Checking in

Hmm, it's been a while since I posted last. Sorry about that. It's been... busy.

Want a list? I could do a list. Here, have a list.

1. Barak's transportation woes. Oh. The woes. I don't even know where to start. We had a ride, then we didn't, then a different ride, then we thought we were totally set, then that fell apart, then we had in the afternoon and now we don't and... yeah. At the moment I am taking him by bus and foot in the mornings. This is doable because B"H our neighbors are taking Iyyar, departing every morning at 7 am. This means we all get up at 6:15, I feed the baby and get dressed, wake up Barak, wake up Iyyar and physically put his clothes on him because he's half asleep and can't do it himself, take him up to our neighbors' car and insert him into his carseat, wave goodbye (as he cries and screams, usually) and then take Barak down to the bus, skipping the second bus entirely and just walking the last 15-20 minutes. School starts at 8 and the timing usually works out well; there's a bakery right near his school and sometimes I bribe him with a cookie. With all the extra exercise he can stand a few extra calories. Then I walk back to the bus and take it home, getting back at around 9; in the meantime, Abba takes Avtalyon to gan. Then I'm home with just Marika and I hope, once things settle down, that this will be naptime for both of us, since I usually go to bed at around 2 am because of work.

2. Avtalyon and gan. Oh, Avtalyon and gan. Avtalyon is Not Happy in gan. He cries the whole time. Screams. Wails. Sobs. Wants his Abba. Wants his Imma. The teacher has called me a couple times to please come get him; today she told me that she would give me back the money but please not to bring him again until after Succot because there was no point in having him there now. She's right; any getting used to it he achieves now will be undone by a week and a half of vacation. A couple of times Avtalyon has come home with a sticker on his shirt with a sad face on it. Not just a sad face, a sad face spouting tears. Who came up with a sticker like that?!

3. Iyyar screams and cries on the way to gan but has been getting better and also unfailingly has a big smile on his face at pickup time--not just "I'm so glad you're here" but "I've had a really good day and hi!" His gan is great. It's huge. I think there are about 30 kids, one ganenet and an assistant. But it's a big room, bright and spotless; lots of toys, all in their places, and the room is as clean at pickup time as it is when we drop him off. It's impressive. The teachers are great and consistent and orderly, the kids know exactly what to expect, the routine is absolute, and that is what children that age want: predictable, orderly, routine, comfortable, safe, known. That is really what Iyyar needs, especially right now, so I'm glad he is there, despite the incredible inconvenience: it's a good fit for him.

4. Afternoon pickup routine, in general: I get Iyyar at the top of the mountain at 1:30, Abba gets Avtalyon next door at 1:15. I don't mind the longer hike because I can usually accomplish an errand or two along the way and I like the 1:1 time (well, I have Marika with me, but she doesn't butt in on conversation) with just Iyyar. He tells me all kinds of interesting things. Like about lunch. His gan has, like many Israeli ganim, a very definite idea of what constitutes appropriate lunch, and it is enforced absolutely. Each kid gets a gan-issued box with three sections: one for a sandwich, one for fruit, one for a vegetable. Each section is labeled with stickers. No plastic bags permitted or required; no other food can be brought except for a bottle of water. The first day of this policy I asked Iyyar how it went over. "One of the kids brought chocolate. She tried to sneak it. She tried to eat it under the table." "Ooh. Uh-oh. What did morah do?" Iyyar, righteously: "She took it away. She said no no and took it away. She put it high up so she [the girl] couldn't reach." "Do you think she gave it back?" "No." "Maybe later?" "Maybe later she gave it back. Maybe AFTER school. Maybe she could eat it at home."

5. Laundry. Have I mentioned laundry? We do not have a washing machine. We have access to coin-op machines that are in a different section of the building, which means you have to do laundry either with all children in tow or with your children in the care of another adult. This, as you might imagine, is a Problem. I'll spare you the gory details, but earlier this week I had a vomit/diarrhea/wet sheet/no pants for Iyyar meltdown and we asked for permission to buy and install a machine. Permission was, against expectation, granted; any suggestions for washing machine shopping in the Jerusalem area?

6. I took Marika to Tipat Chalav last week, which was actually a nice experience; I also got on their scale when I was there. Remember X, where X was the weight I was at when I got pregnant with Barak? I was at X + 25 when we left; I was at X + 18 last week. Even though I've been eating lots of carbs. I still look pregnant, but I can see a difference. Ergo my increased appreciation for the hill.

7. You may have noticed that there has been no mention of how I get Barak home from school in ther afternoons. That's because I have no idea how I'm getting Barak home from school in the afternoons. Every day has been something different and unworkable in the long term; we're in bein ha'zmanim now, though, and Abba can get him next week, and then it's Succot, so we're not in Disasterville until October 4. Hopefully, we'll have something worked out by then. Right?

8. I hired someone to come clean earlier this week, a Sri Lankan guy who did not really seem to speak English or Hebrew but charged me 40 NIS an hour to de-filthify my apartment at lightning speed. Totally, completely worth it, and he's going to be coming once a week from now on (I hope)--on Monday morning, which is perfect, because I'm off on Sunday and it gives me a chance to pick up first. For those unfamiliar with the Israeli style of housework, you can't have anything on the floor at all if you're going to be mopping; oddly enough for a country in a perpetual state of water shortage, floor-cleaning here essentially involves flooding your house and then pushing all the water out the door with a squeegee stick. You may think I'm joking about this. I promise you I'm not.

9. Barak is enjoying school. He's happy to go, he seems happy when he comes home. I don't think he understands a word the teachers say, but he likes it anyway. The first Friday he came home I asked him how school was. "Fun!" "That's great! What did you do?" "I don't know. It was all in Hebrew." But it was fun, I guess. You should see the drawings in his notebooks though. He was supposed to draw Abba in a boat: he drew a pirate ship with skulls and crossbones and cannons and torpedoes. He was supposed to draw a fish in water: he drew a shark with so many teeth they couldn't all fit in his mouth. The shark was eating a fish. The fish didn't look happy. The whole thing was so gleefully violent and elaborately detailed I wanted to frame it. This, my friends, is the worksheet of an artistically inclined kita alepher who has NO CLUE what his morah is saying. Except for when she says it in English.

9. I'm tired right now and probably a little cranky, and I have a headache that is making me feel horribly suspicious that another tooth is starting up with me. So maybe the above doesn't read all that positively. But, as they say here, l'at l'at--slowly slowly--it is coming together. It is.

Logistics

Tomorrow morning school start times: Barak 8:00, Iyyar between 7:15 and 8, Avtalyon 8:15.

Pickup times: Barak 2 PM, Iyyar 1:30, Avtalyon 1:15.

Morning plan: Have Iyyar ready to go at 7 am, and neighbor can drive him up. Iyyar wants me to come with him, which means leaving Marika at home with Abba & other boys. But Barak has to be up the hill at 7:30 for his pickup, and I probably won't make it in time. It will have to be enough that I get him buckled in. What if he freaks out? He'll be in a booster, not a carseat. Maybe I should go with him and hope for the best, or go with him and have MHH take Barak up the hill for his pickup, with Marika and Avtalyon. But that's a lot of stairs. Not sure they can do it. He'd have to carry Marika and hold Avtalyon's hand--even for me that's a lot. Maybe Abba should go with Iyyar. Then I can take Barak up the hill for his 7:30 pickup, and drop Avtalyon off from there. Of course then that means taking Avtalyon up the billion stairs and no stroller. I could take the stroller and leave it at the bottom of the stairs and hope no one steals it. Or I could walk around the corner with the stroller. Yes, best to do that. Then MHH gets home and should still have time to daven. Maybe.

Afternoon plan: get Avtalyon a little early, take stroller to bus, go get Barak with Avtalyon and Marika and stroller (two adult punches, b/c of stroller). Walk from #6 to school instead of taking the second bus, which is unreliable timing-wise. Or: get Iyyar a little early and take bus from his gan to get Barak, while MHH takes Avtalyon. There is more flexibility than I thought with Barak's pickups; the kids sit on the stairs by the shomer and it's OK to be 10-15 minutes late.

Either way, we will all completely miss lunch.

I have to find a better way.

What I took away from Barak's parents' night

עברית אני לא מביןVERY VERY IMPORTANT עברית אני לא מביןMUST DO THIS EVERY NIGHT עברית אני לא מביןBAGS OF CORNFLAKES עברית אני לא מביןHEALTHY FOOD עברית אני לא מביןPENCILS עברית אני לא מבין EXCELLENT, MUST DO IT EVERY NIGHT עברית אני לא מביןKOSHER TZITZIT עברית אני לא מביןARBA MINIM עברית אני לא מביןעברית אני לא מביןABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY AND REQUIREDעברית אני לא מביןBIRTHDAYS עברית אני לא מבין THESE BOOKS EVERY DAY עברית אני לא מביןVERY IMPORTANT עברית אני לא מביןSCHEDULE FOR THE HOLIDAYS עברית אני לא מביןSIX FIVE NINE TWO עברית אני לא מבין TWO עברית אני לא מבין FIVE THREE FOUR TWO עברית אני לא מבין

One month

since we got here.

So far it's been good, in general, though I wouldn't say easy. The travails of Iyyar's gan were utterly eclipsed by what happened with the school we had planned for Barak; after a week of finalizing his acceptance (interviews and visits and endless phone calls), we discovered that a) the school was moving to the absolute opposite end of the city, b) we were going to be required to pay ourselves for the required Hebrew help, at astronomical cost, and c) there was no hasaa (schoolbus). Well, technically there is a hasaa, but it stops at the top of those 182 steps I might have mentioned before, and they would not move the stop. And it costs more than tuition. And I would have had to take a bus just to get to the stop and back. And there was no viable way to get to the school itself by public transportation--it's over an hour each way and the buses are a huge pain.

So we had to find him another school, and I really don't want to get into the details here but last Sunday we (Barak, Marika and I) literally spent seven hours, beginning at 7 am, literally wandering the streets of Jerusalem looking for a school for him. Many tears later, we found one, a good school not too far from us as the crow flies but two buses (short trips, at least) away. The teachers and principal and office staff all seem lovely, there are no other English speakers in his class (a plus so far as I am concerned) and there are only 25 kids in his class, which is incredible around here. I found another parent who was willing to drive him in the morning, but as of now I have to go get him on four buses total every afternoon. This month they're still on short days (till 2) which means I can go get him while my husband is on lunch break, but after the chagim I'm going to have a problem. Hopefully I'll have it dealt with by then.

Iyyar and Avtalyon start school on Wednesday, and I think things will be easier for everyone once we're all in a schedule. Of course, only one week of schedule before it's all disrupted by a thousand chagim, but! at least only one of them is going to be three days this year. That is something I am really looking forward to, right there.

The view

For the record

What half a ton of luggage looks like: the inside of the U-Haul that took our stuff to the airport.

Three weeks

I'm trying to check in once a week, just so you don't give up on me entirely...

It's been an interesting week. It got more interesting on Sunday when I went to pay for Iyyar's gan (nursery school) and was told that the gan was full. I said, but I have an email right here dated April telling me he has a spot. Sorry, it's closed. We'll find you another gan. No no NO, said I; I know it's closed and I know it's full but one of the spots in that full gan belongs to MY SON.

Ah, but no. It didn't. Because--well, it's complicated. We live in a neighborhood of Jerusalem that I'll call Neighborhood A. We live on the very edge of this neighborhood, which is built into the side of an incredibly steep hill. I haven't counted the number of steps it takes to get to the top but it's well over a hundred--I'd guess it's around 150 feet straight up. We live on the bottom. Right next to us, almost literally in our backyard, is the border of our neighborhood and Neighborhood B. Way back before Pesach, I registered Iyyar in a gan in Neighborhood B. Between then and now, all the ganim in Neighborhood B filled up. Then they had to turn kids away. But they're not allowed to turn kids who actually live in Neighborhood B away from ganim in Neighborhood B. So what they did to make room for them was kick out all the kids who lived in other neighborhoods, like, for example, ours. They didn't tell them or anything, of course, just gave their spots to other children. So when I went on Sunday, Iyyar's spot had evaporated, and after three hours and much haggling and consulting a map and calling my neighbors, he was reassigned to a spot that is absolutely on the top of the hill--not only on the top, but OVER the top slightly, and a block and a half down the other side! The hill is utterly un-strollerable. It's zigzagging stone stairs all the way up. The actual gan is also not on our bus route. The only way to do it is to take a bus halfway up the hill to the point where the (steep steep) footpath begins, and walk it from there. Counting bus waiting time, it's going to be 30-40 minutes to get there, a bit less to get home.

Avtalyon's gan is ten minutes away from us, in the absolute opposite direction.

Pickup times are 15 minutes apart.

This is going to be interesting. What it means is that my husband is going to have to do one run and I'm going to have to do the other; me doing a gan pickup is going to blow any possibility of doing ulpan right out of the water. There is some possibility that another family could bring Iyyar home a day or two a week--maybe we'll get lucky. We'll see, I guess.

The happier news is that things seem on the right track with Barak's school. The menaheles is lovely, the school looks nice, we are meeting the rav of the school tomorrow. There is a hasaa but no idea of the logistics there. And no point getting worried about it till I know. Avtalyon's gan is lovely, as is the ganenet; it's very close and in her home. That starts the week after next.

Stay tuned, &c.

Two weeks

Still here.

Sorry for the infrequent posts. I am, it should go without saying, incredibly busy; I also have no babysitting and the boys are all home because school doesn't start until 2 September. So everyone is on vacation but me, and I'm still doing my job on top of the usual Imma routine and, of course, doing everything that needs to be done logistically to get us set up here. The first week had the most running around but something needs to be done every day; tomorrow, somehow we need to get Iyyar's gan paid for, which involves an ishur (form, basically) from the iriya (uh... town hall? municipality?) that has to go to our bank so that they can deduct the money monthly. I had a triumph Saturday night in getting myself logged onto my bank's English-language site; triumph was shortlived, as I got locked out mysteriously the next day. Only way to reset login info: go to bank. My kids are going to be just thrilled about that one.

The technical aspects of my telecommuting setup have not been without incident; getting my phone line working was a project, getting international service another project, and what has ended up actually working was not anything like what I had originally planned. As long as it works, though, right?

The boys are doing fine. They seem happy, possibly mostly because they are spending almost all of their time with Playmobil. That stuff? Worth its weight in gold, people. Yesterday Barak and Iyyar went eight hours almost straight at the dining room table (did I mention our new table?) happily and mostly quietly waging Playmobil knight war.

Further to the table: I have one. I have never owned a dining room table. Now I have a lovely and fabulous table, which seats six but has two leaves that open out to seat eight, and five nice chairs to go with it. So so nice. I bought it used, courtesy of onetiredema, who not only found the table for sale, but arranged for the whole thing, and fronted the money for me, AND worked out getting it delivered to Jerusalem from Modiin without my paying anything at all for that part of it. All hail OTE! Yay table!

Marika continues to be the happiest baby on record, in this family anyway; last night she went to sleep at around 8, woke up at 12 to nurse, slept till 8, woke up to nurse again and then went back to sleep AGAIN until around 10:30. And then took a 3-hour nap in the afternoon. In between, she smiled a lot. And ate some Cheerios. And rolled over in her crib a bunch of times; back to sleep is for newborns, quoth she. I'm sleeping on my tummy now and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

Most recent excitement on the work front: today my computer cord went kablooey, so tomorrow I need to either a) find a cord to use for a week until my office sends me a new one, or b) buy a new cord somewhere in Jerusalem. Marika is still mostly nursing so anywhere I go I have to bring her with me. Tomorrow morning, therefore, I set off, with baby and computer, on a hunt for a new cord. Wish me luck.

One week

Actually, one week and a day, but who's counting?



Things are moving right along.



Sunday: we went to misrad hapnim and got our teudot zehut, which wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected, mostly because Alisha came with us, translated what needed translating and watched the kids while we were otherwise engaged. Once we were done at Window #9 (and Avtalyon's name had a new vav it hadn't had before but we're not arguing with), we all went out for lunch, which, for the kids, consisted of mostly chocolate ruggelach and juice/shoko. (I had a big big salad. And a coke shachor.) Once we were done MHH took the bigger boys home and Alisha and I hit the Israeli version of Amazing Savings and then the shuk--lots of plastic things for the kitchen, some new glasses, a colander, mixing bowls etc. From the shuk, Avtalyon's first barad. He approved.



(Oh--further to barads. A barad is a slushy. Barad is also the name of one of the bibical plagues, specifically hail, which is understood to have been a combination of ice and fire. Barak, when he got his first barad last week, had a red one, and explained to me the etymology of the barad: red like fire, cold like ice, ergo: barad! Totally wrong, but a brilliant chap.)



Monday: Monday was the bank. Oh, the bank. The bank was an experience. It is straight up the hell, henceforth known as The Hill, up which everything needful is to be found. If you have no stroller with you you can go up a bazillion steps; if you have a stroller you have to go up the windy way, which is much longer but, mysteriously, no less steep. We had a stroller so we had to do the straight-up yet windy way and Barak whiiiiiiiiiined the whole way about whyyyyy couldn't he go in the stroller since both Avtalyon and Iyyar got to go in the stroller (answer: because it's a double and they're smaller than you and Abba has to push it). When we finally got to the bank, the air conditioning was delightful, and the rep nice; less ideal was the fact that she spoke zero English. Most Israelis speak at least a little but but not her. An hour and forty-five minutes into opening our account (nobody here has any explanation as to why it takes that long other than It Just Does) I overheard the next guy speaking French and asked her if she spoke French. No, she said, just Hebrew and Russian. I just about fell out of my chair. "This would all have been a lot easier if I'd asked you an hour and forty-five minutes ago if you spoke Russian." We went through some of the essentials again, finished up, stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Tuesday, let's see, what was Tuesday? Oh right, Misrad Haklita. That was pretty easy, although I was supposed to meet up with Alisha again and we missed each other. Wednesday we actually did meet up, I got a cell phone and now it won't happen again. Today was Thursday: shuk shopping date with onetiredema and general decompression. Tomorrow: Shabbos. Finally.

We're here

In a nutshell: we made it.

The last week is kind of a blur. The day before we left seemed to just run itself; I got up, the kids got up, Asnat came over, Ada came over, I packed and cleaned and packed, Yehudis and her sister came to help, and then in the afternoon the friend who was driving the U-haul with all our stuff turned up and MHH and I loaded that. We have some cute pictures of the kids clambering around inside the empty U-haul, and then of the truck packed with our stuff.

The morning we left was a little surreal. Barak woke up at 6:10 and was next to my bed, where I was half-awake and nursing the baby, saying, "Imma, are we going to Israel this day?" I told him we were but not quite yet. I remember thinking that I should have asked Asnat to come earlier than 9, since we were leaving at 10:30, but it was fine; the kids all got baths, got dressed except for the matching tie-dyes I bought them for the trip, and ate: I think they all had oatmeal for breakfast. I broke down the pack and plays and shoved them along with our bedding into the last piece of luggage. The friend driving the U-Haul turned up, the friend driving us came, and all of a sudden it was really time to leave; I went out the front with the kids and got them into their carseats, then went back to check on my husband who was going with the Uhaul--and realized as I walked through the house that he was about to leave with both carryons still sitting on the couch and the bag with the pack and plays on the bedroom floor. Let him know to load them, went back out the front, into the car, and we headed off to the airport.

The unloading and checking-in of the half-ton of luggage went amazingly well. The guy at the counter complimented me on my baggage: "Wow, every single thing is 49.5 pounds!" Except for the one piece I knew would be overweight, which I had expected to have to pay for and did. It was quite a production, but we did it and then headed off through security and to the play area we'd told the kids we'd get a crack at. Then off to gate F19. Then onto the plane to Philadelphia. Two hours, easy flight. Four-hour layover in Philadelphia, spent mostly in the play area, eating crackers and the kids playing with the new Playmobil they'd opened on the first flight. I scouted out the gate to the flight to Israel, easily spotted by the extra security screen and the obvious bunch of Jews sitting around. At around 7:30 we headed that way, went through the second round of security, and got on the plane with a minimum of headache; eleven hours later, we'd eaten all our snacks, everyone had slept at least a little (Barak didn't fall asleep until we were over Greece, watching Ratatouille and Finding Nemo over and over instead) and we were in Tel Aviv. I am pleased to report a trip completely free of vomit or other disasters; everyone except the baby made it in the same clothes. (She peed all over herself and me during a living-dangerously diaper change on my lap. Oh well.)

We landed, we got off, we got down the long ramp at the airport and found the phone to call Misrad Ha'pnim, and were met by a lady with very high laced-up sandals who kept deciding to push my jogging stroller and then walking away from it without locking the brakes. They told us all to get on a bus to the old airport, and it was us, a family from Montreal, and a single guy with big payos. In the old terminal, up some stairs, into the arrivals lounge or whatever they call it, and then processing with a very nice Misrad Ha'pnim rep who spent half her time talking to me and half smiling at the baby. I did the paperwork while MHH fielded the kids, Barak asleep in the stroller and the other two boys happily demolishing the bags of candy handed them by staff. (Seriously. Bags of candy for the kids. BIG bags.) Back to the main airport, by the same bus; got two guys with trolleys and all 23 pieces of luggage (including carseats); through the exit to find OneTiredEma and family smiling, waving, and holding a Welcome Home sign. When OTE offered to meet us at the airport I just thought it would be nice to have a welcoming committee; as it turned out it made all the difference between what would otherwise have been total misery and an arrival that was about as smooth as it could possibly have been. Taxman dealt with the taxi/luggage guys for us in Hebrew, OTE held the baby for me while I put in the carseats, and when Taxman realized that there was no one there at the other end to help us with our mountain of luggage, they all followed us in their car to help unload--and then supplied us all with pizza and popsicles. Amazing. As MHH said, "Wait. Who are they? You've never MET these people?" "She's a blog friend." He shook his head. "You and your blog friends. Wow."

Made the beds, put the kids in them, unpacked, took a shower; sat on the couch, ate more now-cold pizza, looked at my husband, and we both grinned. We made it. We're home.

One week

We're leaving a week from tomorrow.

It's a little overwhelming.

In general I think we are OK so far as preparation--at least as OK as we can be at this point. Tisha b'Av is Tuesday, which means I can't finish packing the clothes, because we can't really do laundry till Wednesday; my husband's agenda for Wednesday involves spending the entire day in the basement doing laundry, cleaning out our laundry area, and working on his paper. We have a ride to the airport, for ourselves and our stuff, and the game plan for the last 36 hours is pretty well worked out. Two pieces of luggage left to pack, plus the pack and plays. K and I got snacks at Trader Joe's when she was here, and I have everyone's lunchbags clean and empty and ready to pack. It's still chaotic, there are still tons of random items lying around to deal with, but it's getting there. It is.

I know that I will want to look back and read posts that I wrote the last few weeks before we left, but the truth is I just don't have time. I am absolutely exhausted, and I need the sleep more than I need the blogging time. Marika is in an insomniac stage, which doesn't help; the kids are needing extra time and attention; there's just so much to do. I have a cleaning lady coming on Wednesday and Friday, and we are having Shabbos lunch out, which will help; the goal is to keep the kids out of the house every possible second between Friday afternoon and when we leave, to keep it as clean as possible. Not sure how that one will go.

The idea of leaving, specifically of leaving here, is hard. As much as I want to go, the actual leaving of this place--this apartment, this block, this community--is going to be very difficult. I have good friends here. I have been happier here, by orders of magnitude, than I've ever been anywhere else in my life. We moved here when Barak was three months old, and have not left since. I had three babies here. And I've never felt more at home anywhere else--I can't even go to the store to buy apples without running into people I know and stopping to chat. I feel like I belong here--like we belong here. Even though I know that really, we all belong somewhere else.

I know it's the right thing. And I think it will be good. 

One more week.

The month in review, because Jasmin told me to.

Uberimma: Who knows ten? I know ten. Ten are the days till we leave.

Uberimma: is about to wave goodbye to her spinning wheel. :(

Uberimma: just waved goodbye to six big boxes of stuff we won't see again till September sometime.

Uberimma: ‎'s stuff has a ride to the airport!

Uberimma: was just reminded that she still has no way to get her half ton of luggage to O'Hare in TWELVE DAYS.

Uberimma: One week and six days. But who's counting?

Uberimma: is scheduled to be landing two weeks, one day, and three minutes from now.

Uberimma: It's official: you cannot fit the worldly goods of a family of six into eighteen pieces of luggage. In case anyone was wondering.

Uberimma: loves LL Bean. They had a typo in their paper catalog knocking down the price of really nice no-iron Shabbos shirts to $19.50 each, and are honoring it. Husband has eight new shirts now, and strict orders not to grow or shrink in any way.

Uberimma: just got a book from the JUF about a little girl named Uberimma who makes aliya with her family and misses her grandma. Hmm.

Uberimma: is attempting to write a speech while listening to Avtalon tear around the living room singing "ROOshayayim! ROOshayayi-im!" a la Uncle Moishy.

Uberimma: is writing speeches and eating Nutella.

‎Uberimma: 's kitchen has never been this clean and empty outside of Pesach prep. My whole body aches, but it's gleaming. [collapses on floor]

Uberimma: has just been informed that we will have almost exactly half a ton of stuff with us when we leave. I don't think I needed to know that.

‎Uberimma: 's house seems empty without Deb and her daughter, but soon Sarah will be here! Aliya: best way ever to get all your out-of-town friends to visit. Highly recommended.

Uberimma: loves listening to Barak daven in the morning, all by himself, with his own siddur.

Uberimma: Two weeks and six days. It feels a lot closer from this side of the three-week mark.

Uberimma: backing up her hard drive. 198 minutes remaining.

Uberimma: hasn't packed in over 24 hours and is starting to feel DTs coming on.

Uberimma: just saw some amazing fireworks with Deb and Barak, whom I had to grab by the shirt to keep him from booking out of there at the first boom.

Uberimma: Three weeks and three days.

Uberimma: needs suggestions: how to get 18 pieces of luggage to the airport on Monday morning 7/26? We can get the people there in one minivan, but the luggage will need a truck or a full-sized van at the least.

Uberimma: should be packing but is taking a short break to snort at this.

Topless Robot - The 17 Least Appropriate Playmobil Sets for Children - Page 1
www.toplessrobot.com

Uberimma: just rejiggered her entire packing plan to allow her husband to take both boxes of seforim on the plane. Greater love hath no woman.

Uberimma: is convinced that stuff is regenerating when I'm not looking. The more I pack, the more there is lying around. Deb, I'm sure there's a bed back here somewhere...

Uberimma: is starting to see progress...

Uberimma: Sony Discman, circa 2004. Anyone?

Uberimma: is getting to the stuff that's hard to pack.

Uberimma: has packed, taped, labeled, weighed and inventoried 12 pieces of luggage. Six to go, most of which I can't pack until the week before we leave.

Uberimma: is really hoping for a night free of vomit.

Uberimma: has never seen such freaky-colored light. Is anyone else's sky looking, um, green?

Uberimma: just put her baby on the bus for the last day of kindergarten. Wasn't it just the first day?

Uberimma: is packing. It appears to be a recurring theme.

Uberimma: and family will IY"H be arriving on Tuesday 7/27, 3:15 PM. Start the countdown now: five weeks and 1 day till departure.

Uberimma: has flights!

Uberimma: is excited. Ellie's coming in twelve hours!!!

Uberimma: still has no flights. Hopefully Monday. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

Uberimma: is booking flights.

Uberimma: has visas in my hot little hands, all names spelled correctly. But they did not return my apostille. "The apostille was in that envelope? I will look." Breathe...

Uberimma: was determined not to pack tonight but did some packing anyway. Oh well, it's a harmless habit really.

Friend of Uberimma: Are you packing whenever you celebrate, or you're sad, or just for no reason? Are you packing when you're alone? Do you pack more than one or two boxes at a time? Have people talked to you about your packing? Uberimma, YOU SHOULD GET HELP!!!

Uberimma: But my packing doesn't affect me. Really. I'm totally in control of my packing. I could stop at any time--I just choose not to because I enjoy my packing. I can take care of my family just fine while I'm packing and I'm never sore the next morning. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM!

Uberimma: has a totally sewn-together Escher-esque tesselated fish blanket for Marika! (Don't be too impressed: I started it for Iyyar.)

Uberimma: plans to celebrate the arrival of visas and the departure of everyone for convention (speeches in hand) by taking the evening off to sew some fish.

Uberimma: has visas waiting to be picked up!

Eleven days

Sorry for the long silence. I've been a little bit busy.

We are leaving in eleven days. Updates:


1. Barak has just been informed, to his great disappointment, that since we are making aliya on our own on a regular plane, not an NBN group or charter flight, there will be no welcoming committee/brass band/cake/soldiers waving flag. I had been showing him the NBN "Come Back" video and it did not occur to me that he thought SOLDIERS were part of the aliya package (well, they still are, but he was looking forward to soldiers waving at HIM, AT THE AIRPORT). I should have known better. If you know any soldiers you could connive into meeting us at the airport, you have the potential to make some little boys very very happy. And I'll knit them hats.

2. It's been a really nice month of visit after visit after visit. Cecilia left in early June and a couple of weeks later Grandma E came; then Deb and her daughter, then Sarah, and now K is here and being the most phenomenal pre-aliya houseguest imaginable. She is caulking my bathtub for me, people. I know. Seriously.

3. I took Marika for her 7-month (or whatever) checkup. The doctor was a little concerned that she wasn't sitting up yet; I wasn't really because, hello, she gets held ALL THE TIME, but when I got home I started trying to get her to sit up. Today she sat unassisted (with K, who has been hanging with my kids while I run around in circles) for ten minutes. I think she's OK.


4. Further to Marika: first two teeth came through yesterday, first solids (oatmeal) today. She didn't seem interested, didn't seem interested, and then today she WANTED THAT FOOD. I was eating cucumbers and hummous and gave her a taste on my finger; her mouth instantly turned into a black hole.


5. I just got back from loading six boxes (one huge, two big, three small) on a friend's lift. We should see them again sometime in September. Winter clothes and things a size up, toys, a Sterilite cabinet for the kitchen, yarn, books.

6. I should have put more puzzles in the boxes for the lift. Have I mentioned lately Avtalyon's passion for puzzles? It's like nothing I've ever seen. He is obsessed with puzzles and he is getting really, really good. He can do a 48-piece puzzle now, all by himself. It takes him some time but he doesn't get frustrated, he just sits there working at it and working at it until he's done.

7. Since we have K here and K has a Honda Odyssey with eight (eight!) seats, we have been doing some of the local-attraction-visiting that we haven't done much of over the last six years that we've been here. One of the places we went was the children's museum, where there is a real, genuine, green John Deere tractor that the kids can climb up into and pretend to drive. You should have seen Avtalyon's face. He wasn't even smiling. He saw it, his entire body went slack, and his eyes were burning with a fiery intensity that only a tractor-obsessed two-year-old can summon. When we got home, he went straight to his tractor puzzle, and for the last couple of days he's been taking it apart, putting it together, and circling it, muttering, "Tractor. Tractor yeah. Tractor."

8. Oh, one more Avtalyon thing. So you might know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time that the Pirates of Penzance are a local favorite. I have always liked it, I introduced it to Barak a couple of years ago, and it's a regular item on the bedtime CD hit parade. Lately, Avtalyon has gotten into it. "Beeya piyate keeng!" He sings, he dances, and, my personal favorite, when he gets to the section with the drums, sings, "da dum da dum da dum." On Friday night he was distraught because there was no Pirate King CD. I had to sing it to him. Fortunately, I know the entire libretto cold, so that was no problem.

9. Iyyar is in a... well, K is calling it a "defiant stage." I call it "testing testing one two three and a half," although he's four now and still doing it. Like, walking away from me and around the corner, while looking straight at me and grinning. What are you going to do if I do this? And this? and how about this? The timing isn't great, but it could be worse--like, say, two weeks from now. I'm hoping he gets it all out of his system. Soon.

10. Last thing, and this one about Iyyar: so he hasn't had any dairy for a year now, of any kind, with the exception of one small Tootsie Roll a few weeks ago. The day before yesterday, we went to the mall where they have a really neat outdoor play area. It was really really hot, and on the way home I thought we should stop at Baskin Robbins, where they have historically had dairy-free slushies. This one didn't. The only thing they had was a sherbet, labeled "contains milk." I let him have a kid scoop. That was two days ago and he has since had one totally uneventful bowel movement. I'm not sure if "contains milk" means "might contain milk" or "really truly contains milk," so I told him that this afternoon, when we go to pick up Abba at the airport, we will stop off again and I will let him have one spoonful of real actual cow milk ice cream and we'll see how it goes. It's a big deal right now, because we are about to be eating five days a week in a cafeteria that serves dairy for lunch every single day. Even if he can't, say, eat a cheese sandwich, it would be awfully nice to know I no longer have to worry about cross-contamination of ingredients and so on.


11. Okay, I lied. That wasn't the last thing.

Abba has been out of town this week, visiting his parents, which was, I freely admit, totally my idea. He has no idea what he has gotten out of. The amount of cleaning and packing and organizing and shlepping of heavy things up and down stairs that has happened this week is not to be believed. I cleaned out his entire closet, including the file cabinet; unloaded a huge box of shaimos, which was I think the fifth one; tossed and packed and organized every night until around 2 am. We had a cleaning lady come on Wednesday, for the second time; last time the two of us spent five hours emptying out and scrubbing down the kitchen, including scraping the grime from between the floor tiles with a piece of Lego and bleaching the baseboards (that was me) and de-gunking the oven (her). Yesterday she moved all the furniture and did all the floors and bathrooms. They look amazing now. Why is it that the house is only ever really clean at Pesach and when you're about to move out?!

Well that was nice.

Isn't it kind of amazing how things work out sometimes?

I've been stressing about packing for months. Really, months. Do we ship anything? How? How much? Do we buy space on someone else's lift? Ship via New York, meaning we have to mail it all there and then pick it up at the shipper's Jerusalem office? Limit ourselves to the luggage allowance or pay for extra? I have been coming to a definite decision every few days, always a different one. Last week I decided to just deal with the luggage allowance and store/toss everything else. But the realities of that were just not practical. Seriously, what do I leave here: the kids' pajamas? my pajamas? the knitting needles? the pots and pans? the English books to read to the kids? 900 lb of luggage sounds like so much but it isn't much at all when you are moving a family of 6 across continents. I could just buy some of it again but it doesn't make sense when we have things we like already.

Then I decided, well, I'll just pay the excess luggage fees. But then I looked at our duffels and boxes and started to panic because they're all weighed out to 49 lb and what if the scale is off and we are charged $900--$50 per overweight piece?

Then I went into work today and when I got home there was a voicemail from my boss. I called her back and she said, sorry I missed you today, I wanted to give you a letter. About what? About your raise. And your $500 bonus for working so hard this year.

!!!!

(This never happens where I work, btw. At least if it does I've never heard of it. We didn't even get raises last year; I got a good one, relatively speaking, plus the bonus, which totally fell out of the sky so far as I'm concerned.)

Then the phone rang again. It was a friend who is sending a lift, from our neighborhood, to a city in southern Israel; we'd already dismissed the idea of shipping stuff with her as unrealistic because we'd have to get it and it wouldn't be worth it. But now, the lift is going to cost $8 a cubic foot, not $12, which is why she called. And we could pay someone to just drive it in a car--we won't have to get movers for the 6-8 boxes we'd be putting on. $300 or so for the lift space, a couple hundred dollars to pay someone to do the drive. $500.

Wow.

One little thing

Before I forget:

When Grandma E was here, she decided to spoil the kids in appropriately grandmotherly fashion and bought them an Elmo cookie from the bakery. It was a big cookie and expensive so I said it was enough for the three of them; she got what she thought was a prune something for herself, but that turned out to be a chocolate something, which she couldn't eat, so she let them have that too. So what ended up happening was that I cut the cookie in half instead of in thirds, cut the chocolate something in half instead of in thirds, and each boy got to pick a half. Avtalyon picked half the Elmo cookie and the bigger boys each got a half of the chocolate something.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because Iyyar has lately been having some issues with a) telling the truth and b) keeping his fingers out of places they're not supposed to be. I left the extra Elmo-cookie-half on the counter and went to do something else; a little while later, I came back and saw the unmistakable signs of Iyyar fingers all over the frosting. It looked like he'd succumbed to temptation and pinched off about half the red icing. Eww. Also, not authorized.

"Iyyar," I said, sternly. "Did you take some of the cookie you weren't supposed to eat?" Iyyar, eyes opened wide, shook his head no. I raised my eyebrows. "Please tell me the emmes [truth]. Do not tell me a shekker [lie]. I only want the emmes."

Iyyar just barely nodded his head. "You ate it?" Tiny little head-nod again. "Were you supposed to eat it?" Tiny little head-shake, eyes very very wide. "Can you say I'm sorry, please?"

Very very quietly, "I'm sorry."

I got the knife back out and cut the mangled cookie into thirds, and gave a piece to each of the three of them. Then I gave Iyyar a kiss on the head and said, "That's for telling me the emmes. Please don't do that again. Next time, ask for the cookie instead of just taking."

I went back to the sink to wipe up from the cookie-cutting and the boys turned back to their cookie-eating. And that was when I heard Barak remark, "Well, that was a pleasant surprise."

Bad blogger

We interrupt this blogging hiatus to bring you the news that WE HAVE A DATE.

Monday, July 26. Arriving Tuesday 7/27 at around 4-4:30 PM by the time we get our stuff together; anyone inclined to meet us with a brass band is welcome to do so.

Four weeks from tomorrow.

This is really happening.

Much to report in the last couple of weeks: a fabulous visit from Grandma E, some noteworthy sayings from the kids, Marika rolling both ways and becoming more delightful daily. Oh, and that Playmobil? Worth every cent, because it's been buying me entire afternoons of peace and quiet to pack. I would have spent more money on babysitting if I hadn't bought it, and that we can't keep.

Not just listing.

1. We have visas! Yay visas! I was hoping we would be able to book the flights today but that didn't happen--I had to fax copies of the visas in and they kept not coming through legibly. No NBN offices on Friday so it'll have to wait. But I'm assured it will be FINE.

2. The house, specifically the packing-up of the house, is coming along. It still looks very lived in but when you start opening closets there's not nearly as much in there as there used to be. And half the living room shelves are empty, which is saying something because we have two full walls covered with built-in bookshelves.

3. The speeches for the Big Event are done and I am taking a little bit of a breather--I still have plenty of work to do but it's not as crazy as it has been for the last, oh, three months or so. Which is good, because, seriously: buncha little kids + nursing baby + job overload + aliya planning + packing up house = no sleep. Tonight I went to nurse the baby as I was about to get the kids into bed; my husband was starting them with teeth-brushing when I went into my room with Marika. The next thing I knew it was 10:30. Obviously I needed the sleep but then I spent an hour on the phone with a friend and I haven't even started cooking. It was an awesome nap though.

4. Grandma E is coming! Grandma E is coming! I spent most of yesterday making the guest room inhabitable, which was a pretty mammoth task but one that needed doing anyway so it was good to have the impetus to do it. Mysteriously, the bed that I cleared off completely last night is now covered with junk again. How how how???

5. Marika is six months. I LOVE six months. It's one of my favorite ages. She is pushing way way up and rolling both ways, although she still seems kind of surprised when she does it. She's having a lot of fun with her feet--grabbing them, chewing her toes, and all the usual diversions. She's babbling up a storm, lots of thoughtful, considered statements like "Ah buh-buh-buh." She also whispers, which cracks me up. Like, she doesn't really want this to be public information, but you should know: ah buh buh. Keep that between us, OK?

6. When I am about to have a baby I get weird about money. Ordinarily I am pretty budget-conscious and I am extremely disinclined to splurge. Any big purchase, I think about and plan out beforehand, and by "big purchase" I mean anything over $50. When I'm about to have a baby, I do things like--hmm, I'm embarrassed now, but I definitely do things like spend inexcusable amounts of money on yarn or whatever. I'm not about to have a baby now but maybe aliya is like that because I have been spending money like it's going out of style. Mostly on things we need but it's a fairly loose definition of "need." I wanted the boys to all have matching shirts for the flights because it makes them a lot easier to keep track of, and then realized that there's no way they're going to go the whole trip in one set of clothes so got everyone two. (Lands' End tie-dyed t-shirts. Very visible! Barak wanted to know why I hadn't gotten one for Marika and I explained that I don't need her to be very visible because she can't run away. "Oh.")

7. I got new pack and play sheets, fun ones with firetrucks. I also got a new carseat, based on the recommendation of the fabulous Carseat Lady (thecarseatlady.com): a Combi Coccoro. And then I also got the Flash stroller, which is the Coccoro's version of a snap n go. I'm going to need it when I come back here for work next winter. I got my husband a bunch of new shirts, which he needed, and Playmobil for the boys, which they did not need but I bought anyway. And I'm going to get a new mattress for one of the pack and plays, which kills me, because we have THREE pack and plays, but two of them have warped mattresses and I can't have Marika sleeping on a warped P & P mattress her entire infancy. It's got a big ridge running right down the middle. Right now she's small enough to avoid it but not for long.

8. Further to the Playmobil (I'll make this its own item): I am not sending Barak to camp this summer, mostly in the name of thrift but also because I think he'll be happier to just have a few weeks to chill out and play before we move. So there was a little extra money in the budget from that, which I had earmarked for fun summer activities. It's really hard to go anywhere though with everyone--MHH is still working all the time and without a car we're really limited. We'll go to the aquarium and maybe the zoo when my friend K is here, and do the zoo at least once when Deb is here, but other than that we're sticking pretty close to home. And I wanted to do something to make the last few weeks here, and the first few weeks in Israel, easier, for me and for them. So I spent what was, for me anyway an unconscionable amount of money on Playmobil. Not hundreds of dollars or anything--some of the small sets, and some of the Playmobil 123 for Marika and Avtalyon. Our MO around here is toys from thrift stores or yard sales. I just don't spend a lot on toys. For some things, like Playmobil (and Lego, and puzzles), you have to pay the money to buy it new, and I do think it's worthwhile to have good, well-made, educational toys that will last. Playmobil is firmly in this category. Still, I'm feeling guilty. They HAVE Playmobil. Not only do they have some already, but an extremely generous blog reader (hi!) is planning on sending them some more. So I didn't need to go on the Playmobil site late at night and buy them a bunch of Playmobil construction guys. But I did. At 1:30 AM.

9. I am trying to figure out why exactly I feel so guilty about buying that Playmobil. I bought my kids toys. This is, I am told, a normal thing for parents to do. But I'm feeling guilty about spending money on Playmobil when they have a box of Playmobil already and do not, strictly speaking, need any more. They have a 28-qt Sterilite of Playmobil. This is the Sterilite box one size up from the shoebox size, but taller. It's not a huge box by any means and it is full of smaller Gladware boxes with the actual sets inside so it's not like it's even really full: they've got a box of Romans, a box of policemen and firemen, some pirates, a killer whale, the small firetruck, a police car, a fire helicopter and a Roman fort my friend Karen sent. No giant castles or pirate ships or anything, tempted though I have been.

They love this stuff, they play beautifully with it and they play with it a lot. I feel comfortable that my kids are not spoiled with too many toys. So why do I feel so hugely uncomfortable with myself for having splurged on Playmobil for no particular occasion? Well, that's not true. It's aliya Playmobil--it's more expensive there, and easier to pack than the big bulky toys we're leaving behind. Not so crazy really. So why am I spending three items on the same list justifying it to myself? While I seriously consider buying them a ship or a castle or a fortress because I know how much they would love it? Discuss.

Radio Exchange Between Israeli Navy and 7th Flotilla Ship Regarding Tran...

Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers (With...

And now for something completely trivial

In contrast, anyway. But it's my all-consuming decision at the moment.

See, I have a Bosch mixer. I bought it after Iyyar was born and while it would be an exaggeration to say I've used it every day since, I do use it an awful lot--a couple of times a week for sure, often more than that. I have the bread bowl and the slicer/shredder attachments, and between those I can make bread and bagels and kugels and potato pancakes and whatever else, really really fast. It saves me time and it also saves me money; a $3.99 bag of flour makes 40 bagels. Try buying bagels for 10 cents each at the store. They won't be anything like as good, either. I can also turn out pizza dough very quickly, which is both dinner and Project with Kids. And, of course, there's the homemade challah, which I make whole-wheat; it's a nightmare to knead by hand and in the Bosch you just dump it all in and turn the machine off after ten minutes. Amazing.

I've been looking at my Bosch for months now, trying to imagine cooking without it. I'm also thinking about, of all things, peanut butter. We go through two jars a week, easy. A kilo of PB in Israel is NIS 24. Shelled peanuts and other shelled nuts cost a lot less per pound. I could get the food processor attachment and make my own. And my own pesto. And baby food, without also needing a hand blender.

Except, of course, that my mixer doesn't run on 220 current.

So, I could a) pack up the whole thing in boxes and live without a mixer. Buy my bagels and my peanut butter, grate vegetables and knead dough by hand. I did it for years. Although I only had one baby then.

Or, I could 2) buy a new base, that runs on 220 volts. It costs $270. That's a lot. Not as much as a complete new mixer, since I already have the bowl. And I won't have to pay tax because the cheapest place to get it is out of state. Still. It's a lot.

Or! I could 3) buy the new base and the food processor attachment. This would be $370 for both. This is also a LOT of money.

However: we will eventually recoup all of that money in savings on food costs. If we stay.

And we'd need to bring it. It's heavy.

Compounding all of this is that I can't just say, well, we'll wait a year and buy it when we see what our eating patterns really are; the reason I can't do this is that my current Bosch mixer is the "old style" which has now been replaced by the "new style" and the parts are not interchangeable. (Don't get me started.) I already have two bowls and a slicer/shredder for my old-style base.

I am pretty sure I could sell my current Bosch mixer here. That would subsidize the purchase substantially. I'm unaccountably reluctant to do that, though. Which is dumb. What, I'd rather store it than sell it and get a new one? It's probably because I'm thinking, "But what if we come back? Come back and HAVE NO BOSCH?! That would be a catastrophe!"

(You don't need to comment on that. I know.)

What to do? Suggestions?

Just go read this instead.

I don't write well about politics. I've never been good at mounting a clear, logical argument when it's something I feel strongly about; I'm non-confrontational by nature, and I'm not at my best when I feel under attack. And when it comes to Israeli politics, and the relationship between Israel and the rest of the world, I run out of words. I can't do much more, these days, but wave my hands helplessly and feel hopeless. A few minutes ago I asked my husband if it was in Tanach that everyone was going to hate the Jews forever. He asked me why. I said I'd feel better about it if it was in a nevua. "Why, because that way clearly it would be divine will?" I said yes. It would, somehow.

If you want a clear, reasoned piece of writing that says everything I feel too impotent and angry to say myself, go read David's blog (link above) or Charles Krauthammer's op-ed, here (and if anyone can tell me why Blogger won't link my in-post links anymore, I'll be grateful):

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2012025784_krauthammer04.html

If you want my own observation, it is a frightening feeling that we are in the middle of a sea change--not in how the world sees Jews, but in how it is OK to talk about your feelings about Jews. When I was growing up, if you'll forgive the slightly gross analogy, being public about hating Jews was kind of like being public about picking your nose. Yeah, everyone does it, but we all pretend we don't. If you do it in public, we'll all censure you and pretend that we don't do it either. Educated people don't Jew-bash. That's for the KKK.

That's changing. The Holocaust, well, that's old hat now, and we're supposed to be over it. It's not a justification for anything else. It's history and not relevant. We're supposed to... well, what, exactly? Give away our country? Go back to Europe? Yeah, that worked out really, really well for us before. Those Europeans definitely have always had our best interests at heart.

The flotilla? What is there to say? Israel blockaded Gaza because Islamic terrorists are importing weapons with which they are trying to kill us. A boatload of armed thugs tried to break the blockade, to enable to importation of more weapons--not humanitarian aid. There's plenty of humanitarian aid coming in through Ashdod and land crossings. That wasn't the point here. The point was breaking the blockade.

Instead of sinking the ship, as any other country would do, the Israeli military sent commandos onboard, at what was obviously great personal risk--commandos armed with paint guns and pistols, with orders not to shoot anyone unless it was self-defense, and then only with permission. They sent in soldiers with their hands essentially tied behind their backs, because they were trying so hard not to kill the armed thugs who were about to do their level best to kill them.

This is bad enough. But it's not what's scary. What's scary is how it's showing up in the newspapers, the AP, Reuters, the Times. The rush to judgment is instantaneous, the chorus of censure almost total. No one is even bothering to pretend. Something changed this week. Something really changed.

All I have to say to the Jews who are joining in on the Israel-bashing is this: you are no different from the assimilated Jews of Hitler's Germany. You think that if you bash Israel with the best of them, it won't ever be about you.

And you are wrong. It's about the Jews. It always has been. The Holocaust wasn't enough; they're coming after us where we are now. They're coming after us in Israel. Don't think they're not coming after you too.

Recipes

I'm packing up my cookbooks and having a hard time with the cookbooks that I use regularly, but only ever use the same two or three recipes from. Pack? Store? Toss? In the end I decided to store them, but put the recipes on my blog; that way, I'll have them when I need them. So here are the first two:

My grandmother's rice pudding:

2 liters of milk

1/2 cup white rice

2/4 cup white sugar

dash salt

tsp vanilla

2 whole eggs

She didn't write in any instructions but... well, everything goes in the pot together except for the eggs, and when you put the eggs in, you need to beat them, and then put a little of the hot rice mixture in the eggs so that the beaten eggs don't turn into scrambled eggs, and then put the eggs back in that way. Low heat, cook it until it's done, which takes a while. Don't let it boil, don't burn your mouth. Add cinnamon at the end if you like. Or maple syrup.

Banana bread a la Fannie Farmer

3 ripe bananas, well mashed (I use my hands for this)

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups flour (whole wheat works fine)

3/4 cup sugar (you can use less)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts are best, pecans also good)

Mix bananas with eggs, add dry ingredients, bake the whole thing at 180c (350F) in a greased pan until it's done; time depends enormously on the shape of the pan, anywhere from 25 to 50 minutes. This recipe has been used so many times the cookbook is cracked in half at that page, and is so old I have my modifications noted in metric. Wow.

And the newest winners of the Darwin Award are...

What, exactly, did they think was going to happen?

A little nachas

You'll permit me, right?

So today we went to the dentist. I just was there yesterday having a filling replaced, and today we went back so that Barak and Iyyar could get checkups. It was quite the excursion: I put Marika in the snugli (oh how she loves the snugli) and Avtalyon in the umbrella stroller, and picked up Iyyar at school; then off to get Barak at his school, and then on the bus to the dentist. The dentist is in the same building as my office, so before our appointment we went and visited some of my coworkers, who hear about the kids a lot but obviously don't really see them. Then to the dentist, where the kids were phenomenally well behaved ("Are they always this good?"), to Whole Foods to get Iyyar's rice milk cheese and Barak's Shabbos yogurts (the good behavior began to erode very slightly in the face of all those bright lights and colors and yummy-looking food), and back to the bus.

The bus we boarded on the way back was one of the newer ones with the flip-up seats to make space for wheelchairs. Since we got on at the first stop, it was completely empty. I considered flipping up seats to make room for the stroller, but then decided not to; instead, I sat on the flip-up row with Iyyar next to me, left Avtalyon in the stroller, which I held, and had Barak on the seats perpendicular to us. That meant that the stroller was more or less out of the way, and left three more handicapped seats across the aisle. The last time we took a bus, this past Sunday, Barak had asked me about the wheelchairs on the seats, and I'd told him that if someone got on the bus who was old or had trouble walking, or if a lady got on with a baby, you should get up and let them have your seats.

When we got on the bus was empty, but right before it pulled out an older lady with a cane got on. Barak leaned over to me, looking concerned, and stage-whispered with great urgency, "Imma! Should we get up? It's an old lady and she needs this seat!" I told him that it was OK, because there were still empty seats right next to her and she could sit there; if another old lady got on, we'd move.

If in ten years, when he's riding the buses on his own, he's the kid who gets up to give other people a seat, I'll be so proud and happy I'll probably cry.

What PSAs should look like

When I lived in Birmingham, there were a lot of things to get used to. One of them was British television--not just the BBC, but ITV and British ads and so on. One of the things that I saw there were road-safety PSAs that you would never, ever see on American TV--because for some reason, sex is fine, fake action-hero violence can be as gory as you want, but this: no. I still remember the physical reaction I had to seeing this, not knowing how it would end; the carseat lady shared it on facebook and I'm sharing it here.

(Click on the link, watch the video, and never let anyone behind you in the car ride unbuckled again.)

Nine weeks

We don't have an actual departure date yet, so that's a bit misleading. My tzadaikas friend wore holes through her shoes today, did battle with metal detectors, and emerged victorious with a stamped-but-not-yet-apostilled marriage certificate; if all goes well, we'll have that shortly, and then visas, and THEN we can request tickets. Once we have those, bli neder I'll put up a ticker, so we can count down together. Whee!

I was thinking earlier that when I go back to look at old posts, I tend to look at the ones right before a big change. Right before I had a baby, right before the move. Because it's so easy to forget what things were like before. Which is why I should really really be blogging more now--but it's so hard to prioritize blogging in the midst of work chaos, children who really need my attention, the house, the paperwork, the very early stages of packing.

But I will want to remember this part, later, so...

1. My friend's 12-yo daughter is still coming every morning, bless her, and picking up Barak, so I don't have to walk him to the bus stop. Our mornings these days are a crazy rush, mostly because I am always so zonked and never wake up on time. My husband gets up first, and wakes up Barak; Barak gets himself ready and by the time I am swimming to consciousness with a baby plastered to me, he is eating oatmeal in the kitchen. At about two minutes to eight there is a wild frenzy of fatherly attempts to apply shoes/bag/jacket to Barak, with occasional meltdown when shoes/bag/jacket fail to present themselves or be acceptable, or lunch is not in place, or whatever; I usually pretend not to hear any of this, and stay in my room nursing the baby until he leaves. At this point, Avtaylon is usually jumping up and down in his crib yodeling, Marika is back to sleep, and Iyyar is either walking around the house in nothing but underwear or sitting on his bed sucking his blanket tag. I get them dressed and in the kitchen for breakfast, get myself dressed, and Asnat turns up at either 9 or 9:20, depending on the day; I run Iyyar to school, and go in my office to start working. At 12, Asnat leaves; Iyyar is done with school at 1:20 and either my husband gets him on his lunch or I do. Then Avtalyon wakes up from his nap, we all play for a while or maybe run an errand; Barak is home at 4, I try to make dinner, Abba is home at 6, and bedtime, usually, is between 7 and 7:30. I try to start working at 8, but it doesn't usually happen. MHH gets home at 10:15, and I either keep working or go clean the kitchen; it's rare that we are in bed much before 1. Being in bed by midnight counts as an early night around here.

2. Avtalyon is having a cape stage. The boys are all very into Playmobil right now, especially Avtalyon, who particularly loves the Playmobil firetruck; the other day, Avtalyon tried to get one of the Playmobil Romans in there, with a cape. Alas, the cape was too hard to get on by himself. "Imma! Imma help you! Imma help you batman!" Cape=batman. How awesome is that?

3. In similar linguistic awesomeness, on Sunday Barak was trying to read a sign that said "Beware of Dog." He got the "beware" part with some help, I read the "of" for him. "Dog" was hard, though. "Beware the duh... dooo... dah... dahg." Pause for consideration. "Beware the Fish?" Because fish, in Hebrew, is dag.

4. I go back and forth between thinking "sixteen pieces of luggage is a ton, we'll have no problem fitting everything we need" and "there's no way we'll be able to bring everything without shipping stuff." We have plenty of space for clothes and kitchen stuff. That's not the problem. The problem isn't even yarn, which will pad the kitchen stuff, or the bedding, which can be squished down pretty small. It's the books and toys and baby things--the pack and play, the seforim, the booster seat, the sixteen blankets Iyyar insists on bringing to bed every night. And the random items--my keyboard, the CDs, the pictures, the extra shoes for the kids to grow into. It's a lot. We may ship some stuff, we may not--no decision there yet.

5. Marika loves the Snugli. Right now I have her in a My Tai, which is a contraption with long ties that is kind of like a regular Snugli but more comfortable for both of us. The other day I wasn't paying as much attention to her as she wanted--it was almost Yom Tov and I was rushing around doing things all day--and at around 5 PM, she was ticked. Right as the kvetching was about to turn into full-blown wailing, I decided to run over to a neighbor's with some food for them, and to bring her with me. She was lying on the bed, surrounded by the laundry I was folding at top speed, when she saw me approaching with the My Tai in hand. She saw it, gasped, and started to chortle. "That! That thing! That thing is JUST WHAT I WANT!" She did, too.

6. There are lots and lots of things I've been thinking I should blog but I just don't have time to do any of them justice. Things like Barak's cupcake-baking, Barak's "snow troopers," Iyyar's recent propensity toward bringing me "ginormous shmattas," Avtalyon's burning desire to shmash houses, and just all the ways Avtalyon's been talking lately. "I want it DEESH ONE!" and "why chuck!" and "bay gull!" and "tayi?" I'll leave you to figure out those last three on your own.

The countdown begins

I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that we are IY"H leaving in just over ten weeks. We don't have our tickets yet so I don't know the exact date but we are hoping for the last week in July. Ten weeks.

We got a surprise this week that was initially pretty unpleasant but was probably for the best. To wit: we are going to be living in the kollel residence. Most of the families stay at this kollel for one year, and a few stay for two, before going back to America. When they leave, families sell the contents of their households--from dishes and armoires to extension cords and garbage cans--as a "package" to incoming families. The "package list" gets sent out sometime after Pesach, and it's a list of the family, contact information, and every single thing in their package: parve garlic press, toilet brush, sheets, power strips, 7 dairy spoons and 5 dairy forks, you get the idea. Usually they sell in the $500-700 ballpark, and this way families (usually newlyweds or maybe with one baby) get everything they need without having to pack it all or buy it.

Lately, more families have been making aliya. While this is of course a good thing, it's thrown a wrench in our packing plans--because only six families are selling packages and there are at least twice as many coming. The package list went up at 9 am and was gone by 9:30; I thought I had one (the wife said yes) and lost it (her husband had already sold it and she didn't know yet). Meaning that all the random household items we thought we would just get there cheaply, we can't.

So. What are the real issues here? Things like electrical items--an oven (the apartments do not come with one), power strips, etc., we will have to buy. Dishes we can bring with us, although it will cut into our luggage pretty steeply--they're heavy. It's the storage furniture. The drawers, armoires (aronim), bookshelves etc--the ones sold in packages are cheap but they work, and they're necessary because the apartments are only partially furnished and there aren't any. And storage space is absolutely key to organization, esp. with little kids.

I priced stuff online a bit and Ikea furniture is exactly twice the price, for most things, that it is here. We could buy it flat packed (and K has even offered to deliver it, thereby earning sainthood in one fell swoop in my opinion) and bring it. But then we'd have to ship stuff.

I have from the beginning been firm that we were not shipping anything. It didn't make sense. We're renting out our apartment furnished, and leaving the seforim here because we won't have room for them there. Once we're leaving our furniture and the books, and storing things in the storage space, that means that we are sending a lift at some later date when we a) have a more permanent place to live and b) either sell our apartment or rent it unfurnished to someone else. Lifts are expensive to send, and we have a pretty huge luggage allowance (at least 16 50 lb bags) so it didn't seem necessary.

This might be making it necessary. It's about $9/cubic feet, so around $1800 for 200 cubic feet, which is about what we'd do. Minimum size is 100 cubic feet, but once we are shipping dishes and flat-packed furniture, it starts seeming to make more sense to send a few more things--the high chair, the plastic drawers in the kids' room, the blocks (too heavy to check as luggage), my glider rocker--large and awkwardly shaped but how do you have a baby without a rocking chair?

Thoughts? Anyone have a shipper to recommend?

Ten weeks. And counting.

Don't let the flying killer sharks bite either

Iyyar: I want a story about kings. About two kings! Two good kings!

Me: Okay. Once upon a time there were two kings.

Iyyar: Two GOOD kings!

Me: Two GOOD kings. Who lived in a castle.

Iyyar: With scary animals!

Me: No. Not in the castle. In the moat. The moat is the thing that goes around the castle, and it's full of water so bad guys can't get in.

Iyyar: Bad guys wanna hurt them! And punch them! And kill them!

Me: Yeah, but they can't because of the moat.

Iyyar: Bad guys are really mean!

Me: Will you let me tell the story already! So the moat is full of whales.

Iyyar: And sharks!

Me: No. No sharks. Just whales.

Iyyar: Six whales! A hundred and forty-six whales!

Me: Six orcas. Six sperm whales. Six right whales. And six blue whales.

Iyyar: No humpback whales.

Me: No, they're too big. They wouldn't be happy in the moat.

Iyyar: Right. Just orcas and right whales and killer whales and sharks.

Me: No, no sharks. And orcas are the same thing as killer whales.

Iyyar: Oh.

Me: Okay, so anyway, there are these two kings...

Iyyar: Two GOOD kings!

Me: Right. Two GOOD kings. And their kingdom, it's very cold.

Iyyar: Why?

Me: It just is. It's very cold. It snows a lot.

Iyyar: Oh.

Me (sitting there knitting socks with some of Cyndy's new sock yarn for my very holy, but not saintly, because she is Jewish and we don't do saints, friend who is getting my marriage license apostilled for me): So the kings feel bad for the people and they want to do something nice for them. So they decide to knit them all socks to keep their feet warm.

Iyyar: Boys don't knit!

Me: Sure they do. Boys knit. Also men can knit. So these kings, they decided to knit socks for all the people in their kingdom. But it was a big kingdom, with a lot of people.

Iyyar: A hundred and forty-six!

Me: At least! Maybe more! Maybe a hundred and forty-six thousand!

Iyyar: Yeah! A hundred and forty six thousand!

Me: And how many feet did each of them have?

Iyyar: Two!

Me: So how many socks is that that the kings had to make?

Iyyar: A gotchion!

Me: Right! A really really lot. So they started knitting, but they wanted to make nice socks, so they started with a ball of Trekking and some size 0 double-pointed needles, like I have here [holding up ball of Trekking, nicely divided, sent to me by Cyndy, who can be saintly instead of holy because she isn't Jewish although wait a minute do you have to be Catholic to be a saint yes I think you do and she's probably not Catholic so far as I know so okay, never mind, she's holy too]

Iyyar: Why did they make socks?

Me: To keep everybody's feet warm. But after a couple of days of doing nothing but knitting all the time [pauses dreamily to think about this, then shakes self back to reality] they only had a couple of pairs of socks. Which wasn't enough. So you know what they did?

Iyyar: Got a machine!

Me: No! They didn't! They did something smarter. They taught all the kinderlach in the whole kingdom to knit.

Iyyar: How?

Me: Well first they taught all the morohs. Then they gave all the morohs needles and yarn for all the kinderlach. And then the kinderlach learned how to knit socks. [Pause to fantasize about Torani Waldorf school.] So then

Iyyar: Did the sharks eat them?

Me: No, we're not up to the sharks yet. Just wait. So then, everybody in the whole kingdom had nice warm socks, and also knitting needles. How many needles do you need to make socks [holding up Exhibit A]

Iyyar: Four!

Me: Right! And are they pointy on both ends or just one end?

Iyyar: Both ends!

Me: Right! So one day, do you know what happened? There was an attack! An attack of mean giant flying killer sharks! They swooped down out of the sky to attack the kingdom! So what do you think happened?

Iyyar: The killer whales ate them!

Me: No, because the killer whales were in the moat. They couldn't get out. Killer whales can't fly.

Iyyar. They got the army?

Me: No, they didn't have an army.

Iyyar: Why not?

Me: I don't know, they just didn't.

Iyyar: Just the two kings?

Me: Right, just the two kings. So do you know what the people did?

Iyyar, openmouthed: No.

Me: All the people, and all the kinderlach, in the whole kingdom, took their sharp pointy sticks, and they held one in each hand, up like this [demonstrating with needles not currently involved in sock production]. So you know what happened when the mean nasty flying killer sharks landed? They got stabbed! And they died! And so they couldn't invade the kingdom. And not only that, but all the kinderlach had FOUR sharp pointy sticks! So if the shark broke one, they'd have extras!

Iyyar: Three extra!

Me, impressed by mental math: Right! Three extra!

Iyyar: Sharp pointy sticks sticking in the killer sharks!

Me: Right. So they killed all the flying killer sharks, and they were all so happy they learned to knit. So then they went back to knitting all the time, except they had to get some new needles because the ones they used to kill the sharks with were all gross with shark blood.

Iyyar: And some of them got brokened.

Me: Right. And you can't knit with a broken needle. The stitches fall off. Good night.

Don't let the spiders bite

Lazy blog posting here: this from an email to Cecilia, with a few edits:

Lately, I have been making up stories to tell the kids at bedtime, since it's hard to read a book, show pictures in three directions, and nurse at the same time, esp. in the dark! The latest was about a bear who wanted to make aliya, but because he was a bear he couldn't get all the paperwork together, so they wouldn't let him. As you know they want a lot of stuff bears don't have, like apostilled birth certificates etc. The bear, however, was a hardcore Zionist, so, undeterred, he decided to stow away on the NBN flight. But being that he was a bear and couldn't read, he had some trouble once he'd sneaked out onto the tarmac. Result: he accidentally got on Qantas instead of El Al and wound up in Sydney. Where there are, as is common knowledge, 9-foot spiders. (Me: "And what's in Australia?" Barak, wide-eyed: "Jabungous spiders!") He was hungry at this point--long trip in cargo hold and all--and decided to try tasting one. He liked them, but you know, not much meat on even a 9-foot spider, so he started eating lots and lots of them. Next thing you know, he's eaten all the spiders in Australia, is hailed as a national hero, and is fixed up by the prime minister with a deluxe cave and a lifetime supply
of honey. The End.

Updates

Oh, I have a blog? Sorry. Almost forgot.

So, where we're holding:

The Jewish Agency has approved us. NBN has approved us. We are now waiting on our visas, which means that we are waiting on our marriage certificate's apostille; I had not realized that getting a marriage license apostilled in New York is a huge mammoth undertaking and that if not for a saintly local friend who is going to do the running around for us, one of us probably would have had to take an actual, physical trip to Manhattan. Seriously.

Five new duffel bags and five big plastic footlockers are stacked up in the guest room. I know it's too early to start packing, because it's not as though we won't be needing the clothes/books/dishes/toys between now and then. So I'm trying to content myself with cleaning and organizing and tossing; I've given away a bunch of householdy things and intend to disencumber myself of more. It helps, of course, that we are renting out this place furnished to relatives of friends who are coming from Israel; they will be happy to have us leave them random kids' books/toys/tools/garbage bags/ all the other stuff that you ordinarily have to deal with before moving day.

The stress level is in flux. Some days, like today, I'm fairly relaxed. Some days, like last Tuesday, I feel like I'm made of glass and getting bumped the wrong way would cause me to shatter into a pile of deadly shards on the floor. The constant, however, is an intense desire to knit. Not buy yarn. Not look at yarn. Not think about knitting. I just want to knit, for hours and hours, preferably while listening to NPR. Thursday night I sat down to an episode of This American Life and my WIP, an Aestlight for Asnat. And it really helped. What is it about knitting that does that?? No idea, but no complaints either. Well, unless it's the complaint about not having enough time, but the busy-ness is all my own doing so I can't really complain there either.

Other highlights of the week:

1. I took all of the kids on the bus to a thrift shop (half-price toy day) and Trader Joe's. They were phenomenally well behaved. I had Marika in the snugli, Avtalyon in the stroller, and a big kid on either side. And really, it was fine. No meltdowns. I told them we'd do it again, and meant it. Still not sure about taking them all to the zoo myself, though--that's a longer trip, and with two buses, too.

2. Picked up Barak at school on Thursday to take everyone to get passport photos for our Israeli visas. That had been something of a comedy of errors with multiple attempts, and I was determined on Thursday to get those pictures or... something. Fortunately, we got them; on the way, we saw that the fire station by his school had the bay door open and stopped in to "look at the truck." Because the firefighters at that station are incredibly nice, they also let Barak and Iyyar get into the truck and climb around. The smiles on their faces were amazing--I've rarely seen them so blissed out.

3. There will be no #3. Because Insomnia Girl just woke up.

Should

There are a lot of things I should be doing right now.

I should be writing a speech. I should actually be writing about a dozen speeches, all at the same time.

I should be holding the baby and trying to get her to sleep. It's past 11 and she's still wide awake. Insomnia Girl rides again.

I should be cleaning up the kitchen.

I should be dealing with the backlog of laundry.

I should be going to sleep earlier.

I should be eating better.

I should be cleaning up back here--the office is wrecked again (wasn't it just clean on Tuesday?) and it's hard for me to work in a disaster zone.

I should clean out the storage space. I can't really start packing until it's emptied out.

I shouldn't be blogging.

Except I want to be blogging, because I know I'll want a record of this time later--the last few months before The Big Move.

I'll want to remember Barak and Iyyar's 6th and 4th birthdays, and that I made brownies, and we had blue doughnuts at Iyyar's school with blue sprinkles (Yom Ha'Atzmaut, which they don't even mention at either of their schools). I'll want to remember that Barak didn't want to have a party, and that instead he asked to stay up as late as he wanted playing Playmobil--and didn't crash, finally, until 1:30 AM, when Abba finally drew the line.

I'll want to remember that Marika just last week, without warning, figured out that fingers were good for more than sucking on, and overnight started being able to grab, move, and manipulate all the toys in her saucer. And that this morning I suddenly realized that I had to raise the height setting on it. By two notches.

I'll want to remember putting the new blue footlockers I got for the move in the kitchen, and handing the kids stickers and Sharpies and telling them to go ahead and decorate their own. Amazingly, none of the permanent marker ink went anywere it wasn't supposed to.

I'll want to remember, probably, all the middle-of-the-night phone calls to Israel trying to get the kids' schools worked out, and the emails to the Israeli family who is taking this place as I try to get their kids worked out in schools here.

I'll want to remember it all. But I probably won't.

In my addled state

I forgot to gush about the food.

And mention that Shanna, with whom we stayed, is categorically the best cook, ever.

I'm not only saying this because I just got an indignant email.* It is actually true. Not only did she stock up with a 2L bottle of Diet Coke for every yom tov/Shabbos, she also made enough food to feed all of the fleeing Jews and probably most of Pharaoh's legions for good measure. And all of it was delicious. Especially the salad. Which was so good I ate it for dessert. With the pecans. That she caramelized herself. With balsamic vinegar and pixie dust. The brisket literally made Iyyar sing (well, okay, he sings over oatmeal too, but this made him sing more melodiously) and even Barak was happy because at every meal there was a huge plate of raw cucumbers/peppers/grape tomatoes, and when he emptied the grape tomatoes onto his own plate and polished them off, they were magically replenished. He was a pretty big fan of the brownies, too. As was Avtalyon. "Want it dis one! Want it TWO one! Want it gawquit!!!"

She made stuffing. She made quinoa salad with things like mangoes in there. She made chicken with some kind of melty onion sauce on top during CHOL HA'MOED. Not even for yom tov--during chol ha'moed, when the mere mortals among us are eating a lot of matzo and cheese and packaged spreads with cottonseed oil. She made stuffed cabbage AND apple kugel AND all kinds of sweet potato deliciousness and when Barak and Iyyar requested, and I quote, "Pesach chicken mishkababble" for lunch she MADE IT. She made pickled mushrooms and Moroccan carrot salad and... and... yeah. It was pretty impressive. Oh, and have I mentioned her three-year-old twins? Who helped? Because they are from another planet, populated entirely by spookily verbal tiny little people? Who are also very very good cooks?

Did I mention she served it all on actual linens, without plastic covers?

Me? I made latkes. Once. Which we ate with charoseth. Which I highly recommend. Even though your charoseth, like my charoseth, is not going to be as good as Shanna's charoseth. Nor will it be magic, like the lasagne she once made me (not for Pesach) which multiplied in my freezer such that every time I dug there was another aluminum loaf pan with another lasagne hiding back there.

Yes, it is true, I do write better speeches. But you can't eat those. Except, I guess, indirectly.

Now if I can only convince her to come here and be my personal chef.

*Actual email, cut and pasted here:

> That was unacceptable. You > didn't gush about the food. DON'T YOU > KNOW IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FOOD?!?!?

Probably incoherent post-Pesach roundup

We got back last night. I am really really tired. Some randomness for you:

Pesach was B"H lovely; the trips in both direction were basically fine, more or less as good as you can realistically hope for with four five-and-under children. A word of warning to those flying with families: United no longer preboards families with small kids. Seriously. They board you AFTER everyone who has lots of points or is paying extra or whatever, so that when we were getting on the plane with four kids and three carseats we were doing so onto a half-full plane, and attempting to install carseats with a steady flow of people attempting to get past us. We nearly delayed the plane because no matter what you do, there is no getting past the fact that you cannot install a carseat while holding a baby and everyone else has to be standing or sitting somewhere while you do it. We only took two carseats on the way back, which made it easier, but still. I don't think this policy is to anyone's benefit.

We went to the city where we lived before we lived here, which was kind of a time warp; it all looked the same and even some of the people hadn't changed at all, but the kids were all, of course, six years older. It's a little bit of a shock to see a kid who you last saw at his bar mitzvah, now six feet tall and definitely an adult. They, of course, had the same thing; Barak is now in kindergarten and we have three other kids besides, and they knew us as a shana rishona couple with a newborn. Time flies, &c.

We stayed with one family, ate lunches by a second, and got to spend time with a few more--almost every day we saw someone we hadn't seen in years. It was also an awesome way to be hosted in that every day we were at a different house with new kids and toys and our kids all played really nicely together. Barak and Iyyar are now Playmobil addicts; they got their first piece courtesy of Jasmin when Marika was born and it is now the ne plus ultra of toys. Playmobil was requested for both afikoman presents and birthdays, upcoming next week; on chol hamoed we went to a fancy/educational/healthy toy store and let them pick out their own. They picked a bunch of Roman soldiers to go with the Roman fort an incredibly generous friend of mine sent them, also as a new-baby gift; I secretly went back and bought Pharaoh and his chariot and a bunch of extra people with which to reenact yetzias mitzrayim. I'm saving that for Israel though. I also, on the same secret trip, bought a bunch of little toys for the long long flight. It was a really really nice store and a good thing we don't have one here, because so much of what they had were things that not only my kids would love, but I would like them to play with--lots of building toys and really creative, interesting, fun things. I spent more than I should have but will probably be glad I did along about Hour 8 of the flight.

The sedarim were great (well, there was the Total Sleep Meltdown of the second night, but we won't mention that in too much detail) and our kids had a blast playing with all my friends' kids. I met 10 kids of really good friends who I hadn't seen in far too long--the last time I saw them all they were either not yet pregnant, pregnant, or with a baby less than a week old. And they all have at least 2 kids now. It's kind of a shock, seeing someone with a bunch of little kids who I've never really known as a mother. Last time I saw any of them it was all about pregnancy or getting pregnant; now, it's "Don't hit your sister." A new life stage to be sure.

They, of course, only knew my kids through emails and my blog; no clear consensus on whether the kids are recognizable as their blogged selves, although one friend called Barak, Barak (that is not really his name, if you didn't know that) and got a funny look.

Iyyar is not breathing well. He sounds all congested again and is even a little bit drooly, which he hasn't been since his got his tonsils out. I was warned that they could grow back with an intracapsular tonsillectomy but the risk was low and the recovery was easier--it seemed a good idea at the time. ENT appointment in two weeks. His behavior has also been, um, pretty atrocious on and off. Mostly when he is tired, and he's not sleeping well. A lot of the misbehavior has seemed to be coming from a place of insecurity/embarrassment/needing reassurance; rather than react to that, I've been trying really, really hard to pour on the positive reinforcement for the good behavior. Trying.

On Sunday (can't forget this one) Marika waved for the first time. I waved at her and she flapped her arms back. Then I waved again and she only flapped one arm. And grinned. And I grinned. Four months, and a wonderful huge toothless smile that just makes my heart explode with love. And that soft warm snuggly feeling of holding her. She's twelve and a half pounds and pretty much all cuddle right now. She's just beginning to grab things and put them in her mouth, and on the flight back she was interested in toys, which she wasn't on the way there. It's wild how fast they grow--Asnat really noticed the difference in just a week and a half. Must... take... more... pictures...

Isn't is weird how fast Pesach goes by? The first night it seems to stretch out forever and then next thing you know you are packing it all up and going out for ice cream. Every year. So strange.

Isn't it weird how fast they grow? The first night you think you'll never sleep again (well, that part is true) and then the next thing you know you're putting them on a schoolbus. And they are their own little people.

Barak's quote of the week: "Imma, right Imma, the world is so interesting?" Yes. Yes it is.