stop, so he should really be here by now. 12:15. 12:20. I knocked on the door of a friend on that block. "Isn't there busing this afternoon?"

"There's busing."

"Why aren't you outside?"

"Dismissal isn't until 1:15."

"No, it's at 12. I looked at the calendar. Legal holiday, dismissal at 12:00." She frowned and went to get the calendar. I started to feel a sense of impending panic. "Huh. You're right. Legal holiday 12:00... for kindergarten. First through fourth is 1:15."

Oh. No.

She already had the phone. "Hi, this is... and Mrs. Uberimma is here and wondering about busing and... oh, he's sitting outside the office? Okay, I'll give her the phone." She handed me the phone, which Avtalyon promptly grabbed and pressed the "stop" button on, disconnecting her. She called again. Guess what: no busing for kindergarten in the afternoon. Barak is sitting on the bench outside her office, not having been picked up. I apologize, promise I'll be right there, and walk as fast as I possibly can the six or seven blocks to school, where Barak is sitting alone and morose on the bench, sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head. I apologize to the office lady, who is extremely nice about it and assures me that it was just a miscommunication and I wasn't the only one. I apologize to Barak. I explain to him what happened, but he doesn't really get it.

Barak was clearly upset, but not saying much about it, until we got across the main street and he decided to sit down on the sidewalk and refuse to move. Then, after the rational approach had failed and I started walking without him, he only came to me by rolling and crawling along the (extremely dirty) sidewalk, while screaming. Sigh. Home again, and I made lunch, and decided to let Barak have macaroni and cheese without spinach. I let him grate the cheese. I apologized again. I did screw up, but it wasn't for any want of trying to get it right; I should have specified kindergarten when I called, but didn't know I needed to, and the person at the office didn't know I was talking about kindergarten when I just said "boys."

Barak wanted to know why I hadn't just come to get him when the bus didn't come. I explained to him that I'd thought he was on the bus, I thought the bus might just be late, and I was afraid that if I went to the yeshiva, he might then get dropped off at the street corner and I wouldn't be there, and that would have been worse than him sitting in front of the office. I reminded him that we'd thought there were no buses, but then there were buses; I explained that I'd called the office and they'd told me that there was going to be a bus that afternoon and then there wasn't. "Someone made a mistake," I said again.

"Yeah," said Barak, accusingly. "YOU did."

What could I say? He was right.

Assorted

I keep meaning to post. Really, I do. And I mentally compose posts, or parts of posts, pretty frequently. I just never manage to remember them while I'm sitting at the computer. So I think I'll open this window and start a list and see where it leads.

1. Knitting. Did I tell you I visited Sarah in Michigan a few weeks ago? It was great. I knitted a lot. We ate yummy produce from a farm stand and I bought some new sock yarn and a book and one of these, which I love. I've been squeezing in a lot of knitting lately--if you're on ravelry, go look.

2. I feel like every third post I say something like, "Avtalyon is being really hilarious lately." But it's true, pretty much all the time. He's such a clown. He isn't just funny, he's funny on purpose, and deliberately does things to make people laugh. He also imitates Iyyar, which is, well, hilarious. Potbellied nineteen-month-old swaggering--yes, swaggering--through the living room in pirate hat while attempting Iyyar's signature tough-guy noises? You'd laugh too. He also imitates Iyyar's firetruck imitation. And does it really well.

3. Barak started kindergarten this week. Totally overwhelming for me--the long day, the schoolbus, all of it. He seems very happy. The first day he came home with a plastic bag full of woodchips and informed me that he and some other boys had found worms and he'd brought some home. I didn't see any worms in the bag, though.

4. Iyyar also started playgroup, at the same place where I sent Barak two years ago. I wasn't thrilled with it then, but then as now it is the best available local option. It's that, or send him someplace far enough away that it won't be walkable--which I don't want to do now for the same reasons I didn't want to do it then. So that's where he is. I'm seeing the same things I saw with Barak that I wasn't happy with then, but she clearly likes me now--I am never, ever late for pickup, which I think is mainly why, plus my checks never bounce and Barak was well behaved--so she took it quite well when I told her I was relocating the cleaning products in the bathroom out of children's reach. A couple of weeks ago Iyyar saw a bottle of Mr. Clean on the counter and asked, "Can I have some dat?" I am not taking more chances than I have to.

5. I am slowly putting together plans for who will do what with the kids when I am IY"H in the hospital having a baby, as well as plans for potential return trips to the hospital should the jaundice strike a fourth time. Which, let's face it, it probably will. What makes me insane is that despite the fact that I've had jaundice requiring treatment with every single child, and that two of those children had bilirubin levels that shot up 10 points in less than a day, well into the scary land of brain-damage-and-death potential, no pediatrician in my practice will go to bat with my insurance company to keep a newborn with elevated bilirubin in the hospital an extra day.

Let's be clear here. What I asked was, "Will you, if I have a baby with a bilirubin over 10 at 2 days, keep the baby under bililights in the mother-baby unit? This would mean that said baby could avoid going home to get sicker and sicker, a return trip to the hospital that would mean a peds admission to an almost certainly highly contagious floor, and the attendant risks/issues thereof." Clearly better for the baby in every way. But no. The answer is always no. Even though, with my track record, this is incredibly likely to be the case. Nobody will even try to get an exception from the insurance company. Avtalyon, by the way, had every risk factor on the list for jaundice, and the wouldn't keep him either. This is why I wanted to be proactive, so I wouldn't again be trying to fight the system while postpartum and still shellshocked from labor.

There is one pediatrician left in the practice--the one who dropped the ball the first go-round with Iyyar. I have an appointment with him on Friday.

6. Avtalyon is getting pretty verbal. He loves saying "thank you," which he pronounces in a way spookily reminiscent of my grandmother imitating my grandfather saying "thank you" in English. Tank ee-you! If I offer him a pacifier, he cries "puggie!" delightedly and then comes toward me with a wide-open mouth. If I ask him what's in his mouth, he sticks out his tongue. He also likes to keep me informed about what he's doing. For example, squatting down with a look of intense concentration, turning purple, and then gasping, "Boop!"

7. It's kind of incredible how much parve stuff is manufactured on equipment that also processes dairy. I went to Trader Joe's today with Iyyar to get the only totally dairy-free rice milk I've found and tried to also get him crackers. Trader Joe's sells a LOT of different kinds of crackers. Only one of them is totally dairy-free. We bought three boxes.

8. I've been giving both kids sunflower seed butter sandwiches for lunch (peanut-free classrooms). They are totally fooled and have not said a word. To make sure the moros know what they are, I wrote on both of the sandwich bags in black Sharpie, "Not peanut butter." Barak came home on Friday saying, "My morah says I can't have tr... tr... turmumps either. " "You can't have tree nuts?" "No." I think I should put a more informative note in his lunchbox tomorrow.

9. Barak has gotten really, really bedtime-resistant lately. We were away this Shabbos and he stayed up till 10:45 with no trouble at all. I tried to get him to go to bed, but he reeeeeally didn't want to, and I just didn't want to abandon the seuda to try to make him, which would have involved waking up the other two and then having to deal with that and probably not getting anything to eat myself. (And there was steak. I wanted some.) Next morning, he was up at 7, bright-eyed etc., to be offered a chocolate muffin (tell me again how this differs from a cupcake?) by the baalas ha'bayis. Not only was he fine all day long, but when we got home, after 10 PM, as I was speedily transferring Iyyar and Avtalyon into their respective beds from the cab, he settled into a kitchen chair and requested Lego (request summarily denied) and then cheese (I relented). He refused point-blank to go to bed, such that forcing him would have required a full-on battle that probably would have woken the other two. As I was considering this, the phone rang, and then I noticed Barak asleep in the chair--he does crack eventually. I hung up. He denied ever having been asleep. Kind of like his father. This morning again he was up at 7, but showing signs of collapse by around 4. As I've been writing this, he's come in here three times wailing for different things. Right now, he's in his room howling for the blanket he pished on the other day. "It's not cozy!" Sigh.

I just won't fight him every night. I refuse. If he doesn't get into bed, I ignore him, turn off all the lights and go work. He does go to bed eventually, but... ugh. Maybe I'm being lazy, or maybe I've just kind of had it for now.

10. I made it to nine, so there has to be a ten, right? Oh, how about the house? Which is a wreck. As always. I try. I try SO HARD. But it is SO HOPELESS. I could spend three hours a day cleaning and doing nothing else and I don't think it would really be clean. Tomorrow Iyyar and Barak have school but I am not working and I should get two hours of free time while Avtalyon naps. If I can avoid napping myself, I want to do a toy and book purge. We have way too much stuff in this house and some of it just has to go.