Naming names

The baby had his bris yesterday. Maybe because this is the third time for me, I freaked out less than I have in the past and even changed the first post-bris diaper myself (not by choice, but I did not leave him in a dirty diaper till my husband came home, which I suppose is some kind of level.)

Having had a bris, the baby also is now the proud possessor of a name. Naming babies in this house is always something of an... well, "ordeal" isn't quite the word I'm looking for. "Process"? That sounds better. Naming babies is a process.

I start thinking names the minute I see that second pink line. First and middle, of course; why have one name when you can have two? And there are many considerations: is there anyone to be named for, is the name already taken somewhere else in the family, how do the two names sound together, do they have a good meaning, are non-Jews going to be able to pronounce the names?

For my husband, things are different. A name should be thought of in the moments immediately before the baby is actually named, or failing that, possibly the night before. Maximal ruach ha'kodesh should be involved--forget this looking in baby name books business, a name should just hit you. But the name should be not only replete with meaning, it should be interesting, and ideally a name that doesn't get used much. A frequently-heard phrase is, "Nobody ever names after him."

So while I was floating names like Dov and Natan and Eliahu, my husband was campaigning for Zebulun and Ovadia and, I am not making this up, Yom Tov. "We are not naming the baby Yom Tov!" I would protest. "It's a real name!" would be the plaintive reply. "And nobody uses it!" With, one might add, good reason.

With Barak, my husband's front-runner name was Chasdai, and I almost went for it. But in the end, we picked the same name used by all of the three boys born to staff members at his school that year. Three little boys, three Baraks. With Iyyar, his name was picked (off a short list) by a friend so there was less discussion. This time around, MHH had his hopes back up--only briefly--with Avtalyon.

"How about Avtalyon?" he ventured one night over dinner.

"Who's Avtalyon?"

Avtalyon, apparently, was the rebbe of Hillel and Shammai. I thought about it. It actually seemed to meet most of my exacting criteria. I liked how it looked in Hebrew, and it was easy to pronounce. I could think of a few okay ways to shorten it into a nickname. I said I was open to the idea. MHH was astounded. "Really? You'd really name the baby Avtalyon?"

Well, I would have until I ran the idea past an Israeli friend. Her reaction--"MA?! Avtalyon?? Ma at CHOSHEVET!?" kind of blew the idea out of the water. "Yes, it is a fine name if you want him to be tortured by the other boys all through school..."

But here on Blogger, there are no playground bullies, and Abba can finally have his way, virtually at least. You'll have to excuse me for stopping here--baby Avtalyon is nursing, and I'm tired of typing one-handed.

Two weeks

The baby is two weeks old today. B"H he's doing much better. He's nursing better, and waking himself up when it's time to eat; I didn't even need to set an alarm clock last night. If the baby scale I borrowed from a neighbor can be trusted, he's up from 6 lb 3 oz on Monday to 6 lb 7.5 this morning. I know a couple of ounces each way can be one feed or even one diaper, but he's been going steadily up instead of steadily down, so I'm feeling pretty pleased with him.

He's also pretty much got that latch-suck-swallow thing down. Between being born at 37 weeks and having had the whole jaundice thing, he had been finding eating--even when awake--a little overwhelming. I got the impression he thought it was like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach while riding a unicycle, and no matter how hungry he might be it just didn't seem worth the effort--easier just to sleep. He's still sleeping almost all the time, but when he's not sleeping he's eating, with much less need for help and interference from me. Which is very nice for me, because now, even though it might take me an hour to feed him, it doesn't take an hour of total concentration and wishing I had a few extra hands. A few times a day now, he wakes up and looks around and makes funny faces. He hardly cries at all, except when I'm doing something really unreasonable like changing his diaper. It's quite a change from our usual newborn routine around here, which has to date always involved an awful lot of screaming.

Our babysitter came three mornings this week, and I availed myself of this well--once she turned up, I absented myself with the baby to my bedroom and slept until an hour before she left, at which point I got up and nursed the baby so I wouldn't have to do it with the other two jumping on me. I'm definitely the best-rested I've ever been with a new baby. It's strange, but I look back at the last two weeks and all I see is yad Hashem moving things in ways that I might not have been happy with at the time, but were so clearly for the best: on Tuesday, when I had just gotten home from the hospital and was feeling so overwhelmed and both boys were being monsters and I hid in my bedroom and cried, well, that was when the phone rang and it was the doctor's office telling me to take the baby to the hospital. Not that I wanted to take the baby to the hospital, but in the end it meant five days of sitting still whether I wanted to or not--which was really what I needed. The delayed bris has taken a lot of the stress out of the first week--we don't have to plan a simcha yet. Having the baby erev Shabbos meant that there wasn't much to do for a shalom zachor, and my friend across the street had it at her house. And having a jaundiced baby in an incubator meant that as much as I would have preferred to sleep cuddling the baby, I didn't really have any choice but to just lie down and sleep--I couldn't hold him even though I wanted to.

Right now MHH is out with the boys--now the big boys--picking up diapers and milk and other sundries before Shabbos. The baby is in his carseat, making the distinctive little snuffling sounds that mean he is thinking about waking up and nursing sometime soon. A friend of ours--the same friend who came to the hospital right before Shabbos bearing a bag full of food, including four Diet Cokes and a whole pound of corned beef--turned up an hour or so ago with chicken and soup and cholent and salads and an entire lime meringue pie. The house is clean, the kids are not too nuts, and MHH's grades are finally, finally done. Things are settling down. The world is coming back into focus.

And tonight, I get to do something I've been waiting to do for what seems like an awfully long time. Tonight, for the first time, I get to light five candles for Shabbos.

My husband warns you not to read this.

The baby is 11 days old today. I can't quite figure out how he got to be eleven days old, and then when I went over it I realized that it's because he spent 8 of those days in the hospital that it's been hard to keep track.

I think he's doing better, B"H--he is still not waking up on his own when it's time to eat, but it's much easier to wake him than it has been and over the course of the day it's become progressively easier to get him to nurse. Last night he woke once on his own and I thought he would do it again at night--wrongly, as it turned out. I nursed him at 11, went to sleep myself at 12, and woke up at 6 with a horrified start as I realized that my ten-day-old baby had gone 7 hours without eating. Not good. So today I've been keeping a closer eye on the clock and waking him regularly; I plan to set an alarm tonight. In the meantime, he's had longer periods of alertness, and if the baby scale I borrowed can be trusted has even gained a bit since yesterday.

I said I'd write up a birth story, and if I'm going to do it I'd better do it, because the details are already getting sort of blurry. But I should warn you that it wasn't one of your easier deliveries and I'm still kind of traumatized by the whole thing, and if you, um, haven't had a baby yet and think you might want to do it someday, you might want to stop reading here. Unless, you know, you want a convincing treatise on why you should ALWAYS get the epidural. Because otherwise, you might find yourself writing up a birth story blog post like this one.

Let's see. On Wednesday night I started feeling like things were really moving along and mentioned to MHH that I wouldn't be surprised if the baby came that night or the next day. He just about jumped out of his seat. "Tonight?!" "Well, the baby's got to come eventually..." I went to bed, and woke up in the morning--no baby.

Thursday, same thing, with the contractions coming and going, but nothing I could really time. At around 11, though, things changed, and I called my midwife. She told me the usual--rest, drink some water, call back when they're closer together. Instead of resting, of course, I tidied the house and put away the groceries that I'd had delivered that afternoon, and MHH frantically tried to finish his grading. I called the friends who were on call for middle-of-the-night babysitting, and arranged for Ada to come at 4 am when she got off work (night shift at the local children's hospital) and another friend to come if things got moving earlier. Which, as it happened, they did; at around 2 am, after I'd spent an hour or so lying down, I started feeling that I'd really be much happier if I were already at the hospital. Not that I thought I was going to have the baby any second--it was more that, with Iyyar, I had gone from "well, these contractions aren't so bad" when I called the cab to "oh please please I don't want to have this baby in the back of a taxi" twenty minutes later. So, I wanted to be, you know, prudent about it.

I called the midwife back, and we talked a little bit about when I should leave. I told her why I was worried--because things had gone from 0 to 60 so, so quickly last time--and she paused for a minute and then said, "Well, how about leaving now. I'll meet you at the hospital."

I called the friend who had agreed to come, and put labor bag by the front door, and when she drove up it was -5 outside and I couldn't find my gloves, so I hunted down my fingerless ones and the big triangular lace shawl Cecilia gave me a few years ago. The cab pulled up, and I remember thinking, hmm, climbing up there is not going to be so easy. Somehow or other I got in, and climbed over my labor bag on the floor, and sat in the back with my husband, having a nice calm chat that probably made the cab driver relax a bit about whether the pregnant lady in back was going to mess up his nice clean cab.

This is why I should have written this up earlier--it's all already a blur. I remember walking in the hospital, and the sliding glass doors that don't give any visible indication of which piece of glass is wall and which piece is door--if you don't walk in the right way, you have to stand there waving your hand until something moves. I remember telling MHH that when I'd come in to have Iyyar, that had totally thrown me and I'd stood there thinking, "I'm going to have my baby right here because I won't be able to get in these doors." We went into L & D, and there was Fran, my midwife, and she showed us our room--room 38, the same room I had Iyyar in.

Fran was wearing the socks I'd made her after I had Iyyar--not on purpose, she'd just happened to put them on that morning. I took out the gloves I'd started knitting that morning and sat on the bed for a while working on the cuff; Fran checked me and I was at about 5 cm. MHH took out some finals to grade, and Fran and I walked around the floor to try to get things moving a little more. There were some workers there--at 4 am--doing whatever they were doing, hanging plastic over some doors and moving ladders around. Fran gave me a big cup of water and at one point I had to give it to her to hold, as the contractions got stronger and stronger and I was afraid I would drop it. A nurse came into our room at one point, saying she had a 25-weeker in active labor. That baby has been on my mind since--I wonder how he or she is doing. Fran told me that the hospital, which has a Level III NICU, is full of babies that tiny, because they come from all over the state.

I walked, and knitted a little, and talked to Fran and the nurse, and I don't remember now what else. At some point I stopped knitting the glove I was doing, because the fingers were too much to keep track of, and I started the cuff of the second glove, so I could knit some mindless ribbing. Somehow or other it got to be around 7. I remember looking at the clock and wondering where those hours had gone--I know MHH took a nap, and that he filled out the cord blood donation form while I was knitting, and one nurse left and another came. I knitted a little more and walked a little more, and the contractions got stronger, but I could handle them. I stopped knitting. Fran put a pillow on one of the tray tables for me to lean on, and that was nice, and she rubbed my back a little, which also helped. The first nurse told me that she'd had two Diet Cokes a day when she was pregnant--this made me feel better about having had one a day. Fran checked me again and I was up to 7 centimeters. The contractions had gotten strong, but in between the contractions I felt fine. The new nurse mentioned how comfortable I looked, and I said a little grimly that I'd gotten into trouble in the past with my lack of propensity to scream when in pain. Don't worry, I assured her, it hurts plenty--I'm just not a screamer.

Yeah. Well.

Probably the main reason I haven't written up this birth story yet is that I didn't really want to get to the screaming part. Because I really am not a screamer. But, well, I guess everybody has their limit. I hit mine at around 7:30, when I started to feel like I really, really had to push. Fran checked me again and I was only at around 9 cm. "Try pushing," she said, and I did, and she said I was almost there "but there's still this piece of cervix here that won't budge." With Iyyar, the contractions were by far the worst part, and once I could push I felt better about the whole thing--it's not that I didn't scream, but it was more with the effort of the whole thing. This time, I got to nine centimeters and a bit but my water hadn't broken, and then it did and the baby moved down a little bit and then his head turned and he got stuck. That was when I started screaming this time. This screaming wasn't because of the effort--it was me completely losing control.

I remember Fran telling me to push, not with my face, but to push the baby, and I remember crying back that I couldn't, I was trying but I couldn't do it. It wasn't an issue of it hurt too much or I was too tired--I was trying with every contraction, but nothing was happening. I had Iyyar without any drugs and I had Barak with what one might fairly term completely inadequate pain control, and it was still nothing like this--not with the exhaustion I had with Barak, but with a whole new level of fear that somehow or other I couldn't do this, that I was trying to push but it wasn't happening, and I didn't know why, and it hurt so much all I could do was scream and scream. I remember everyone else in the room--the nurse, the midwife, my husband--telling me things. The midwife told me what she was doing to move the baby, and made me move into a position I don't even want to think about now, and at the same time I thought that the world was imploding and there was no way, no way at all, I could survive this, they were all having normal calm conversations with each other, and it was like being on another planet or in a different world or one of those nightmares you wake up from unable to breathe.

Yeah, see, this is the part I didn't really want to write about.

Somehow Fran moved the baby, and at that point I just refused to push because I couldn't handle it. The one thing about this labor that had made it so different, and easier, than the other two up until this point was that the contractions started and then they stopped and I had a rest in between. With Barak and Iyyar, once they started it was just one long contraction that never ended. This time, I had time to breathe in between, and when she told me to push at the next contraction I could feel it coming but just could not bring myself to try to push, because at that moment I could handle the pain and I knew if I pushed it would hurt more and I didn't want that. I told her I couldn't do it, and she said you have to, or this baby won't come out. So I did, and then she said good! Now you're getting somewhere! And my husband tried to say something encouraging too, and I yelled at him to shut up. There was a small hurt silence and I heard, "I'm just trying to be helpful." "You are saying the right thing," Fran reassured her. "She's just not feeling very receptive right now." At that moment, I wasn't feeling terribly receptive to anybody.

I know that right at the end Fran told me she saw lots of dark hair and I just had to push, and then she said you're almost there, and I asked how many pushes. She didn't know. I asked for an educated guess and she said one to three. I said, okay, I can do that--and somehow that was reassuring because the worst part of the pain was feeling that I was getting nowhere, it was never going to end, and I was completely, totally trapped alone in this alternate universe. So I pushed, and I screamed some more, and I think it was more than three pushes in the end but I pushed and his head was out and then I pushed again and the rest of him came out. Someone showed me the baby and said look, is it a girl or a boy? and I said, it's a boy, and there he was on my chest all warm and wet and wiggling and crying and I didn't care at all. All I cared about was that it was over, and I kept saying it, again and again--it's over, it's over, it's over. Someone asked me if I wanted to see the baby and I said no, but all of a sudden there he was anyway, with his tiny little sweet face, but I was shaking too hard to hold him.

They cleaned him up and I cried some more as Fran reminded me that there was still that issue of a placenta, and my reaction to "you have to push some more" was "you have got to be kidding me." I can't deal with any more pushing, no way are you putting in any stitches, just leave. me. alone. Of course she couldn't do that, and eventually she did what she needed to do, and it was light outside now and there was snow and the baby was fine and it was over, and I tried to get the baby to nurse, and he did, and then after a while we called a few people and told them it was a boy.

I guess every birth feels cataclysmic in its own way, but I think mine have all sort of been on the outer edges of what one might term your average cataclysm. Fran stopped by to see me the next day and explained what had happened, and agreed that it wasn't what normally happens in a birth. She used the term "deep transverse arrest," and told me that it was nothing I was doing wrong, but the baby's head had turned in a way that he couldn't come out. I'd been pushing, but the signals, as she put it, weren't getting through. I was sitting there nursing the baby as she talked and I told her I could never, ever do that again. She said, forget this birth--it wasn't you, it was the baby's position. And, she said, if you'd had an epidural you probably would have ended up with a c-section.

Well, anyway. As I said earlier, it's over now, and the baby is asleep in his carseat, and he'll be two weeks old on Friday and I'm up and about again. My husband is wondering why I even wrote this up, and I guess it's because I might want it later, although I might just save this and not post it. I'm trying to think of a good way to wrap this up, but I can't--it's just how it happened, or at least it's how I remember it.

Home again

Where to start?

With the baby, I guess. B"H he is doing fine, so far as I can tell. Right now he is hanging out in the carseat next to me, looking around and checking out the shelves of sock yarn. ("I want her to make me something out of that!") The last hour or so has been by far the longest he's been awake and alert--it makes me want to hold him but whenever I pick him up he gets cozy and goes to sleep, and I'd rather have him awake while I am. So, the carseat it is.

We got home last night, a couple of hours after Shabbos. Iyyar was in bed; Barak, who has been having some, ah, potty regression issues in the last week or so, was sitting in the kitchen eating a granola bar as reward for actually doing the right thing in the right place (we've left potty treats far behind, but Abba wisely thought one was in order yesterday). He didn't know we were coming home, and as I came up the back stairs with the carseat I peeked in the kitchen window and knocked. The effect was electric: he leaped out of his seat screaming, "It's Imma! It's Imma! I SEE HER!" By the time I opened the door he was dancing around the kitchen laughing and singing. It was nice to feel welcome.

The hospital was... well, for starters I never want to see another microwaved box of Tuv Taam fettucine ever again. The fact that I could order a diet coke with my meals was pretty nice, though. I didn't get to sleep much in the hospital--does anyone?--but at least I wasn't running around as I would have been at home. Things with the baby were stressful, because his bilirubin did not go down very quickly and then, once it did go down, shot right back up when he came out from under the lights; he also was so sleepy and lethargic that getting him to nurse was really, really difficult, and kept him out from under the lights for far too long. I had to give him bottles, which I hate doing at this stage but was a far preferable alternative to an NG tube. And the floor was full of serious contagious nasties: almost every door had "contact precautions" or "droplet precautions" warnings stuck on the door. Perfect. Just where you want to bring your four-day-old baby: a great big convention of babies with flu and RSV.

Oh, and the med students. The med students! "So, Mrs. Uberimma, do you have any idea how he got the jaundice?" Um. Yes, I do. Do you? And oy, the residents, who mamash looked twelve years old to me. I'm sure you did fine in medical school, but can I please have a doctor who is at least as old as I am? Please?

On Saturday night, when the baby's bilirubin stayed down at a nice comfortable 11.2, we were scheduled to be discharged, but I was mightily freaked by his intense inability to stay awake. When he slept through a heel stick without a whimper, I asked the nurse to call a doctor to take a look at him before we got home. I got the resident, who checked his vital signs and said he looked fine. "Yes, but he has been difficult or impossible to arouse for 24 hours. He's not waking up when he's hungry and even when I squirt milk right into his mouth most of it runs out the other side. It takes me an hour to get anything approaching a normal feed into him and that's with almost no participation from him."

"But his vitals are fine. We could keep him for another night if you want."

Um. Hello. Do you have any idea why he's not waking up?

"He looks fine to me. Babies do sleep a lot." Dr. Howser, clearly, had no idea how not normal this kind of behavior was for a week-old baby. I know most babies sleep more than my babies usually do, but--hello!

The attending on call, apparently, was not actually on call--"I think she's at a wedding," and when I called my own pediatrician, the one doctor in the practice whom I seriously can't stand was on call so I didn't even bother. Instead, I went back to the nurses' station and asked as nicely as I could how it was possible that in the entire hospital there was not a single pediatrician over the age of 25 available to look at my baby or talk to me. Half an hour later, the NICU attending had been paged, and called me back with a reasonable explanation for the sleepiness (baby 3 weeks early, bilirubin still leaving system, normal sleep rhythms totally shot by going in and out of very very bright lights--I should not expect normal sleep from such a baby) and specifics on what to watch out for at home. He said that I should see a decrease in sleepiness that night, and indeed, while I was on the phone, the baby woke up on his own and then proceeded to nurse like a champ. So home we went.

Back to the pediatrician tomorrow for what would ordinarily be the 2-day checkup; I haven't quite figured out how I am going to work this one logistically but I'll figure out something. And yes, I'll get a birth story post up here sooner or later.

Still here

Bili down to 11 this morning, then after a few hours out from under the lights back up to 15.

So, we're here for Shabbos. We are okay; apparently the boys at home (all three of them) are having a little bit of a meltdown.

Shabbat shalom-

Deja vu...

Back in the hospital, on pediatrics, with the baby under bililights. Hoping to be home in time for Shabbos. Things are moving along, just slowly.

Did I say tired?

Barak and Iyyar's baby brother arrived on Friday morning. We just got home from the hospital this afternoon. The baby in brief: 7 lb 1 ounce, sweet-smelling and cuddly, long and skinny, bilirubin too high for comfort and rising so we are back to the hospital for more blood draws tomorrow. The labor in brief: I am never doing this without drugs ever ever again.

More when I have time. Shall we say, October?

Tired

Yesterday, I was very, very tired. I had not had a babysitter that morning, which meant no quiet sitting at the computer working time--just a whole day of mostly being on my feet, chasing small children. The kids had not been misbehaving, exactly, but they'd been very high-energy and very high-need (as in, I will implode RIGHT NOW if I do not get ALL YOUR ATTENTION RIGHT THIS SECOND!) I was having contractions, I didn't feel good, and the last thing I wanted to do was move one muscle more than necessary. By around four PM, I'd really really had it. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, and the kids were playing on the floor--and then both of them bolted down the hall.

Ordinarily, when they are in the kind of mischief-making mood they'd been in for most of the day, I don't let them stay out of my sight for very long, because oh BOY can they get in trouble fast. But yesterday, I just couldn't deal. I knew I should get up, but... I heard a door open and close, and heard the sounds of toys and playing. It's not that there aren't things to get into in their room, but there aren't so many, so I just sat and listened. It sounded pretty harmless. A little banging, some giggling, some more toy sounds, some conversation I couldn't catch, some more giggling.

This is fine, I told myself. I need to relax. I have to get used to not watching them every second. IY"H there will be a baby soon and I won't be able to follow them all over the house. They're fine.

Giggle. Giggle. Talk talk. Giggle. Splash.

SPLASH?!

I heaved myself off the couch, ran/waddled down the hall, and opened the bathroom door. Sure enough--both of them were in there. The floor was covered with water, which was running out of the sink. And Iyyar had one toothbrush in each hand, and was dipping them into the toilet and brushing his teeth with each one in turn, as Barak giggled madly.

I don't how how much e. coli they both consumed, but they seem okay today. The toothbrushes, however, have met their end.

Crime and punishment

Right after Iyyar was born, Grandma E sent us a Fabulous Box containing, among many other things, the book that became Barak's favorite for at least a year: Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. He'd ask me to read it at least five times a day, complete with voices. (I always had the goblins speaking Hungarian.) After every reading, he'd sigh with contentment. "Globlins," he'd inform me. "Very scary."

Lately, he's been asking to sleep with the door to the bedroom closed, and if I open it during the night, at some point when he next wakes up (Barak still wakes up numerous times a night--I think it's just the way his brain is wired--but B"H he usually doesn't wake up anyone else) I'll hear the door being closed from the inside. A few weeks ago I asked him why he does this. "I don't want the goblins to come in." Oh. I explained to him that there were no goblins in the house, because goblins are just pretend. The only place there are goblins, I said, were inside books. Barak did not seem convinced. "Even if there were goblins, I wouldn't let them in the house," I assured him. "They make big messes, right? I like the house to be nice and clean. Do you think I'd let in a goblin to make a big mess?" This seemed a little more satisfying to him, but he still wanted the door closed.

Today, while Iyyar was napping (Barak doesn't have school this week) I let Barak come into my office and watch zoo elephant videos on the computer (YouTube is good for some things). He wanted me to close the door. I said no, I don't want to close the door, because if we close the door I won't be able to hear Iyyar if he wakes up. Barak looked... distressed. "I don't want da goblins to come in." Hmm.

"Barak, goblins aren't real. They're just pretend. There are no goblins in the house, and we need to leave the door open." He was, clearly, not pleased, but came over and sat on the bed anyway and we watched elephants for a little while. Then Iyyar woke up, and I decided it was time to discuss this goblin thing a little more. I found the Hershel book, and we read it. Then we discussed.

"Barak, are goblins real or just pretend?"
"Just pretend."
"Can you see a real goblin anywhere? Can you see one in the zoo?"
"No."
"You can only see real things in the zoo, right? Like, can you see a lion at the zoo?"
"Yeah, 'cause lions are real."
"Right. Can you see a tiger in the zoo?"
"Yeah, 'cause dey're real."
"Can you see a... polar bear?"
"Yeah, 'cause dey're real. Dey're also white."
"Right. Can you see a dragon in the zoo?"
"Nooooo. 'Cause dey're just pretend."
"Right. Can you see a dinosaur?"
"No. 'Cause Hashem took dem away."

I'm not quite sure where he got that from--probably from me, honestly. But it was the way he said it that got me. In our house, things get taken away when they are mistreated or misused. Fight over a toy, and it will get taken away. Whack your brother with a toy, or bang it excessively against the wall, or swing it dangerously over your head, ditto.

I wonder what he thought people had been doing with the dinosaurs.

It worked

Still pregnant. And if I'd ordered the camera from Amazon with super saver shipping, it would have been here by now.

Scattered

No baby yet. Sometimes I feel like it's going to be a matter of hours before things get moving, and then... everything stops. So, we'll see.

Sorry I haven't been posting much. I should be, if for no other reason than that I'll want to read the posts myself later. I've just been so wildly busy lately. I have SO MUCH to do at work, and even though I know that whenever I have the baby, it will no longer be my problem, I really don't want to leave my boss--whom I like very much--with more than I have to. She's been dealing with a lot of her own stresses, I think, and the last thing I want to do is slam her with a huge pile of ugly speeches to write. So I've been trying to do as much as I can, without actually sacrificing too much of my own sleep. I'm also trying to keep the house clean, the laundry under control, and the refrigerator and freezer in a reasonably stocked state, just in case.

And in the middle of this, my husband is in the middle of writing, giving, and grading exams--and since he's up for tenure this year I am very loathe to ask him to do anything that isn't work-related. Oh, and Iyyar seems to be having some kind of weird sleep regression. For the last year or so he's been a really good sleeper--I could just put him in his crib and he'd suck on his blanket till he was ready to sleep. For the last couple of weeks, off and on, he's been refusing to nap, and waking up at night wanting to be cuddled and held--very unusual for a baby who is usually far too busy for such things. Mostly I only get cuddles from him either at random times during the day for thirty seconds when he's in the mood, or when I'm done with work, or briefly at bedtime (before he wiggles out of my lap in search of something more fun). Right now, though, if I go in to him when he cries I find him standing up in his crib, arms up, pleading to be held. It's sweet, and if all he wanted were a nice cuddle to get to sleep, I'd have no problems with it. But what he wants is to just sleep in my lap--if I try to put him down, he wakes up and howls and howls and howls, totally a la Barak at this age. I just can't go down that road, especially not now. So I give him one good long cuddle, put him in his crib, and that's it. Tonight he cried hard for about half an hour, but I think he's asleep now.

I keep thinking of things to add to the Iyyar post. Like "thank you." Iyyar, like Barak, enjoys saying "thank you," and fully expects a "you're welcome" to follow every one. If you don't immediately say "you're welcome," he'll keep thanking you, pointedly, until you do. And then you get a look that distinctly says, "and what were you, raised in a barn?"

Last night--this is another thing I should add to the Iyyar list--MHH was giving both boys a bath as I sat on the floor of their room, feeling too huge and slothlike to move. I was getting Iyyar undressed as Abba got Barak into the tub. Once he was totally naked, Iyyar spied the orange plastic sunglasses I got at Target last summer, and put them on. Okay, naked baby with sunglasses--cute enough. Then he ran down the hall in them, and ran back--appearing in doorway, still naked, still in sunglasses, now grinning hugely and waving at me. "Bye! Bye!" And off to the bathtub. Oh, I wish I had a picture of that one.

Iyyar's hair is getting long enough that I probably should cut it, but I just don't want to, because once you cut their hair they're not quite babies anymore. And Iyyar really is still a baby. I checked on him tonight, after he finally fell asleep, and there he was in his crib with his knees tucked under his tummy, tush in the air, blankie tag in mouth. Definitely baby. I'm holding on to it as long as I can.

Okay, time to go back to speeches, and send off that one I've been working on tonight.

32 Things about Iyyar (more when I think of them--stay tuned)

1. Iyyar insists that he does not comprehend the word "no." If you say it to him, even very firmly and even at volume, he looks at you with complete blank innocence and keeps doing whatever it is he's doing. So, for example, when he's banging a toy against the wall (which he knows full well he is not allowed to do), and hears "no," he'll look at you with those big eyes and just keep banging, because, you know, he just doesn't understand that word. But he loses a lot of credibility when you take the toy away and he starts howling, "NOOOOOO!!!!"
2. It is very obvious that Iyyar has a big brother. Yesterday, I was in my room folding laundry, and Iyyar was playing with a plastic toy dinosaur in one hand and a plastic toy dog in the other. He was standing next to the bed with them, and then I realized that he was making growling noises and pretending that the dog and the dinosaur were fighting each other. There is just nothing to be done about testosterone, is there.
3. Iyyar will still eat most things, with the exception of raw fruits and vegetables (he will eat bananas and cherries, but I think those are the only ones). He's not quite as indiscriminate as he once was, though.
4. He screams for anything I am eating or anything he sees me preparing, even if he has, at that very moment, the exact same thing on his high chair in front of him. Because, clearly, whatever I have must be better.
5. This is why he eats peanut butter on a slice of whole wheat bread for breakfast most mornings. He sees me making Barak's sandwich and NEEDS ONE NOW.
6. He needs to suck the tag of a blanket to go to sleep.
7. He loves putting on shoes and socks. He won't usually come when I ask him to, but if I tell him it's time to put on shoes and socks, he's there. Yesterday, I had him mostly dressed but hadn't gotten his socks on yet; he went over to his drawer, found a pair of socks, and brought them to me.
8. He loves challah and will always ask for it if he sees it. "Alla! Alla!"
9. Bamba is probably his favorite thing to eat. Sometimes Barak tortures him by saying, "Iyyar, Bamba! Bamba!" just to get him all excited, when in fact there is no Bamba to be had anywhere.
10. He gets along very well with Binyomin, who is here sharing our babysitter in the morning. He calls him Naya. When Binyomin is not here, sometimes Iyyar points at his booster seat and tells me, encouragingly, "Naya! Naya!" I wonder if he thinks I can somehow produce Binyomin for him, when he does that.
11. He is still very very into the cat. Whenever he sees Emese, he points her out to me with great delight. "Cah! Cah!"
12. He's starting to really enjoy looking out the window. He shows me the cars and trucks. He also asks for trucks sometimes. "Chuh! Chuh!"
13. He knows that all the good toys are in the armoire, and frequently campaigns for me to open it up. "Openih! Openih!"
14. He's realized the utility of "please" and "thank you." Like Barak before him, he's gotten to where it's pretty automatic. He'll hold out an empty cereal bowl imploringly: "Bee! Bee!" and then accept a full bowl back with a polite, "gay goo." Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night thirsty and I'll go in there to hear a plea for water. When I give it to him, he'll collapse back into bed with his prize, but there's usually a "gay goo" before he falls.
15. If you walk past a light switch holding him, he will try to turn it on or off. If you walk past a mezuza with him, he will try to wrench it off the wall.
16. Iyyar LOVES the phone. If you let him, he'll walk around the house talking on it, having quite a plausible-sounding conversation that is mostly gibberish with the occasional, "Hewwow?" and "yeah!"
17. When Iyyar gets annoyed, he tosses things off the side of his high chair. He is beginning to get the threat of "Iyyar, if you drop it, it's all done," because when he hears it, he starts just banging things around his tray instead of actually tossing them. Unfortunately, because he now understands that dropping things on the floor is a surefire way to lose his tray and everything on it, he sometimes starts heaving things overboard when he wants to get out.
18. He's also started hitting, and, as a logical consequence, getting (very short) time-outs in his crib. He thinks this is the cruellest and most outrageous thing every. He's been hitting a lot less.
19. When Barak won't share his toys, Iyyar will sneak up behind him, grab his kippa and run away with it giggling. He knows he'll get a rise out of Barak that way, every single time. Sometimes he'll go into Barak's drawer, find a kippah, put it on and wear it around.
20. He loves being tickled. If you tickle his tummy and stop before he's ready, he'll pat his tummy with his hands to tell you to keep doing it.
21. He's really into Lego lately. He's gotten pretty good at putting it together and taking it apart, and sits there doing so while caroling, "geh go! geh go!"
22. He likes sitting on the couch, but can't climb up there by himself, so he'll come up to me and pat the couch cushions while saying, "up! up!" until I lift him up.
23. He's just started asking me to read him books. Yesterday he brought me "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," handed it to me (I was sitting in the rocking chair in their room) and turned around so that I could pick him up facing the right direction to sit in my lap and be read to.
24. He seems to be past the phase of shoving way too much food into his mouth and resorting to sucking on it because his mouth is too full for him to be able to chew. It's been a while since I've seen him sucking on a mouthful of bread.
25. He did, however, choke on too much ravioli this week, and threw up what seemed like a whole day's worth of food all over the floor, his clothes and shoes, and his high chair. I bleached everything and disassembled the high chair to clean it, but I feel like the kitchen still smells like vomit.
26. He seemed totally unperturbed by all of this and wanted more ravioli about thirty seconds later.
27. He still fits into his little blue baby shoes. The soft leather baby shoes/slippers from Target, though, are really on their way out.
28. He's really, really cute when he's sleeping. And most of the rest of the time.
29. His hair is getting to the point where it really needs to be cut, but I'm putting it off.
30. His favorite trick these days is closing the door. If I'm in the bedroom, he'll go out into the hall, closing the door behind him. He pulls it shut with one hand until the door is almost shut, then stands on his toes to reach the knob so he can pull it the rest of the way. All the time, he's saying "Bye!" and, sometimes, waving.
31. He also likes to shut the gate to the kitchen. I don't think he's yet realized that the only thing he accomplishes by doing this is limiting his own opportunities for unfettered motion.
32. He likes eating cereal and milk with a spoon. If I just put dry cereal on his high chair tray, unless it's a really high-value cereal like Puffins he'll express very great disgust.

Motzai shabbos again

As of Friday morning, two centimeters and a bit, but no contractions to speak of. Dum dee dum. I have been instructed at work to remain pregnant until I finish a few more particularly icky speeches, then I am free to go ahead and have my baby, if I must. Thirty-six weeks and three days. I know that most women with more than one kid say "Oh, with my first I always knew how many weeks I was, but now I just can't keep track." Me, I always know to the day.

All I want to do, personally, is knit like a fiend. I have so much I want to knit, and I remember very well exactly how much knitting time I had after Iyyar was born (a sock and a half over my twelve-week maternity leave). Current goal is at least finishing the socks I'm making for my midwife, and ideally also the purple Shetland spiral-yoke sweater I'm making to replace the orange Shetland spiral-yoke sweater that is not really publicly presentable anymore. I'm trying not to have any ambitions beyond that.

Right now, though, it's late and if I'm not going to write any speeches (which, at this point, I'm obviously not) I'd better go to bed. Shavua tov.

Wednesday night

No contractions since last Thursday. Besides the usual ninth-month aches and annoyances, I feel fine.

Today was a little nutty. I had Ada here all day, because she had the time to come and I don't have anyone Mondays or Thursdays--and really have a ton of work to catch up on. I got a lot accomplished this morning--right up until about 1, when I got myself a nice big glass of water from the kitchen and promptly knocked the whole thing over onto the keyboard of my laptop. Uh-oh.

The nice thing about having a laptop that belongs to your company is that if you mess it up, someone else will fix it and you don't have to pay for it. The less nice thing, of course, is that nobody is very happy with you. I called the computer people and they told me to bring the laptop right in so that they could disassemble and dry it. I thought about this for a minute and decided, well, why not bring Barak along--if all I'm doing is taking the bus in to work so that I can drop off a drenched laptop, he might as well get a fun bus trip out of it.

So I took him along with me, which was very nice because a) he and Iyyar have been getting into SO much mischief together lately that it was a good break for me to have him happy and on his best behavior, and b) I think he really needed some one-on-one Imma time. He was pleasantly surprised by the suggestion of going to Imma's office and enjoyed the bus trip, as well as getting to go in the elevator (where he was happy to push the buttons for everyone); the final transportation excitement was at the bookstore next to my office, where we stopped to pick something up for Abba (unsuccessfully, but we tried) and we took a few gratuitous trips up and down the escalators.

So I didn't get as much speechwriting done as I would have liked, but the day was productive in other, probably more important, ways. Iyyar seemed not terribly resentful at having been left with Ada and his buddy all day, and anyway I made it up to him by being home all morning today (cf. "no babysitter on Thursdays," above). The lowlight of the day, unfortunately, was that I seem to have lost my gloves--which I made with a particular favorite skein of Bearfoot yarn on size O needles. I really really like those gloves and I'm pretty sure I dropped them somehow when I was out yesterday. Sigh. Not much knitting time left, either...

Motzai Shabbos

I'll do an Iyyar post soon, don't worry. I just need to think about it a little bit first. In the meantime, I'll give you this: today we went over to friends to play in the afternoon. Iyyar, as is his habit, found an open door (bathroom, of course) and closed himself in. I followed him, and closed the door behind both of us (ninth month and all). Then he walked over to the toilet, lifted up his shirt, patted his undershirted tummy, and told me meaningfully, "Potty. Potty." Um, no. Sorry. Not starting with that right now. Get back to me in about... um... well, get back to me later. Much later.

In the meantime, after a Thursday of contractions so bad I called my husband to come home from work (not because I thought I was about to need to go to the hospital, but because I couldn't get around enough to watch both kids), I had a friend over and we spent the evening drinking water, sitting still, and knitting. She made quite an impressive hat, which I wanted to photograph. I discovered, after three tries at new batteries, that my Radio Shack digital camera, purchased when Barak was born, has finally given up the ghost. My cheapskate instincts wrestled with my sane mother instincts for an hour or so (new baby on the way and no camera!), and then I just sat down at the computer and ordered a reasonably inexpensive new camera on Amazon. Then I got to the checkout, and the shipping options.

What to do? Do I go with the free super saver shipping, which might not get the camera here for two weeks or more? Or do I spring for the overnight delivery? Surely that's not necessary. I thought about it for a while, and finally settled on the two-day option.

And have not had a contraction since. Hmm. Think I just bought myself another month of being pregnant?

40 things about Barak

1. Instead of "won't," Barak says "willn't."
2. He likes to stash sippy cups of water on the top of the window, where he can reach them but Iyyar can't. Sometimes he's got two or three of them up there at once.
3. Before he goes to bed, he piles all his toys and blankets, except for the purple comforter he sleeps under, on the top of his train bed. He doesn't want me to put them away in drawers--they need to be on top of the train bed.
4. If he is saying that someone forgot something, he says "he got forgot."
5. He takes a very, very long time in the morning to make a bathroom trip and put on underwear.
6. He usually forgets to put his mitzva notes in the yellow pushka at school, and ends up with a stash of them in his backpack.
7. He can get himself completely dressed, with the exception of shoes and socks. He can get the socks on, but they're usually upside down.
8. If he's wearing pajamas with a snap tab on top of the zipper, he comes and asks me to button his snap for him.
9. He likes to come downstairs to check the mail with me.
10. He hasn't had wet underwear since September--K"AH. But he still sleeps in a pullup, and they're usually soaked in the morning.
11. He can brush his own teeth.
12. He can recognize about half of the aleph-beis, even though I really haven't been working on him with it at all lately. I don't think he knows any English letters.
13. If you tell him a number, he will try to show you the correct number of fingers and ask, "This many?" Any number larger than ten usually becomes "a hundred."
14. The past, for Barak, is divided into "esterday" and "esterday, a long time ago." Sometimes things that actually did happen yesterday are categorized as happening "esterday, a long time ago." I'm not quite sure why.
15. Whenever Barak is going somewhere in his car, or is flying a plane somewhere, or driving a train somewhere, it is almost invariably going to California.
16. He still, every so often, tells me that he wants to go to Morah Chana's school (where he went last year.)
17. He still drinks out of sippy cups or covered cups with straws. Sometimes I give him cups without tops, and they almost invariably spill.
18. He likes to sweep. If he sees me sweeping, he wants to help, and sometimes actually does. But I can no longer get away with sweeping myself and then handing me the broom, because he will complain that there is "no more schmutz" on the floor.
19. The only kind of meat Barak will eat is bologna and salami. Most kinds of fake soy meat are fine too.
20. Barak no longer insists on only wearing shirts with trucks or scary animals on them. The one he picks most often is a striped long-sleeved t-shirt from LL Bean.
21. He can make a bracha on his tzitzis by himself, and on most foods. Anything yummy, however, defaults to being a mezonos, even if it's not--I guess he has that established in his mind as the treat bracha.
22. He is convinced that the baby is a girl baby.
23. He likes wearing a tie on Shabbos.
24. His favorite cereal is Puffins either cinnamon or peanut butter. He gets a few in the morning if he gets himself dressed with reasonable speed.
25. Whenever I make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which is every morning he has school) he asks me to remove the peel (crust). If I just take a knife and remove the outer 1/16 of an inch, he is satisfied with this.
26. Barak doesn't sleep with his special monkey in his bed anymore, but likes to know where he is at night.
27. He also often spirits Iyyar's special puppydog (which Iyyar couldn't care less about these days) on top of his train bed at night. I think he's much more attached to it than Iyyar is.
28. I've noticed him diapering the Cabbage Patch Kid we inherited from a friend quite a lot lately.
29. He is convinced that when I go to the hospital to have a new baby, there will be trains for him to play with.
30. He is starting to get the concept of taking turns and considers this a fair way to resolve some toy conflicts. Unfortunately, Iyyar doesn't, so it doesn't help a whole lot most of the time.
31. He remembers every home we've ever been a guest in by which toys they had for him to play with. "They had dinosaurs for me to play with."
32. He loves being allowed to open and close the refrigerator by himself. He usually remembers to ask first.
33. He's better than he has been about tantrums, but still sometimes explodes for no obvious reason.
34. Logic is sometimes a little shaky too. If I tell him that I can't do something, his response is often "but I want!" or "but I need!"
35. He's been spending a lot of time singing about makkos lately (last week's parsha and all). We've been hearing snatches of "avadim hayyinu" and "no no no, I will not let you go!" Of course, I hear "I will not let you go!" and my 80s upbringing wants to sing back a la Queen, "Let me go!"
36. If you ask him about the makkos that Hashem sent the mitzrim, he tells you about the frogs first. "Where were the frogs, Barak?" "Jumping on Paroh's bed and on his head!" "Did he like that?" "No!" Pause. "But I like it." He probably would--briefly anyway. He also likes the wild beasts one, and the idea that the beasts were coming in the windows. Very scary, etc.
37. He actually has some idea of where matzo comes from, because he knows that when I make pizza dough or challah dough we have to let it rise. If it doesn't rise, it doesn't get nice and fluffy, and instead it's all flat. I'm thinking we might do a rise-no rise comparison on Sunday.
38. When he comes home from school with pekelach from birthday parties (FULL of candy, you would not believe what people send home with three-year-olds!) he will cooperatively, if not enthusiastically, hand them over unopened to be returned on Shabbos. If I'm lucky, he forgets about them and has Bamba or strawberry yogurt for a Shabbos treat. Even when he remembers, he has not yet registered that there is never as much candy in the bag as there once was, and some raisins and whole-wheat pretzels are there that weren't before.
39. When Barak was a baby, and when Iyyar was smaller, I used to sing them mizmor l'David (also known as the 23rd psalm) at bedtime. Lately, Barak has taken to asking me to sing it to him again, with him in the rocking chair, the way I did two years ago. He says, "Imma, I want you to rock me and sing me the baby song." Who could say no?
40. Lately, Barak has been all-Imma, all the time. If Abba goes to him in the night, and I stay in bed, I hear a sad wail, "I need IIIIMMMMMAAAAA!" In ten years, he probably won't, so I'll just enjoy it now.

Big boy

Barak loves Clementines. Every couple of weeks, I buy a big box of them at Trader Joe's or the supermarket, and he can easily eat four or five of them a day if I let him. He can peel them himself if I peel off the very top for him, and knows to put the peel in the trash.

There is one small problem with his Clementine consumption, however. Barak is very particular about how he eats them: he likes to take one section at a time, and have the rest of the orange (okay, tangerine, but he calls them oranges) stay intact. It has happened on more than one occasion that a split-in-two orange has had him in tears. "I want it to be stuck! Can you make it stuck, Imma? I need it to be stuck!"

Barak did a good job on a lot of things today. He went to mincha with Abba, and by all accounts behaved very nicely. He hung up his own coat, without asking, when he got back, and ate a dinner full of "green" without protest (okay, he didn't eat much, but he didn't protest). At bedtime, he was quite pleased with himself. "I'm a big boy," he informed me. "I did lots of mitzvos today!" And then he told me, apropos of nothing,

"At school today my orange broke. I was peeling my orange by myself and it broke. I wanted it to be stuck, but I din't cry, 'cause I'm a big boy. I just ate it."

Now that's a big boy.

Hmm. Yes. Well.

1-2 cm dilated, mostly effaced, baby -1 station. I'd rather have that all be two weeks from now, but I'm not particularly worried; with Iyyar I walked around 3 cm dilated for what, three weeks? And I was this dilated at around 33 weeks, and didn't have him until 37.5. So. The midwife said "try not to have the baby in the next two weeks, okay?" and I agreed to do my best. There was a suggestion of keeping my feet up for a few hours a day, which I can actually do--that telecommuting thing, you know.

Further bulletins, as always, as events warrant.

Nope

No baby, and I still don't think I'm really in labor. Going to the midwife tomorrow just to get checked. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

Perspective

Today could have easily been a lot worse. Nobody is injured or seriously ill, nobody lost a job today, and... yeah.

It could have been worse.

That was that I started telling myself when I woke up this morning with such intense abdominal cramps I couldn't stand up straight. It was what I told myself while checking Iyyar's temperature and finding that he had a fever for the third straight day, meaning I really needed to take him to the pediatrician--a mile away by foot. When Barak got out the door with only minimal protest, I told myself reassuringly, see? It really could have been worse.

The baby who normally shares our babysitter with us was here today, even though there was no babysitter and I was, theoretically at least, working. But, fortunately, baby #2 had just gotten back from a different time zone with his family, and slept most of the morning. So while I was waiting for both the midwife and the pediatric nurse to call me back, I put both of them in their respective cribs with some toys (Iyyar complained, the other baby passed out instantly) and went to take a long hot shower, which made me feel no longer completely convinced that I was in labor. Picking up the phone when the midwife called back and describing what I felt like, though, it was a little harder to convince her. She thought I should come in. To the office that's a 30-minute drive away, because there was no one to see me in the local office today. The two 20-month-olds, one of whom is feverish and the other one of whom is asleep? Well, isn't there someone you could leave them with? Um, no. No, there isn't, and even if there were, two 30-minute cab rides are not on my itinerary for today.

So now I have an appointment for tomorrow, for the local office, but in the middle of the afternoon, when I will... do what exactly with my already-born kids, I'm not sure. The pediatrician's office called back, and said to bring Iyyar in to walk-in tomorrow morning at 8 am at the latest. That would have been flat-out impossible, logistically, without having MHH take a personal day, and since he's only got three of those we aren't about to use any of them now. So I made an appointment for 4:40 PM, called MHH and asked him to come home early. Which he did. And then Barak decided to go along too, so all three of them went.

Now we are having thunderstorms.

I didn't mention a few other things, like the lady from the Consumer Products Safety Commission who showed up to photograph Barak's broken and highly dangerous front-end loader, which has been hiding in the basement since small choking-hazard-sized pieces starting coming off it in August. "Iss my front end loader! Imma found it! Yay!" I had emailed her this morning to say that we needed to reschedule, but she was already out on her dangerous toy documentation rounds and didn't get it. (But how impressive is it that we have a government agency that does these things?! I mean, really!)

The doctor thinks that what Iyyar has is viral, did not see any signs of an ear infection and says to bring him back if he is still feverish on Wednesday. So that's good. I'm glad we don't need to give him antibiotics, especially since on Friday I filled two prescriptions for the first time in (B"H ) a long time and discovered that the two totally ordinary drugs that MHH and Iyyar had been prescribed each had a $50 copay PER MONTHLY SUPPLY. We are not talking expensive drugs for which generics are available, or fancy new recently-developed drugs. No. We are talking allergy and reflux medicine here.

Anyway. MHH and the boys stopped to get French fries on the way home, mostly to get out of the incredible downpour. They made it, B"H, in the dark and the rain across two very scary intersections, which is the main thing--MHH had the covered-in-reflective-tape jogging stroller and the geeky-in-a-cool-way flashing-lights high-visibility backpack. Like I said... nobody is really sick, nobody is hurt, nobody lost a job today, and even if I am going into labor, that could be worse too--I'll be 35 weeks on Thursday, so we're not talking major terrifying prematurity or even the potential for weeks and weeks of bedrest. And it's MHH walking the kids home in the pouring rain without a raincoat, not pregnant and possibly contracting me.

Perspective, right? Perspective.

What color are their hands now?

Two points to anyone who gets the Muppets reference.

I think I might have mentioned that my husband's parents visited last week. This was a fairly momentous occasion, since my mother-in-law, generally speaking, does not travel, and had not flown in something like 15 years. The visit was very nice and I think they enjoyed themselves. It is worth mentioning, however, that there is nothing like a weeklong visit from macrobiotic in-laws to make you want to eat an entire bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies and wash the whole thing down with Diet Coke.

They got here on Wednesday and by Thursday night I was already plotting my sugar orgy. I bought the cookies and a 20-oz bottle of caramel-colored phosphoric acid and aspartame, and hid them in the back of the cupboard and the back of the fridge, respectively. Friday morning I had a midwife appointment, so the babysitter was going to be here and I was going to have couple of hours out of the house. Mwa ha ha ha.

I woke up on Friday at some ridiculously early hour, for the fifteenth or so bathroom trip of the nightg. I was too achey to go back to bed (the hallmark of the tail end of this pregnancy) so went into the dark kitchen--it was just barely dawn--for a drink of water. Then I remembered. Ooh. Cookies. I could have a couple cookies right here in my own kitchen. Everyone's asleep. I got a couple of cookies and took out the Diet Coke, intending to indulge in a swig. The first cookie was halfway to my mouth when, as if he'd popped up through the floorboards, my FIL materialized at my elbow.

He was too polite to say anything, but looked reproachful. Cookies! For breakfast! While pregnant! The horrors! I decided to just pretend I was holding a handful of celery sticks. We chatted innocently about the plans for the day, quite as though I were not clutching a fistful of refined poison, and he continued on his laps of the apartment (morning walk and all). I put the cookies back in the bag. I slid the Diet Coke into my backpack. Then I reached over to put the cookies into the bag. I literally had them on the counter and one hand on the zipper when I heard,

"Imma, what are dose?"

What are YOU doing up?!

"Dose are cookies, Imma!"

Sigh.

"Yes, Barak."

"What are they for?"

"They're for later." True enough. They're for later for ME.

Barak looks at me, not quite accusingly, but... hurt. Surely you're not going to eat cookies without me, Imma... are you?

"You put dem in your bag."

What could I do? I took his lunchbag out of the fridge. I put in a cookie. Barak decided to push his luck.

"Can I have one to eat right now?"

"Barak, do I usually put cookies in your lunch for school?"

"No."

"So, what do you think... do you think you should ask a lot of questions, or do you think you should just enjoy your cookie when it's time for your snack?"

"I sink I should just enjoy my cookie when it's time for my snack."

"I think you're very smart."

From the mouths of, etc.

Iyyar has realized the utility of words. I think up until now he regarded them as something of a party trick, with which to occasionally delight a particularly fortunate parent. He's been saying a little bit more here and there: "doh pih" for "drop it," "ball," "cat," "car," "cheese," etc. This past week, he said "blankie" ("gahgee!") for the first time. And then a couple days ago, he was sitting morosely on the bedroom floor, looking sadly at the blankies that I'd folded in his crib too far from the accessible edge for him to pull through the bars. "Gahgee," he mourned. "Gahgee."

"Do you want a blankie?" I asked him. He looked startled. I was sitting on the floor and didn't want to get up, so I reached behind me and pulled a clean blankie--with a nice clean tasty tag on which to suck--out of the drawer, and handed it to him.

You could practically see the light bulb switch on. Heeeeyyyy. That was a neat trick. I said I wanted a blankie and like magic she gave me one. Why didn't anyone tell me I could do that?

* * *

"Thank you" was one of Barak's first words. He said "ta tam," which Israelis heard, naturally, as "toda" and Hungarians heard as "koszonom." Iyyar says "gay goo," which is, if reports are accurate, apparently what I myself said as a baby. It was, not surprisingly, my first word. Now that Iyyar has worked out that he is more likely to get things by saying "please," snack time is replete with "peess!" and "gay goo!" and "shee! shee!" ("cheese!") Yesterday (did I blog this already?) he was sitting in his high chair, nobody was really paying attention to him, and suddenly MHH and I heard, clear as a bell, "All done now." We both gaped. Then we stared at each other. "Did he really say that?" Judging by the look on his face, yes, he did.

And now that he's figured out that words let him communicate what he wants, he's started using them a whole lot more. Instead of shaking the gate to the kitchen to communicate the desire for a snack, he stands there shaking the gate caroling, "ungee! ungee! openih!" I'm HUNGRY, Imma, that's why I need you to OPEN THE GATE!"

* * *

Barak, of course, has lots and lots of words, and I try very hard to encourage him to use words and not behavior to express what he's feeling. "Barak, if you need attention, come tell me you need attention. Throwing toys and doing things you're not supposed to do isn't a good way to get attention. Tell me you need attention and I'll try to pay attention to you, okay?"

Tonight, I got home late with Iyyar from the allergist (more on this later) and MHH was home with Barak. I gave Iyyar dinner, busted out the new pajamas I got them from the LL Bean sale (blue with white polar bears, very cute) and Barak was totally delighted to match Iyyar. He danced around for a while, spinning on one foot. "Look, Imma! I can do a trick! I can do dis!" [Demonstrates one-footed spinning.] "Look!" Eventually we got both of them into bed--they've B"H been doing really well with that lately--and Abba and I repaired to the kitchen, for me to recover from the miles-long arctic trek with jogging stroller. Fifteen minutes later, we heard a familiar wail.

"IIIIMMMMMAAAAAA..."

"Barak, if you need me, you don't need to yell. Come tell me what you need." The door opened and a squinting little boy in polar bear pajamas peeked his nose out. "Imma, I need you to pay attention to me."

What could I say? "Okay, come over here and sit in my lap and I'll cuddle you a little bit." Really I should have gone into his room, but I was too tired to get up. He came out into the kitchen and climbed into my lap, head snuggled into my shoulder. "I needed some attention, Imma. I didn't have enough attention today." Pause. Sigh. "I had a long and crazy day today. That's why I need some attention now." Sounds like a good enough reason to me.

Things Iyyar Has Done This Week

1. Put both hands on his diaper, looked up at me sorrowfully, and intoned, "Boopy. Boopy." And he was right.

2. Learned to say please. Pizza is a powerful motivator.

3. Found the little pink plastic chair, dragged it over to my bed, and used it as a stepladder to get up there and attempt to pet the cat. That last part was not successful. She'll be faster than him for a long time yet.

4. Started to say "blankie" ("gangee!")

5. Realized that it feels good when I put vaseline on his chapped cheeks, and come up to me with face up requesting to be shmeared.

Let the record note

that yesterday, for the very first time, Iyyar called me Imma! He says "Amma" just like Barak did.

Various

1. Iyyar has moved from being obsessed with balls to being obsessed with the cat. Whenever he sees her, he points at her, looks at me, and crows, "Cah! Cah!" Then he points again and looks at me again, meaningfully, to check that I got it. The cat is pretty predictable in her habits and is usually to be found sitting on Abba's side of the bed. This morning, she wasn't, and when Iyyar came looking for her (direct from crib release) he was perturbed. And started picking up the blankets to peek under them, in case she was hiding in there.

2. Barak does things with toys that I can't even pretend to understand. Yesterday, he had all the Little People animals carefully arranged on the xylophone, which was attached to a dump truck by the xylophone's mallet. The dump truck had a few dinosaurs in it. When it was time to clean up, he carefully brought the entire apparatus back to the toy boxes, and explained to me, "Dey can come off now because dey went to da hospital and dey got medicine and now baruch hashem dey feel better." Okay then. Baruch Hashem.

3. The house is still moderately clean. I'm trying really hard not to let it slide, because it's just so nice like this. My favorite part: the nakedly exposed top surface of the triple dresser, on which I can now fold laundry.

4. I washed sweaters last night. I do this in the washing machine, but stopping and starting the cycle by hand (the reason why I bought a top-loader). My original intention was also to wash the fabulous maternity-sized Rogue my friend Cecilia made me. Then I realized that it would in fact require a load all of its own. Even though we have an extra-large-capacity washer.

5. I would just like to announce to the whole world that my husband rocks. Yesterday he put back two light fixtures and assembled Iyyar's new stroller (our seventh, if anyone's still counting). This from a person whose un-handiness was once legendary, and who still deeply resents the need for anything to be fixed, assembled, reassembled or otherwise, you know, dealt with on a physical plane. But he does it. Last night I told his father that he (my husband) had caulked the bathtub. There was a short pause of disbelief. "Caulked the bathtub?" Another pause. "Are you sure?"

6. Last night I took a foray into amateur shoemakerhood and fixed MHH's broken Crocs with a tapestry needle and about ten inches of silk noil. It worked, and hardly even shows. More reasons to knit, or at least to marry someone who knits.

7. The LL Bean sale page is up, which is usually the mainstay of my year's clothing shopping. Not much appealing this year though, at least to me--no women's skirts (!) and no heavyweight fleece pajamas in toddler sizes (although they did have boys' small, which I got for Barak).

Back to work. I think the whole office has taken this week off--it's the middle of the morning and I still haven't had a single call or email, which must be a first.

Please tell me it is normal

for three-year-old boys to be obsessed with all things scatological. The poopy humor ("humor" here being extremely loosely defined) has gotten to the point where all mention of things poopy has been banned from all parts of the house other than the bathroom (for obvious reasons) and the kids' room (where diapers are changed). If Barak starts shrieking about poop while, say, at the kitchen table, he is asked to relocate his one-person conversation to one of the permissible sites of poop discussion.

It's a phase, right? Right?

Still no new babysitter--T minus about a week and a half. I'm off today, but Barak and MHH are at school, so I have a rare quiet morning with Iyyar. We ran some errands this morning (in our 'hood, hardly anybody cares what day today is so almost everything is open, except the Russian stores of course), came home and played a bit, then made carrot pancakes for a mid-morning snack. Said pancakes will also serve as dinner for Barak and Iyyar; right now, Iyyar's napping, and I'm about to make some chicken soup for dinner tomorrow night and Shabbos. MHH's parents are scheduled to arrive tomorrow evening, and I want to have something ready for when they arrive. Stay tuned.

A brief shining moment

There are no dust kitties under any of the furniture.

There is nothing in any of the dishracks.

All the toys are in their proper bins.

There are no little fingerprints on the walls or doorframes.

There are clean sheets on all of the beds.

All of the laundry is done, folded, and put away.

All the closets are clean and organized.

So far as I know, there is not one dirty tissue hiding anywhere it shouldn't.

It hasn't happened since erev Pesach 2006. Who knows when it will happen again?

But for one... beautiful... moment...

My house is clean.

RFP

Further to the subject of food, can anybody think of anything I can cook for dinner that Barak is likely to eat? It seems like we are eating doodles cheese about four times a week, which, given that two other nights a week are, practically speaking, Shabbos, means an awful lot of doodles cheese. It's seeming a bit much.

There is nothing wrong with doodles cheese. I use whole-wheat noodles, I add a lot of spinach, and the only other ingredient in cheese. But... enough is enough. Sometimes I make carrot pancakes. Sometimes I make carrot muffins, which, ingredient-wise, are the same thing, with walnuts. Sometimes we have parve chicken nuggets and corn, and sometimes I make pizza, but since Barak won't touch it if it involves anything but dough and cheese, I might as well make him a grilled cheese sandwich. When I make doodles cheese I also make a big pot of vegetables, which he is required to leave in front of him but I do not force him to eat. Whatever I am cooking, he has a plate of sliced cucumbers/peppers/carrots to munch on while he waits, so it's not like he isn't getting anything. Still.

On Friday nights, Barak will happily eat chicken soup with knaidlach, and I tell myself that some of the nutrition from the vegetables must surely be in the broth. Saturday night, it being Shabbos and all, I usually let the kids have cereal and yogurt.

Suggestions, anyone?

In other news, Iyyar has an appointment with an allergist on Thursday. Twice after eating a certain brand of hummous, and then twice on subsequent Shabbosim, he's broken out all over with a bright red rash. He eats just about everything with no problem, so I'm thinking the problem must be legumes, which we tend not to eat much of during the week. He never had a problem with cholent before, but the last couple of weeks I switched from beans to lentils--maybe that's doing it. Anyway, we'll see. We've got major allergies on both sides of the family so I'm hoping we're not in for anything major here.

Trying not to panic

Asnat called last night. She is not coming back from LA. Too sunny there.

And our new babysitter called this afternoon. She has found a new job, with more hours and relevant to what she wants to do as a career.

So, that leaves me with eight hours a week of childcare (when I work twenty-five hours) for the next however many weeks of work (possibly as many as eight, although given precedent probably more like six). And then, IY"H, eight hours a week of help at home when I'll have a brand-new baby, a 21-month-old, and a currently rather volatile 3.5-year-old. MHH gets three personal days, which will probably get used up between my actually having the baby and being in the hospital. So chances are very high that I will walk in the door with the new baby and immediately be on my own with everyone for every waking minute, less the eight hours of the week that our original (fabulous) babysitter will be here.

I need to get something else figured out. Really, really soon.

Observed reality

As I've mentioned here before, one of Barak and Iyyar's favorite walk destinations is the mat room. The mat room is located inside the J, which also houses, among other things, a gym for grownups. Last Sunday, we were talking (we being me and Barak) about all going to the J so we could go to the mat room, but Barak opted instead to play in his pajamas all morning, and letting him do so seemed to me an option infinitely preferable to forcing him to get dressed so I could go push a stroller for a mile in the snow and freezing cold. Abba, however, wanted to go work out, so after davening he headed out to the J on his own. After the door closed, Barak felt a pang of regret.

"Where's Abba going?"

"He's going to the J."

"Hiss going to the J by hisself?"

"Yep."

Pause while Barak considers this.

"Why?"

"He wants to go to the gym."

"He wants to go to the gym by himself?"

"M-hm."

"Why?"

"He likes going to the gym."

Another pause.

"I sink iss not gonna work."

"What do you mean, it's not going to work?"

"I sink Abba is too big."

"He's too big? Why is he too big?"

"I sink hiss too big for da tunnel."

Ohhh. The tunnel in the baby play equipment in the mat room.

"No, sweetie, Abba's not going to go play in the mat room. He's going to the gym. That's in the J, but it's different. You've never been in there."

"What's Abba gonna do dere?"

"He's going to work out. He's going to..." How do I explain "work out"? "He's going to lift a lot of heavy things, and then he's going to run around a lot and get hot and tired."

Barak stared. Then he burst out laughing, because clearly I was just messing with him, because Abba NEVER runs around. Abba sits on the couch. With books.

Explanations

I love it when Barak explains things to me. He goes into earnest toddler mode, with lots of expressive hand gestures and much brow-furrowing. "Because dis, Imma, dis one goes dere," he informs me, punctuating his sentence with an emphatic point.

Yesterday, he closed his hand in his pajama drawer. I could tell right away he wasn't badly hurt, despite the full-volume howl--I asked him a question mid-wail and he stopped to ask, "What?" Then he came over and showed me his hand, upon my request.

"Where does it hurt? Show me."

"It hurts here. Dese ones hurt. See, dis one and dis one and dis one and dis one. But not dese ones. Dese ones [indicating un-squished hand] are okay. But dese ones [indicating hand of Tragic Drawer Injury] are all pinchy."

* * *

Lately, Barak has taken it into his head that he wants to sleep in underwear, not a pullup. This would be fine with me if he a) made this decision sufficiently prior to bedtime for me to enforce a fluid intake limit, and b) could actually stay dry during the night. He did really well one time, but the other two or three times--not so much. Last night he woke up at about 10 soaked and howling. "Imma! I pished in my unnerwear! IIIIIMMMMAAAAAA!!"

I got him up and changed, putting him in some plaid flannel pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt (the better, I thought, for unaided nighttime potty trips.) Barak was not immediately convinced. "Imma, dose are not pajamas," he informed me. "Dose are for dressed in da morning."

"Sometimes," I said. "But they can also be pajama pants. Like Abba wears. Abba doesn't wear fuzzy pajamas with a zipper, right? Abba wears pajama pants and an undershirt. See, like you're wearing. Abba wears pajama pants just like that." Barak considered this and decided he agreed. And went back to bed with no problem.

This morning, though, he woke up again soaked, and smelly. He definitely had to have a bath before school, so I herded both boys into the bathtub as soon as they woke up. I helped Barak peel off his wet pajama bottoms. He dropped them on top of MHH's pajama bottoms, which were slouched in a pile in the corner of the bathroom floor. "Imma, look!" he exclaimed. "Dose are Abba's pajama pants and my pajama pants! Dey match!"

* * *

When Barak was Iyyar's age, and up until pretty recently, he really wanted approval. If I asked him to do something, he would do it more or less immediately, with a big grin on my "Good job!" If he saw that I was annoyed, he got upset, either inwardly or outwardly. By eighteen months, his response to "Barak, no!" was "ooh--busted."

Iyyar's response to "Iyyar! No!" is, "Hee hee! Gonna make me?"

It doesn't help that Iyyar has a partner in crime, but I think most of it is just his personality. Yesterday, Barak and Iyyar decided to make a mess. I was in the living room listening to them play in the bedroom, and heard, "Iyyar! Let's make a mess! Let's make a mess, Iyyar!" I came in to their room to find that they'd completely emptied the whole bookcase, other than the unreachable top shelf, of all books and toys. "Barak, did you make a big mess?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay, so now we need to clean it up." I helped, but I made Barak pick up all the toys and all the books, put together all the puzzles, and get everything back on the shelves. So far, so good.

Until Iyyar remembered how much fun it was to make a mess, and with a gleam of determination in his eye headed back to the bookshelf and started ripping all the books off the shelves. At 31 weeks, I was not so into the idea of crawling around the floor picking things up again, and he was about to undo all of Barak's hard work. "Iyyar!"I shrieked, in a serious "DO NOT DO THAT!" tone. "Iyyar, NO! No, no, no!" Iyyar just laughed, and pulled them all off the shelf until I grabbed him away.

He completely ignores most no's and also all requests to come here--I remember that at this age Barak didn't come reliably, but he did come most of the time. (Do not compare children, do not compare children, do not compare children... ) Iyyar only comes if he thinks I've got something good for him--lunch, for example, or a ball, or socks. Did I mention that Iyyar loves having his socks put on? Sometimes he'll even take socks out of the drawer for himself, and try to put them on on top of his existing socks (and shoes). It doesn't work so well, but he'll never know if he doesn't try. If he starts dropping things off his high chair tray and I say no, he'll look me right in the eye and drop one more thing--now, the first time he drops, I just take his whole tray away and that's it. Ditto with hitting--one hit and he goes in the crib alone for a minute, which sometimes he minds and sometimes he really doesn't. Would it be mean of me to take all the blankies out of his crib before putting him in?

* * *

I think I may have mentioned here oh, forty or fifty thousand times that Barak has never been a good sleeper. Last night, he had one wakeup because of a wet bed, which was understandable. But he also woke up, at 1 and 2 and 5, with much less urgent requests. "Imma! I needa book! IIMMAA! I need you to get a book for me!" I told him to go back to bed, of course. "I don't wanna shluff. I needa book!" I refused to get out of bed, and tried as hard as I could to sleep through his pleas. Eventually, I got up and put him back in bed, where he stayed, howling.

I don't remember what the problem was the second round, but it involved Barak screaming in his room and then coming into my room to scream some more. The third time, he started out screaming about needing a truck or whatever it was, and then segued into screaming that his eyes hurt. MHH really doesn't like it when he does that, because he feels it's crying wolf--one of these days, he really will be hurt and we'll ignore it. "IMMA! IMMA! IIIIIMMMMMAAAAA!" He screamed and screamed and screamed, and this time did not wake up Iyyar. I started to get worried, not about him, but about Iyyar--how could he possibly be sleeping through such volume.

I nudged my husband. "He's screaming for me, so I don't want to go in there, but can you make sure everything's okay? I don't know how Iyyar can be sleeping through this." MHH heaved himself out of bed and trudged in there. "Barak, it's late. Imma needs to shluff. If you wake Imma up at night, she'll be grumpy tomorrow and nobody will have any fun. Go back to sleep." I was asleep again by the end of the sentence, and the next thing I knew my husband was back in bed. "I told him to go back to sleep. Iyyar was snoring."

I guess he's adapted.

For the record

two of them turned up; the tractor kippah, which was under the couch, and the excavator one, which mysteriously appeared right in the drawer where it should have been all along and categorically wasn't half an hour earlier. Not that I'm complaining.

Still hunting for the firetruck and the aleph-beis. Speaking of aleph-beis, last night Barak identified all the letters on the dreidel, even distinguishing between a gimel and a nun without prompting--not so easy, especially with the fancy type on that dreidel.

And I'm almost afraid to ask this question, but, um, how long does it take for small boys to stop gleefully inserting the word "poop" into almost every sentence? For a while Barak was shouting "Vayishlach tummy!" which I never figured out at all, but now he's returned to the liberal scatological references. Right now he is running around yelling "Iyyar! You poop! Iyyar! You poop!" Which, while technically accurate... anyway.

Iyyar's new thing is trying to attach his toothbrush, which has a suction cup on the bottom for sticking the toothbrush to the sink, to every possible surface (and some that really aren't possible at all, but he'll never know if he doesn't try). He was amazingly cooperative during yesterday's pre-Chanuka-party latke-frying marathon (ten pounds of potatoes, one borrowed food processor, and one--ONE--frying pan, capacity six latkes. It took three hours.) Toward the end, MHH came into the kitchen and saw Iyyar yelling gleefully at the top of his lungs while banging my entire set of milchig measuring cups and spoons (which are steel) on his high chair tray. "Is he supposed to have those?" he asked. "I gave them to him," I said. "What do you think goes on here every afternoon you come home to find I've actually cooked dinner? "

How?!

Barak has four kippot. FOUR. He has an excavator kippah, a firetruck kippah, a tractor kippah, and an aleph-beis kippah. Kippot one through three were custom made for him by my friend, with his name and favorite heavy machinery. Kippah number four was bought from the man with the truck. As of this moment, ALL FOUR of them are MIA. I am pretty sure they are all in the house somewhere, because I would have noticed if Barak had left the house with a kippa and returned without. Wintertime is hazardous for kippot, I know, because they get stuck in hoods and the like, but I really do think they're in the house. ALL FOUR of them. But where?!

Food

Iyyar, these days, still eats just about anything. The only things he doesn't really like are raw fruit and vegetables, and I think that's a texture thing--he'll put them in his mouth, suck on them for a minute, and then spit them out.

Barak, on the other hand, is still a pretty seriously picky eater. I don't worry about it from a health perspective, because he eats a wide enough range of nutritious food that I know he's getting what he eats, but it would be nice if he'd branch out a little--and it is a little difficult that he will hardly eat anything at your average Shabbos table. If there's some noodle kugel or apple kugel or pumpkin kugel, he's good, but otherwise, it's challah, grape juice, and off to play. But he'll eat just about any fruit I give him (he doesn't like peaches or kiwi, but other than that he'll eat it all). He happily eats whole wheat or brown rice pasta, plain brown rice, all of our sugar-free whole-grain cereals, granola with unsweetened yogurt, whole-wheat and natural peanut-butter sandwiches without jam--etc. Of course, he'd rather eat strawberry yogurt and waffles, but he knows that those are treats.

Vegetable-wise, he'll eat plain sliced cucumbers without the peel, carrots when grated and inserted into carrot pancakes or carrot muffins, and spinach when mixed into doodles cheese. I can't ever give him doodles cheese without spinach, because if I do it once it takes ten mealtimes of misery and struggle for the spinach to be acceptable again. But it's been such a long time since he's had the spinach-free variety--since early September, I think--that we've now gotten to a point where there's almost as much spinach in there as there is noodle, and he'll eat it perfectly happily.

In general, Barak and new foods don't really get along. A teaspoon of tomato sauce gives a whole pot of noodles the cooties. Latkes? Forget it. The only way to eat a potato is French fried. Meat? Straight-up bologna or hot dogs, or never mind. Pizza? Cf. "tomato sauce" and "cooties," above. Anything with any ingredient he doesn't immediately recognize is immediately dismissed from consideration.

So I was a little bit surprised when, while cooking dinner and munching on carrot sticks earlier this week, I got a request. "Imma, c'I have a carrot stick please?" Um, okay. I handed him a carrot stick. He ate it. "C'I have another one?" I handed him another one. He ate three.

Tonight, I was making dinner, which consisted of brown rice spaghetti with, you guessed it, spinach and cheese; peas; and a pot of zucchini and red peppers with garlic. Barak watched me slicing the peppers. I thought I'd try. "Barak, do you want a red pepper stick?" "Umm, yes please." I handed him a pepper stick. He ate it. "C'I have another one please?" I handed him another one. He ate another three. "I like pepper sticks. Pepper sticks are the best!"

Hmm. What else can I slip him while this phase lasts?

Seven things

1. The kids, for 90% of this afternoon, were great. This is highly notable because Barak's behavior for the last, oh, month or two has been really, really challenging. As in, really REALLY challenging. This morning was OK, and apparently he had a rough start at school (I got two phone calls) but once he got home he was just great--as in his old/normal sweet self.

He was being so cooperative, in fact, that I wanted to find something fun for him to do, so I found an empty Sterilite box (I use those to store most of their toys, so I always have a few extras around), filled it about a quarter full with the odds and ends of pasta that were hiding out in my cupboards, along with a couple of handfuls of rice, and put it on the kitchen table along with his box of Matchbox trucks. I told him that he could bulldoze and build what was in the box as long as he kept everything on the kitchen table and didn't make a mess. Could he do that? Yes, he could.

So I closed the baby gate into the kitchen and went to clean up the living room with Iyyar. Barak not only spilled next to nothing on the floor, he entertained himself happily and quietly for at least an hour and a half. During which time Iyyar enjoyed a rare spell of undivided attention, and I got to put away laundry, organize toys, and do all that fun stuff. Wow.

2. I have a tichel storage solution! Thanks for all your suggestions. I checked out the links and pondered the possibilities, but being as I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this didn't really want to buy 10 scarf hangers for my hundred-tichel collection. But they gave me an idea. As I may have mentioned here I think that the best investment ever created on the baby toy front is the $2.99 package of plastic linking rings I got Barak at Target. Well, as of now they have a new role in life. I linked them all together, hung the chain from my closet rod, and threaded a scarf through each hole. Presto--nearly instant tichel storage. All I need is another 3 packages of them, and I'm set.

3. If you have been expecting a package for me and have despaired of its ever showing up, take heart. There is a stack of packages like you wouldn't believe piled up on the bed behind me, and if all goes well I intend to mail them all tomorrow. Stay tuned.

4. A few years ago, when I first started toying with the idea of selling my loom, I asked my knitting buddy Cecilia what she would do with a $1000 yarn purchasing allowance. I wasn't seriously intending on using all the money from the loom to buy yarn (because as I may have mentioned I do have some already) but I felt it would be reasonable to put aside some portion of the proceeds of a loom sale for future unjustifiable purchases of a woolly nature. I don't remember her initial list, but a lot of Noro and a complete set of Clover needles were involved.

I did sell my loom in August, and set aside half of the money for future fiber-related purchases. I thought this was reasonable; I was selling the loom because I needed the space, and using the proceeds to fund more fibery stuff was not actually purchasing anything, just trading, right? Anyway, it went into my PayPal account, and there most of it stayed through the autumn--when I got into my third trimester.

I don't know about anyone else but I now have a three-pregnancy track record of serious fiber activity in my third trimester. As in, nonstop obsessive knitting, and yarn acquisition completely out of proportion to any hope of knitting time. When I was pregnant with Barak, I remember several sizable Webs orders; with Iyyar, it was Elann.com and sock yarn. Well, this time around, I actually had a budget to do some damage with. And... well. I now have an Ott-Lite, a greatly expanded stash of Socks that Rock mediumweight, a pretty good collection of Opal (already diminished by recent knitting activity), some new sock knitting bags from my favorite Etsy shop, and, um, quite a lot of new knitting needles.

5. And speaking of knitting needles--well, I could try to blame Grandma E for those, but that wouldn't be quite fair. She did, it is true, turn up on her last visit with a set of the new KnitPicks nickel-plated Options needles. She did sing their praises and tell marvelous tales of the smoothness of their joins and the sharpness of their tips. However, she did direct several pointed looks at the open closet door on which is hung my entire admittedly expansive collection of circular needles. And perhaps, when I murmured something about possibly wanting some Options needles of my own, her seemingly straight-faced reply of "Because you don't have enough needles," might have had just a touch of, oh, I don't know, sarcasm. Probably not though. Right?

Anyway, I did buy some of the Options needles in the laminated wood, along with some of their DPs in size 0. And I must say that they are now my favorite needles ever. They are smooth, they are sharp, they are warm and they are light. With a few sets of tips and cords, you suddenly have almost any size circular needle you could need, other than the 16" ones (which I don't often use anyway, since I prefer DPs.) And speaking of DPs--their DPs come in sets of six. Six!

AND, so far at least, they do not bend. Usually after a mere two pairs of socks my bamboo DPs are C-shaped. I've had these for a few weeks and they have been in pretty much constant use, and there is nary a sign of warping. Plus, they are very lovely to look at. I only bought them in the 0s, and now I am eyeing the full set of sock needles in sizes 0-3. But I will resist. Really. I will. Even though Cecilia already bought them and had them sent here for me to send on to her in Australia, where KnitPicks does not ship, and I have been gazing at them longingly for quite a while now. I will resist, because I have completed my fiber shopping for this pregnancy--even though Grandma E is right, and I don't have enough needles.

6. Iyyar is talking more and more now. He is quite fascinated by Emese and points at her with exclamations of "Cah! Cah!" He also is very into socks, for some reason, and not only sticks his foot out for me to put socks onto, he occasionally gets himself more socks out of his sock drawer and tries to pull an extra sock or two on top of his shoes. It doesn't work so well, but he enjoys it, and that's what matters, right?

7. I had been gaining weight faster than I wanted to so a few weeks ago decided to banish white flour and white sugar from my diet during the week. I'll eat it on Shabbos (which includes Saturday night, because otherwise how would I eat pizza?) but have been pretty vigilant about not touching it otherwise. No white pasta, no white bread, no trips to the bakery, but other than those two banned ingredients I eat what I want. Tonight, dinner was brown rice spaghetti with spinach and cheese, a big pot of onions and mushrooms sauteed in butter, and latkes. Clearly, I am not starving myself or anyone else around here. Yet to my shock and delight, at my last prenatal I found out I hadn't gained any weight all month! Baby, B"H, is growing fine, but I didn't gain any weight. Woohoo! So far I've gained 20 lb, with officially 10 weeks to go (although I've never gone past 38 weeks before, so it's probably more like 7 or 8 weeks to go) so if I can make it through Chanuka without tripping up too badly, I might actually have this baby at the same weight I was when I had Barak, even though I started out this time about, oh, 15 lb up from my starting weight then. Even if I gain close to a pound a week, which right now I'm not doing. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Tichel storage

Does anybody out there have a good way of storing tichels (headscarves)? I currently have a pretty large drawer crammed with them, courtesy of my friend who spent the summer in Israel, found a place that sold them for 8 shekel each, and brought me back thirty--that's right, thirty--of them. (But as I like to point out, my entire expansive tichel collection still costs less than one good sheitel. Or even one cheap one.) When my tichels live in my drawer they a) get wrinkled and b) hide from me when I'm looking for the only one I own that matches whatever it is I'm wearing. Besides that, they're pretty, and it's sort of a shame to hide them all in there. I googled "tichel storage" and, oddly enough, came up with nothing.

Ideas?

Hard day

Sometimes, Barak has a hard day. A hard day means lots of counting, lots of misbehaving, lots of Imma mentally counting to ten, lots of time outs. At night, when I'm putting the kids to bed, I'll ask him if he had a good day or a hard day. Usually, even if he had a good day, he'll say he had a hard day. Then he'll sigh an age-old sigh and tell me wearily, "I don't like having a hard time."

Yeah, well, Imma doesn't like it either.

I could give a recap of the day, but I'd rather just let it be water under the bridge. Three and a half is the hardest, right? Right? Right? (Don't start telling me about the teenage years. I'm not even thinking about that yet.)