Sorry I couldn't come up with a better name for this post. It's been that kind of a weekend.
Thursday's ER visit? From the perspective of today, it was nothing. Iyyar was limping. He was holding his foot funny. I got worried--it didn't seem to hurt him a bit but he was positively hobbling. I called the pediatrician and talked to the nurse, who said to bring him in in the morning. Ada, Babysitter of Amazingness and Inexplicable Baby Voodoo-Master, was consulted via email from her day (well, night, really) job at the local children's ER. Might be a toddler fracture, she said.
Hmm, I thought. If I wait till the morning, take him to the pediatrician, he gets sent for an x-ray, then if it needs a cast... it's going to be all day, and I'll have to either take the baby to the ER (no way) or leave him all day (no way--he still won't take a bottle from anyone other than Ada, cf. Inexplicable Baby Voodoo-Master, above.) What to do? Well, since Ada was actually working that night, the most reasonable course of action seemed to be just taking him to the ER for x-rays after Avtalyon had gone to sleep.
Which I did. Iyyar, for the most part, had a great time--he got to see Ada, he got to play with toys, he was plied with Bamba which he happily piled into the vomit basins conveniently provided, he pulled ear-probe covers out of their dispensers and discovered a DVD player with buttons within his (carefully supervised) reach. There were stickers. There were fish tanks, one with an actual shark. We got, thanks to Ada, total red-carpet treatment, and she hung out with us as much as she could sneak away from her desk. Iyyar was delighted to be reunited with his buddy; I had very little to do but trail along after them hauling the carseat.
And then there was the x-ray, which was less fun, but! Ada helped! and there were bubbles! Note to self--spring for the additional cab fare and use more distant children's ER if any further ER trips are necessary. Especially if it's Ada's night on.
Verdict: no break, it's probably muscular, keep an eye on it and bring him to your pediatrician if it's not better in five days. Ada was bidden farewell ("Right back? Rika right back?") and I tried not to feel too much like chopped liver, we took a cab home and Iyyar passed out in the back seat.
All in all, no big deal.
Fast-forward to Friday morning.
I was sitting working, the kids were with Asnat, and I heard the door open at around 10. It was MHH. What's up with that? He's supposed to be at the beit medrash, preparing his d'var Torah for the Shabbaton tonight. He came in--staggered, actually, and stood there, swaying. I took a look and realized that he was a) gray like dishwater, b) sweating profusely, and c) looking really, really ill. "I don't feel good," he said, unnecessarily. "Go eat something," I said. "Did you eat?"
"I did eat!" he said. "I had some heartburn this morning, so I took a Prevacid [he takes it for reflux] and then I had breakfast and went to kollel. And then I started really sweating. I thought I was going to throw up. Now I feel really nauseous. And really tired. I'm going to go lie down."
Nausea... heartburn... profuse sweating... dizziness... gray... fatigue...
DING DING DING DING
"I think we're going to the ER." I said.
"What?"
"Let's go to the hospital."
"That's what Marvin said."
"Who?"
"Marvin at the kollel. He wanted to take me to the ER. He said I was dia... diaphor..."
"Diaphoretic. Sweaty."
"Yeah."
"Well, let's go."
"Why?"
"Because you might be having a heart attack. I'm calling a cab." I called the cab, picked up the sleeping baby to give him a top-up nurse, and we left.
We got to the ER and boy there is nothing like coming in with that list of symptoms to have them swing you right past everyone else in the waiting room and get you hooked up to a bunch of machines really really fast. The EKG looked fine, his heart sounded fine, and he was looking distinctly better. "Do you still feel sick?" I asked him, an hour later, as he was hanging out on the gurney in a hospital gown covered with stickers and wires. "Um, no," he said. "Just really really tired."
The attending came in, and explained that while they were sure he had not had a big heart attack, he might still be having a little one, and they would like to admit him, do two more blood tests six hours apart, and then put him on a treadmill in the morning. Which would be Shabbos. MHH looked horrified. "You're staying," I told him. He called his local rav, asked a few shailos, and that was that.
Did I mention that my cell phone was not working? No? Well, it wasn't, so I was checking in with the babysitter with the ER phone. I called myself a cab, waited until MHH was back from getting a chest X-ray, called a few people to find someone who could run food, clothes, and Shabbos supplies back to the hospital, and then went back home. Starving baby, worked-up kids (especially Barak, who, remember, had seen me disappear to the hospital with Iyyar the night before), and... you have GOT to be kidding me... no electricity. Which meant no phones, because we have VOIP.
No food, no power, no phones, a whole bunch of people to call and plans to cancel and stuff to do in three hours before Shabbos. Asnat lent me her cell phone, which was a lifesaver; I called Ada to tell her that our Friday night plans were off, and she offered to come over anyway and help out, which was lifesaver #2; getting three kids ready for Shabbos when you have notice is one thing, but doing it all on your own with no notice, a husband in the hospital, and, oh yes, NO FOOD, PHONE, OR ELECTRICITY is something else. There was no possibility of just eating what was in the fridge--we'd just been in Israel for two months and there was nothing in the fridge or freezer. So I loaded everyone in the stroller, and off we went to the bakery (where I immediately caved to Barak's request for a $2 slice of cake--which he will remember forever), the grocery store (since when is roast beef $18/lb?! we'll have the bologna) and the produce store (where I bought orange juice and cookies, planning to take the bribery route through the evening). We went home, calling Grandma E on the way; I fed the kids dinner, and then Ada turned up and gave them baths and got them into pajamas while I took a shower. MHH's new rosh kollel (did I mention that the shabbaton we were supposed to go to was the first shabbaton of his brand-new job?) called and then came over with food; I put the baby down, and was about to light when Jenny from work called and, as if inspired by a host of psychic angels, offered to come over the next day to check in on us and on MHH in the hospital. I gratefully accepted, lit, let the kids eat their cake, Ada and I put them to bed, we sat in the kitchen schmoozing and looking at baby pictures for a while, and then she left and I went to bed. By myself.
Let me state for the record that I cannot imagine being a single parent. No--let me restate that. I have imagined it, and the very idea fills me with unspeakable horror. I know that I could not handle it, practically or emotionally. I don't know how anyone does. I couldn't sleep; the baby couldn't sleep; I ended up taking him into bed with me for company and nursing him most of the night. The kids woke up out of sorts and asking for Abba; they were acting up within minutes, and I yelled at them by 9, instantly regretting it. We went outside to play; Jenny came, and went off to check in on MHH. At this point my stomach was in the kind of tight hard knot it has not been in since... can't remember when actually. My legs felt like water. To say that I was in a state of increased anxiety would be, you know, an inadequate descriptor of the situation.
We came inside and had lunch; I was about to put Iyyar down for a nap when I heard a familiar knock on the back door. Jenny came in. "He's fiiiiiiine," she said, reassuringly. "They're discharging him. "
"Really? He's fine?"
"He's so totally fine. I think he's milking it, actually. He's being pretty pathetic. Guys!"
??
The rest of the day was better, from my point of view, although the non-husband-related anxiety was pretty high again later when I visited a good friend whose baby was clearly in need of a return trip to the hospital from which she'd just been discharged. We got home at around 6, the boys had their Shabbos yogurts, Avtalyon had some rice cereal (or maybe it was cement--hard to tell, they look the same), and everyone went to bed. MHH came home, looking totally fine; he was kicking himself for not just catching a ride home with Jenny at lunchtime. What did they think had happened? No idea, really; sleep deprivation, dehydration, reflux, vagus nerve something, who knew. He wasn't supposed to stop taking his reflux medicine, and was supposed to check in with his GP.
He went over to the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet to get his reflux medicine and I was about to leave the kitchen when I heard a strangled sound. "What's this?!"
"What?"
"What's this? This isn't my reflux medicine."
"No, that's mine."
"What is it?"
"Those are the class-A controlled-substance narcotics the neurologist gave me when I had that thing with the nerve in my face."
Silence.
"Ohhhhhhhhh. Oh no."
"Um. Is that what you took yesterday?"
"But it says [our last name]! I thought it was mine!"
"That's the last name of everyone in this house. You took one?"
"I... I think I... I took one, and then I ate breakfast, and then I went to the kollel, and that's when I got sick."
"About half an hour later, then?"
"I guess." Pause. "Could it have really made me that sick?"
I googled the drug in question (I'm fast-forwarding a little here--I'm tired of typing) and read off the list. "Common side effects include dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness, vomiting, drowsiness... less common side effects include allergic reaction, depressed respiration, irregular heartbeat, anxiety..."
So...
B"H, he's fine. He will be reading prescription labels more carefully in future. We will be keeping our respective medicines in different locations in future. And all of us will be trying to get some more sleep.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Jig.
We're back.
Where to begin?
With the trip? The trip was fine. The kids did great, and nobody threw up. Getting out the door was crazy, what with the 4 am motzai Shabbos departure, and neither MHH or I slept at all that night. But we did it, and even successfully got our VAT back at the airport, which is not for the faint of heart. Most of our luggage made it--just the strollers and Barak's booster seat were left in London, which turned out not to be a problem at all because a) it meant we could all fit in one van and b) British Airways gave us a new carseat! "We have to! Otherwise how would you get home from the airport?" More reasons to love BA.
Then we got home. The less said about that the better. The tenants, we immediately noticed, had not cleaned. The had not cleaned the stove, or the sink, or the fridge, and where are all those fruit flies coming from? Sheets dirty in washing machine... are there ANY clean sheets? Pretzels in couch, toys, all over house, and let's not think about Pesach. Okay, it could be worse... wait... are those my fleishig glasses in the milchig cupboard? Where are the sink tubs that I use in my treif sinks? They're in the guest room?! What have they been washing dishes in all summer? Is that a fleishig spatula in the parve drawer? And what's this pile of flatware in my fleishig dish rack... milchig, milchig, fleishig, parve, parve, milchig...
[sound of uberimma's head exploding]
The father of the family is the principal of an orthodox school. Nuff said. We're not sending our kids there...
We are about 70% unpacked, and the kids are about 50% over their jet lag. One duffel bag left to unpack, and several baskets' worth of clean laundry piled on my bed--it's hard to put away laundry when both rooms where clothes are kept contain sleeping children at the only time of day in which I am at liberty to put laundry away.
MHH started his new job a couple of days ago, and B"H so far so good. I met the other kollel wives and felt a little bit fish-out-of-water-y, but I'm sure it will be fine.
Back to work now. Next up: our exciting late-night trip to the local children's emergency room. Don't worry, everyone's fine, and Iyyar has lots of new stickers and play-doh now...
Where to begin?
With the trip? The trip was fine. The kids did great, and nobody threw up. Getting out the door was crazy, what with the 4 am motzai Shabbos departure, and neither MHH or I slept at all that night. But we did it, and even successfully got our VAT back at the airport, which is not for the faint of heart. Most of our luggage made it--just the strollers and Barak's booster seat were left in London, which turned out not to be a problem at all because a) it meant we could all fit in one van and b) British Airways gave us a new carseat! "We have to! Otherwise how would you get home from the airport?" More reasons to love BA.
Then we got home. The less said about that the better. The tenants, we immediately noticed, had not cleaned. The had not cleaned the stove, or the sink, or the fridge, and where are all those fruit flies coming from? Sheets dirty in washing machine... are there ANY clean sheets? Pretzels in couch, toys, all over house, and let's not think about Pesach. Okay, it could be worse... wait... are those my fleishig glasses in the milchig cupboard? Where are the sink tubs that I use in my treif sinks? They're in the guest room?! What have they been washing dishes in all summer? Is that a fleishig spatula in the parve drawer? And what's this pile of flatware in my fleishig dish rack... milchig, milchig, fleishig, parve, parve, milchig...
[sound of uberimma's head exploding]
The father of the family is the principal of an orthodox school. Nuff said. We're not sending our kids there...
We are about 70% unpacked, and the kids are about 50% over their jet lag. One duffel bag left to unpack, and several baskets' worth of clean laundry piled on my bed--it's hard to put away laundry when both rooms where clothes are kept contain sleeping children at the only time of day in which I am at liberty to put laundry away.
MHH started his new job a couple of days ago, and B"H so far so good. I met the other kollel wives and felt a little bit fish-out-of-water-y, but I'm sure it will be fine.
Back to work now. Next up: our exciting late-night trip to the local children's emergency room. Don't worry, everyone's fine, and Iyyar has lots of new stickers and play-doh now...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Collected
I keep thinking during the day of various things I want to blog about, and then when I sit down at the computer... do I really need to finish this sentence? I don't, do I?
Usually when this happens I sit down and write a list post. Today, I think I'll take more of a stream-of-consciousness approach. Bear with me, please.
I just got back from a skirt sale someone was holding at a neighbor's apartment. I went for the skirts but stayed for the shmoozing--it was mostly Anglos, a couple of new olim, and one who just got here a few weeks ago. She told me that she came on her pilot trip in January and saw nice rentals in this neighborhood for about $650. By the time she came in June, there was nothing--not even yucky little apartments--for under a thousand. They did not have the money for a nice place and did not want to live somewhere gross, so ended up renting something a half-hour walk away from the religious neighborhood. Not the way to an easy klita.
The religious neighborhood is, in fairness, spreading out and up the hill; the mayor does not want to zone any of the new neighborhoods being built as religious, feeling that the city should be integrated, but of course the religious families want to live together (in walking distance to the religious schools, happy minyans, and so on). Of course, as the desirable neighborhood spreads, so do the rents. I am hoping that in two years, our current timetable, the following three things will happen:
1. The Israeli real estate market will tank as it has already done in the states, making things more affordable;
2. The American real estate market will recover, such that it will be possible to sell our house without taking a massive loss (the woman I talked to tonight took a $70k loss on the sale of her house--doesn't bear thinking about);
3. The dollar will recover, at least to the level of, say, 4 NIS to the dollar.
Hey, a girl can dream, right? And while we're at it, how about good jobs for me and the mister?
Anyway...
The good news (did I write this already?) is that Asnat is staying with us for, it appears, another year; she can only stay until 12:30 so I will have to work with that. The bad news is that I still, as of this writing, have no way to get Barak home from nursery school in the afternoon. I have a ride in the morning, but that's it. So for now, I have to pick Iyyar up at playgroup 15 minutes early and walk the mile and a bit to get Barak. It's okay for right now, but once it gets cold it won't be.
Avtalyon is still not-quite-crawling. He gets up on all fours, pushes back with his feet, and propels himself forward a few inches while collapsing on his stomach; by doing this a few times in rapid succession, he gets around quite nicely, although not fast enough yet to be really dangerous. One thing he just started today was pushing his tush up and to the side, in one of the early stages of getting into a sitting position unassisted--I guess I'd better work with him on sitting, because for now he topples right over. He is so happy lying on his stomach, doing the swim and watching everything around him, that I don't spend nearly as much time with him as I probably should. Barak, at this age, demanded constant attention--he was too big to want to lie on his back, couldn't roll over or sit, hated being on his stomach, and basically either was in my arms or crying pretty much all the time. Good thing he was my first, hm?
Uh-oh. Avtalyon's awake and kvetching in his crib. He's already had his late-night snack, so I'm hoping he'll go back to sleep on his own. For the last couple of nights he's been waking up a few times in the night and then declaring morning at 5:15 am. It's getting a little wearing. Today I put Iyyar in his crib for a time-out--I don't remember now why--when Avtalyon was already napping. I thought I'd lie down on the couch for the allotted two minutes of Iyyar's confinement and guess what? Yup. I fell asleep. I don't know how long I was asleep for but suffice it to say that Iyyar was royally displeased when I finally came to rescue him.
Speaking of Iyyar, his phrase of the month is "cool water!" which is actually intended to be "cold water!" You have to be drinking water all the time here, and we usually keep a few emptied soda bottles full of water in the fridge. Although I don't think Iyyar really cares about the temperature in his sippy cup, he has heard us talk about cold water enough that he demands it himself. He also likes it when I give him ice and let him put it in there himself. "Iyyar do it! Iyyar do it by a self!"
He is also very fond of bicycles. The entry way of this building is a veritable parking lot of bicycles and strollers, and Iyyar wants them ALL. "Bike ull! Hell mut! Bike ull!" And he tries to climb on. Strangely, he has not at all been put off by the spill he took last week when we were in Beit El--three concrete steps down on a tricycle, landing on his face. One of his front teeth is now at a different angle than it was--think it'll fall out? I'm hoping not, baby tooth or no.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm tired and cranky. It's hot, I'm not getting enough sleep, the cost of living here is discouragingly high, we're leaving in a few days and I have a really intimidating amount on my plate both at work and at home. I'm hoping the people who rented our place left it clean, but there will still be a fair amount of apartment reassembly, not least of which will be putting away all the stuff I tossed in the back bedroom before we left. And returning the borrowed baby saucer to my SIL. And packing. And getting food for the trip. And cleaning the vomited-on car seat. And repacking the Shas, Shulchan Aruch, and assorted seforim into boxes sized in accordance with BA's luggage allotments. And so on.
Ah, well, it's all good. And tomorrow I'm taking Barak on a quick trip (without Avtalyon, so it'd better be quick) to the Tachana Merkazit for one last tichel-buying expedition. Hey, they're cheaper than seforim--and a lot lighter to pack.
Usually when this happens I sit down and write a list post. Today, I think I'll take more of a stream-of-consciousness approach. Bear with me, please.
I just got back from a skirt sale someone was holding at a neighbor's apartment. I went for the skirts but stayed for the shmoozing--it was mostly Anglos, a couple of new olim, and one who just got here a few weeks ago. She told me that she came on her pilot trip in January and saw nice rentals in this neighborhood for about $650. By the time she came in June, there was nothing--not even yucky little apartments--for under a thousand. They did not have the money for a nice place and did not want to live somewhere gross, so ended up renting something a half-hour walk away from the religious neighborhood. Not the way to an easy klita.
The religious neighborhood is, in fairness, spreading out and up the hill; the mayor does not want to zone any of the new neighborhoods being built as religious, feeling that the city should be integrated, but of course the religious families want to live together (in walking distance to the religious schools, happy minyans, and so on). Of course, as the desirable neighborhood spreads, so do the rents. I am hoping that in two years, our current timetable, the following three things will happen:
1. The Israeli real estate market will tank as it has already done in the states, making things more affordable;
2. The American real estate market will recover, such that it will be possible to sell our house without taking a massive loss (the woman I talked to tonight took a $70k loss on the sale of her house--doesn't bear thinking about);
3. The dollar will recover, at least to the level of, say, 4 NIS to the dollar.
Hey, a girl can dream, right? And while we're at it, how about good jobs for me and the mister?
Anyway...
The good news (did I write this already?) is that Asnat is staying with us for, it appears, another year; she can only stay until 12:30 so I will have to work with that. The bad news is that I still, as of this writing, have no way to get Barak home from nursery school in the afternoon. I have a ride in the morning, but that's it. So for now, I have to pick Iyyar up at playgroup 15 minutes early and walk the mile and a bit to get Barak. It's okay for right now, but once it gets cold it won't be.
Avtalyon is still not-quite-crawling. He gets up on all fours, pushes back with his feet, and propels himself forward a few inches while collapsing on his stomach; by doing this a few times in rapid succession, he gets around quite nicely, although not fast enough yet to be really dangerous. One thing he just started today was pushing his tush up and to the side, in one of the early stages of getting into a sitting position unassisted--I guess I'd better work with him on sitting, because for now he topples right over. He is so happy lying on his stomach, doing the swim and watching everything around him, that I don't spend nearly as much time with him as I probably should. Barak, at this age, demanded constant attention--he was too big to want to lie on his back, couldn't roll over or sit, hated being on his stomach, and basically either was in my arms or crying pretty much all the time. Good thing he was my first, hm?
Uh-oh. Avtalyon's awake and kvetching in his crib. He's already had his late-night snack, so I'm hoping he'll go back to sleep on his own. For the last couple of nights he's been waking up a few times in the night and then declaring morning at 5:15 am. It's getting a little wearing. Today I put Iyyar in his crib for a time-out--I don't remember now why--when Avtalyon was already napping. I thought I'd lie down on the couch for the allotted two minutes of Iyyar's confinement and guess what? Yup. I fell asleep. I don't know how long I was asleep for but suffice it to say that Iyyar was royally displeased when I finally came to rescue him.
Speaking of Iyyar, his phrase of the month is "cool water!" which is actually intended to be "cold water!" You have to be drinking water all the time here, and we usually keep a few emptied soda bottles full of water in the fridge. Although I don't think Iyyar really cares about the temperature in his sippy cup, he has heard us talk about cold water enough that he demands it himself. He also likes it when I give him ice and let him put it in there himself. "Iyyar do it! Iyyar do it by a self!"
He is also very fond of bicycles. The entry way of this building is a veritable parking lot of bicycles and strollers, and Iyyar wants them ALL. "Bike ull! Hell mut! Bike ull!" And he tries to climb on. Strangely, he has not at all been put off by the spill he took last week when we were in Beit El--three concrete steps down on a tricycle, landing on his face. One of his front teeth is now at a different angle than it was--think it'll fall out? I'm hoping not, baby tooth or no.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm tired and cranky. It's hot, I'm not getting enough sleep, the cost of living here is discouragingly high, we're leaving in a few days and I have a really intimidating amount on my plate both at work and at home. I'm hoping the people who rented our place left it clean, but there will still be a fair amount of apartment reassembly, not least of which will be putting away all the stuff I tossed in the back bedroom before we left. And returning the borrowed baby saucer to my SIL. And packing. And getting food for the trip. And cleaning the vomited-on car seat. And repacking the Shas, Shulchan Aruch, and assorted seforim into boxes sized in accordance with BA's luggage allotments. And so on.
Ah, well, it's all good. And tomorrow I'm taking Barak on a quick trip (without Avtalyon, so it'd better be quick) to the Tachana Merkazit for one last tichel-buying expedition. Hey, they're cheaper than seforim--and a lot lighter to pack.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Six days
Not the war. How much time we have left here. Six days.
This morning I took Barak up to the kanyon, otherwise known as the mall; we took the bus, did a big grocery shop at Mr. Zol (literally, Mr. Cheap, but it isn't at all--Sheffa Shuk was a lot less expensive), and I am pleased to report that I successfully managed to order grocery delivery in Hebrew. I wasn't totally sure it would arrive, but it did. Barak left his hat in the store, but we went back and got it, and then took the bus back home.
We spent, just for the record, a little over NIS 500 on groceries today. It was what I would consider a normal week's grocery shop, not counting fruit, vegetables, milk, or bread, which I usually buy daily. That's around $150. There were some expensive items in there--a pack of diapers, a five-pack of wipes--but those are normal components of our grocery tab. I did not buy anything along the lines of paper goods, cleaning supplies, shampoo, or anything like that. I also did not buy any meat, although I did buy some extra things to take back to the States, which probably balanced that out. This means that I can reasonably expect to spend around $800 a month on food here--about a quarter of what I could expect my monthly take-home income to be. And our kids aren't even eating that much yet. And we have all boys.
How do people do it here? The food costs more. The housing costs the same. Transportation, so far as buses, is slightly cheaper and much better, and maybe clothes are cheaper, but the quality is lower so they don't last as long. I know that part of how expensive everything feels is the weak dollar, but even with the dollar being weak American salaries are still way higher than Israeli salaries. How in the world does anyone buy an apartment here, let alone a house or a car? I feel like I've asked everyone in the world this and the most common answer is a shrug and a gaze off into the middle distance. I've had a few people tell me that they rely on nissim, which is one approach I guess but it's not one I'm entirely comfortable with myself.
Yes, tuition is much lower here. That's huge. But we're not really paying that yet, so we're not feeling it as much.
I'd better go help Abba get the kids out of the bathtub. More later.
This morning I took Barak up to the kanyon, otherwise known as the mall; we took the bus, did a big grocery shop at Mr. Zol (literally, Mr. Cheap, but it isn't at all--Sheffa Shuk was a lot less expensive), and I am pleased to report that I successfully managed to order grocery delivery in Hebrew. I wasn't totally sure it would arrive, but it did. Barak left his hat in the store, but we went back and got it, and then took the bus back home.
We spent, just for the record, a little over NIS 500 on groceries today. It was what I would consider a normal week's grocery shop, not counting fruit, vegetables, milk, or bread, which I usually buy daily. That's around $150. There were some expensive items in there--a pack of diapers, a five-pack of wipes--but those are normal components of our grocery tab. I did not buy anything along the lines of paper goods, cleaning supplies, shampoo, or anything like that. I also did not buy any meat, although I did buy some extra things to take back to the States, which probably balanced that out. This means that I can reasonably expect to spend around $800 a month on food here--about a quarter of what I could expect my monthly take-home income to be. And our kids aren't even eating that much yet. And we have all boys.
How do people do it here? The food costs more. The housing costs the same. Transportation, so far as buses, is slightly cheaper and much better, and maybe clothes are cheaper, but the quality is lower so they don't last as long. I know that part of how expensive everything feels is the weak dollar, but even with the dollar being weak American salaries are still way higher than Israeli salaries. How in the world does anyone buy an apartment here, let alone a house or a car? I feel like I've asked everyone in the world this and the most common answer is a shrug and a gaze off into the middle distance. I've had a few people tell me that they rely on nissim, which is one approach I guess but it's not one I'm entirely comfortable with myself.
Yes, tuition is much lower here. That's huge. But we're not really paying that yet, so we're not feeling it as much.
I'd better go help Abba get the kids out of the bathtub. More later.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Not for those with fear of heights
That's Iyyar, on our mirpeset. To the left of him, outside of the picture, is Jerusalem; to the right is a whole lotta desert. After I checked out this apartment for the first time and went back to Ramat Beit Shemesh, I tried to explain to my husband what it looked like here.
"It's really... biblical." I said. "Well, I mean, of course it's biblical. It's Israel. But it's biblical in a kind of apocalyptic way. It's just really, really, really intense."
Which it is.
Biblical. And intense.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Moving on
We're clearing out of this apartment today and heading to a new place in Maale Adumim, where we'll be for a little under two weeks. It's kind of incredible that we've been here for over seven weeks already--didn't I just unpack these bags?
A lot has happened since I posted last. Barak has spent the last couple of weeks at Camp Kinderlach--yes, really--which he loves so much that a mere "Barak, do you want to go to camp tomorrow?" in a mildly threatening tone is enough to get him to go to bed. Iyyar has started talking like you wouldn't believe--he's gone from "Ah wanna dat!" to "I need da oder one blankie also!" and, waking from a bad dream, "I no gike it DODDIE!"--two days after we came back from visiting a friend in Efrat with some of the sweetest dogs ever. And yesterday a new phase in brotherly love was reached, with both Barak and Iyyar wrestling on the couch and onto the floor--while giggling.
Avtalyon is crawling like the minute hand of a clock--if you glance at him he doesn't look like he's going anywhere, but if you glance back a couple of minutes later, whoa, how did he get all the way over there, and is that Barak's sneaker in his mouth?!
More later--speaking of the baby, he just woke up.
A lot has happened since I posted last. Barak has spent the last couple of weeks at Camp Kinderlach--yes, really--which he loves so much that a mere "Barak, do you want to go to camp tomorrow?" in a mildly threatening tone is enough to get him to go to bed. Iyyar has started talking like you wouldn't believe--he's gone from "Ah wanna dat!" to "I need da oder one blankie also!" and, waking from a bad dream, "I no gike it DODDIE!"--two days after we came back from visiting a friend in Efrat with some of the sweetest dogs ever. And yesterday a new phase in brotherly love was reached, with both Barak and Iyyar wrestling on the couch and onto the floor--while giggling.
Avtalyon is crawling like the minute hand of a clock--if you glance at him he doesn't look like he's going anywhere, but if you glance back a couple of minutes later, whoa, how did he get all the way over there, and is that Barak's sneaker in his mouth?!
More later--speaking of the baby, he just woke up.
Friday, August 01, 2008
More firsts
Iyyar's first really complete sentence, as of about five minutes ago.
Background (as always): as some of you may know I have, er, a certain fondness for Diet Coke. Nothing, you know, addiction-like or anything, certainly. Just a healthy--um--I mean--a fondness. Right.
Anyway... where were we. Oh yes. So, while Barak sees me drink Diet Coke and has long since accepted that he never, ever gets any, Iyyar has not given up hope. But he knows that the direct ask will get him nowhere. So he tries subterfuge. He doesn't want Diet Coke--no no. He wants water. That water, that I have. The kind that just happens to be cold, black and fizzy. And in a Diet Coke bottle.
I just came back from dropping Barak off at gan and was sitting at the kitchen table drinking what my mother used to refer to as the Elixir of Life when Iyyar noticed. "Amma? Water? Please?"
"Nice try, Iyyar. No. That's not for you."
Brightly and winningly: "That water! That water please!"
"No. Sorry. Not a chance."
Lifting froggy cup, eyes fixed purposely on prize, leaning forward in high chair, "I want that water in here!"
Background (as always): as some of you may know I have, er, a certain fondness for Diet Coke. Nothing, you know, addiction-like or anything, certainly. Just a healthy--um--I mean--a fondness. Right.
Anyway... where were we. Oh yes. So, while Barak sees me drink Diet Coke and has long since accepted that he never, ever gets any, Iyyar has not given up hope. But he knows that the direct ask will get him nowhere. So he tries subterfuge. He doesn't want Diet Coke--no no. He wants water. That water, that I have. The kind that just happens to be cold, black and fizzy. And in a Diet Coke bottle.
I just came back from dropping Barak off at gan and was sitting at the kitchen table drinking what my mother used to refer to as the Elixir of Life when Iyyar noticed. "Amma? Water? Please?"
"Nice try, Iyyar. No. That's not for you."
Brightly and winningly: "That water! That water please!"
"No. Sorry. Not a chance."
Lifting froggy cup, eyes fixed purposely on prize, leaning forward in high chair, "I want that water in here!"
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Look out, world...
Six months and a few days. For the record, Barak sat unassisted for the first time at around 8.5 months; both Barak and Iyyar started crawling at 10.5. Avtalyon isn't quite crawling, in that he hasn't worked out coordinating the movement of arms and legs at the same time. What he does, instead, is get up on all fours in sort of a downward dog yoga pose, push off with his feet, and propel himself a few inches forward on his belly; then he does the Baby Swim a little and starts the whole routine over. He can move quite a ways like this, with surprising speed.
Barak is loving camp, much more than he liked gan, probably because there is much less sitting still and doing of projects involved. And now that Barak is out of the house in the mornings again, I am having more of that one-on-one time with Iyyar that I was enjoying so much. Today, for the first time, he said "please"--not "bee" but actually "please." And he gave me bunches of hugs, when I sat on the floor, pretending to cry, and asked for them. The favorite word of the day, though, is "gawquit." As in, Iyyar spies jar of Nutella on counter and wants some: "Imma? Gawquit?" And then, winningly and irresistibly, "Please?"
Monday, July 28, 2008
Kein yirbu
Well, I did it--I made my first really awful Hebrew flub today.
First off, a little background. (Of course.) As I may have mentioned, this is a shmitta year, which means that Jews may not sow, plant, or otherwise work the land. This also means that Jews may not eat any produce of the land, which, as we understand it, refers to land in Israel that is owned by Jews.
So what does one do, practically speaking, when one wishes to, say, purchase a potato? One can do a few things. One can buy a potato from outside Israel. One can buy a potato from last year's crop. One can buy a potato that was grown on an elevated platform, or hydroponically, off the land. (Are there such things as hydroponic potatoes? I know they do tomatoes...) One can buy fruit that grew on its own, but that comes with its own set of complicated issues. Or one can buy produce grown by a non-Jew--in Hebrew, a nachri.
In Ramat Beit Shemesh, the produce store has two signs under every bin of produce: what kind of produce it is, and what its shmitta status is. So you might see, "Carrots--outside the land," or "Oranges--sixth year." Got that? Good.
Today, I wanted to buy grapes. I saw the sign that said "grapes," but no corresponding sign informing the prospective purchaser of their shmitta status. So I asked the store's owner. What I meant to ask, of course, was, "Were these grapes grown by non-Jews?" I probably should have kept it simple and just asked, "Zeh nachri?" which he would have understood as, "Is this nachri?" But no. I had to get ambitious. I went up to the owner and asked, politely, "Ha'anavim nachriim?" "Are these grapes non-Jews?"
As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized--but if I hadn't, the owner's reaction (highly amused) would have tipped me right off.
First off, a little background. (Of course.) As I may have mentioned, this is a shmitta year, which means that Jews may not sow, plant, or otherwise work the land. This also means that Jews may not eat any produce of the land, which, as we understand it, refers to land in Israel that is owned by Jews.
So what does one do, practically speaking, when one wishes to, say, purchase a potato? One can do a few things. One can buy a potato from outside Israel. One can buy a potato from last year's crop. One can buy a potato that was grown on an elevated platform, or hydroponically, off the land. (Are there such things as hydroponic potatoes? I know they do tomatoes...) One can buy fruit that grew on its own, but that comes with its own set of complicated issues. Or one can buy produce grown by a non-Jew--in Hebrew, a nachri.
In Ramat Beit Shemesh, the produce store has two signs under every bin of produce: what kind of produce it is, and what its shmitta status is. So you might see, "Carrots--outside the land," or "Oranges--sixth year." Got that? Good.
Today, I wanted to buy grapes. I saw the sign that said "grapes," but no corresponding sign informing the prospective purchaser of their shmitta status. So I asked the store's owner. What I meant to ask, of course, was, "Were these grapes grown by non-Jews?" I probably should have kept it simple and just asked, "Zeh nachri?" which he would have understood as, "Is this nachri?" But no. I had to get ambitious. I went up to the owner and asked, politely, "Ha'anavim nachriim?" "Are these grapes non-Jews?"
As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized--but if I hadn't, the owner's reaction (highly amused) would have tipped me right off.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
melllltiiiing...
No, not from the heat.
To expand a little on what's in the sidebar:
I grew up in New York, speaking English. My father was born in Hungary, and although I heard a lot of Hungarian growing up, I never really spoke it as a kid. I learned French starting in seventh grade, in public school, and by the time I started college spoke it well enough that I tested into a Francophone translation course. At the same time, I started speaking more Hungarian, and when I was 21 I went to Hungary for a year, where all the latent Hungarian kind of came out. By the end of the year, I was pretty close to fluent, although I still had trouble understanding specialized spoken Hungarian (for example, political news on TV and that kind of thing). I also took German that year. When I went back to America, age 22, I started taking an intensive Russian course, which I continued for two years; then I spent a summer in Russia, and did another two years of Russian after that, although much less intensive. I also started taking Hebrew, at the local Reform temple. After the summer in Russia, I was in England for a year (studying Russian) and also took a semester of Mandarin Chinese. When I got back to America after that year, I took an intensive Hebrew course for a semester; three years after that, I took a much less intense Hebrew course for close to a year, dropping out at Pesach right before Barak was born. My Hebrew a year ago was not great, but thanks to Asnat it's come a long way since last summer.
Oh, and I've also taken American Sign Language, the full set of ten courses offered by the New York Society for the Deaf. I've done some interpreting, but I don't have a license.
The functional result of all of this is close-to-fluent Hungarian, latently very good but currently quite rusty ASL, Russian and French, no Chinese to speak of, survival German, and, B"H, rapidly improving Hebrew.
When I am in Vienna, I can get around fine with my German. When I'm in Hungary, my Hungarian is totally fine. If I am around French or Russian people, my French or Russian picks up pretty quickly, and right now my Hebrew is as good as it's ever been. What I can't do, unfortunately, is switch from one to the other. And that is a problem, because we are in Israel. Specifically, we are in Ramat Beit Shemesh. So this morning, I spoke English to my husband and kids, Hebrew to Barak's madricha, Hungarian to my granny on the phone, and then had quite a long conversation in French (she thought I was Belgian!!) with the French lady at the pharmacy. Then I walked outside, and someone asked me, in Hebrew, where a particular beit knesset was.
I told her. In French.
If someone comes up to me today and tries to speak Russian with me, I think my brain will melt and drip out my ears.
To expand a little on what's in the sidebar:
I grew up in New York, speaking English. My father was born in Hungary, and although I heard a lot of Hungarian growing up, I never really spoke it as a kid. I learned French starting in seventh grade, in public school, and by the time I started college spoke it well enough that I tested into a Francophone translation course. At the same time, I started speaking more Hungarian, and when I was 21 I went to Hungary for a year, where all the latent Hungarian kind of came out. By the end of the year, I was pretty close to fluent, although I still had trouble understanding specialized spoken Hungarian (for example, political news on TV and that kind of thing). I also took German that year. When I went back to America, age 22, I started taking an intensive Russian course, which I continued for two years; then I spent a summer in Russia, and did another two years of Russian after that, although much less intensive. I also started taking Hebrew, at the local Reform temple. After the summer in Russia, I was in England for a year (studying Russian) and also took a semester of Mandarin Chinese. When I got back to America after that year, I took an intensive Hebrew course for a semester; three years after that, I took a much less intense Hebrew course for close to a year, dropping out at Pesach right before Barak was born. My Hebrew a year ago was not great, but thanks to Asnat it's come a long way since last summer.
Oh, and I've also taken American Sign Language, the full set of ten courses offered by the New York Society for the Deaf. I've done some interpreting, but I don't have a license.
The functional result of all of this is close-to-fluent Hungarian, latently very good but currently quite rusty ASL, Russian and French, no Chinese to speak of, survival German, and, B"H, rapidly improving Hebrew.
When I am in Vienna, I can get around fine with my German. When I'm in Hungary, my Hungarian is totally fine. If I am around French or Russian people, my French or Russian picks up pretty quickly, and right now my Hebrew is as good as it's ever been. What I can't do, unfortunately, is switch from one to the other. And that is a problem, because we are in Israel. Specifically, we are in Ramat Beit Shemesh. So this morning, I spoke English to my husband and kids, Hebrew to Barak's madricha, Hungarian to my granny on the phone, and then had quite a long conversation in French (she thought I was Belgian!!) with the French lady at the pharmacy. Then I walked outside, and someone asked me, in Hebrew, where a particular beit knesset was.
I told her. In French.
If someone comes up to me today and tries to speak Russian with me, I think my brain will melt and drip out my ears.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Changeling
Within a week and a half, Avtalyon has gone from Screamiest Baby Ever to... how do I put this? The Kind of Baby I Thought Only Belonged to Other People.
He's amazingly good-natured, although that's kind of been there for a while. But last week, he started to sleep, well, more or less normally. As in, he takes three naps a day, two of them quite long (like 2 hours, sometimes more). I nurse him, plunk him in his crib, and--get this--walk away. He might fuss for a few minutes, mildly, but then goes to sleep. He's been waking up two or three times a night, but going right back to sleep, pretty much.
And babies around here have historically taken what one might term a relaxed approach to that whole developmental calendar thing. Barak and Iyyar both rolled both ways at around 8-9 months, crawled at 10.5 and walked at 14. Avtalyon, the day we got here (which was the day before he turned 5 months) started happily rolling both ways. If you put Barak down on his stomach even at 8 or 9 months, he'd just cry; Avtalyon, who turned 6 months on Friday, now gets up on his hands and knees and is showing every sign of wanting--desperately--to start crawling. You never really know when they'll decide to take off but I would not be surprised at this point if he did it, well, pretty soon.
He's amazingly good-natured, although that's kind of been there for a while. But last week, he started to sleep, well, more or less normally. As in, he takes three naps a day, two of them quite long (like 2 hours, sometimes more). I nurse him, plunk him in his crib, and--get this--walk away. He might fuss for a few minutes, mildly, but then goes to sleep. He's been waking up two or three times a night, but going right back to sleep, pretty much.
And babies around here have historically taken what one might term a relaxed approach to that whole developmental calendar thing. Barak and Iyyar both rolled both ways at around 8-9 months, crawled at 10.5 and walked at 14. Avtalyon, the day we got here (which was the day before he turned 5 months) started happily rolling both ways. If you put Barak down on his stomach even at 8 or 9 months, he'd just cry; Avtalyon, who turned 6 months on Friday, now gets up on his hands and knees and is showing every sign of wanting--desperately--to start crawling. You never really know when they'll decide to take off but I would not be surprised at this point if he did it, well, pretty soon.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Up, up, and...
Who among you has not considered that immortal question: if you had to choose between the power of flight and the power of invisibility, which would you choose?
Apparently, Avtalyon's already made up his mind.
Apparently, Avtalyon's already made up his mind.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Happiness is...
making two potato kugels for Shabbos, so you can eat half of one hot from the oven on Friday afternoon. With help from husband and children, of course.Thursday, July 17, 2008
The boy with the big red hat
You can't really see it in the picture, but the makolet in the background has a massive display of Bamba carefully calculated to drive passing toddlers mad with desire. "Bamba! Amma! Bamba! Amma! Bamba! PEEESE!"
Ulpan
I started ulpan last week. It rocks. It's two mornings a week, for an hour and a half, in the teacher's home; there are currently four students, all religious women, and the focus of the class is the practical Hebrew we all need to know. How to decode your arnona bill; what's in that note home from the teacher; reading supermarket shelves. Yesterday she brought an mp3 of paying her gas bill by phone and we listened to it with a vocabulary list. Awesome.
I have been repeatedly confirming my belief that there is no such thing as a useless word. Some are more useful than others, obviously, but you'll need 'em all eventually. To wit: my current favorite reading matter is The First Thousand Words in Hebrew. On the back cover, there's part of the page that covers "the garden," with some of the words I am less likely to need. Why didn't they put "the kitchen," or "the school"? No, it was "the garden," with words like "rake," "bird's nest," "tire," and "ladder." This is the page I find myself seeing again and again when the book is sitting next to me while I'm doing something else. "Ladder?!" I remember grousing to myself. "When am I going to next need to say that?"
Second day here, that's when--when I rolled my double stroller into the makolet, picked up a bag of pita, turned around (in a 9-point turn at least) and found that in those thirty seconds, a man with, you guessed it, a ladder had appeared behind me, climbed the ladder, disappeared through the canopy, and, basing a guess on my view of his knees, started repairing the top of the awning. I was stuck.
"Excuse me?" I called up through the canvas.
Nothing.
"Excuse me, sir? I cannot go."
Nothing.
"Sir! Your ladder! Your ladder is in my way and I cannot go!"
Instantly, his head popped back into sight.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" And he came down the ladder, folded it, and moved it so I could go.
And yesterday, I found out the word for "pound key," as in, "enter the number of your gas bill and press the pound key." Guess what it is? "Sulamit"--literally, "little ladder." Natch.
I've been trying hard to read and decode as much Hebrew as I can. Today, on the way up our street coming back from the evening park run, I saw a sign affixed to a gate, next to a huge tree loaded with brilliant magenta flowers that spilled over the fence and down to the sidewalk. I stopped and studied it for a minute and realized what it said (Deb, you will like this):
I have been repeatedly confirming my belief that there is no such thing as a useless word. Some are more useful than others, obviously, but you'll need 'em all eventually. To wit: my current favorite reading matter is The First Thousand Words in Hebrew. On the back cover, there's part of the page that covers "the garden," with some of the words I am less likely to need. Why didn't they put "the kitchen," or "the school"? No, it was "the garden," with words like "rake," "bird's nest," "tire," and "ladder." This is the page I find myself seeing again and again when the book is sitting next to me while I'm doing something else. "Ladder?!" I remember grousing to myself. "When am I going to next need to say that?"
Second day here, that's when--when I rolled my double stroller into the makolet, picked up a bag of pita, turned around (in a 9-point turn at least) and found that in those thirty seconds, a man with, you guessed it, a ladder had appeared behind me, climbed the ladder, disappeared through the canopy, and, basing a guess on my view of his knees, started repairing the top of the awning. I was stuck.
"Excuse me?" I called up through the canvas.
Nothing.
"Excuse me, sir? I cannot go."
Nothing.
"Sir! Your ladder! Your ladder is in my way and I cannot go!"
Instantly, his head popped back into sight.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" And he came down the ladder, folded it, and moved it so I could go.
And yesterday, I found out the word for "pound key," as in, "enter the number of your gas bill and press the pound key." Guess what it is? "Sulamit"--literally, "little ladder." Natch.
I've been trying hard to read and decode as much Hebrew as I can. Today, on the way up our street coming back from the evening park run, I saw a sign affixed to a gate, next to a huge tree loaded with brilliant magenta flowers that spilled over the fence and down to the sidewalk. I stopped and studied it for a minute and realized what it said (Deb, you will like this):
During the year of shmitta all flowers are ownerless.
Help yourself.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Dumbfounded
If you have been reading this blog for more than, oh, a week, you will know that Sleep and the Lack of It figures right at the forefront of our daily concerns. Barak, since birth, has been The Worst Sleeper Ever. Iyyar, when he was born, was better, but that didn't last long; by eight weeks or so he was as sleep-resistant as Barak.
But Avtalyon, right from the start, was different. He slept. He slept happily in his carseat, woke up to eat, and went right back to sleep, for the first month or possibly even two of his life. He did wake up to nurse at night, many times, but mostly you could nurse him and put him back down. Yes, he cried, because all babies cry, but I just never got anywhere close to the levels of sleep deprivation and exhaustion I hit with both Barak and Iyyar. I remember when Barak was four or five weeks old waking my husband up at 4 am in tears, literally sobbing, and saying to him, "You have to take the baby. You have to. If I don't sleep, I'm going to die." And I meant it.
With Iyyar, things didn't get really seriously bad until I went back to work. That was when the nightly screamfests began; from around 4 pm until at least midnight, he would scream and scream and scream and if I did finally get him to go to sleep, five minutes after I put him down he'd be up again.
Now, I do not live on a remote Internet-less island off the coast of Pitcairn, so I have indeed heard of that whole crying-it-out thing. I have read and heard a very great deal. And even though I will admit that I am both morally and emotionally opposed, desperation is a wonderful motivator and I tried it with both Iyyar and Barak. With Barak, I closed his door, went into my room, closed the door, turned on a fan right next to my bed, and went to sleep. I don't remember how old he was when I first did this--at least one, I think. Certainly he was standing, because when I went back into his room at 7 am and saw him, covered with snot to the knees, swaying perilously with exhaustion and misery as he gripped the side of his crib, face unrecognizeably swollen, and failing to scream any more because he had lost his voice--he was old enough to stand.
I've felt pretty bad about my mothing, but just the memory of that picture, and the realization of what that one night's sleep had cost, makes my stomach clench. Barak literally cried all night long. He cried through the dark and right through the dawn and about an hour past it. It's possible he slept somewhat, but I doubt it, because when I picked him up and cuddled him in the rocking chair he went right to sleep and I think slept almost the whole morning. He'd been up screaming for me long enough and hard enough to lose his voice, and it stayed lost for a couple of days.
It was a pretty strong disincentive to try that again.
Iyyar's screamy phase lasted from around 8 weeks or whenever it was to six months, when I tried a combination of swaddling him with a small stuffed dog inside and playing a noise machine that sounded like our dishwasher. (I'd tried everything else already. Can you tell?) Like magic, he suddenly started sleeping, and by about 10 months you could just stick him in his crib, wide awake, and he'd go to sleep on his own. No problem. But prior to that, I had tried crying it out, despite what had happened earlier (cf. "desperation," above) and it was a disaster; he'd cry for hours and hours (with me listening the whole time, crying myself, of course) and once he fell asleep he'd wake right back up again crying even harder ten minutes later. Awful.
Anyway, so when Avtalyon launched his own screamy phase when we got here, I didn't think it would last. It just wasn't his personality. So I thought, maybe it's jet lag. Maybe it's gas. Maybe he's teething. But whatever it was, it wasn't stopping, and I was spending most of my days holding a hysterical screaming baby who was kicking me and flailing at me and grabbing every part of me he could find, hard, and no matter how short you keep those little fingernails, that hurts. Up till then, he would do that, but it was like holding the Whomping Willow--you had to find a way to push in the secret knot that turns off the tree (in this case, pushing the pacifier into the mouth for long enough for him to start sucking it) and all was well. No more; the very notion of the pacifier was a horrible insult and enough to start the screaming going.
Yesterday, when I got frustrated enough to hit a wall with my hand without stopping to consider construction of said wall (steel-reinforced concrete) I decided it was time to try that whole crying-it-out thing. I nursed the baby. I changed him. I cuddled him. And when he was calm and very very tired, I put him in his crib and walked away.
He cried for an hour and twenty minutes, and then he fell asleep, and slept for three hours. Then he woke up to nurse, and I fell asleep nursing him, so we had our usual nighttime routine, but that was my fault really.
I did it again at naptime today. He cried for forty minutes, and slept for two and a half hours.
And I did it tonight. He cried for fifteen minutes. He's still asleep. Not only that, he didn't even object to being put in his crib, and played in there for a while before he even started to cry.
I'm pretty stunned. And while I'm not ready to give up nursing him at night, if this keeps up I'm about to become a much better-rested Imma. Stay tuned.
But Avtalyon, right from the start, was different. He slept. He slept happily in his carseat, woke up to eat, and went right back to sleep, for the first month or possibly even two of his life. He did wake up to nurse at night, many times, but mostly you could nurse him and put him back down. Yes, he cried, because all babies cry, but I just never got anywhere close to the levels of sleep deprivation and exhaustion I hit with both Barak and Iyyar. I remember when Barak was four or five weeks old waking my husband up at 4 am in tears, literally sobbing, and saying to him, "You have to take the baby. You have to. If I don't sleep, I'm going to die." And I meant it.
With Iyyar, things didn't get really seriously bad until I went back to work. That was when the nightly screamfests began; from around 4 pm until at least midnight, he would scream and scream and scream and if I did finally get him to go to sleep, five minutes after I put him down he'd be up again.
Now, I do not live on a remote Internet-less island off the coast of Pitcairn, so I have indeed heard of that whole crying-it-out thing. I have read and heard a very great deal. And even though I will admit that I am both morally and emotionally opposed, desperation is a wonderful motivator and I tried it with both Iyyar and Barak. With Barak, I closed his door, went into my room, closed the door, turned on a fan right next to my bed, and went to sleep. I don't remember how old he was when I first did this--at least one, I think. Certainly he was standing, because when I went back into his room at 7 am and saw him, covered with snot to the knees, swaying perilously with exhaustion and misery as he gripped the side of his crib, face unrecognizeably swollen, and failing to scream any more because he had lost his voice--he was old enough to stand.
I've felt pretty bad about my mothing, but just the memory of that picture, and the realization of what that one night's sleep had cost, makes my stomach clench. Barak literally cried all night long. He cried through the dark and right through the dawn and about an hour past it. It's possible he slept somewhat, but I doubt it, because when I picked him up and cuddled him in the rocking chair he went right to sleep and I think slept almost the whole morning. He'd been up screaming for me long enough and hard enough to lose his voice, and it stayed lost for a couple of days.
It was a pretty strong disincentive to try that again.
Iyyar's screamy phase lasted from around 8 weeks or whenever it was to six months, when I tried a combination of swaddling him with a small stuffed dog inside and playing a noise machine that sounded like our dishwasher. (I'd tried everything else already. Can you tell?) Like magic, he suddenly started sleeping, and by about 10 months you could just stick him in his crib, wide awake, and he'd go to sleep on his own. No problem. But prior to that, I had tried crying it out, despite what had happened earlier (cf. "desperation," above) and it was a disaster; he'd cry for hours and hours (with me listening the whole time, crying myself, of course) and once he fell asleep he'd wake right back up again crying even harder ten minutes later. Awful.
Anyway, so when Avtalyon launched his own screamy phase when we got here, I didn't think it would last. It just wasn't his personality. So I thought, maybe it's jet lag. Maybe it's gas. Maybe he's teething. But whatever it was, it wasn't stopping, and I was spending most of my days holding a hysterical screaming baby who was kicking me and flailing at me and grabbing every part of me he could find, hard, and no matter how short you keep those little fingernails, that hurts. Up till then, he would do that, but it was like holding the Whomping Willow--you had to find a way to push in the secret knot that turns off the tree (in this case, pushing the pacifier into the mouth for long enough for him to start sucking it) and all was well. No more; the very notion of the pacifier was a horrible insult and enough to start the screaming going.
Yesterday, when I got frustrated enough to hit a wall with my hand without stopping to consider construction of said wall (steel-reinforced concrete) I decided it was time to try that whole crying-it-out thing. I nursed the baby. I changed him. I cuddled him. And when he was calm and very very tired, I put him in his crib and walked away.
He cried for an hour and twenty minutes, and then he fell asleep, and slept for three hours. Then he woke up to nurse, and I fell asleep nursing him, so we had our usual nighttime routine, but that was my fault really.
I did it again at naptime today. He cried for forty minutes, and slept for two and a half hours.
And I did it tonight. He cried for fifteen minutes. He's still asleep. Not only that, he didn't even object to being put in his crib, and played in there for a while before he even started to cry.
I'm pretty stunned. And while I'm not ready to give up nursing him at night, if this keeps up I'm about to become a much better-rested Imma. Stay tuned.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Updates
Sorry not to have been posting much. It's been busy, but in a good way. Some random items of possible interest:
1. Avtalyon has gone from My Easy Baby to The Screamiest Baby Ever. At first I thought it was jet lag, and now I think it is teething. Either way, this working at night thing has become... challenging. Barak and Iyyar have been going to bed much later than usual, because--well, because of a few things. One is that their bedroom has a skylight, and it is full of blazing sunshine until about 7:45 PM. I have realized that trying to put them to bed before then is totally hopeless. So now they go to bed a full hour later than they are used to, and often aren't asleep until close to 9, which is waaaay too late for children aged 2 and 4. Barak does okay with it, but Iyyar does not, and ends up taking three- or even four-hour naps to compensate--which puts him in good shape to jump up and down in his crib screaming till 9 pm. Vicious cycle, etc. In the meantime, Avtalyon is usually screaming his head off for hours on end, and I'm trying to calm him down while fielding the children and that whole speechwriting thing... well. It's been happening at some very odd hours indeed.
The official plan is that MHH is supposed to be the Parent On Call after 7 pm, at which time I'm supposed to be at work, but the trouble with that is his stubborn refusal to lactate and consequent inability to soothe the savage baby. We talked about that this evening and have some plans in mind for how we will deal with it in future. Stay tuned for how that one will work out.
2. The tichel-shopping expedition of last Thursday continued Friday morning. In belated answer to your question, israelmom, we're in Ramat Beit Shemesh (wanna come visit?) We were going to visit friends in Modiin over Shabbos, and I had to pick up MHH's Shabbos pants from the dry cleaner Friday morning, so I stopped by Helen's Hats in the shopping center to check out the tichel offerings there. And fortune smiled upon me. Allow a bit of backtracking, if you will; on Thursday, on the way in to Jerusalem, a South African woman was sitting in front of me on the bus with one of the nicest tichels I've ever seen. It was one of the long rectangular ones, and it was in shades of pink, brown, and sage green, which managed to be pretty and feminine and totally not pastel all at the same time. I will admit to a bit of covetousness, and to tapping her on the shoulder to ask where she got it. Alas, she didn't know where it had come from; it was a gift. And I didn't see it in any of the places I looked in Jerusalem. But on Friday, when I poked through the pile of 2-for-NIS-30 tichlach, there were two of them! I got one, and another one that was a nice loose black-and-white weave. Why oh why did it never occur to me to weave myself a tichel when I owned a loom?! It would have been the perfect thing. Of course, it would have required warping at 20 epi...
3. The jury is officially in. I want to live here. In fact, I never want to leave. Neither does Barak. MHH says that I have been actively brainwashing him into this conclusion but I think a lot of it is his own observation. He doesn't get monitored nearly as closely here as he does in the States. There are playgrounds every fifty meters, or so it seems. There is a playground literally downstairs from our building--with a falafel store, equipped with a slushy machine, right next to it. This is the Land of Bamba. There are children EVERYWHERE. They stay out late playing. He also gets to stay out late playing. It never snows. We have an elevator, and he gets to press the buttons. He has cousins here, and when we visit them he gets to play in the dirt out in the shchuna without any adults watching.
And did I mention that this is the Land of Bamba?
Anyway, Barak has informed me a few times that he likes Israel, he does not like the city where we usually live, and he just wants to "live in Israel the whole day." He has no plans to leave. I told him that we did have to go back to our usual place of residence, and he said no, he didn't want to. I explained that I hoped that we would come back here to live, and I hoped it would be soon, but in the meantime we did have to go back because we have an apartment there, and we don't have one here; all of his books and toys and all of my books and yarn and all of Abba's books and, um, books are there. So we at least had to go back and get them. He was okay with that--but I don't think my idea of a return timetable (probably two years, at the end of MHH's contract) and his (as soon as we can get everything boxed up) match up very well.
4. As I mentioned there is a park downstairs from us, known as "the falafel park," as well as a park right across the street, known as "the park with the ball thing," and another park on the way to gan, in front of the makolet, known (funnily enough) as "the makolet park." Barak likes the makolet park, probably because after 4 PM it is packed with children, and it also has some old-time playground equipment like a metal child-powered merry-go-round, a seesaw, and a slide. Iyyar also likes this playground, and whenever we pass it, usually on the way back from dropping Barak off at gan, he campaigns for a play stop. "Pay! Pay!" Unfortunately, even with the shtarkest sun hats ever and a lot of sunblock, midmorning visits to totally unshaded playgrounds with very young children are not a good plan.
5. We don't have AC here and it is actually fine. It would be very very very un-fine where we live in the States. But here, we open all the windows at night and turn on all the fans; in the morning we close the shades, and it stays reasonably cool all day.
6. I am now taking a conversational Hebrew ulpan, two mornings a week. It's great. Five women, all religious, and one teacher, also religious. I'm learning a lot. And B"H my Hebrew is really improving. Last Wednesday I managed to successfully return an item (a defective water bottle) to the store and get my money back--a feat which, if you are familiar with Israeli-style customer service, is not exactly easy. Before I went I practiced my intended arguments on my teacher, and she pronounced them all acceptable but warned that returning things in Israel was not easy even if you did speak the language. So I'm quite looking forward to reporting on my success in the morning. :)
7. The vegetables here are amazing. Everyone seems to be complaining about how you can't get as much, or the prices are much higher, during shmitta--but for me, the prices are about the same, the variety is all I need (except for the total lack of bananas that aren't otzer bais din), and oh, my gosh, the flavor is out of this world. Real tomatoes! Real onions! Real grapes! Tomato sandwiches on warm fresh pita!
8. And on the subject of pita, I have discovered that the bread here grows mold faster than any bread anywhere. Leave it on the counter for a day and there are white spots; leave it for four and you will have half-inch mounds of black festering mold that is hot enough to leave condensation inside the plastic. Yecch. All pita now goes directly into the freezer--it thaws fast enough.
9. Iyyar has always liked cottage cheese. Here, it is noticeably tastier (as is everything else) and it has become something of an obsession with him. Whenever he sees it go into the fridge, he reacts as Barak once did to the sight of Yobabies--with frenzied, passionate desire. "Hotchee! Hotchee! AWAAAANNNNAAAAA!"
10. And is it the climate or the food? I don't know, but whatever the cause, Iyyar's eczema is gone. Vanished. Disappeared completely. When we left, three weeks ago, it was getting bad enough to worry me: despite twice-daily applications of vaseline, he had it on at least half his face, with spots coming out on his arms and a few on his legs too, and it was steadily getting worse. All gone now. We are still putting vaseline on his face at night but I think it would be okay to stop--for the first time in almost a year, the chapped cheeks are totally gone.
I think that's the roundup--more as I think of it, bli neder.
1. Avtalyon has gone from My Easy Baby to The Screamiest Baby Ever. At first I thought it was jet lag, and now I think it is teething. Either way, this working at night thing has become... challenging. Barak and Iyyar have been going to bed much later than usual, because--well, because of a few things. One is that their bedroom has a skylight, and it is full of blazing sunshine until about 7:45 PM. I have realized that trying to put them to bed before then is totally hopeless. So now they go to bed a full hour later than they are used to, and often aren't asleep until close to 9, which is waaaay too late for children aged 2 and 4. Barak does okay with it, but Iyyar does not, and ends up taking three- or even four-hour naps to compensate--which puts him in good shape to jump up and down in his crib screaming till 9 pm. Vicious cycle, etc. In the meantime, Avtalyon is usually screaming his head off for hours on end, and I'm trying to calm him down while fielding the children and that whole speechwriting thing... well. It's been happening at some very odd hours indeed.
The official plan is that MHH is supposed to be the Parent On Call after 7 pm, at which time I'm supposed to be at work, but the trouble with that is his stubborn refusal to lactate and consequent inability to soothe the savage baby. We talked about that this evening and have some plans in mind for how we will deal with it in future. Stay tuned for how that one will work out.
2. The tichel-shopping expedition of last Thursday continued Friday morning. In belated answer to your question, israelmom, we're in Ramat Beit Shemesh (wanna come visit?) We were going to visit friends in Modiin over Shabbos, and I had to pick up MHH's Shabbos pants from the dry cleaner Friday morning, so I stopped by Helen's Hats in the shopping center to check out the tichel offerings there. And fortune smiled upon me. Allow a bit of backtracking, if you will; on Thursday, on the way in to Jerusalem, a South African woman was sitting in front of me on the bus with one of the nicest tichels I've ever seen. It was one of the long rectangular ones, and it was in shades of pink, brown, and sage green, which managed to be pretty and feminine and totally not pastel all at the same time. I will admit to a bit of covetousness, and to tapping her on the shoulder to ask where she got it. Alas, she didn't know where it had come from; it was a gift. And I didn't see it in any of the places I looked in Jerusalem. But on Friday, when I poked through the pile of 2-for-NIS-30 tichlach, there were two of them! I got one, and another one that was a nice loose black-and-white weave. Why oh why did it never occur to me to weave myself a tichel when I owned a loom?! It would have been the perfect thing. Of course, it would have required warping at 20 epi...
3. The jury is officially in. I want to live here. In fact, I never want to leave. Neither does Barak. MHH says that I have been actively brainwashing him into this conclusion but I think a lot of it is his own observation. He doesn't get monitored nearly as closely here as he does in the States. There are playgrounds every fifty meters, or so it seems. There is a playground literally downstairs from our building--with a falafel store, equipped with a slushy machine, right next to it. This is the Land of Bamba. There are children EVERYWHERE. They stay out late playing. He also gets to stay out late playing. It never snows. We have an elevator, and he gets to press the buttons. He has cousins here, and when we visit them he gets to play in the dirt out in the shchuna without any adults watching.
And did I mention that this is the Land of Bamba?
Anyway, Barak has informed me a few times that he likes Israel, he does not like the city where we usually live, and he just wants to "live in Israel the whole day." He has no plans to leave. I told him that we did have to go back to our usual place of residence, and he said no, he didn't want to. I explained that I hoped that we would come back here to live, and I hoped it would be soon, but in the meantime we did have to go back because we have an apartment there, and we don't have one here; all of his books and toys and all of my books and yarn and all of Abba's books and, um, books are there. So we at least had to go back and get them. He was okay with that--but I don't think my idea of a return timetable (probably two years, at the end of MHH's contract) and his (as soon as we can get everything boxed up) match up very well.
4. As I mentioned there is a park downstairs from us, known as "the falafel park," as well as a park right across the street, known as "the park with the ball thing," and another park on the way to gan, in front of the makolet, known (funnily enough) as "the makolet park." Barak likes the makolet park, probably because after 4 PM it is packed with children, and it also has some old-time playground equipment like a metal child-powered merry-go-round, a seesaw, and a slide. Iyyar also likes this playground, and whenever we pass it, usually on the way back from dropping Barak off at gan, he campaigns for a play stop. "Pay! Pay!" Unfortunately, even with the shtarkest sun hats ever and a lot of sunblock, midmorning visits to totally unshaded playgrounds with very young children are not a good plan.
5. We don't have AC here and it is actually fine. It would be very very very un-fine where we live in the States. But here, we open all the windows at night and turn on all the fans; in the morning we close the shades, and it stays reasonably cool all day.
6. I am now taking a conversational Hebrew ulpan, two mornings a week. It's great. Five women, all religious, and one teacher, also religious. I'm learning a lot. And B"H my Hebrew is really improving. Last Wednesday I managed to successfully return an item (a defective water bottle) to the store and get my money back--a feat which, if you are familiar with Israeli-style customer service, is not exactly easy. Before I went I practiced my intended arguments on my teacher, and she pronounced them all acceptable but warned that returning things in Israel was not easy even if you did speak the language. So I'm quite looking forward to reporting on my success in the morning. :)
7. The vegetables here are amazing. Everyone seems to be complaining about how you can't get as much, or the prices are much higher, during shmitta--but for me, the prices are about the same, the variety is all I need (except for the total lack of bananas that aren't otzer bais din), and oh, my gosh, the flavor is out of this world. Real tomatoes! Real onions! Real grapes! Tomato sandwiches on warm fresh pita!
8. And on the subject of pita, I have discovered that the bread here grows mold faster than any bread anywhere. Leave it on the counter for a day and there are white spots; leave it for four and you will have half-inch mounds of black festering mold that is hot enough to leave condensation inside the plastic. Yecch. All pita now goes directly into the freezer--it thaws fast enough.
9. Iyyar has always liked cottage cheese. Here, it is noticeably tastier (as is everything else) and it has become something of an obsession with him. Whenever he sees it go into the fridge, he reacts as Barak once did to the sight of Yobabies--with frenzied, passionate desire. "Hotchee! Hotchee! AWAAAANNNNAAAAA!"
10. And is it the climate or the food? I don't know, but whatever the cause, Iyyar's eczema is gone. Vanished. Disappeared completely. When we left, three weeks ago, it was getting bad enough to worry me: despite twice-daily applications of vaseline, he had it on at least half his face, with spots coming out on his arms and a few on his legs too, and it was steadily getting worse. All gone now. We are still putting vaseline on his face at night but I think it would be okay to stop--for the first time in almost a year, the chapped cheeks are totally gone.
I think that's the roundup--more as I think of it, bli neder.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
... and first pigua.
Last Thursday, when I went to pick Barak up from gan, I was silently handed a slip of paper.
TRAGIC NEWS
We are deeply saddened to inform you that
Hodaya's aunt, her mother's sister, was murdered
in yesterday's terror attack. Hodaya's mother is
sitting shiva in Yerushalayim.
The mothers and fathers--gan pickup is much more equitable here than it is in the States, it seems--were coming and going with their kids, and I was standing there with Barak's tik in one hand and this slip of paper in the other. I hadn't even heard about the terror attack.
"What terror attack?" I asked the ganenet. She seemed shocked I hadn't heard.
"It was near the bus station. A tractor tipped over a bus, and ran over some cars." I explained that we were only here for the summer and didn't have a TV or radio--and I hadn't checked the news online since the day before. She told me, gently, that I should really get a radio. The children filtered out, one by one, and we were still there. I suddenly realized we were the last ones, and took Barak's hand and we left.
"It was near the bus station. A tractor tipped over a bus, and ran over some cars." I explained that we were only here for the summer and didn't have a TV or radio--and I hadn't checked the news online since the day before. She told me, gently, that I should really get a radio. The children filtered out, one by one, and we were still there. I suddenly realized we were the last ones, and took Barak's hand and we left.
We walked home, Barak and I, and I bought him a slushy at the falafel store on the way, which he found a pleasant surprise--I don't usually do that. When we got back I checked the news and found out the details. And Hodaya's aunt was my age, with a baby my baby's age, and I could not help but look at my baby and think about her baby, and what it would be like for a six-month-old baby to suddenly go from having Imma all the time to having no Imma, ever again. No more nursing, no more cuddles, no more Imma. I picked up my baby, and held him tight, and tried not to think too much.
It is the most incredible disconnect, somehow, being here. Where we live here is incomparably safer than where we live most of the time. Where we live in America, I would never allow any of my kids to be out of my sight when outside, even for a moment. There have been muggings and attempted abductions and even a fatal shooting within a couple of blocks of our house, in the last few years. Here, I have no problem with letting Barak run down the steps to the entryway on one side of our building while I walk around the other side with the stroller. To go from our house to his gan, we cross one street--everything else is paths. I don't make him hold the stroller unless we are crossing the street, and I let him run ahead, which I also don't do in the States.
It's so much safer--and at the same time, you can be coming back from your well-baby checkup with your six-month-old and someone might murder you. Not kill you by accident. Murder you. Because they hate you and want to kill you, and they want to kill everyone like you. That's what jihad is.
Of course, having once worked at 50 Broadway across the street from a large smoking hole, I know very well that it is not really any more dangerous here than anywhere else. You can wake up one morning and go to your accounting job and be murdered sitting at your desk. Nowhere is safe, so better to be where we are supposed to be, better to be where we can defend ourselves. Because where we are is the first line of defense, and it is our line of defense.
So last Thursday, I met a friend for lunch and tichel-shopping at the central bus station, on Jaffa Street, right near the pigua the week before. I took my baby with me. And we took the bus.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Talking
Iyyar is starting to talk more, and much more expressively, and now that I am home with him while Barak is at school I get the benefit of it much more than I did before. Barak tends to kind of dominate the conversation when he is here, not surprisingly, and until now I was hardly ever with Iyyar without Barak there. So now I am hearing all kinds of gems.
For example: in general, I buy generic diapers, but I get Pampers for Iyyar and Avtalyon to use overnight because they leak less. Pampers have Elmo on them, so they are very popular with Iyyar, who is right there in the Elmo target age bracket. I brought a bunch of Elmo diapers for the trip, and now Iyyar is, sadly, out of them (and into generic Titulim, which seem fine) while Avtalyon still has a stack left. A couple of days ago, I was putting Avtalyon into a clean diaper with Elmo on it, while Iyyar watched--rather resentfully, as it turned out. "No want it!" he told me emphatically, lips pushed out in a pout, shaking his head firmly for emphasis. "No want it Elmo baby tooshie!" If I can't get Elmo, NOBODY gets Elmo.
Speaking of Elmo, he is very much a fan. He refers to all Muppets generically as Elmo, but does also identify Ernie (uh-nee), Big Bird (bih buh), Grover, (go wuh) and Cookie Monster (kumana!) Diction may not be his strong point, but expressiveness is. He does the best faces, and also gives the best hugs; if you ask him for a hug, he'll usually say no, but if you then act all hurt and pretend to cry, he'll rush up to you, fling his arms around you, and carol "hug!" Better than that it getteth not.
He's got a new name for Barak, who is now "Ayyar!" (funnily enough). When we drop Barak off at school, Iyyar is often perturbed: "Where Ayyar go?" And sometimes, when waking up from a nap or in his high chair, Iyyar will call roll.
"Abba? Where Abba go?"
"Abba's davening."
"Ayyar?"
"Barak's at school."
"Naya?"
"Binyamin's home."
"Ah koh?"
"Yaakov's at home too."
"Baby?"
"Baby's shluffing."
"Baby oofing?"
"Right, he's shluffing."
Then, seriously, "Oh. Kay."
When he sees a park, which happens roughly every sixty seconds around here, he demands to avail himself of it ("pay! pay!") and when he sees the falafel store, he knows just what he wants "Ah foo! Ah foo!" And he's developed a habit, clearly derived from his big brother, of calling me in a very peremptory fashion. "Ah MA!" he bellows, righteously, sometimes whacking me insistently on the closest body part (and getting told off for potching). Pay attention to me NOW!
And, of course, he lives to go outside ("annai!") and eat, well, just about anything, but especially cheese ("shee"), milk, ("muk!"), bananas ("na na") and anything that I am eating ("DAT!")
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