did not start terribly well. Well, last night was good; Avtalyon slept in a regular crib all night, with his big brothers in the room, and everyone slept fine from when I moved Avtalyon in there at around 9 through till 6:45 this morning. I had to leave at 7:30 to take Iyyar to the doctor, and of course at 7:35 there was no cab. Many back and forth calls later (during each of which I reconfirmed my exact address) I got a call that "my cab had arrived"--ten blocks away. Gah! So we left half an hour late, for the appointment that it had taken a month to get, with me practically in tears thinking we'd miss it and Avtalyon hysterical because I kept coming in and out the front door with the car seat. (Oh, and Avtalyon has a fever. Forgot to mention that part.)
We did make it, in the end, with about a minute to spare. The appointment went well. We were there all morning, from 8:40 till around noon. Iyyar was down another half pound to 31. We checked in with the nurse, who took the back story, and then we spent a good half hour talking to the GI doctor, who listened, asked questions, examined him, and then told me what she thought the possibilities were: behavioral constipation (I really don't think that's it at this point), celiac, a thyroid problem, parasites, or something with a very long name that means a sensitivity to milk protein in the small intestine. She ordered a bunch of blood work and we also need to bring in stool samples for the parasites etc. Unfortunately, Iyyar has very small veins and the phlebotomist could only get enough blood to do the chem labs. We were told to come back, but I'm going to see if I can get the labs done at our local hospital and have them sent over. The place we went to today is half an hour away by cab, which means at least two hours of babysitting plus cabs etc.
We also saw a nutritionist, who thinks that the weight loss is mostly to do with a) taking dairy out of his diet and b) him not feeling good, partly because of the tummy issues and also partly because of his huge huge huge tonsils. (We're seeing the ENT next week, and I fully expect to be told that the tonsils have to go. Did I mention they're HUGE?) I told her exactly what Iyyar eats in a given day--it doesn't vary much--and she said I needed to be adding fat. More peanut butter, which he loves, or olive oil on his noodles. I've been worrying about getting vegetables into him, but she said I should be focusing on fats (which also help lubricate the digestive system, as it were.)
In general it was reassuring. The doctor told me point blank that she doesn't see signs of anything extremely concerning; Iyyar was happy and bouncy and playing the whole time we were there, ate his whole snack (strawberries, crackers, raisins and apple juice) with great gusto, and seemed to forgive her for the indignity of the rectal exam. She wants him back on Miralax, even though it did nothing at all that I could see, and also agreed that we should go back to daily warm baths and lots of A & D in the diaper in case the problem is fissures that are making pooping painful.
The nice part about going to a specialist at a children's hospital is that the whole place is so well set up for kids. The exam rooms are kid-friendly, there are tons of toys, everyone there deals well with kids. The hard part is seeing so many kids in such bad shape. There was a little girl in an examining room next to ours whose wheelchair was sitting nearby; she was lying on an examining table while the adults were talking a few feet away, and my instinct was, "careful, she'll roll right off!" Then I looked again and realized that she wasn't capable of rolling herself anywhere. I am not good at seeing such things and telling myself how much I have to be grateful for. I know exactly how much I have--but that doesn't make it hurt less to see people with much harder things to deal with.
Anyway. That's the update for today. No poop to report, but no poop-related misery either, which is something. As for me, my house is clean, my kids are abed, and it's time to write some speeches.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Twelve months
I took Avtalyon for his twelve-month checkup yesterday. Friday afternoon in the winter is not really the ideal time to schedule a well baby visit, but it's the only time I can do it without paying for a babysitter, so that's when we went. It went fine. Great, actually. I was kind of looking forward to it, truth be told. Because usually, these well baby visits around here go kind of like this:
"So, is he walking yet?"
"No."
"Holding his own cup?"
"No."
"How about blocks? Is he stacking blocks?"
"Ummm... no."
"Pointing?"
"No."
"Clapping his hands, how about that?"
"Uh, no, but I haven't been trying to teach him that one."
"Well, how about words? How many words is he using regularly?"
"Words, as in, English words that anybody could recognize, or... um.. I... not really any, actually, now that you ask."
And so I was greatly looking forward to walking in to a 12-month checkup with a baby who'd been walking for two months already, who uses something like 10 words, who plays games, does give-and-take, points, plays peekaboo, holds his own cup and! yes! knows his own name! Alas, what happens when you walk in with a child who is clearly developmentally normal is THEY DON'T ASK YOU ANY OF THOSE THINGS. Unfair as all heck, isn't it?
He was holding my credit card; the pediatrician took it, he took it back, and then offered it back to her. "Oh, he does give and take!" Then, "What are you feeding him?" I blathered on for a while about his outstanding pincer grip, his ability to hold his own cup, his shocking facility at sleeping through the night with only one nursing break--all those things that, you know, weren't quite happening at this point with Barak or Iyyar. "Mmm-hmmm," she said politely, after listening to his lungs and peeking in his ears. "You can turn his carseat around now if you want, you know." I launched into a diatribe about how it was really safer to keep them rear-facing for as long as possible, but installing convertible carseats rear-facing is a lot trickier, so, sometimes when we take a cab...
Through all of this, Avtalyon was being a rock star. He was toddling around the exam room, stopping every so often to shoot me a blinding grin and then demonstrate his royal wave. I mentioned his Abba; he crowed "Abba! Abba! Ah ba ba ba!! Ha ha ha!! Abba!" I said his name and he stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "Yes? You called?" He tried to open the garbage can, he made a good attempt at reaching the keyboard, he came over to visit me and drool companionably on my knee. He's 25th percentile for weight, 40th for height. He got his Prevnar and his last Hib shot yesterday, resulting in a fever this morning that disappeared quickly with some Tylenol. "He's doing great."
I felt a little guilty about the whole thing (shocking, isn't it? Me? Feeling guilty?)--as though I were somehow saying, "I know the first two were totally substandard babies but look, I got it right this time!" Which of course isn't how I feel at all. It's just that the first two had what one might call a total disregard for the foolishness contained in What to Expect the First Year, a volume of uselessness dumped in the trash by Iyyar's 6-month checkup as nothing but food for my neuroses. I think they're both fine developmentally, and cheerfully ignored the letter home that Barak got about his inability to draw X's and circles on demand. He draws houses full of dragons sleeping and eating chocolate cows. That's enough for me.
I also, while at the doctor's, got Iyyar's records and growth charts to take to the GI doctor's visit next Tuesday. Iyyar has been much better generally since we stopped with the dairy, but things have been going less well this week; there's been a lot of "my tushy hurts me," and "I can't poop!" He isn't really constipated though; regular dirty diapers lately. So I don't know. I did notice when looking at his records that he seems to have gone down a pound a month since I first brought him in about this in November; 33.5, then 32.5, then 31.5 at our last visit. I know that the first visit he was horrifically constipated so I can easily imagine that extra pound being all poop; he's also had a major source of fat and calories (dairy) removed from his diet. Still, I didn't like seeing that.
Anyway, we've got the records now, and his films from the hospital, and we had the visit with the allergist, so I've got everything I need for the GI doctor next week. Let's hope she's got some answers for us.
"So, is he walking yet?"
"No."
"Holding his own cup?"
"No."
"How about blocks? Is he stacking blocks?"
"Ummm... no."
"Pointing?"
"No."
"Clapping his hands, how about that?"
"Uh, no, but I haven't been trying to teach him that one."
"Well, how about words? How many words is he using regularly?"
"Words, as in, English words that anybody could recognize, or... um.. I... not really any, actually, now that you ask."
And so I was greatly looking forward to walking in to a 12-month checkup with a baby who'd been walking for two months already, who uses something like 10 words, who plays games, does give-and-take, points, plays peekaboo, holds his own cup and! yes! knows his own name! Alas, what happens when you walk in with a child who is clearly developmentally normal is THEY DON'T ASK YOU ANY OF THOSE THINGS. Unfair as all heck, isn't it?
He was holding my credit card; the pediatrician took it, he took it back, and then offered it back to her. "Oh, he does give and take!" Then, "What are you feeding him?" I blathered on for a while about his outstanding pincer grip, his ability to hold his own cup, his shocking facility at sleeping through the night with only one nursing break--all those things that, you know, weren't quite happening at this point with Barak or Iyyar. "Mmm-hmmm," she said politely, after listening to his lungs and peeking in his ears. "You can turn his carseat around now if you want, you know." I launched into a diatribe about how it was really safer to keep them rear-facing for as long as possible, but installing convertible carseats rear-facing is a lot trickier, so, sometimes when we take a cab...
Through all of this, Avtalyon was being a rock star. He was toddling around the exam room, stopping every so often to shoot me a blinding grin and then demonstrate his royal wave. I mentioned his Abba; he crowed "Abba! Abba! Ah ba ba ba!! Ha ha ha!! Abba!" I said his name and he stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "Yes? You called?" He tried to open the garbage can, he made a good attempt at reaching the keyboard, he came over to visit me and drool companionably on my knee. He's 25th percentile for weight, 40th for height. He got his Prevnar and his last Hib shot yesterday, resulting in a fever this morning that disappeared quickly with some Tylenol. "He's doing great."
I felt a little guilty about the whole thing (shocking, isn't it? Me? Feeling guilty?)--as though I were somehow saying, "I know the first two were totally substandard babies but look, I got it right this time!" Which of course isn't how I feel at all. It's just that the first two had what one might call a total disregard for the foolishness contained in What to Expect the First Year, a volume of uselessness dumped in the trash by Iyyar's 6-month checkup as nothing but food for my neuroses. I think they're both fine developmentally, and cheerfully ignored the letter home that Barak got about his inability to draw X's and circles on demand. He draws houses full of dragons sleeping and eating chocolate cows. That's enough for me.
I also, while at the doctor's, got Iyyar's records and growth charts to take to the GI doctor's visit next Tuesday. Iyyar has been much better generally since we stopped with the dairy, but things have been going less well this week; there's been a lot of "my tushy hurts me," and "I can't poop!" He isn't really constipated though; regular dirty diapers lately. So I don't know. I did notice when looking at his records that he seems to have gone down a pound a month since I first brought him in about this in November; 33.5, then 32.5, then 31.5 at our last visit. I know that the first visit he was horrifically constipated so I can easily imagine that extra pound being all poop; he's also had a major source of fat and calories (dairy) removed from his diet. Still, I didn't like seeing that.
Anyway, we've got the records now, and his films from the hospital, and we had the visit with the allergist, so I've got everything I need for the GI doctor next week. Let's hope she's got some answers for us.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Pro-life, pro-choice
I don't usually write about politics here. The politics I care about most are in Israel, and I don't have the knowledge or the stomach to get into that on a regular basis. So far as American politics go, I don't get too wrapped up in it; we don't have a TV, I was almost completely oblivious of the election until a few weeks before it was time to vote, and so far as my personal make-or-break political issues, they are limited to the environment, Israel, and, yes, abortion.
I am very firmly of the opinion that the men in Washington (and the few women) should not be the ones making the reproductive choices for us all. They should not be the ones deciding for people like Julia, with miscarriages numbering in the double digits because of an unbalanced translocation, or the woman I know who waited six years to be pregnant, only to find out through an ultrasound that the baby would not survive to birth. They should not decide for the women with preeclampsia, or those with HELLP. And they should not be deciding for the women with no partner, no source of income but her own job, and no one to help her with a baby.
Every abortion is a tragedy, for everyone concerned. Yes, it's killing a baby. I'm very fond of babies, and I don't want anyone to kill babies. We can agree on that, surely. Isn't everyone (okay, not Hamas, but the rest of us) pro-life, when it comes down to it? Who's pro-death? Who's actually pro-abortion? Those of us who are pro-choice recognize that sometimes, all the choices are bad.
Which is why this organization gets my money. What a concept! Let's actually give women--at least some of them, those we can help--choices. Let's give them better choices. Let's acknowledge, for once, that most women have abortions because they can't take care of a baby--and give them a better choice. How about help with the baby? How about a crib, a stroller, baby clothes, diapers, and food? Oh--and while we're at it, how about help with daycare, so that the mother won't be unemployed and destitute as soon as she gives birth?
Great idea, isn't it? In a tiny country like Israel, it stops 4,000 abortions a year.
Wouldn't it be nice if, in this country, we could do something similar? How about, in this time of too many people needing too few jobs, if some of that stimulus money went to creating a program of--gasp--government-paid maternity leave? How about government-funded daycare? Think how many problems that would solve. More women would be able to take care of their babies, resulting in fewer abortions. Jobs would be created in daycares by the babies whose moms worked, and jobs would be left open by the women choosing to stay home with their babies.
Wouldn't that make everybody happy?
It'd sure make the babies happy.
How about if, now that we're all believing in change, we think about changing things for them?
I am very firmly of the opinion that the men in Washington (and the few women) should not be the ones making the reproductive choices for us all. They should not be the ones deciding for people like Julia, with miscarriages numbering in the double digits because of an unbalanced translocation, or the woman I know who waited six years to be pregnant, only to find out through an ultrasound that the baby would not survive to birth. They should not decide for the women with preeclampsia, or those with HELLP. And they should not be deciding for the women with no partner, no source of income but her own job, and no one to help her with a baby.
Every abortion is a tragedy, for everyone concerned. Yes, it's killing a baby. I'm very fond of babies, and I don't want anyone to kill babies. We can agree on that, surely. Isn't everyone (okay, not Hamas, but the rest of us) pro-life, when it comes down to it? Who's pro-death? Who's actually pro-abortion? Those of us who are pro-choice recognize that sometimes, all the choices are bad.
Which is why this organization gets my money. What a concept! Let's actually give women--at least some of them, those we can help--choices. Let's give them better choices. Let's acknowledge, for once, that most women have abortions because they can't take care of a baby--and give them a better choice. How about help with the baby? How about a crib, a stroller, baby clothes, diapers, and food? Oh--and while we're at it, how about help with daycare, so that the mother won't be unemployed and destitute as soon as she gives birth?
Great idea, isn't it? In a tiny country like Israel, it stops 4,000 abortions a year.
Wouldn't it be nice if, in this country, we could do something similar? How about, in this time of too many people needing too few jobs, if some of that stimulus money went to creating a program of--gasp--government-paid maternity leave? How about government-funded daycare? Think how many problems that would solve. More women would be able to take care of their babies, resulting in fewer abortions. Jobs would be created in daycares by the babies whose moms worked, and jobs would be left open by the women choosing to stay home with their babies.
Wouldn't that make everybody happy?
It'd sure make the babies happy.
How about if, now that we're all believing in change, we think about changing things for them?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
But wait! There's...
... more.
But we're not going to get into that. A few updates instead.
1. I took Iyyar to the allergist today and the test for milk allergy was negative. She (allergist) told me that it is possible that it is another kind of sensitivity that is not a true allergy, and recommended keeping him off dairy anyway since he's been doing so much better without it. I was going to do that anyway, of course, even though Iyyar is Not Pleased about the sudden lack of cheese in his diet. Vegan not-cheese is not doing it for him, and I can't say I blame him. I can't blame him for getting mad about seeing Barak and Avtalyon get the real stuff, either. But I simply can't take dairy out of Barak's diet. He's such a picky eater that if I stop giving him dairy there'll be nothing left to give him but wheat, cucumbers, and fruit. I think it'll be easier after next week, when school is back in session; that way I can give Barak and the baby dairy without Iyyar looking on and feeling deprived.
2. I got a new laptop at work. It's pretty shpitzy. I haven't really played with it yet but will do so as soon as I get my desk excavated.
3. I lost weight this month. I have no idea how I managed this, but I'm not complaining. I am back to X + 11, for those keeping score at home.
4. All I want to do is spin and knit. I know, not really an update. But worth mentioning.
5. Mr. Fixit came yesterday to put light fixtures in the two closets that didn't have them, in the name of moth deterrence. I've done what I can with laundering and freezing; I also ordered moth traps, which don't actually kill the moths but lets you know where you've got them. In the meantime, I've been fixing a lot of holes.
6. There is no number six.
7. I just got a pretty impressive care package today from a friend in Boston. This may sabotage #3, but that's okay.
8. I am enjoying the kids' winter break much more than they are. I love sleeping that extra half an hour, and I really really love not having to haul out the double stroller in all this ice.
9. I've gone to bed before midnight every night so far this week. This may not sound like much, but it's pretty unusual around here, and I'm hoping to keep it up.
10. There's no number ten, either. Off to clean.
But we're not going to get into that. A few updates instead.
1. I took Iyyar to the allergist today and the test for milk allergy was negative. She (allergist) told me that it is possible that it is another kind of sensitivity that is not a true allergy, and recommended keeping him off dairy anyway since he's been doing so much better without it. I was going to do that anyway, of course, even though Iyyar is Not Pleased about the sudden lack of cheese in his diet. Vegan not-cheese is not doing it for him, and I can't say I blame him. I can't blame him for getting mad about seeing Barak and Avtalyon get the real stuff, either. But I simply can't take dairy out of Barak's diet. He's such a picky eater that if I stop giving him dairy there'll be nothing left to give him but wheat, cucumbers, and fruit. I think it'll be easier after next week, when school is back in session; that way I can give Barak and the baby dairy without Iyyar looking on and feeling deprived.
2. I got a new laptop at work. It's pretty shpitzy. I haven't really played with it yet but will do so as soon as I get my desk excavated.
3. I lost weight this month. I have no idea how I managed this, but I'm not complaining. I am back to X + 11, for those keeping score at home.
4. All I want to do is spin and knit. I know, not really an update. But worth mentioning.
5. Mr. Fixit came yesterday to put light fixtures in the two closets that didn't have them, in the name of moth deterrence. I've done what I can with laundering and freezing; I also ordered moth traps, which don't actually kill the moths but lets you know where you've got them. In the meantime, I've been fixing a lot of holes.
6. There is no number six.
7. I just got a pretty impressive care package today from a friend in Boston. This may sabotage #3, but that's okay.
8. I am enjoying the kids' winter break much more than they are. I love sleeping that extra half an hour, and I really really love not having to haul out the double stroller in all this ice.
9. I've gone to bed before midnight every night so far this week. This may not sound like much, but it's pretty unusual around here, and I'm hoping to keep it up.
10. There's no number ten, either. Off to clean.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
And even more!
On Shabbos, Avtalyon started feeling a little warm. Then he felt warmer. Then he felt really, really hot, and that was when I decided to check his diaper and realized that it had stayed totally dry for over 5 hours, and then I checked his temperature with a fancy infrared thermometer (after Shabbos) and it came up at everything from 101.7 to 105.1 and then 106.2. So much for fancy infrared thermometer. Motrin, then Tylenol three hours later, and a lot of screaming. B"H he's better today. I think it's teething. He wanted to nurse, but couldn't at all, and was pulling at his ears a bit. Don't tell me teething doesn't cause fever--I'll nod politely but know you're wrong.
This afternoon Iyyar very deliberately sneaked a good long swig from Barak's cup of milk, which I saw only after it was too late. Tonight I went to Target with a friend to pick up, among other things, more baby Tylenol; when I came home, Iyyar had thrown up, Avtalyon was screaming, and Barak was coming out of bed whining that nobody was paying ANY ATTENTION TO HIM AT ALL! I snapped at Barak, saying something I immediately regretted, and managed to get everyone else to sleep pretty easily. Then I spent a little time making it up with Barak and explaining why I'd been angry; he didn't seem to have hurt feelings and went to sleep happily with Middos Machine, the pink CD (Episode 3, in which Shnooky gets into Dr. Middos's Time Machine, with all the consequences you would expect).
It really is looking like a dairy allergy. I have an appointment for Iyyar with a pediatric GI specialist at the local children's hospital a week from Tuesday; I'm going to see if I can get him in with the allergist at our pediatric practice too. There wasn't much of a wait the last time we took him (right before Avtalyon was born--remember the hives?) and the more information I can bring to the GI doctor, the better.
This afternoon Iyyar very deliberately sneaked a good long swig from Barak's cup of milk, which I saw only after it was too late. Tonight I went to Target with a friend to pick up, among other things, more baby Tylenol; when I came home, Iyyar had thrown up, Avtalyon was screaming, and Barak was coming out of bed whining that nobody was paying ANY ATTENTION TO HIM AT ALL! I snapped at Barak, saying something I immediately regretted, and managed to get everyone else to sleep pretty easily. Then I spent a little time making it up with Barak and explaining why I'd been angry; he didn't seem to have hurt feelings and went to sleep happily with Middos Machine, the pink CD (Episode 3, in which Shnooky gets into Dr. Middos's Time Machine, with all the consequences you would expect).
It really is looking like a dairy allergy. I have an appointment for Iyyar with a pediatric GI specialist at the local children's hospital a week from Tuesday; I'm going to see if I can get him in with the allergist at our pediatric practice too. There wasn't much of a wait the last time we took him (right before Avtalyon was born--remember the hives?) and the more information I can bring to the GI doctor, the better.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
More
1. More moth holes. Many more. I am in the middle of washing all my sweaters and taking them outside to freeze. But the stash! Do I take out the entire stash? There is so much stash. I have hundreds of pounds of wool in the house. I can't deal.
2. More Iyyar woes. I had to take him to the dentist today because he was crying that his teeth hurt. The dentist saw nothing--$95 and $48 of babysitting later. He and Avtalyon are also just getting over major diarrhea, with attendant major diaper rashes.
3. More work stress. The assistant to my main client is mad at me because I screwed up. I didn't get everything done this week I should have done (because of sick kids) and I sent the wrong speech, plus one speech with the wrong tag. She is under a lot of stress herself and reamed me out in front of people. I don't deal well with things like that.
4. We're going away for Shabbos. I have to pack, and before I can pack, I have to iron a bunch of shirts.
5. I can't do that because I'm supposed to be writing speeches.
6. I'm not writing speeches because I'm dealing with moths.
7. My house is a trashed wreck. It was totally clean on Tuesday night. I was caught up on laundry then, too.
Off to dump a lot of wool into trash bags.
2. More Iyyar woes. I had to take him to the dentist today because he was crying that his teeth hurt. The dentist saw nothing--$95 and $48 of babysitting later. He and Avtalyon are also just getting over major diarrhea, with attendant major diaper rashes.
3. More work stress. The assistant to my main client is mad at me because I screwed up. I didn't get everything done this week I should have done (because of sick kids) and I sent the wrong speech, plus one speech with the wrong tag. She is under a lot of stress herself and reamed me out in front of people. I don't deal well with things like that.
4. We're going away for Shabbos. I have to pack, and before I can pack, I have to iron a bunch of shirts.
5. I can't do that because I'm supposed to be writing speeches.
6. I'm not writing speeches because I'm dealing with moths.
7. My house is a trashed wreck. It was totally clean on Tuesday night. I was caught up on laundry then, too.
Off to dump a lot of wool into trash bags.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Knots
I am feeling really really really stressed out right now, and I thought it might be helpful to sit down and list the reasons why. Just, you know, to get a handle on it.
1. Barak and the biting business. I talked to the early childhood director today and she did not seem terribly worked up but she said that his teacher will be calling me tonight.
2. I found a great big m*th hole smack front and center on Barak's dragon vest. The dragon vest he last wore last week. Those are some pretty brazen moths. This means I have to go wash all my sweaters (we are talking high double digits here, household-wide) and should probably go inspect all my yarn, too. Not a minor undertaking, especially in winter.
3. Speaking of winter, it is really, really cold here. We are all stir-crazy. The snowplows do not worry about pedestrians, so leave snowbanks that are between knee- and thigh-high at the sides of the roads. For me to get over with my double stroller. If the stroller sinks into the bank, I'm sunk, and have to turn around and haul the thing out from the front--you know, on the side of the road, which is slippery and has cars on it. Gah.
4. Work. Work is busy. Work is stressful. There is a lot of it, which is good, but my place of employment is in financial trouble (show me one that isn't!) and we are having a meeting on Thursday to discuss our new austerity measures. I have been told that we are not at the layoffs stage. Which implies that there might be one later, doesn't it.
5. Iyyar's tummy. Today was fine, after a lot of diarrhea last night and this morning. I really hope it is just the dairy. Could one cookie's worth of butter (two cookies made with half butter, half margarine) have done that? Or is it something else? Should I be following up on that referral to the pediatric GI specialist at the children's hospital, with all the un-fun testing that that will entail? Or should I wait and see?
6. An old friend wrote me today and asked if she could give my email to a relative I have not heard from in several years--well, I haven't heard from any of my relatives in years. It's possible that this is just a friendly gesture. It's also possible that something is up.
7. Oh, and the war. Yes. That. And the threats against the Jewish schools in town. One of which is my son's.
8. I should not have checked the estimated value of our apartment right now. It was a bad idea. Because now I know that if we were to sell it now to, say, make aliyah, we'd probably get just enough to cover what's left on our mortgage. Which is $63,000 less than what we paid for our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. I think the best move right now is to refinance in a week or two, on the assumption that rates are as low as they will ever be, to get the lowest monthly payment possible, and then try to rent it out.
9. Money, generally. We are barely saving anything, despite what seems to me like a good income for both of us. It just goes... in mortgage, utilities, babysitting, tuition, playgroup, clothes (they keep growing! and destroying their pants!) and food. I go through all of our bills and credit card charges every month and this past month the only thing that I could have reasonably cut was $56.00 on wool. This month we bought plane tickets to Edmonton to visit my SIL at Pesach. That was a lot, but realistically not much more than we would have spent making Pesach here. It meant taking money out of savings to get to the end of the month. And this was supposed to be our last year to save. Next year, it's full tuition for Barak: almost $10,000 a year for kindergarten. I don't think we'll be eligible for scholarship for one, although we'll apply, of course.
10. That's really enough, isn't it? But one more thing. This afternoon I was taking pictures with the kids and letting them take pictures of me (with me holding the camera). That is never a flattering way to be photographed, but do I really have that many chins? And do I really look that... old and tired?
Sigh.
Off to write some speeches. And not get any spinning in. Maybe tomorrow?
1. Barak and the biting business. I talked to the early childhood director today and she did not seem terribly worked up but she said that his teacher will be calling me tonight.
2. I found a great big m*th hole smack front and center on Barak's dragon vest. The dragon vest he last wore last week. Those are some pretty brazen moths. This means I have to go wash all my sweaters (we are talking high double digits here, household-wide) and should probably go inspect all my yarn, too. Not a minor undertaking, especially in winter.
3. Speaking of winter, it is really, really cold here. We are all stir-crazy. The snowplows do not worry about pedestrians, so leave snowbanks that are between knee- and thigh-high at the sides of the roads. For me to get over with my double stroller. If the stroller sinks into the bank, I'm sunk, and have to turn around and haul the thing out from the front--you know, on the side of the road, which is slippery and has cars on it. Gah.
4. Work. Work is busy. Work is stressful. There is a lot of it, which is good, but my place of employment is in financial trouble (show me one that isn't!) and we are having a meeting on Thursday to discuss our new austerity measures. I have been told that we are not at the layoffs stage. Which implies that there might be one later, doesn't it.
5. Iyyar's tummy. Today was fine, after a lot of diarrhea last night and this morning. I really hope it is just the dairy. Could one cookie's worth of butter (two cookies made with half butter, half margarine) have done that? Or is it something else? Should I be following up on that referral to the pediatric GI specialist at the children's hospital, with all the un-fun testing that that will entail? Or should I wait and see?
6. An old friend wrote me today and asked if she could give my email to a relative I have not heard from in several years--well, I haven't heard from any of my relatives in years. It's possible that this is just a friendly gesture. It's also possible that something is up.
7. Oh, and the war. Yes. That. And the threats against the Jewish schools in town. One of which is my son's.
8. I should not have checked the estimated value of our apartment right now. It was a bad idea. Because now I know that if we were to sell it now to, say, make aliyah, we'd probably get just enough to cover what's left on our mortgage. Which is $63,000 less than what we paid for our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. I think the best move right now is to refinance in a week or two, on the assumption that rates are as low as they will ever be, to get the lowest monthly payment possible, and then try to rent it out.
9. Money, generally. We are barely saving anything, despite what seems to me like a good income for both of us. It just goes... in mortgage, utilities, babysitting, tuition, playgroup, clothes (they keep growing! and destroying their pants!) and food. I go through all of our bills and credit card charges every month and this past month the only thing that I could have reasonably cut was $56.00 on wool. This month we bought plane tickets to Edmonton to visit my SIL at Pesach. That was a lot, but realistically not much more than we would have spent making Pesach here. It meant taking money out of savings to get to the end of the month. And this was supposed to be our last year to save. Next year, it's full tuition for Barak: almost $10,000 a year for kindergarten. I don't think we'll be eligible for scholarship for one, although we'll apply, of course.
10. That's really enough, isn't it? But one more thing. This afternoon I was taking pictures with the kids and letting them take pictures of me (with me holding the camera). That is never a flattering way to be photographed, but do I really have that many chins? And do I really look that... old and tired?
Sigh.
Off to write some speeches. And not get any spinning in. Maybe tomorrow?
Ohm....
Barak is driving me crazy.
Yesterday I got a phone call at noon from the director of early childhood education at his school. Barak had bitten another child and I needed to come pick him up, right away. I told her I couldn't--it was an hour until school ended and I couldn't make it there that fast on foot in all the snow with a double stroller. He came home in regular carpool, and spent the rest of the afternoon whining, complaining, doing things he wasn't supposed to do, and whining some more. He didn't want to use the bathroom. Wouldn't eat his dinner and campaigned loudly and obnoxiously for cereal instead. Didn't want to go to bed. Needed a different Middos Machine CD. Add to this that Iyyar had had a cookie made with butter on Sunday and was right back to square one with the tummy distress--so while Iyyar was writhing and wailing on the floor, howling that his tushy hurt and he needed to POOP, Barak was hollering even louder to make himself heard about NEEDING THE PINK MIDDOS MACHINE CD BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT THE GREEN ONE AND HE NEEDED IT A GOTCHION MUCH AND IF HE DIDN' T GET IT HE WAS JUST GOING TO SCREAM.
Good thing I am opposed to corporal punishment, isn't it?
We got through the day somehow and this morning was all the same. I need oatmeal. I need raisins. I NEED THEM! I NEED RAISINS! I know he is four but his total inability to see that I AM ALREADY IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING YOUR RAISINS or I CANNOT GET YOU RAISINS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM NURSING THE BABY is a little hard to take. (Sound familiar, Zahava?) Before I had gotten him anything else he decided that in fact he wanted granola and yogurt. I got him granola and yogurt. He took one look and announced that THERE WASN'T ENOUGH GRANOLA IN HIS YOGURT. I told him he could eat it or not eat it but he had kvetched and therefore was not going to get what he had kvetched for (policy around here--ineffective at quelling the kvetching, but consistently applied in an undying hope that it'll work eventually). He sat down and started eating. Sloooowwwlly.
All this was going on while Iyyar, who had pooped out two days' worth of post-cookie poop over the course of the night, was getting de-pooped in the bathtub, while Avtalyon was proclaiming his righteous outrage from the highchair. Decibel level climbing, nerves frazzling.
And on the way to carpool: "Imma, there wasn't enough granola in my yogurt."
AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!
Uh-oh. I hear Iyyar crying for me. I kept him home from school today because by the time he got out of the bathtub it was already time to take Barak to carpool; if I'd come back to get him and taken him to school I would have lost half an hour of work time. Easier to keep him home with Asnat and Avtalyon. He's been fine tummy-wise for more than a week, but on Sunday he had two of the cookies I made for Sunday night, which had butter in them--and then started crying a couple of hours later that he needed to poop and his tummy hurt. I really want to think that this is not mere coincidence and dairy is the culprit, because it's something that's relatively easy to manage. So why am I hearing him crying now?
Sigh.
Oh, and did I mention that when I was packing Barak's bag this morning, it was full of toys he'd taken home from school? "Did your morah know that you took those?" "No." "Were you allowed to take those or not allowed?" "Not."
He's four. I know he's four. And much of the time he is sweet and charming. He is usually obedient and always happy to run get me a rag or a box of wipes when I need them. He plays nicely with his brothers 90% of the time. He gives the baby kisses. He likes school. He's polite. He draws pictures for the lady at work who doesn't have anyone to draw her pictures. He is getting a huge kick out of learning the alphabet and reading the signs that say OPEN on the stores. He knows STOP and ONE WAY too. On Sunday he took three polite bites of a vegetable omelet without spitting anything out. True, he took cookies he wasn't supposed to take on Sunday--but he told me the truth right away.
He's a good boy. He really is. He's just driving me slowly insane.
Yesterday I got a phone call at noon from the director of early childhood education at his school. Barak had bitten another child and I needed to come pick him up, right away. I told her I couldn't--it was an hour until school ended and I couldn't make it there that fast on foot in all the snow with a double stroller. He came home in regular carpool, and spent the rest of the afternoon whining, complaining, doing things he wasn't supposed to do, and whining some more. He didn't want to use the bathroom. Wouldn't eat his dinner and campaigned loudly and obnoxiously for cereal instead. Didn't want to go to bed. Needed a different Middos Machine CD. Add to this that Iyyar had had a cookie made with butter on Sunday and was right back to square one with the tummy distress--so while Iyyar was writhing and wailing on the floor, howling that his tushy hurt and he needed to POOP, Barak was hollering even louder to make himself heard about NEEDING THE PINK MIDDOS MACHINE CD BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT THE GREEN ONE AND HE NEEDED IT A GOTCHION MUCH AND IF HE DIDN' T GET IT HE WAS JUST GOING TO SCREAM.
Good thing I am opposed to corporal punishment, isn't it?
We got through the day somehow and this morning was all the same. I need oatmeal. I need raisins. I NEED THEM! I NEED RAISINS! I know he is four but his total inability to see that I AM ALREADY IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING YOUR RAISINS or I CANNOT GET YOU RAISINS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM NURSING THE BABY is a little hard to take. (Sound familiar, Zahava?) Before I had gotten him anything else he decided that in fact he wanted granola and yogurt. I got him granola and yogurt. He took one look and announced that THERE WASN'T ENOUGH GRANOLA IN HIS YOGURT. I told him he could eat it or not eat it but he had kvetched and therefore was not going to get what he had kvetched for (policy around here--ineffective at quelling the kvetching, but consistently applied in an undying hope that it'll work eventually). He sat down and started eating. Sloooowwwlly.
All this was going on while Iyyar, who had pooped out two days' worth of post-cookie poop over the course of the night, was getting de-pooped in the bathtub, while Avtalyon was proclaiming his righteous outrage from the highchair. Decibel level climbing, nerves frazzling.
And on the way to carpool: "Imma, there wasn't enough granola in my yogurt."
AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!
Uh-oh. I hear Iyyar crying for me. I kept him home from school today because by the time he got out of the bathtub it was already time to take Barak to carpool; if I'd come back to get him and taken him to school I would have lost half an hour of work time. Easier to keep him home with Asnat and Avtalyon. He's been fine tummy-wise for more than a week, but on Sunday he had two of the cookies I made for Sunday night, which had butter in them--and then started crying a couple of hours later that he needed to poop and his tummy hurt. I really want to think that this is not mere coincidence and dairy is the culprit, because it's something that's relatively easy to manage. So why am I hearing him crying now?
Sigh.
Oh, and did I mention that when I was packing Barak's bag this morning, it was full of toys he'd taken home from school? "Did your morah know that you took those?" "No." "Were you allowed to take those or not allowed?" "Not."
He's four. I know he's four. And much of the time he is sweet and charming. He is usually obedient and always happy to run get me a rag or a box of wipes when I need them. He plays nicely with his brothers 90% of the time. He gives the baby kisses. He likes school. He's polite. He draws pictures for the lady at work who doesn't have anyone to draw her pictures. He is getting a huge kick out of learning the alphabet and reading the signs that say OPEN on the stores. He knows STOP and ONE WAY too. On Sunday he took three polite bites of a vegetable omelet without spitting anything out. True, he took cookies he wasn't supposed to take on Sunday--but he told me the truth right away.
He's a good boy. He really is. He's just driving me slowly insane.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Another Iyyarism
Earlier this week, at bedtime, as I was rooting around in Iyyar's drawer for pajamas:
"Iyyar, which pajamas do you want? Do you want the doggie pajamas?" (It's actually a reindeer--pajamas purchased on post-Christmas sale at LL Bean--but he thinks it's a doggie and I haven't corrected him.)
"Not doddie. Dat one moose!"
"It's a moose? I thought it was a doggie."
[with conviction and very great earnestness] "Not! Is moose! Not doddie!"
"Oh, okay. Do you want the moose pajamas then?"
"No!"
"Which ones do you want?"
"Want it dis one! Want it truck jajamas!"
"Truck pajamas? Okay, you want truck pajamas. Oh wait. Iyyar, we don't have the top of those. They're in the wash. Do you want your doobie [bear] pajamas? Do you want to match Avtalyon?"
[Iyyar surveys his pajama options, then inspects Avtalyon, who is already in doobie jajamas.]
"Yeah! Match!"
"Okay, you're going to match!"
"Match it baby jajamas! Match it Talyon jajamas!"
"Right, you're going to match Avtalyon's pajamas!"
Eyebrows two inches above normal position, eyes wide: "Also Barak have jajamas!"
"Right, Barak has pajamas too."
"Abba not have jajamas."
"Yeah, he does. You just never see them because he's up before you ."
"Abba has jajamas?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
"Oh." Iyyar considers this. Then, shaking head regretfully, palms pointing skyward,"Not Imma has jajamas."
That's true, actually. My nighttime nursing wardrobe is pretty... eclectic. "No, Imma doesn't have pajamas."
Iyyar looks at me sympathetically. "Not have."
They're going to be called jajamas around here for a while, I think.
In other news, the no-dairy seems to have worked--that plus warm baths plus lots of A & D. He last had dairy last Thursday. Friday was the usual, Saturday morning was awful. Saturday afternoon he started with diarrhea that lasted through Sunday afternoon. Monday was maybe half an hour of crying in the morning, followed by much much more poop. Monday night, as I was putting on his jajamas, I suddenly noticed that his potbelly had vanished. How awful must that have felt? Tuesday night he was back to his sweet troublemaking self; yesterday and today has been normal poopage without fanfare. (Well, normal except that it smells incredibly foul. Can't blame him for that, though, given what I've been feeding him in the roughage and fiber department.) It's so nice to have my happy little boy back.
"Iyyar, which pajamas do you want? Do you want the doggie pajamas?" (It's actually a reindeer--pajamas purchased on post-Christmas sale at LL Bean--but he thinks it's a doggie and I haven't corrected him.)
"Not doddie. Dat one moose!"
"It's a moose? I thought it was a doggie."
[with conviction and very great earnestness] "Not! Is moose! Not doddie!"
"Oh, okay. Do you want the moose pajamas then?"
"No!"
"Which ones do you want?"
"Want it dis one! Want it truck jajamas!"
"Truck pajamas? Okay, you want truck pajamas. Oh wait. Iyyar, we don't have the top of those. They're in the wash. Do you want your doobie [bear] pajamas? Do you want to match Avtalyon?"
[Iyyar surveys his pajama options, then inspects Avtalyon, who is already in doobie jajamas.]
"Yeah! Match!"
"Okay, you're going to match!"
"Match it baby jajamas! Match it Talyon jajamas!"
"Right, you're going to match Avtalyon's pajamas!"
Eyebrows two inches above normal position, eyes wide: "Also Barak have jajamas!"
"Right, Barak has pajamas too."
"Abba not have jajamas."
"Yeah, he does. You just never see them because he's up before you ."
"Abba has jajamas?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
"Oh." Iyyar considers this. Then, shaking head regretfully, palms pointing skyward,"Not Imma has jajamas."
That's true, actually. My nighttime nursing wardrobe is pretty... eclectic. "No, Imma doesn't have pajamas."
Iyyar looks at me sympathetically. "Not have."
They're going to be called jajamas around here for a while, I think.
In other news, the no-dairy seems to have worked--that plus warm baths plus lots of A & D. He last had dairy last Thursday. Friday was the usual, Saturday morning was awful. Saturday afternoon he started with diarrhea that lasted through Sunday afternoon. Monday was maybe half an hour of crying in the morning, followed by much much more poop. Monday night, as I was putting on his jajamas, I suddenly noticed that his potbelly had vanished. How awful must that have felt? Tuesday night he was back to his sweet troublemaking self; yesterday and today has been normal poopage without fanfare. (Well, normal except that it smells incredibly foul. Can't blame him for that, though, given what I've been feeding him in the roughage and fiber department.) It's so nice to have my happy little boy back.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Iyyarisms
Maybe it's because he hasn't been feeling well, and I appreciate it more when he's being his usual self, but Iyyar has been ridiculously cute lately. He's had a big jump in his expressive language and every five minutes comes out with something that I know I should write down or blog or remember to tell Abba when he gets home. And later? I can't remember it at all.
So I'll open a window in blogger and see what I can remember.
1. I've been teaching Barak his ABC's, which he won't be learning in school till the year after next (Hebrew first, then English). Barak is okay with this but not wildly into it. His visual memory is not the greatest--he still has a hard time with a number of Hebrew letters and usually needs hints to differentiate gimel from nun, hay from chet, etc. Iyyar, on the other hand, can be told a letter once and, if he's in the mood, remember it forever. Last week Barak made an A page for his ABC book. I gave Iyyar some coloring to do at the same time but did not mention A to him specifically, even though obviously he was in the room at the same time. Next time the box of Weetabox comes out: "Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa A"!
Hey, he's right. "That is an A! Good job!" Then,
"Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa oder one A! Iss two A's!" What do you know. It is!
I showed him B and he spent some time picking out B's. I showed him S yesterday and he already knows C from C is for Cookie. Sometimes he mixes them up, showing me an S and saying A, but he usually gets them right.
2. The last three days have been better poop-wise. (Hmm, blogger seems to consider "poop-wise" a valid English word. There must be a lot of mothers of small children on blogger--ya think?) Yesterday morning he spent about half an hour crying and saying he needed to poop, but then he spent the rest of the afternoon pooping with little fanfare. I can't imagine he's still constipated with everything that's been coming out. I took the suggestion of Miriam and Dr. Google and stopped giving him cow's milk as of last Thursday, which seems to be helping.
Yesterday I had a serious talk with Barak about why we can't give Iyyar milk or things with milk, how they make him sick, etc. He told me about kids at school who are allergic to bananas and so on and seemed to get it. Which is why I was both surprised and un-thrilled to find him and Iyyar hiding under the kitchen table, with Barak spoon-feeding yogurt from a full quart container into Iyyar's mouth. I heard them giggling under there but they didn't seem to be getting into any trouble--then I saw what they were doing. I really gave it to Barak, who knew very well what he was doing--I just hope it doesn't put us back at square one.
3. I was going to talk about cute Iyyarisms, right? Okay, so, he still says "od" in Hebrew when he means "another one." So if he sees a second letter A, sometimes it's "od A!" If he sees more than one of something and wants to count, it's always "two!"
4. On the subject of numbers, this isn't an Iyyarism but it is worth noting. Barak likes numbers, the bigger, the better. "Million" and "billion" and even "trillion" and "googleplex" didn't do it for him, so he came up with "sillion" and "gotchion." As in, "I love cinnamon cereal! I love it a hundred thousand gotchion ten much! I just want to eat it the whole day!" A gotchion, apparently, is more than a sillion, so that's really a lot.
5. Iyyar is into Emese lately. He likes to follow her into our room and peek under the bed to check that she's there. All cats are Emese, including the Lego cat, which is, to be fair, small, round and gray.
6. Avtalyon is getting three upper teeth at the same time. The top front left tooth is through as well as the one to the left of that, which gives him an oddly lopsided appearance; the top front right tooth is almost through. This means that he is slightly cranky (which, for the record, would have equaled an incredibly calm and even-keeled day for either Barak or Iyyar at that age) and wants to chew on everything, including Grover's nose.
Iyyar has a Grover doll--I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this--who is now his best friend. He takes Grover just about everywhere and if he does not have Grover in his crib he will wake up and call me politely to find him. Right now, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to grab Grover and shove that big pink nose right in his mouth. There are few that Iyyar wants less. "No! My Grover! No baby! No Talyon! Not your Grover!" I'm going to have to find Avtalyon a similarly appealing Elmo or something to prevent escalation of hostilities.
7. Iyyar is picking up a few of Barak's less great habits, like the urgent screaming for whatever minor desire he might have at the moment. I'm not sure why he thinks this is a good idea, since it never gets Barak anywhere, but I guess it is part of the little brother territory. So sometimes I'll here Iyyar, in his little two-year-old voice, bellow, "Imma! Needa JUICE! NEEDA! JUICE! RIGHT! NOW!" with accompanying foot-stamps. What is very funny about this is that when he does this, he is not actually after juice. He knows quite well that he will not get juice by doing this. He just thinks it's fun. So sometimes, I'll hear him hollering in the living room, throwing a tantrum for juice--without ever bothering to come let me know about it.
8. Lately, Iyyar has taken to imitating a fire truck siren. His idea of a firetruck siren, however, is a one-second earsplitting shriek right at the upper ranges of human hearing, before you get into the frequencies of, say, dog whistles. "Imma! Fire truck do whooop!" "Actually, I think it makes a sound more like this: woooOOOOOoooooOOOO." "No. Firetruck do whoop!" At this point I agree with him, just because my ears hurt and I don't want him to do it again.
9. Sometime last week Iyyar woke up at 2 am in so much pain that, in desperation, I brought him into my office to show him Grover videos on YouTube just to distract him. It worked somewhat--he was interested in Grover even though he was doubled over and crying--and so it's not that I regret that exactly. The trouble now, of course, is that he knows that Grover is inside my computer. He knows about Grover and the soup, and Grover and the big and little hamburgers, and Grover in the baftub, and Grover singing about around, over, under, and through. "Want see Grover! Want see Grover 'nair! Want go office, Grover!" (feet stomp) Sometimes I let him see one or two, but when I've got all three of them back here it gets pretty perilous. This room is just not set up for free-ranging small children.
10. There has to be a #10, right? Ummm... oh yes. Iyyar and Avtalyon. When Iyyar and Avtalyon are together without Barak around, it is very very cute. Not always, because sometimes there are the dread Grover Wars, and sometimes Iyyar wants nothing so much as to take every toy Avtalyon touches and put it on the highest shelf he can reach--but sometimes, sometimes it is very cute. Sometimes, in fact, Iyyar is downright solicitous of Avtalyon. He shows him how to do things. "Wook, baby! Wook, Talion! Openit--no! Not like that. Not like that, baby. Wook! Dis! Dis way!"
And Iyyar and Avtalyon have something else in common, too, besides the shared love for Grover. They both sing the happy food song.
So I'll open a window in blogger and see what I can remember.
1. I've been teaching Barak his ABC's, which he won't be learning in school till the year after next (Hebrew first, then English). Barak is okay with this but not wildly into it. His visual memory is not the greatest--he still has a hard time with a number of Hebrew letters and usually needs hints to differentiate gimel from nun, hay from chet, etc. Iyyar, on the other hand, can be told a letter once and, if he's in the mood, remember it forever. Last week Barak made an A page for his ABC book. I gave Iyyar some coloring to do at the same time but did not mention A to him specifically, even though obviously he was in the room at the same time. Next time the box of Weetabox comes out: "Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa A"!
Hey, he's right. "That is an A! Good job!" Then,
"Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa oder one A! Iss two A's!" What do you know. It is!
I showed him B and he spent some time picking out B's. I showed him S yesterday and he already knows C from C is for Cookie. Sometimes he mixes them up, showing me an S and saying A, but he usually gets them right.
2. The last three days have been better poop-wise. (Hmm, blogger seems to consider "poop-wise" a valid English word. There must be a lot of mothers of small children on blogger--ya think?) Yesterday morning he spent about half an hour crying and saying he needed to poop, but then he spent the rest of the afternoon pooping with little fanfare. I can't imagine he's still constipated with everything that's been coming out. I took the suggestion of Miriam and Dr. Google and stopped giving him cow's milk as of last Thursday, which seems to be helping.
Yesterday I had a serious talk with Barak about why we can't give Iyyar milk or things with milk, how they make him sick, etc. He told me about kids at school who are allergic to bananas and so on and seemed to get it. Which is why I was both surprised and un-thrilled to find him and Iyyar hiding under the kitchen table, with Barak spoon-feeding yogurt from a full quart container into Iyyar's mouth. I heard them giggling under there but they didn't seem to be getting into any trouble--then I saw what they were doing. I really gave it to Barak, who knew very well what he was doing--I just hope it doesn't put us back at square one.
3. I was going to talk about cute Iyyarisms, right? Okay, so, he still says "od" in Hebrew when he means "another one." So if he sees a second letter A, sometimes it's "od A!" If he sees more than one of something and wants to count, it's always "two!"
4. On the subject of numbers, this isn't an Iyyarism but it is worth noting. Barak likes numbers, the bigger, the better. "Million" and "billion" and even "trillion" and "googleplex" didn't do it for him, so he came up with "sillion" and "gotchion." As in, "I love cinnamon cereal! I love it a hundred thousand gotchion ten much! I just want to eat it the whole day!" A gotchion, apparently, is more than a sillion, so that's really a lot.
5. Iyyar is into Emese lately. He likes to follow her into our room and peek under the bed to check that she's there. All cats are Emese, including the Lego cat, which is, to be fair, small, round and gray.
6. Avtalyon is getting three upper teeth at the same time. The top front left tooth is through as well as the one to the left of that, which gives him an oddly lopsided appearance; the top front right tooth is almost through. This means that he is slightly cranky (which, for the record, would have equaled an incredibly calm and even-keeled day for either Barak or Iyyar at that age) and wants to chew on everything, including Grover's nose.
Iyyar has a Grover doll--I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this--who is now his best friend. He takes Grover just about everywhere and if he does not have Grover in his crib he will wake up and call me politely to find him. Right now, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to grab Grover and shove that big pink nose right in his mouth. There are few that Iyyar wants less. "No! My Grover! No baby! No Talyon! Not your Grover!" I'm going to have to find Avtalyon a similarly appealing Elmo or something to prevent escalation of hostilities.
7. Iyyar is picking up a few of Barak's less great habits, like the urgent screaming for whatever minor desire he might have at the moment. I'm not sure why he thinks this is a good idea, since it never gets Barak anywhere, but I guess it is part of the little brother territory. So sometimes I'll here Iyyar, in his little two-year-old voice, bellow, "Imma! Needa JUICE! NEEDA! JUICE! RIGHT! NOW!" with accompanying foot-stamps. What is very funny about this is that when he does this, he is not actually after juice. He knows quite well that he will not get juice by doing this. He just thinks it's fun. So sometimes, I'll hear him hollering in the living room, throwing a tantrum for juice--without ever bothering to come let me know about it.
8. Lately, Iyyar has taken to imitating a fire truck siren. His idea of a firetruck siren, however, is a one-second earsplitting shriek right at the upper ranges of human hearing, before you get into the frequencies of, say, dog whistles. "Imma! Fire truck do whooop!" "Actually, I think it makes a sound more like this: woooOOOOOoooooOOOO." "No. Firetruck do whoop!" At this point I agree with him, just because my ears hurt and I don't want him to do it again.
9. Sometime last week Iyyar woke up at 2 am in so much pain that, in desperation, I brought him into my office to show him Grover videos on YouTube just to distract him. It worked somewhat--he was interested in Grover even though he was doubled over and crying--and so it's not that I regret that exactly. The trouble now, of course, is that he knows that Grover is inside my computer. He knows about Grover and the soup, and Grover and the big and little hamburgers, and Grover in the baftub, and Grover singing about around, over, under, and through. "Want see Grover! Want see Grover 'nair! Want go office, Grover!" (feet stomp) Sometimes I let him see one or two, but when I've got all three of them back here it gets pretty perilous. This room is just not set up for free-ranging small children.
10. There has to be a #10, right? Ummm... oh yes. Iyyar and Avtalyon. When Iyyar and Avtalyon are together without Barak around, it is very very cute. Not always, because sometimes there are the dread Grover Wars, and sometimes Iyyar wants nothing so much as to take every toy Avtalyon touches and put it on the highest shelf he can reach--but sometimes, sometimes it is very cute. Sometimes, in fact, Iyyar is downright solicitous of Avtalyon. He shows him how to do things. "Wook, baby! Wook, Talion! Openit--no! Not like that. Not like that, baby. Wook! Dis! Dis way!"
And Iyyar and Avtalyon have something else in common, too, besides the shared love for Grover. They both sing the happy food song.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
A vagany mellett kerjuk vigyazzanak
I can't tell you how nostalgic this makes me. I used to take that train every Sunday morning at 5:23 am. The music doesn't really do it for me though--it should really be Sipos F. Tamas or something. Oh, oh my gosh, this.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Everybody's a critic
Last Friday Ada came over to help out, since Asnat was out of town and I had to take Iyyar for the GI and then, theoretically, work, although that part never did happen. As she was leaving I noticed her wrapping a polyester fleece scarf around her neck. With what was probably barely concealed disapproval, I asked her if that was warm. She said it wasn't and she'd been looking for a better (read: wool) scarf. I don't actually like knitting scarves that much--they're boring as anything--but this situation simply could not be allowed. "I'll make you one," I said. "What do you want?" We established that the scarf should be pink, that it did not have to be especially soft, and that wide was good.
I thought about spinning something, then decided in the name of speed to, um, make a directional scarf in Silk Garden Sock. (Yeah. Speed. In sock yarn. I know, I know.) I cast on this morning and by midafternoon sometime was into the first short-row section. Then Iyyar came over and inquired as to what I was doing. The conversation went something like this:
"What dat?"
"That's for Ada."
"Dat socks?"
"No, that's a scarf."
"Garf?"
"Yep, scarf."
"Not garf. Sock."
"No, it's a scarf."
"No gike it."
"You don't have to like it."
Pause during which Iyyar wrinkles nose in expression of total disgust. Then, shaking head disapprovingly,
"I gink Urda no gike it. Ewww."
The scarf is sitting on a shelf until Ada is here next. I'm not making an entire scarf out of sock yarn if it's going to be ewww.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Hurt me
Friday's GI series went fine. Iyyar did not enjoy himself but drank the stuff he was supposed to drink and generally cooperated as much as could be expected; the radiologist said everything looked normal. Friday night he (Iyyar, not radiologist) pooped with minimal crying and hopes were raised. Today, though--two straight awful hours of screaming and crying and writhing and stomping his feet, pulling each knee up to his tummy in turn, all while pleading and wailing. "Hurt me! Hurt me tushy! Poopy! Owww..." I tell him he needs to poop and then he'll feel better. "I can't..."
I don't know. One second he's in agony and the next something catches his interest, then you can see on his face when something hurts again. It seems like it's abdominal cramping from his behavior. He isn't really that constipated though, in regards to how much is in there--not so much poop showed up on the scan and he's been going at least somewhat almost every day. So why does it hurt so much? I don't know. We'll see how tomorrow goes--one more day on Miralax--and then I'll call the doctor on Monday to see what's next.
I don't know. One second he's in agony and the next something catches his interest, then you can see on his face when something hurts again. It seems like it's abdominal cramping from his behavior. He isn't really that constipated though, in regards to how much is in there--not so much poop showed up on the scan and he's been going at least somewhat almost every day. So why does it hurt so much? I don't know. We'll see how tomorrow goes--one more day on Miralax--and then I'll call the doctor on Monday to see what's next.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Poop
Iyyar is constipated.
Let's just get that part right out in the open to begin with. This has been going on for a while now, since before Thanksgiving at least, since the weekend after Thanksgiving is when Sarah came to visit and accompanied us to a memorable family photography session at which Iyyar alternately smiled cheesily for the camera and bent over double howling, "Poooooopyyyyyyyy! Imma, I need poop potty! Hurt me! Tushy hurt me! Imma, tushy hurt me!" A few minutes after the end of the session, he pooped--cataclysmically--and felt better.
Since then, it's been sort of off and on. He's had a really bad cold, and some kind of a bug, and he's thrown up a few times (once rather memorably when Sarah was here). Now the cold is gone, the bug seems to be gone (although he did throw up a little last Friday night) and he is really, really, really constipated--as in, last Thursday he woke up from his nap crying and screaming and writhing so much that, in the absence of an open pediatrician's office to take him to, I brought him to the ER.
Without going into too many details, let me just say that none of my several visits to our local ER has greatly inspired my confidence. This one was no exception. They did give Iyyar an x-ray and pronounced him impacted; they gave him a suppository, which, much screaming and wailing later, produced four very full and very foul diapers and a much happier Iyyar. They told me to follow up with an appointment with my regular pediatrician, and sent me home with an extra suppository just in case. They seemed to think the matter resolved and so did I; but less than a day later, we were right back where we'd been with the pain and the wailing. I gave him suppository #2, which worked somewhat. Sunday night, it all started up again, and I wasn't happy about waiting for my Wednesday appointment but circumstances around here (an unexpected trip out of town for my husband) weren't really conducive to my trying to go elsewhere.
Last night at around 9, he started crying, and then the crying escalated to wailing and writhing and howling and the whole nine yards. I called a neighbor who had mentioned sometimes using suppositories on her own kids and asked if I could have one; I used it on Iyyar with no results whatsoever. I tried all my tricks (this is, obviously, after a couple of weeks of the full-on anti-constipation diet, which Barak has been loving--hey, juice! Imma never lets us have apple juice and now we get apple juice and applesauce and raisins and dried apricots ALL THE TIME!), to no avail; the only thing that calmed him down at all was, between around 1 and 2 am, some time on my lap in my office watching Grover clips on YouTube with occasional pauses to cry and strain and try to poop. "I can't! Poop! Hurt me! Hurt me Imma!" It was awful. At around 2 we called the doctor's office for any ideas; she asked why he hadn't been prescribed a laxative or given an enema and I gave the bitter rundown of the ER visit. Sigh.
Fast forward to this morning, far too few hours of sleep later. Barak went to school and I took Iyyar, still unhappy but no longer crying, to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checked him out, prescribed Miralax, and said he wasn't that concerned. "He's not really that impacted. I don't feel anything up there, so let's see what the Miralax does. It's not as though he's been throwing up and..."
"He has been throwing up, actually." Hmm. I'd forgotten to mention that.
"What?" This, apparently, makes a big difference. Now we are scheduled for an upper GI series for Iyyar on Friday morning, with the barium and the rest of it. I'm still not sure exactly what they are looking for--I have been told not to worry yet but this is just about the worst thing to say to me if you really think I shouldn't worry. I told the doctor as much. "If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll know. If you don't, I'll imagine all kinds of catastrophic things, so you might as well just tell me." Congenital anomalies, I have been told, or any kind of a blockage.
In the meantime, I gave him the Miralax and he's had three dirty diapers since. He does seem to feel much better. Here's hoping that this will all turn out to be nothing much and will resolve itself speedily, with no more lasting adverse effects than Avtalyon having figured out that stray sippy cups found on the floor might contain something he now knows he likes very, very, very much.
Let's just get that part right out in the open to begin with. This has been going on for a while now, since before Thanksgiving at least, since the weekend after Thanksgiving is when Sarah came to visit and accompanied us to a memorable family photography session at which Iyyar alternately smiled cheesily for the camera and bent over double howling, "Poooooopyyyyyyyy! Imma, I need poop potty! Hurt me! Tushy hurt me! Imma, tushy hurt me!" A few minutes after the end of the session, he pooped--cataclysmically--and felt better.
Since then, it's been sort of off and on. He's had a really bad cold, and some kind of a bug, and he's thrown up a few times (once rather memorably when Sarah was here). Now the cold is gone, the bug seems to be gone (although he did throw up a little last Friday night) and he is really, really, really constipated--as in, last Thursday he woke up from his nap crying and screaming and writhing so much that, in the absence of an open pediatrician's office to take him to, I brought him to the ER.
Without going into too many details, let me just say that none of my several visits to our local ER has greatly inspired my confidence. This one was no exception. They did give Iyyar an x-ray and pronounced him impacted; they gave him a suppository, which, much screaming and wailing later, produced four very full and very foul diapers and a much happier Iyyar. They told me to follow up with an appointment with my regular pediatrician, and sent me home with an extra suppository just in case. They seemed to think the matter resolved and so did I; but less than a day later, we were right back where we'd been with the pain and the wailing. I gave him suppository #2, which worked somewhat. Sunday night, it all started up again, and I wasn't happy about waiting for my Wednesday appointment but circumstances around here (an unexpected trip out of town for my husband) weren't really conducive to my trying to go elsewhere.
Last night at around 9, he started crying, and then the crying escalated to wailing and writhing and howling and the whole nine yards. I called a neighbor who had mentioned sometimes using suppositories on her own kids and asked if I could have one; I used it on Iyyar with no results whatsoever. I tried all my tricks (this is, obviously, after a couple of weeks of the full-on anti-constipation diet, which Barak has been loving--hey, juice! Imma never lets us have apple juice and now we get apple juice and applesauce and raisins and dried apricots ALL THE TIME!), to no avail; the only thing that calmed him down at all was, between around 1 and 2 am, some time on my lap in my office watching Grover clips on YouTube with occasional pauses to cry and strain and try to poop. "I can't! Poop! Hurt me! Hurt me Imma!" It was awful. At around 2 we called the doctor's office for any ideas; she asked why he hadn't been prescribed a laxative or given an enema and I gave the bitter rundown of the ER visit. Sigh.
Fast forward to this morning, far too few hours of sleep later. Barak went to school and I took Iyyar, still unhappy but no longer crying, to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checked him out, prescribed Miralax, and said he wasn't that concerned. "He's not really that impacted. I don't feel anything up there, so let's see what the Miralax does. It's not as though he's been throwing up and..."
"He has been throwing up, actually." Hmm. I'd forgotten to mention that.
"What?" This, apparently, makes a big difference. Now we are scheduled for an upper GI series for Iyyar on Friday morning, with the barium and the rest of it. I'm still not sure exactly what they are looking for--I have been told not to worry yet but this is just about the worst thing to say to me if you really think I shouldn't worry. I told the doctor as much. "If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll know. If you don't, I'll imagine all kinds of catastrophic things, so you might as well just tell me." Congenital anomalies, I have been told, or any kind of a blockage.
In the meantime, I gave him the Miralax and he's had three dirty diapers since. He does seem to feel much better. Here's hoping that this will all turn out to be nothing much and will resolve itself speedily, with no more lasting adverse effects than Avtalyon having figured out that stray sippy cups found on the floor might contain something he now knows he likes very, very, very much.
Doughnuts
Chanuka just ended yesterday and we finished it off in the traditional jelly-filled sugar-topped way, with sufganiot. And it reminded me of a granny story, possibly one of my favorites.
I was sitting in my granny's kitchen watching her fry doughnuts (fank) which were to be filled with homemade apricot jam and eaten warm. If you've never tried this, well... what can I say, you haven't lived. Anyway, there I was in the kitchen, watching this very normal thing (granny frying doughnuts) when suddenly it hit me what I was seeing.
She was turning the doughnuts. In the boiling oil.
With her fingers.
Erm.
It's better in Hungarian, but this is the exchange that followed:
Nagymama, az Neked nem faj? Grandma, doesn't that hurt?
Granny smiles without looking up. Most mar nem. Not anymore.
I was sitting in my granny's kitchen watching her fry doughnuts (fank) which were to be filled with homemade apricot jam and eaten warm. If you've never tried this, well... what can I say, you haven't lived. Anyway, there I was in the kitchen, watching this very normal thing (granny frying doughnuts) when suddenly it hit me what I was seeing.
She was turning the doughnuts. In the boiling oil.
With her fingers.
Erm.
It's better in Hungarian, but this is the exchange that followed:
Nagymama, az Neked nem faj? Grandma, doesn't that hurt?
Granny smiles without looking up. Most mar nem. Not anymore.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Why I don't blog about Israel
Because you can all just read David instead.
He pretty much says what I would say if I knew as much as he does and could put it as clearly.
He pretty much says what I would say if I knew as much as he does and could put it as clearly.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Anybody there?
Hello? Hello?
I'm still here, just otherwise engaged. The kids go to bed, whatever needs to get done around the house gets done (or not) and then when it is a choice between spinning and blogging... well...
I'm still here, just otherwise engaged. The kids go to bed, whatever needs to get done around the house gets done (or not) and then when it is a choice between spinning and blogging... well...
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Quiet
Sorry for the infrequent and badly written posts. It's been busy around here.
Avtalyon is walking more and more; he can now lurch from couch #1 to couch #2 without face-planting. He likes playing peek-a-boo and Barak has fun playing it with him and making him laugh. Personally, I totally don't get why it's so funny, but it's cute, so who cares?
Iyyar still talks like Yoda, but surprises me more and more often with a fully formed offering like, "Imma, put that down!" when I've tipped the jogging stroller up to turn it. He also does an entertaining Hebrew-English patois, in which he demands "doobie one blankie" or "od doggie!"The constipation continues off and on; yesterday I broke out an intended Chanuka present (a Sesame Street sticker book with pictures of Grover) to distract him from his misery before he (finally) pooped. Good thing he likes prunes ("big raisins") or we'd really be in trouble. He no longer eats everything indiscriminately as he once did; he eats the knaidlach out of his chicken soup, leaves the rest untouched, and holds out the bowl demanding "More chichen soup!" That stuff in there? That's not soup. That's just, you know, soup waste. Carrots and whatever.
Barak is getting taller, and will loudly proclaim to everyone that this is because he is EATING HIS VEGETABLES. After said proclamation, he will consume one (1) noodle with one (1) shred of spinach attached. He still seems happy at school, though I have heard other rumblings that all might not be well. My friend up the street told me that her daughter told her that she'd been told by another child "Don't like Barak!" And today he was upset because another child tried to take his cookies and his morah had to intervene. Sigh. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not, because my own experience was anything but. When is it really appropriate to step in? I keep telling myself that as long as he's happy and loves school I am not going to worry about third party commentary, and will just check in with his morohs monthly or so. Not sure if this is the right thing to do.
For myself, I am very happy with the new wall unit thingie I have back here, bought off of craigslist from someone who had a Curves that went out of business. It's 5' high and 5' across, with 16 cubbies that are 15" deep. Lots of stash fits in there and it now looks like a yarn shop back here. In a good way, of course. I am finally knitting a second sweater for Abba, out of some White Buffalo Unspun I bought from elann some years ago. It's three strands of very fine roving, held together, and I am knitting it on 10s so it's going quite quickly. Of course, very fine totally unspun roving is also incredibly fragile to knit, and I am doing a lot of knitting in the eye of the storm that is three boys aged 4 and under. Oh well. It spit-splices very nicely, and it'll still be warm.
Avtalyon is walking more and more; he can now lurch from couch #1 to couch #2 without face-planting. He likes playing peek-a-boo and Barak has fun playing it with him and making him laugh. Personally, I totally don't get why it's so funny, but it's cute, so who cares?
Iyyar still talks like Yoda, but surprises me more and more often with a fully formed offering like, "Imma, put that down!" when I've tipped the jogging stroller up to turn it. He also does an entertaining Hebrew-English patois, in which he demands "doobie one blankie" or "od doggie!"The constipation continues off and on; yesterday I broke out an intended Chanuka present (a Sesame Street sticker book with pictures of Grover) to distract him from his misery before he (finally) pooped. Good thing he likes prunes ("big raisins") or we'd really be in trouble. He no longer eats everything indiscriminately as he once did; he eats the knaidlach out of his chicken soup, leaves the rest untouched, and holds out the bowl demanding "More chichen soup!" That stuff in there? That's not soup. That's just, you know, soup waste. Carrots and whatever.
Barak is getting taller, and will loudly proclaim to everyone that this is because he is EATING HIS VEGETABLES. After said proclamation, he will consume one (1) noodle with one (1) shred of spinach attached. He still seems happy at school, though I have heard other rumblings that all might not be well. My friend up the street told me that her daughter told her that she'd been told by another child "Don't like Barak!" And today he was upset because another child tried to take his cookies and his morah had to intervene. Sigh. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not, because my own experience was anything but. When is it really appropriate to step in? I keep telling myself that as long as he's happy and loves school I am not going to worry about third party commentary, and will just check in with his morohs monthly or so. Not sure if this is the right thing to do.
For myself, I am very happy with the new wall unit thingie I have back here, bought off of craigslist from someone who had a Curves that went out of business. It's 5' high and 5' across, with 16 cubbies that are 15" deep. Lots of stash fits in there and it now looks like a yarn shop back here. In a good way, of course. I am finally knitting a second sweater for Abba, out of some White Buffalo Unspun I bought from elann some years ago. It's three strands of very fine roving, held together, and I am knitting it on 10s so it's going quite quickly. Of course, very fine totally unspun roving is also incredibly fragile to knit, and I am doing a lot of knitting in the eye of the storm that is three boys aged 4 and under. Oh well. It spit-splices very nicely, and it'll still be warm.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Baby steps
1. Avtalyon is walking. Seriously. He hit ten months last week and he is now launching himself fearlessly from pieces of furniture, sometimes even making it to the next piece of furniture before crashing to the floor. I've seen him do three steps at a time. He also stands and sits easily in the middle of the room, without anything to grab onto, and can stand unassisted for as long as he wants. Incredible, especially around here. Other milestones: first pizza (this morning), first cookie (yesterday--I was doing some creative homeschooling with aleph-beis cookies and he got in on the action) and 1000th bowl of chicken soup. I know that technically there is probably very little wrong with a baby living off breastmilk, Cheerios and chicken soup vegetables but it's probably unusual.
2. Iyyar thinks that he can fit into a size 3 diaper. He is mistaken.
I don't think that I have mentioned here that Iyyar is very, very fond of Grover. He knows about Grover because the Pampers I buy for nighttime have Sesame Street characters on them, and he always digs through the drawer to get those out first. The predictable result of this, of course, is that he runs out of Grover diapers--while Avtalyon still has plenty of Grovers. In size 3.
Iyyar is still in love with the Grover doll I succumbed to in the Newark airport a couple of weeks ago. He carries it around the house with him and takes it to bed every night. And whenever you find Grover for him, he gives you a big smile. It's sweet.
3. The huge box is still in our living room. I saw it while walking through our back alley with Sarah last week: a great big dryer box being unloaded from a truck behind the building next door. I asked the man doing the unloading if it had staples and he said no, it was glued; I asked if we could have it and he said sure. It spent a few days as a dragon cave and is now a pirate ship. I told the kids they could have it till Chanuka--not sure what, if anything, will be left of it by then.
2. Iyyar thinks that he can fit into a size 3 diaper. He is mistaken.
I don't think that I have mentioned here that Iyyar is very, very fond of Grover. He knows about Grover because the Pampers I buy for nighttime have Sesame Street characters on them, and he always digs through the drawer to get those out first. The predictable result of this, of course, is that he runs out of Grover diapers--while Avtalyon still has plenty of Grovers. In size 3.
Iyyar is still in love with the Grover doll I succumbed to in the Newark airport a couple of weeks ago. He carries it around the house with him and takes it to bed every night. And whenever you find Grover for him, he gives you a big smile. It's sweet.
3. The huge box is still in our living room. I saw it while walking through our back alley with Sarah last week: a great big dryer box being unloaded from a truck behind the building next door. I asked the man doing the unloading if it had staples and he said no, it was glued; I asked if we could have it and he said sure. It spent a few days as a dragon cave and is now a pirate ship. I told the kids they could have it till Chanuka--not sure what, if anything, will be left of it by then.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
More updates
Sarah was here! She came, she brought much gorgeousness (including, among other things, a quilt for Avtalyon, which I will photograph when I have some light), and she even stayed an extra day because she just couldn't bear to leave us. Many latkes were eaten and much knitting was accomplished. It was my designated weekend to finish Things in Bags, and so I did:
Celtic Dreams, which I started more than ten years ago now and stuffed in a bag minus a sleeve and 3/4 in December of 1998. I sent it to Sarah sometime last year, and she arrived with it complete but for the cuffs, which I did before she left. The whole thing, blocked and fitting perfectly, despite the intervening 10 years and (mumble mumble) pounds:
I also finished these, which have been minus the top two inches of one mitten since the week before Barak was born, when my hands swelled so much I couldn't hold size 1 needles:
They're made of Dale of Norway Tiur, now sadly discontinued, and Koigu.
And I finished a pair of pink and white mittens, which I didn't photograph before I gave them to Sarah.
The visit was great--just what I needed. We sneaked out to knit at Borders, stayed up way too late, ate cookies and takeout, hung out with the kids and just generally did knitterly things. You know you have a good houseguest when she not only is unfazed by a geyser of toddler vomit, she even cleans it off the rug for you while you're busy de-vomiting the toddler. She was quite tolerant of all the discussion of poop, too. And all this with a bathroom that lacked towels and soap until about twelve hours before she left.
There is much that I could blog about the visit, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't. I have some knitting to do.
Celtic Dreams, which I started more than ten years ago now and stuffed in a bag minus a sleeve and 3/4 in December of 1998. I sent it to Sarah sometime last year, and she arrived with it complete but for the cuffs, which I did before she left. The whole thing, blocked and fitting perfectly, despite the intervening 10 years and (mumble mumble) pounds:
I also finished these, which have been minus the top two inches of one mitten since the week before Barak was born, when my hands swelled so much I couldn't hold size 1 needles:
They're made of Dale of Norway Tiur, now sadly discontinued, and Koigu.And I finished a pair of pink and white mittens, which I didn't photograph before I gave them to Sarah.
The visit was great--just what I needed. We sneaked out to knit at Borders, stayed up way too late, ate cookies and takeout, hung out with the kids and just generally did knitterly things. You know you have a good houseguest when she not only is unfazed by a geyser of toddler vomit, she even cleans it off the rug for you while you're busy de-vomiting the toddler. She was quite tolerant of all the discussion of poop, too. And all this with a bathroom that lacked towels and soap until about twelve hours before she left.
There is much that I could blog about the visit, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't. I have some knitting to do.
What I've been up to
Spinning and more spinning. The skeins on the far left and far right are spun from fiber contributions from Grandma E; the orange, yellow, pink, and purple skein second to right is from the roving Harmless gave me when I saw her in Newark two weeks ago now.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Drained
I had Barak's first parent-teacher conference this week. Last week, when I was in New York, my friend Naomi tried to warn me. "Every time I walk in there, the teacher sits there and tells me about a kid I've never met or heard of."
Yeah. Well.
Apparently Barak's morohs are not so pleased with him. There are two. One was only moderately negative. The other one told me, "He doesn't finish his projects," in the same doom-laden tone of voice in which she told me he was hitting the other children and they were afraid of him.
???!!!
First off, this is Barak. It's really, really hard for me to picture that. But I know that some kids are polar opposites behavior-wise at home and at school, so it's always possible. But... what? If he's been hitting kids, why has no one called me over the last three months?
The meeting was strange. It was supposed to be ten minutes, which is not enough to begin with, and I got less because the people who came before me were late and ran over but the people after me walked right in at their scheduled time. It was also strange because I had the vague impression that they weren't sure who Barak was--an impression strengthened when one of the teachers, when I asked a specific question, turned to the other, saying, "I don't know him that well." Um... hello, you should.
It wasn't malicious, she said, or at least she didn't think it was malicious. He's very deep, she said, and very bright and creative, and he likes pirates, and he's been pretending to be a pirate, and some of the other children have been scared. And one of them said that he hit her.
At the end of the meeting, I managed to overcome my shock and paralysis enough to ask some rational questions, among them, "How serious of an issue is this? I am not getting a clear picture of how concerned I need to be and what I should be doing. "
The response: "Well, we're observing him. "
Which means... what, exactly?
I walked out of the classroom and directly into the office of the early childhood director, where I said, nicely, that this would not do: either there was a real problem, in which case telling me about it for the first time three months into the year in a 10-minute meeting with no warning was inadequate, or the problem was not that big of a deal, in which case that was not a meeting well handled. She was more reassuring, saying that it was only November, they did not expect or want perfection from small children, and that if I felt there was not enough communication I could call any time.
It's hard to know what to do with all of this. His actual progress report did not look that devastating; it was more their tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc. I know that Barak is a little bit funky and a little bit different. I know that he has a vocabulary that is not normal for his age (his teachers both agreed that he was very bright...) and interests that are probably a little unusual in your typical chareidi school. (Gilbert & Sullivan, chaveiros?) But to me he seems like your normal four-year-old kid who likes trucks, Lego, cookies and Sesame Street. He is downright solicitous of Avtalyon, and plays nicely with Iyyar about 85% of the time. The problems that I see at home--his tendency to scream when frustrated, his constant need for attention--were not even whispered of. And in the end, he loves school, he says that he has lots of friends, and he loves his teachers. When I see him play with other kids, he seems to do just fine.
Like I said. Hard to know. MHH called the early childhood director yesterday and left a message saying he wanted to go over Barak's progress with her; he's going to ask the specific questions that I was too shocked to ask, as in, "Has he been seen hitting anyone, or was it reported by other kids?" and "How are his interactions with the other kids generally--does he have friends?"and "Where do we go from here?" One of my concerns especially is that I have heard stories about all kinds of things getting sprung on parents in nursery--from the kid who got kicked out for hitting (whose mother knew nothing about any problem until, you guessed it, parent-teacher conferences) to the kid who was kept back a year for not knowing aleph-beis, whose mother had no idea there was an issue until March. Communication: not their strong suit.
If I'd had a happy experience in school, maybe I could handle this in stride and see it as normal behavior for a 4-yo boy. But I didn't. I got eaten alive, socially and emotionally, and my dread of seeing that happen to Barak is, well, intense. And up until now all I saw was a happy well-adjusted kid, the same happy well-adjusted kid who was reported to me all last year. So maybe... maybe what? Maybe he's changed? Maybe the environment has changed? Or maybe his teachers are just a little bit freaked out by scary scary pirates?
Yeah. Well.
Apparently Barak's morohs are not so pleased with him. There are two. One was only moderately negative. The other one told me, "He doesn't finish his projects," in the same doom-laden tone of voice in which she told me he was hitting the other children and they were afraid of him.
???!!!
First off, this is Barak. It's really, really hard for me to picture that. But I know that some kids are polar opposites behavior-wise at home and at school, so it's always possible. But... what? If he's been hitting kids, why has no one called me over the last three months?
The meeting was strange. It was supposed to be ten minutes, which is not enough to begin with, and I got less because the people who came before me were late and ran over but the people after me walked right in at their scheduled time. It was also strange because I had the vague impression that they weren't sure who Barak was--an impression strengthened when one of the teachers, when I asked a specific question, turned to the other, saying, "I don't know him that well." Um... hello, you should.
It wasn't malicious, she said, or at least she didn't think it was malicious. He's very deep, she said, and very bright and creative, and he likes pirates, and he's been pretending to be a pirate, and some of the other children have been scared. And one of them said that he hit her.
At the end of the meeting, I managed to overcome my shock and paralysis enough to ask some rational questions, among them, "How serious of an issue is this? I am not getting a clear picture of how concerned I need to be and what I should be doing. "
The response: "Well, we're observing him. "
Which means... what, exactly?
I walked out of the classroom and directly into the office of the early childhood director, where I said, nicely, that this would not do: either there was a real problem, in which case telling me about it for the first time three months into the year in a 10-minute meeting with no warning was inadequate, or the problem was not that big of a deal, in which case that was not a meeting well handled. She was more reassuring, saying that it was only November, they did not expect or want perfection from small children, and that if I felt there was not enough communication I could call any time.
It's hard to know what to do with all of this. His actual progress report did not look that devastating; it was more their tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc. I know that Barak is a little bit funky and a little bit different. I know that he has a vocabulary that is not normal for his age (his teachers both agreed that he was very bright...) and interests that are probably a little unusual in your typical chareidi school. (Gilbert & Sullivan, chaveiros?) But to me he seems like your normal four-year-old kid who likes trucks, Lego, cookies and Sesame Street. He is downright solicitous of Avtalyon, and plays nicely with Iyyar about 85% of the time. The problems that I see at home--his tendency to scream when frustrated, his constant need for attention--were not even whispered of. And in the end, he loves school, he says that he has lots of friends, and he loves his teachers. When I see him play with other kids, he seems to do just fine.
Like I said. Hard to know. MHH called the early childhood director yesterday and left a message saying he wanted to go over Barak's progress with her; he's going to ask the specific questions that I was too shocked to ask, as in, "Has he been seen hitting anyone, or was it reported by other kids?" and "How are his interactions with the other kids generally--does he have friends?"and "Where do we go from here?" One of my concerns especially is that I have heard stories about all kinds of things getting sprung on parents in nursery--from the kid who got kicked out for hitting (whose mother knew nothing about any problem until, you guessed it, parent-teacher conferences) to the kid who was kept back a year for not knowing aleph-beis, whose mother had no idea there was an issue until March. Communication: not their strong suit.
If I'd had a happy experience in school, maybe I could handle this in stride and see it as normal behavior for a 4-yo boy. But I didn't. I got eaten alive, socially and emotionally, and my dread of seeing that happen to Barak is, well, intense. And up until now all I saw was a happy well-adjusted kid, the same happy well-adjusted kid who was reported to me all last year. So maybe... maybe what? Maybe he's changed? Maybe the environment has changed? Or maybe his teachers are just a little bit freaked out by scary scary pirates?
Saturday, November 22, 2008
B'kitzur
It's been a while, and there's been a lot to post about--nothing big, just a lot of little stuff. Sorry it's not fabulously written, but it's motzai Shabbos and I got me some spinning to do.
1. The pirates obsession continues. A few weeks ago--I didn't blog about this but should have--I took Barak to see a local production of Pirates of Penzance. It was fabulous. The production itself, considering the unpromising venue (local middle school!) was surprisingly good; the cast were better singers than actors, but much better that than the other way around. The orchestra, with the exception of the guy on drums during the first act (who got replaced somewhere around the time Frederick meets Mabel--wonder what the story was there), was really good too.
Barak really had no idea what to expect, having, obviously, never been to the theater before. When we got there, a few minutes early, and settled in our seats, the orchestra was busy tuning up, and Barak noticed snatches of a few of his pirate songs. We talked about how the orchestra was going to play more pirate songs, and I pointed out some of the instruments, and Barak and I confirmed that yes, we were here to see pirates and also to hear the pirate songs. The lights went down, the overture started, and Barak was totally rapt watching the orchestra--and oblivious to the closed curtain behind it, which meant nothing to him.
The overture over, the orchestra stopped playing for a moment, and Barak looked back at me, clearly wondering if we were leaving--and then the curtain rose, the pirates leapt onto the stage, and he just about jumped out of his skin. It was fabulous. We were in the front row of the balcony, and he could stand up if he wanted to without bothering anyone, so he did, some of the time; he was rapt for the entire first act, and when intermission came around he was unwilling to leave, because what if he missed the rest of it? (We didn't.) He was so wrapped up in the show that he did not even comment on the concession stand, which, for my sugar-obsessed son, is saying something. In short, he behaved beautifully, and the row of retired ladies behind us said so. "I've never seen any child behave as well as your son did! Not even much bigger children." And then he got his own round of applause of behaving so nicely. :)
Further to the pirates: he and Iyyar have lately been going to bed every night listening to the Pirates CD, which means, naturally, that Barak now knows a lot of the words, or at least thinks he does. ("And pay a manky monious part, with a pirated and a pirate heart!") Naturally, he asks me what they mean. Have you ever tried to explain something like, "When I can write a washing-list in Babylonic cuneiform" to a four-year-old? Or even, "We observe too great a stress/on the risks that on us press/and of reference a lack/to our chance of coming back"? Or how about, "For when threatened with emeutes/and your heart is in your boots/there is nothing brings it round/like the trumpet's martial sound"? We tried that one this week.
"What does it mean, Imma?"
"Well, are the policemen really brave, or are they really scared?"
"They're really scared."
"Do they want to fight the pirates, or do they want to go home and take a nap and eat some cookies?"
"Probably go home and eat some cookies." [He omitted the reference to the nap, funnily enough.]
"They're singing about how they don't really want to fight the pirates, but how singing about it makes them feel not so scared."
"Oh."
2. Avtalyon had his first non-Cheerio cereal today: Rice Chex. He approved.
3. He also cut tooth #2. Ouch, for both of us--he keeps wanting to chew my finger. He's been standing unassisted for longer and longer stretches, and cruising around expertly on the furniture--he's also coopted the garbage can into service as a walker, and uses it to hobble along up and down the hall. He looks like a tiny old man, only much cuter.
4. Avtalyon and I had a little adventure last week; we, just the two of us, flew to Newark on Thursday morning for a chasuna in Spring Valley on Thursday night. By happy coincidence, my good friend Harmless had the afternoon off and came to pick us up at the airport, accompany us on a Century 21 run for a tights-drawer resupply (DKNY opaque black, all the way), and drive with us all the way to Paterson because it did not occur to me to find out what number on Main Avenue in Passaic we were going to, and so we drove all the way the wrong way down it, as in, all the way to Paterson. Oh dear.
Fortunately, Harmless is also Patient, and also fortunately, the price of gas has gone down considerably in recent weeks. One google maps text message and one quick meal of kosher Chinese takeout later, and Avtalyon was released from the cruel baby jail (carseat! wicked, evil carseat!) to which he had been confined for much of the day; I stayed with a friend whose many kids kept Avtalyon entertained while I got dressed in my de rigeur New York wedding black suit, and then abandoned Avtalyon to the care of said kids as we (friend and I) went off to the wedding. I will admit to second (and even thirty-seventh) thoughts as I walked out of a house containing my precious baby, a bunch of little kids without medical degrees, and a responsible party aged 14, but I came home to a happy, sleeping baby in clean pajamas, so it was all good. The wedding was lovely. We made it back in time for Shabbos. And now I have new wool to spin, courtesy of Harmless. :) Because, you know, I totally don't have enough wool.
5. Iyyar has, inexplicably, been having a really rough time sleeping for the last few weeks. He's been waking up screaming and inconsolable multiple times in the night, either wanting to be held or not wanting anything identifiable but rolling around on the floor hysterical and writhing. Every night, I'd think, "he's sick, I'll need to take him to the doctor" and then the next morning he would be totally fine, except for being so tired that by early afternoon he turned into a miserable wreck. I thought it was nightmares, but couldn't think of what could have set them off; I called his morah (my friend Yehudis) to ask if there was anything going on at school that I didn't know about, but no.
"Maybe he has pinworms?"
Pinworms? WHAT?! I haven't seen any pinworms.
"They come out at night. Take off his diaper and shine a flashlight on his bottom. They look like little white hairs." This was last Wednesday night. Considerately, Iyyar started wailing just a few minutes after that conversation, so I went in there with a mag-lite to change his diaper. I took off the diaper, shined the light on his tush and OH MY G_D ARE THOSE LITTLE WHITE HAIRS ACTUALLY WORMS?! I wiped at them with a wipe--and the hairs were gone. It was all I could do to not start jumping around and screaming then and there because it was SO GROSS. If you don't know about pinworms, count yourself lucky. Or click here. Go on. I dare you.
I was leaving for New Jersey the next morning and couldn't take him to the doctor, so I asked Yehudis what she'd done when her son had had pinworms. And she'd covered a clove of garlic with vaseline and stuck it up his rectum to kill them. "It works!" she told me, as I tried not to gag. After some consultation with Dr. Google, I decided for the middle ground of a) feeding child lots of garlic, b) smearing tush with vaseline and c) putting a couple of crushed garlic cloves in his diaper. The next day, we had a few huge and disgusting diapers; last night, Iyyar slept through the night for the first time in weeks. It seems to have worked.
But boy, does the house reek.
6. I went to the dentist on Tuesday. All hail fluoride rinse; no cavities, no bleeding, and the whole thing was practically painless. Seriously. Brush and floss, people, and get yourselves a bottle of ACT if you don't have one already. It's disgusting, but you get used to it.
7. This post is now long enough, but I will leave you with this:
Avtalyon in his elf suit, courtesy of Tanta Cecilia. If elves hung out in baby swings, that's totally what they'd wear to do it in.
1. The pirates obsession continues. A few weeks ago--I didn't blog about this but should have--I took Barak to see a local production of Pirates of Penzance. It was fabulous. The production itself, considering the unpromising venue (local middle school!) was surprisingly good; the cast were better singers than actors, but much better that than the other way around. The orchestra, with the exception of the guy on drums during the first act (who got replaced somewhere around the time Frederick meets Mabel--wonder what the story was there), was really good too.
Barak really had no idea what to expect, having, obviously, never been to the theater before. When we got there, a few minutes early, and settled in our seats, the orchestra was busy tuning up, and Barak noticed snatches of a few of his pirate songs. We talked about how the orchestra was going to play more pirate songs, and I pointed out some of the instruments, and Barak and I confirmed that yes, we were here to see pirates and also to hear the pirate songs. The lights went down, the overture started, and Barak was totally rapt watching the orchestra--and oblivious to the closed curtain behind it, which meant nothing to him.
The overture over, the orchestra stopped playing for a moment, and Barak looked back at me, clearly wondering if we were leaving--and then the curtain rose, the pirates leapt onto the stage, and he just about jumped out of his skin. It was fabulous. We were in the front row of the balcony, and he could stand up if he wanted to without bothering anyone, so he did, some of the time; he was rapt for the entire first act, and when intermission came around he was unwilling to leave, because what if he missed the rest of it? (We didn't.) He was so wrapped up in the show that he did not even comment on the concession stand, which, for my sugar-obsessed son, is saying something. In short, he behaved beautifully, and the row of retired ladies behind us said so. "I've never seen any child behave as well as your son did! Not even much bigger children." And then he got his own round of applause of behaving so nicely. :)
Further to the pirates: he and Iyyar have lately been going to bed every night listening to the Pirates CD, which means, naturally, that Barak now knows a lot of the words, or at least thinks he does. ("And pay a manky monious part, with a pirated and a pirate heart!") Naturally, he asks me what they mean. Have you ever tried to explain something like, "When I can write a washing-list in Babylonic cuneiform" to a four-year-old? Or even, "We observe too great a stress/on the risks that on us press/and of reference a lack/to our chance of coming back"? Or how about, "For when threatened with emeutes/and your heart is in your boots/there is nothing brings it round/like the trumpet's martial sound"? We tried that one this week.
"What does it mean, Imma?"
"Well, are the policemen really brave, or are they really scared?"
"They're really scared."
"Do they want to fight the pirates, or do they want to go home and take a nap and eat some cookies?"
"Probably go home and eat some cookies." [He omitted the reference to the nap, funnily enough.]
"They're singing about how they don't really want to fight the pirates, but how singing about it makes them feel not so scared."
"Oh."
2. Avtalyon had his first non-Cheerio cereal today: Rice Chex. He approved.
3. He also cut tooth #2. Ouch, for both of us--he keeps wanting to chew my finger. He's been standing unassisted for longer and longer stretches, and cruising around expertly on the furniture--he's also coopted the garbage can into service as a walker, and uses it to hobble along up and down the hall. He looks like a tiny old man, only much cuter.
4. Avtalyon and I had a little adventure last week; we, just the two of us, flew to Newark on Thursday morning for a chasuna in Spring Valley on Thursday night. By happy coincidence, my good friend Harmless had the afternoon off and came to pick us up at the airport, accompany us on a Century 21 run for a tights-drawer resupply (DKNY opaque black, all the way), and drive with us all the way to Paterson because it did not occur to me to find out what number on Main Avenue in Passaic we were going to, and so we drove all the way the wrong way down it, as in, all the way to Paterson. Oh dear.
Fortunately, Harmless is also Patient, and also fortunately, the price of gas has gone down considerably in recent weeks. One google maps text message and one quick meal of kosher Chinese takeout later, and Avtalyon was released from the cruel baby jail (carseat! wicked, evil carseat!) to which he had been confined for much of the day; I stayed with a friend whose many kids kept Avtalyon entertained while I got dressed in my de rigeur New York wedding black suit, and then abandoned Avtalyon to the care of said kids as we (friend and I) went off to the wedding. I will admit to second (and even thirty-seventh) thoughts as I walked out of a house containing my precious baby, a bunch of little kids without medical degrees, and a responsible party aged 14, but I came home to a happy, sleeping baby in clean pajamas, so it was all good. The wedding was lovely. We made it back in time for Shabbos. And now I have new wool to spin, courtesy of Harmless. :) Because, you know, I totally don't have enough wool.
5. Iyyar has, inexplicably, been having a really rough time sleeping for the last few weeks. He's been waking up screaming and inconsolable multiple times in the night, either wanting to be held or not wanting anything identifiable but rolling around on the floor hysterical and writhing. Every night, I'd think, "he's sick, I'll need to take him to the doctor" and then the next morning he would be totally fine, except for being so tired that by early afternoon he turned into a miserable wreck. I thought it was nightmares, but couldn't think of what could have set them off; I called his morah (my friend Yehudis) to ask if there was anything going on at school that I didn't know about, but no.
"Maybe he has pinworms?"
Pinworms? WHAT?! I haven't seen any pinworms.
"They come out at night. Take off his diaper and shine a flashlight on his bottom. They look like little white hairs." This was last Wednesday night. Considerately, Iyyar started wailing just a few minutes after that conversation, so I went in there with a mag-lite to change his diaper. I took off the diaper, shined the light on his tush and OH MY G_D ARE THOSE LITTLE WHITE HAIRS ACTUALLY WORMS?! I wiped at them with a wipe--and the hairs were gone. It was all I could do to not start jumping around and screaming then and there because it was SO GROSS. If you don't know about pinworms, count yourself lucky. Or click here. Go on. I dare you.
I was leaving for New Jersey the next morning and couldn't take him to the doctor, so I asked Yehudis what she'd done when her son had had pinworms. And she'd covered a clove of garlic with vaseline and stuck it up his rectum to kill them. "It works!" she told me, as I tried not to gag. After some consultation with Dr. Google, I decided for the middle ground of a) feeding child lots of garlic, b) smearing tush with vaseline and c) putting a couple of crushed garlic cloves in his diaper. The next day, we had a few huge and disgusting diapers; last night, Iyyar slept through the night for the first time in weeks. It seems to have worked.
But boy, does the house reek.
6. I went to the dentist on Tuesday. All hail fluoride rinse; no cavities, no bleeding, and the whole thing was practically painless. Seriously. Brush and floss, people, and get yourselves a bottle of ACT if you don't have one already. It's disgusting, but you get used to it.
7. This post is now long enough, but I will leave you with this:
Avtalyon in his elf suit, courtesy of Tanta Cecilia. If elves hung out in baby swings, that's totally what they'd wear to do it in.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Click this link right now
I can't believe I didn't know about this already.
Edited two hours later:
How, how, HOW is it possible that I have not a single ball of black worsted-weight superwash in my entire stash? My entire stash which one might, if one were to be absolutely honest, fairly describe as, ah, extensive? The ONLY black superwash in the entire house is half a 50g ball of Dale Baby Ullgarn--enough yarn for a hat for a newborn. A premature newborn.
Gah!
I can pick up a ball tomorrow at the LYS by my office for Hat #1--for the rest (and there will be more) I'll have to wait for a delivery from cheap wool yarn central.
Edited two hours later:
How, how, HOW is it possible that I have not a single ball of black worsted-weight superwash in my entire stash? My entire stash which one might, if one were to be absolutely honest, fairly describe as, ah, extensive? The ONLY black superwash in the entire house is half a 50g ball of Dale Baby Ullgarn--enough yarn for a hat for a newborn. A premature newborn.
Gah!
I can pick up a ball tomorrow at the LYS by my office for Hat #1--for the rest (and there will be more) I'll have to wait for a delivery from cheap wool yarn central.
Updated
The current sock yarn stash.
If it's missing from the old sock yarn stash, it's probably been knitted. Because, even though I feel like I've been whining nonstop about not having any time to knit, I cannot deny the mysterious appearance of a finished object or six.
Like these. The largest gloves ever, knit for a friend with very, very, very big hands. I started them last August. Look at the tracing for scale. Now try putting YOUR hand on a sheet of 8 x 11 paper and see how much of the paper your hand doesn't cover.
And this: a Cobblestone modified to require as few purls as possible. See that line up the yoke? That's where I wrapped and turned at the beginning and end of each row/round, because the idea of having to purl to achieve garter stitch--garter stitch!--was just too much to bear. Begun before we went to Israel; finished a couple of weeks ago. Back in the day, I could have done it in less than a week, but, well, I have other things going on now. No idea why Blogger insists on turning the picture sideways; that's not the way it is on my computer and I have no idea how to make Blogger rotate it.
What's next? Mmm, well, maybe some of this...
If it's missing from the old sock yarn stash, it's probably been knitted. Because, even though I feel like I've been whining nonstop about not having any time to knit, I cannot deny the mysterious appearance of a finished object or six.
Like these. The largest gloves ever, knit for a friend with very, very, very big hands. I started them last August. Look at the tracing for scale. Now try putting YOUR hand on a sheet of 8 x 11 paper and see how much of the paper your hand doesn't cover.
And this: a Cobblestone modified to require as few purls as possible. See that line up the yoke? That's where I wrapped and turned at the beginning and end of each row/round, because the idea of having to purl to achieve garter stitch--garter stitch!--was just too much to bear. Begun before we went to Israel; finished a couple of weeks ago. Back in the day, I could have done it in less than a week, but, well, I have other things going on now. No idea why Blogger insists on turning the picture sideways; that's not the way it is on my computer and I have no idea how to make Blogger rotate it.
What's next? Mmm, well, maybe some of this...
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Why, what's this?
You mean, it's not obvious?
It's what happens when you ask your four-year-old son what kind of a vest he wants you to knit, thinking he'll say "blue" or "red" or maybe "with a green stripe."
Yeah, well. Maybe other kids say that. My kid is the son of a knitter. He aims a little higher.
He asked for a vest with a fire-breathing dragon.
What could I say? I knit him one.
I don't usually pass on tzedaka requests
But there's a first time for everything.
Fourteen-year-old survivor of the Mercaz HaRav (where, by the way, we would be happy to be zoche to send any of our sons) massacre needs surgery in the US to put his insides back together so that he can do things like eat and go to the bathroom. The family is from Sderot. The kupat cholim (insurance) is not covering it on the grounds that it could be done in Israel; his parents feel that he should have it done by specialists, and the specialists are in the US. If it were my kid, I would feel exactly the same way.
Full story, and address for donations, here.
Fourteen-year-old survivor of the Mercaz HaRav (where, by the way, we would be happy to be zoche to send any of our sons) massacre needs surgery in the US to put his insides back together so that he can do things like eat and go to the bathroom. The family is from Sderot. The kupat cholim (insurance) is not covering it on the grounds that it could be done in Israel; his parents feel that he should have it done by specialists, and the specialists are in the US. If it were my kid, I would feel exactly the same way.
Full story, and address for donations, here.
Briefly
Before I forget...
At playgroup, Iyyar learned that immortal Jewish children's classic, "Dip the Apple in the Honey."
Lyrics, sung to the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine," run thusly:
Dip the apple in the honey
Make a bracha loud and clear
Shana tova u'mesuka
Have a happy sweet new year.
You know how there's a school of thought that toddlers are basically cavemen and need to be addressed as such? Well, Iyyar clearly belongs to the caveman school of songwriting, because his version of the above, rendered always at earsplitting volume, runs:
"APPLE! HONEY! BRA! KA!"
At playgroup, Iyyar learned that immortal Jewish children's classic, "Dip the Apple in the Honey."
Lyrics, sung to the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine," run thusly:
Dip the apple in the honey
Make a bracha loud and clear
Shana tova u'mesuka
Have a happy sweet new year.
You know how there's a school of thought that toddlers are basically cavemen and need to be addressed as such? Well, Iyyar clearly belongs to the caveman school of songwriting, because his version of the above, rendered always at earsplitting volume, runs:
"APPLE! HONEY! BRA! KA!"
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Nine
A friend's husband commented once that nine months is a significant milestone because it means more time out than in. For us, we passed that marker about a month ago, but never mind. Avtalyon is nine months old, and cut his first tooth this morning.
I've mentioned before that he's on a developmental track that has him doing almost everything a good three months ahead of his brothers. It's fun, and really different--it's also a little disconcerting sometimes (but in a good way) because he looks absolutely exactly like Barak--the pictures will be indistinguishable--but Barak, at this age, couldn't yet roll over both ways, didn't know his name, and couldn't reliably sit up on his own--pictures of him sitting up at ten months show lots and lots of pillows and soft bedding in the background, because he always fell over.
Avtalyon started saying "Abba" last week. I am "Mmmmm! Mmmmmmma! Ammmmmmmma!" I wasn't sure if he was really saying my name or just being hungry; speculation on this subject in Asnat's presence was met with the kind of look you can only manage if you're Israeli. It manages to convey "You are completely, totally, definitively out of your mind," without a single vowel or consonant. Pretty impressive, actually. Anyway, so, Asnat thinks he's saying my name. He also seems to be saying Barak and Iyyar's names; Barak is "Ah yah!" and his version of Iyyar's name is so close to Iyyar's actual name I don't think I'll post it.
He now waves at people regularly; if I'm holding him and there's someone new and I ask him to wave, even if I don't do it myself or hold his hand up as a hint, just the word is enough; he almost always waves, multiple times, and expects the courtesy returned. He's gotten interested in anything with a baby lock and has expressed ambitions in the area of emptying low-lying kitchen cupboards of their contents. Yesterday I made macaroni and cheese--the genuine article, with a Bechamel sauce and grated sharp cheddar, as opposed to just cheese melted on noodles--and he liked that. A lot.
What else? He doesn't really nap--an hourlong nap is a major accomplishmentl--but he spends most of the day happy so it's okay with me. He goes to sleep at around 6 PM and stays asleep until sometime around 6 or 7 am; he wakes up a few times in between, but usually before midnight. Everything's relative; to us, that's amazing sleeping for a nine-month-old.
The problem right now is finding a place for him to sleep. You wouldn't think this would be a problem in a five-room apartment, but it is; he's a very, very light sleeper, so really can't sleep with the boys, and if he sleeps in our room he's up nursing all night long. I tried putting a second pack and play in my office and moving him back here when I go to bed (and, inevitably, he wakes up); that worked fine for a few weeks but the problem is that now it's cold out and this room (three external walls) gets freezing cold at night--and even with two pairs of pajamas and a wool sweater in between he gets cold enough to wake up and cry. The current system involves the second pack and play in the living room, but besides obvious issues of not being able to go get the baby without being fully dressed (huge, huge picture window facing the street, we are on the first floor, and the curtains don't fully cover the windows), it's pretty cold there too. The only rooms in the house that are really warm at night are our bedroom and the boys' room. We might resort to sleeping in the guest room and letting the baby have our room till he outgrows the light sleeping or it gets warm, whichever comes first. We'll see how it goes.
The thing that's so funny about this whole developmental thing is that I'm just not used to so much going on with such a tiny baby. I mean, only nine months on planet earth! and he's already opening the garbage cans and pulling out the dirty diapers! and falling in love with the bath ducky! and escaping diaper changes with the stealth of Houdini and the courage of Tarzan! How'd he figure out all out so fast?
It's all pretty neat.
I've mentioned before that he's on a developmental track that has him doing almost everything a good three months ahead of his brothers. It's fun, and really different--it's also a little disconcerting sometimes (but in a good way) because he looks absolutely exactly like Barak--the pictures will be indistinguishable--but Barak, at this age, couldn't yet roll over both ways, didn't know his name, and couldn't reliably sit up on his own--pictures of him sitting up at ten months show lots and lots of pillows and soft bedding in the background, because he always fell over.
Avtalyon started saying "Abba" last week. I am "Mmmmm! Mmmmmmma! Ammmmmmmma!" I wasn't sure if he was really saying my name or just being hungry; speculation on this subject in Asnat's presence was met with the kind of look you can only manage if you're Israeli. It manages to convey "You are completely, totally, definitively out of your mind," without a single vowel or consonant. Pretty impressive, actually. Anyway, so, Asnat thinks he's saying my name. He also seems to be saying Barak and Iyyar's names; Barak is "Ah yah!" and his version of Iyyar's name is so close to Iyyar's actual name I don't think I'll post it.
He now waves at people regularly; if I'm holding him and there's someone new and I ask him to wave, even if I don't do it myself or hold his hand up as a hint, just the word is enough; he almost always waves, multiple times, and expects the courtesy returned. He's gotten interested in anything with a baby lock and has expressed ambitions in the area of emptying low-lying kitchen cupboards of their contents. Yesterday I made macaroni and cheese--the genuine article, with a Bechamel sauce and grated sharp cheddar, as opposed to just cheese melted on noodles--and he liked that. A lot.
What else? He doesn't really nap--an hourlong nap is a major accomplishmentl--but he spends most of the day happy so it's okay with me. He goes to sleep at around 6 PM and stays asleep until sometime around 6 or 7 am; he wakes up a few times in between, but usually before midnight. Everything's relative; to us, that's amazing sleeping for a nine-month-old.
The problem right now is finding a place for him to sleep. You wouldn't think this would be a problem in a five-room apartment, but it is; he's a very, very light sleeper, so really can't sleep with the boys, and if he sleeps in our room he's up nursing all night long. I tried putting a second pack and play in my office and moving him back here when I go to bed (and, inevitably, he wakes up); that worked fine for a few weeks but the problem is that now it's cold out and this room (three external walls) gets freezing cold at night--and even with two pairs of pajamas and a wool sweater in between he gets cold enough to wake up and cry. The current system involves the second pack and play in the living room, but besides obvious issues of not being able to go get the baby without being fully dressed (huge, huge picture window facing the street, we are on the first floor, and the curtains don't fully cover the windows), it's pretty cold there too. The only rooms in the house that are really warm at night are our bedroom and the boys' room. We might resort to sleeping in the guest room and letting the baby have our room till he outgrows the light sleeping or it gets warm, whichever comes first. We'll see how it goes.
The thing that's so funny about this whole developmental thing is that I'm just not used to so much going on with such a tiny baby. I mean, only nine months on planet earth! and he's already opening the garbage cans and pulling out the dirty diapers! and falling in love with the bath ducky! and escaping diaper changes with the stealth of Houdini and the courage of Tarzan! How'd he figure out all out so fast?
It's all pretty neat.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
assorted
But first, a public service announcement to a few people who annoyed me this morning.
a) If you expect me to address you as Rabbi Plony, please do not address me by my first name. If you want the kavod of your title, please give me mine. Thanks.
b) If you have a kindergarten-aged girl, please dress her accordingly. Do not dress her in knee-high black boots with inch-and-a-half platform heels. Especially not if you are Orthodox Jews.
c) If you have small children with you at a shul kiddush in honor of a bris, and if there is candy at said bris but not endless quantities of same, please do not allow your small children to fill styrofoam coffee cups to the brim with candy before kiddush has been said. This will mean that the small children whose mothers make them wait for kiddush, make them wait for the adults, and promise them two pieces of candy for their patience will get nothing but negative reinforcement for good behavior.
Thanks.
Now that that's out of the way...
1. Ada came over for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, to buy me a couple of hours of desperately needed writing time. She usually only comes on Wednesdays, which means she hasn't been around for a few weeks, and Iyyar, who adores her, had been asking for her for days. She is usually extremely punctual so about two minutes before she was scheduled to arrive, I told Iyyar she was coming. She must have hit traffic or something, because she was about 25 minutes late--25 long, long, looooong minutes during which Iyyar asked me, repeatedly and with ever-mounting alarm, "Where Ada go? Coming? Coming soon? Onna way?" He looked at the back door. He looked at the front door. He looked at the back door again. I had to check the mail, and when he saw me opening the front door thought that perhaps Ada might be down there, you know, hiding or something. He came down with me, and was standing behind my legs as I checked the mail, foot wedged in the door at the bottom of the stairs to keep it open.
"Ada? Ada come? Ada comin?"
"I don't think Ada's there, sweetie. She usually comes in the back. Come on, let's go check the back door [so I can get you back in the apartment]."
Then Iyyar started to giggle. Because guess what--she was on the other side of the door! He saw her, because he's three feet tall, but I didn't. He grinned up at me with total vindication and then flung his arms around Ada, content.
2. It had been a very busy Friday and between having Asnat here in the morning, rushing around like crazy for two hours at lunchtime, and having Ada here in the afternoon while I hid in my office and wrote as fast as possible, I, um, forgot to feed the baby. I know--it's pretty bad. I nursed him, so it's not like he was starving, but he didn't get any actual food, so he was getting pretty hungry, and I totally missed it even as he got more and more angry, annoyed, and finally frantic when I put him to bed without having given him dinner. He usually goes to sleep really easily at bedtime so the hysterical screams from the crib gave me pause. I stood in the kitchen listening and suddenly OH NO the lightbulb went on.
"Ada, did you give Avtalyon dinner?"
"No. I didn't know you wanted me to."
Oh. Oh dear. I went and retrieved the baby, put him in his high chair and started pushing fingerfuls of spanakopita in his mouth. Magically, the miserably wailing baby was transformed into happy, cooing, gurgling baby, who nevertheless directed a number of extremely dirty looks toward Ada ("See? See? I kept telling you I was HUNGRY but did you listen? No....") despite the fact that it was patently my fault he hadn't eaten.
He is a forgiving sort, however, and by the time Ada left they were friends again. So much so that when we accompanied Ada to the front door, he waved at her. And she waved back. And he waved again! And again! It was a hilarious sort of stiff-armed salute, part campaign for office, part royal wave, part 1939 Germany (only hilarious when rendered by a nine-month-old Jewish baby in 2008). And he was so pleased with himself, too--almost as pleased as I was.
3. All the yarn has been arriving. It's amazing. I got my Webs box yesterday (3 balls of purple and gray Kauni, 5 of purple-and-green Kureyon, and a sweater's worth of Kathmandu DK tweed) and it was all so lovely I actually gasped.
However, I have a problem. I can't find the pattern I wanted to use the Kureyon for. Does anyone remember seeing, in an old Knitter's or possibly IK (the more I think about it, the more I think it's IK), a pattern for a yoked sweater in royal blue with a yellow swirly motif around the yoke? The yarn was a mohair blend, and I think the model was African American and possibly riding a motorcycle. The picture was definitely on the right side of the page, pattern on the left; the gauge was 16 sts/4 in. I know, I know, all very helpful. I can't find it on ravelry and I can't take two years to hunt through all my back issues for it. Anyone? Anyone?
4. Adding to the fiber bonanza of recent weeks, Grandma E sent me a lovely box (is there any other kind?) full of spinning batts--a gorgeous red wool/black mohair blend--and a pair of socks! Handknit socks! Made from Socks That Rock! No one's ever knit me socks before! I wore them yesterday and had happy feet all day long. :)
5. Iyyar's speech is getting a lot clearer these days. He can really pronounce his own name now (he used to say it "Eddie" which I found hilarious) and is surprisingly good at pronouns, which Barak didn't have down until he was almost four.
His stock way of claiming something is saying, "Not yours!" Lately, this has morphed from being a circumlocution for the forbidden word "Mine!" into a commentary on ownership. As in, the other day we saw a tricycle on a lawn.
"Bikull!"
"Right, a tricycle!"
"Ride it!"
"No, we can't ride that."
"Not ours."
"Right. Not ours."
6. With the occasional exception, the boys have been really fun and funny lately. Barak and Iyyar have been playing together unusually well, with only the obligatory minimum of tears and screaming, and both of them have been treating Avtalyon like a celebrity. I love it. Yesterday Avtalyon, who is now pulling up and cruising on the furniture, fell over and bonked his head. Iyyar got there before I did, trying to pick him up while cooing comfortingly, "Baby hurt! Oh no! Avtalyon! Oh no Avtalyon! Iss okay! Okay baby!" And tonight, when Iyyar was wailing frantically from his crib for Abba, who had gone to shul ("ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU! ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU CHAIR!") and I was cruelly ignoring it (if I'd gone in, it would have lasted for hours, but ignoring it usually means he's asleep in five minutes) I heard Barak:
"Iyyar! Iyyar, look! Look at this!" [Sound of toy.] "Isn't that cool! Here! Have this toy! It's okay! You don't have to yell! Abba's going to be home soon." And so on.
Isn't that amazing? They like each other and want each other to be happy. How about that?
And more amazing still was Barak, in my lap tonight at bedtime, snuggled close and getting sleepy,
"Imma, I like you the best. I like you the best from everybody."
"I like you the best from everybody too. Also Iyyar and Avtalyon."
"Me too. I like you, and Abba, and Iyyar, and Avtalyon, and everybody in this house. I like you all a hundred thousand gotchion billion ten much."
"Wow, that's really a lot."
"Yeah. I like you a lot a lot much."
It just doesn't get better than that.
a) If you expect me to address you as Rabbi Plony, please do not address me by my first name. If you want the kavod of your title, please give me mine. Thanks.
b) If you have a kindergarten-aged girl, please dress her accordingly. Do not dress her in knee-high black boots with inch-and-a-half platform heels. Especially not if you are Orthodox Jews.
c) If you have small children with you at a shul kiddush in honor of a bris, and if there is candy at said bris but not endless quantities of same, please do not allow your small children to fill styrofoam coffee cups to the brim with candy before kiddush has been said. This will mean that the small children whose mothers make them wait for kiddush, make them wait for the adults, and promise them two pieces of candy for their patience will get nothing but negative reinforcement for good behavior.
Thanks.
Now that that's out of the way...
1. Ada came over for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, to buy me a couple of hours of desperately needed writing time. She usually only comes on Wednesdays, which means she hasn't been around for a few weeks, and Iyyar, who adores her, had been asking for her for days. She is usually extremely punctual so about two minutes before she was scheduled to arrive, I told Iyyar she was coming. She must have hit traffic or something, because she was about 25 minutes late--25 long, long, looooong minutes during which Iyyar asked me, repeatedly and with ever-mounting alarm, "Where Ada go? Coming? Coming soon? Onna way?" He looked at the back door. He looked at the front door. He looked at the back door again. I had to check the mail, and when he saw me opening the front door thought that perhaps Ada might be down there, you know, hiding or something. He came down with me, and was standing behind my legs as I checked the mail, foot wedged in the door at the bottom of the stairs to keep it open.
"Ada? Ada come? Ada comin?"
"I don't think Ada's there, sweetie. She usually comes in the back. Come on, let's go check the back door [so I can get you back in the apartment]."
Then Iyyar started to giggle. Because guess what--she was on the other side of the door! He saw her, because he's three feet tall, but I didn't. He grinned up at me with total vindication and then flung his arms around Ada, content.
2. It had been a very busy Friday and between having Asnat here in the morning, rushing around like crazy for two hours at lunchtime, and having Ada here in the afternoon while I hid in my office and wrote as fast as possible, I, um, forgot to feed the baby. I know--it's pretty bad. I nursed him, so it's not like he was starving, but he didn't get any actual food, so he was getting pretty hungry, and I totally missed it even as he got more and more angry, annoyed, and finally frantic when I put him to bed without having given him dinner. He usually goes to sleep really easily at bedtime so the hysterical screams from the crib gave me pause. I stood in the kitchen listening and suddenly OH NO the lightbulb went on.
"Ada, did you give Avtalyon dinner?"
"No. I didn't know you wanted me to."
Oh. Oh dear. I went and retrieved the baby, put him in his high chair and started pushing fingerfuls of spanakopita in his mouth. Magically, the miserably wailing baby was transformed into happy, cooing, gurgling baby, who nevertheless directed a number of extremely dirty looks toward Ada ("See? See? I kept telling you I was HUNGRY but did you listen? No....") despite the fact that it was patently my fault he hadn't eaten.
He is a forgiving sort, however, and by the time Ada left they were friends again. So much so that when we accompanied Ada to the front door, he waved at her. And she waved back. And he waved again! And again! It was a hilarious sort of stiff-armed salute, part campaign for office, part royal wave, part 1939 Germany (only hilarious when rendered by a nine-month-old Jewish baby in 2008). And he was so pleased with himself, too--almost as pleased as I was.
3. All the yarn has been arriving. It's amazing. I got my Webs box yesterday (3 balls of purple and gray Kauni, 5 of purple-and-green Kureyon, and a sweater's worth of Kathmandu DK tweed) and it was all so lovely I actually gasped.
However, I have a problem. I can't find the pattern I wanted to use the Kureyon for. Does anyone remember seeing, in an old Knitter's or possibly IK (the more I think about it, the more I think it's IK), a pattern for a yoked sweater in royal blue with a yellow swirly motif around the yoke? The yarn was a mohair blend, and I think the model was African American and possibly riding a motorcycle. The picture was definitely on the right side of the page, pattern on the left; the gauge was 16 sts/4 in. I know, I know, all very helpful. I can't find it on ravelry and I can't take two years to hunt through all my back issues for it. Anyone? Anyone?
4. Adding to the fiber bonanza of recent weeks, Grandma E sent me a lovely box (is there any other kind?) full of spinning batts--a gorgeous red wool/black mohair blend--and a pair of socks! Handknit socks! Made from Socks That Rock! No one's ever knit me socks before! I wore them yesterday and had happy feet all day long. :)
5. Iyyar's speech is getting a lot clearer these days. He can really pronounce his own name now (he used to say it "Eddie" which I found hilarious) and is surprisingly good at pronouns, which Barak didn't have down until he was almost four.
His stock way of claiming something is saying, "Not yours!" Lately, this has morphed from being a circumlocution for the forbidden word "Mine!" into a commentary on ownership. As in, the other day we saw a tricycle on a lawn.
"Bikull!"
"Right, a tricycle!"
"Ride it!"
"No, we can't ride that."
"Not ours."
"Right. Not ours."
6. With the occasional exception, the boys have been really fun and funny lately. Barak and Iyyar have been playing together unusually well, with only the obligatory minimum of tears and screaming, and both of them have been treating Avtalyon like a celebrity. I love it. Yesterday Avtalyon, who is now pulling up and cruising on the furniture, fell over and bonked his head. Iyyar got there before I did, trying to pick him up while cooing comfortingly, "Baby hurt! Oh no! Avtalyon! Oh no Avtalyon! Iss okay! Okay baby!" And tonight, when Iyyar was wailing frantically from his crib for Abba, who had gone to shul ("ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU! ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU CHAIR!") and I was cruelly ignoring it (if I'd gone in, it would have lasted for hours, but ignoring it usually means he's asleep in five minutes) I heard Barak:
"Iyyar! Iyyar, look! Look at this!" [Sound of toy.] "Isn't that cool! Here! Have this toy! It's okay! You don't have to yell! Abba's going to be home soon." And so on.
Isn't that amazing? They like each other and want each other to be happy. How about that?
And more amazing still was Barak, in my lap tonight at bedtime, snuggled close and getting sleepy,
"Imma, I like you the best. I like you the best from everybody."
"I like you the best from everybody too. Also Iyyar and Avtalyon."
"Me too. I like you, and Abba, and Iyyar, and Avtalyon, and everybody in this house. I like you all a hundred thousand gotchion billion ten much."
"Wow, that's really a lot."
"Yeah. I like you a lot a lot much."
It just doesn't get better than that.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Dreams deferred
Way back in grad school days, my knitting buddy Cecilia and I used to have several recurring discussions in our (many, many) emails. One of them was "how much money would we have that we don't now have if we didn't knit?" (Answer "better not to think about it, and probably not much anyway, because if we didn't knit we'd do something else.")
When I was working at an insultingly low-paid job and she was working on her dissertation, we had a memorable exchange over the question, "If you had a thousand dollars to blow on fiber-related purchases, what would you do with it?" I don't have the exchange anymore (or if I do, it's buried in the 11,000-email "Cecilia" box) but I remember dreamy lists of full sets of Clover DPs and circulars in all sizes, sweater quantities of Noro, and other luxuries. On the budgets we both had at the time, though, there was no way. The whole discussion was firmly in the realm of fantasy.
Fast forward seven years.
A few weeks ago, I sold my spinning wheel. There was a lot of emotional baggage attached to that spinning wheel and looking at the pile of $20 bills that replaced it was an odd experience. They seemed... icky, somehow. The space in my closet where the wheel used to be looked strange. It was, and is, very weird to think of it as being really gone.
I think I sold it on a Thursday, and so the next day I used some of the money to pay my babysitter. The rest I put in the bank, with no particular earmark. Then I thought, well, I'll use some of it to buy things I've been putting off buying. And I did. I bought a new pack and play for Avtalyon, so that he doesn't have to be sleeping in our room (and waking us up all night) until Iyyar outgrows his crib. I bought a new umbrella stroller to replace the one we left in Israel with my SIL. And I bought a new high chair for Avtalyon, so he doesn't have to keep bonking his head on the wooden chair back behind the booster seat he's currently using. All told, a couple hundred dollars.
I still had quite a lot of money left though--after all, I sold a DT Lendrum with lots and lots of goodies. And so I decided to spend it on unjustifiable acquisition of yarn. All of it. I did some math and I actually have bought the wheel's worth of yarn, because I bought some yarn before I sold the wheel for about as much money as I spent on the baby items. It's not all here yet, but when it does get here I should really take a picture. It's pretty impressive. I've got the sweater's worth of Noro, and another sweater's worth of purple Kauni; some new books; some spinning fiber, a big box of Brown Sheep millends and a huge pile of sock yarn. I also, of course, got some presents for Cecilia.
What happens to a dream deferred? Yup. It explodes. Out of cardboard boxes, and all over the floor of the knitting room.
When I was working at an insultingly low-paid job and she was working on her dissertation, we had a memorable exchange over the question, "If you had a thousand dollars to blow on fiber-related purchases, what would you do with it?" I don't have the exchange anymore (or if I do, it's buried in the 11,000-email "Cecilia" box) but I remember dreamy lists of full sets of Clover DPs and circulars in all sizes, sweater quantities of Noro, and other luxuries. On the budgets we both had at the time, though, there was no way. The whole discussion was firmly in the realm of fantasy.
Fast forward seven years.
A few weeks ago, I sold my spinning wheel. There was a lot of emotional baggage attached to that spinning wheel and looking at the pile of $20 bills that replaced it was an odd experience. They seemed... icky, somehow. The space in my closet where the wheel used to be looked strange. It was, and is, very weird to think of it as being really gone.
I think I sold it on a Thursday, and so the next day I used some of the money to pay my babysitter. The rest I put in the bank, with no particular earmark. Then I thought, well, I'll use some of it to buy things I've been putting off buying. And I did. I bought a new pack and play for Avtalyon, so that he doesn't have to be sleeping in our room (and waking us up all night) until Iyyar outgrows his crib. I bought a new umbrella stroller to replace the one we left in Israel with my SIL. And I bought a new high chair for Avtalyon, so he doesn't have to keep bonking his head on the wooden chair back behind the booster seat he's currently using. All told, a couple hundred dollars.
I still had quite a lot of money left though--after all, I sold a DT Lendrum with lots and lots of goodies. And so I decided to spend it on unjustifiable acquisition of yarn. All of it. I did some math and I actually have bought the wheel's worth of yarn, because I bought some yarn before I sold the wheel for about as much money as I spent on the baby items. It's not all here yet, but when it does get here I should really take a picture. It's pretty impressive. I've got the sweater's worth of Noro, and another sweater's worth of purple Kauni; some new books; some spinning fiber, a big box of Brown Sheep millends and a huge pile of sock yarn. I also, of course, got some presents for Cecilia.
What happens to a dream deferred? Yup. It explodes. Out of cardboard boxes, and all over the floor of the knitting room.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Avtalyon updates
He's eight and a half months now, crawling like a madman, eating immersion-blended vegetables and the squishier parts of onion kugel and potato knish. He laughs his head off while playing with his big brothers, and admirably fulfills his role as baby brother by summarily destroying big-brother Lego structures on sight. He pulls up to standing on everything, including lots of things he shouldn't (glider rocker footstools...) and does a little bit of creeping from one piece of furniture to the next when he can. No signs of launching into space though--he can't stand independently yet.
He's sleeping, B"H, much better; he doesn't do much in the way of napping but he doesn't spend much of the day screaming either so I don't mind. His usual schedule right now is to go down in the pack and play in our room at around 6 and wake up somewhere between 9 and 11 for a late-night snack; he goes back to sleep until Abba or I go to bed, at which point he usually wakes up instantly. I swear that baby has sonar. No sooner have I swung the door silently open than he's scrabbling up the side of his pack and play, staggering out of sleep to let me know that he's HUNGRY AND ALL BY HIMSELF. That's when I nurse him again and transfer him to pack and play #2, in my office. I don't really like having him that far away but he's such, such, such a light sleeper it was the only way. Before I finally cracked and bought a second p & p for the office, MHH was sleeping on the couch, I was sleeping on the guest bed, and Avtalyon had the master bedroom all to himself. Then we realized that something was wrong with that picture. The back bedroom/office, unfortunately, is not only at the opposite end of our railroad-style apartment, but it's the only room with three external walls and it's really cold. He sleeps in two pairs of pajamas already--I think when it really does get cold out we're going to have to figure out a new arrangement.
Barak and Iyyar treat him like some kind of celebrity. It's really funny. Now that he has an obvious personality, but is still little and (mostly) harmless, they think he's a riot. Iyyar carols his name in a ridiculously funny pronunciation, and happily runs to get me diapers, pluggies, whatever. Oh, and speaking of diapers... I can't believe I didn't mention this first but seriously, Avtalyon is the pod baby. He's unnaturally strong. Okay, both Barak and Iyyar were kind of pipsqueaks and both of them have some unusual stomach muscle weakness (neither can do a sit up from lying on their back--they both roll over onto their stomachs first) but holy cow, Avtalyon is not normal! If I'm changing his diaper and he spies something he wants right above his left ear, in about three hundredths of a second he's flipped himself over, wrenched his feet out of my right hand, shot over to where it is and is happily playing with it, naked tushy stuck straight up in the air. He accomplishes all of this in less time than it takes me to reach for a wipe. If he really didn't want you to change his diaper, you'd have a really, really hard time doing it against his will--at least not without an extra pair of hands holding him down. I even have to keep my wits about me while nursing--no dozing off for me, because if he got interested in something he'd shoot right out of my lap before I could stop him.
No teeth yet, and he still hasn't mastered the pincer grip, which is okay by me. He's enough of a menace already--I can wait a little bit for him to be able to pick up tiny choking hazards off the floor on his own. (Yes, I do try to keep choking hazards far from babies in general, but with two older brothers around sometimes things appear.)
My current suspicion is that he's not going to nurse for as long as his brothers did. He just gets so distracted--granted, there is a lot more going on around him than there was around Barak at the same age, but Avtalyon just seems to want to leap into the fray much more. For the time being, though, he's still a baby--still little and soft and cuddly and sweet. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
He's sleeping, B"H, much better; he doesn't do much in the way of napping but he doesn't spend much of the day screaming either so I don't mind. His usual schedule right now is to go down in the pack and play in our room at around 6 and wake up somewhere between 9 and 11 for a late-night snack; he goes back to sleep until Abba or I go to bed, at which point he usually wakes up instantly. I swear that baby has sonar. No sooner have I swung the door silently open than he's scrabbling up the side of his pack and play, staggering out of sleep to let me know that he's HUNGRY AND ALL BY HIMSELF. That's when I nurse him again and transfer him to pack and play #2, in my office. I don't really like having him that far away but he's such, such, such a light sleeper it was the only way. Before I finally cracked and bought a second p & p for the office, MHH was sleeping on the couch, I was sleeping on the guest bed, and Avtalyon had the master bedroom all to himself. Then we realized that something was wrong with that picture. The back bedroom/office, unfortunately, is not only at the opposite end of our railroad-style apartment, but it's the only room with three external walls and it's really cold. He sleeps in two pairs of pajamas already--I think when it really does get cold out we're going to have to figure out a new arrangement.
Barak and Iyyar treat him like some kind of celebrity. It's really funny. Now that he has an obvious personality, but is still little and (mostly) harmless, they think he's a riot. Iyyar carols his name in a ridiculously funny pronunciation, and happily runs to get me diapers, pluggies, whatever. Oh, and speaking of diapers... I can't believe I didn't mention this first but seriously, Avtalyon is the pod baby. He's unnaturally strong. Okay, both Barak and Iyyar were kind of pipsqueaks and both of them have some unusual stomach muscle weakness (neither can do a sit up from lying on their back--they both roll over onto their stomachs first) but holy cow, Avtalyon is not normal! If I'm changing his diaper and he spies something he wants right above his left ear, in about three hundredths of a second he's flipped himself over, wrenched his feet out of my right hand, shot over to where it is and is happily playing with it, naked tushy stuck straight up in the air. He accomplishes all of this in less time than it takes me to reach for a wipe. If he really didn't want you to change his diaper, you'd have a really, really hard time doing it against his will--at least not without an extra pair of hands holding him down. I even have to keep my wits about me while nursing--no dozing off for me, because if he got interested in something he'd shoot right out of my lap before I could stop him.
No teeth yet, and he still hasn't mastered the pincer grip, which is okay by me. He's enough of a menace already--I can wait a little bit for him to be able to pick up tiny choking hazards off the floor on his own. (Yes, I do try to keep choking hazards far from babies in general, but with two older brothers around sometimes things appear.)
My current suspicion is that he's not going to nurse for as long as his brothers did. He just gets so distracted--granted, there is a lot more going on around him than there was around Barak at the same age, but Avtalyon just seems to want to leap into the fray much more. For the time being, though, he's still a baby--still little and soft and cuddly and sweet. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Look!
Look what Cecilia made me!
I'm so excited. :)
(You have to be on ravelry to follow the link. It's a swallowtail shawl, made in red Kauni. Aren't I lucky?)
Wonder how long it will take to get here from Australia...
Cecilia and I have both concluded that there is an inverse correlation between time available for knitting and desire to purchase yarn. I have, currently, pretty much no time to knit. This doesn't mean that I don't knit, it just means that I sneak time for knitting that I should be spending folding laundry or sleeping. It also means that on many of the nights that I am up into the wee hours writing speeches that someone else couldn't have their act together to request in a timely manner, I tally up the pay for those overtime hours and think, "Well, I could use just a little bit of that and get..." and put in an order for a ball of yarn. I know ALL the places that have free shipping.
When Deb came a couple of weeks ago (still haven't blogged about that! and be careful, if you follow the link, don't scroll down too far, because if you do you will find a truly disgusting picture of degloved squirrels. In a pot. You have been warned.) she commented on the size of my stash and the fact that it would probably take me the rest of my life to knit through it at my current rate. I muttered something noncommittal and hoped she would be out when the mailman arrived. She wasn't, and saw how much Noro I'd bought from the littleknits sale. But being a true knitter, not only did she not hold it against me, she started hankering after some Noro of her own. So it was all ok. :)
In case you're wondering how much sock yarn I have, I have this much:
Not that bad. Most of the bottom shelf isn't even sock yarn, and ergo doesn't count. Or maybe it's the sock yarn that doesn't count? Well, whatever. See that red on the second to bottom shelf? That's my shawl now. The wheel in the lower left corner is Iyyar's tricycle, or "bikull!" as he calls it.
Back to cleaning the kitchen. And then maybe a couple of rows on my Cobblestone. Before I start making Shabbos. Because we're having guests.
And I haven't even gone shopping yet.
I'm so excited. :)
(You have to be on ravelry to follow the link. It's a swallowtail shawl, made in red Kauni. Aren't I lucky?)
Wonder how long it will take to get here from Australia...
Cecilia and I have both concluded that there is an inverse correlation between time available for knitting and desire to purchase yarn. I have, currently, pretty much no time to knit. This doesn't mean that I don't knit, it just means that I sneak time for knitting that I should be spending folding laundry or sleeping. It also means that on many of the nights that I am up into the wee hours writing speeches that someone else couldn't have their act together to request in a timely manner, I tally up the pay for those overtime hours and think, "Well, I could use just a little bit of that and get..." and put in an order for a ball of yarn. I know ALL the places that have free shipping.
When Deb came a couple of weeks ago (still haven't blogged about that! and be careful, if you follow the link, don't scroll down too far, because if you do you will find a truly disgusting picture of degloved squirrels. In a pot. You have been warned.) she commented on the size of my stash and the fact that it would probably take me the rest of my life to knit through it at my current rate. I muttered something noncommittal and hoped she would be out when the mailman arrived. She wasn't, and saw how much Noro I'd bought from the littleknits sale. But being a true knitter, not only did she not hold it against me, she started hankering after some Noro of her own. So it was all ok. :)
In case you're wondering how much sock yarn I have, I have this much:
Not that bad. Most of the bottom shelf isn't even sock yarn, and ergo doesn't count. Or maybe it's the sock yarn that doesn't count? Well, whatever. See that red on the second to bottom shelf? That's my shawl now. The wheel in the lower left corner is Iyyar's tricycle, or "bikull!" as he calls it.
Back to cleaning the kitchen. And then maybe a couple of rows on my Cobblestone. Before I start making Shabbos. Because we're having guests.
And I haven't even gone shopping yet.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Motzai shabbos
Thanks for all the emails.
I keep and enjoy this blog for many reasons but emotional catharsis, generally speaking, is not one of them. So I'm not going to be writing much about my granny and the last couple of weeks here, at least not anytime soon. But if you want to know more about her, you can read this.
I keep and enjoy this blog for many reasons but emotional catharsis, generally speaking, is not one of them. So I'm not going to be writing much about my granny and the last couple of weeks here, at least not anytime soon. But if you want to know more about her, you can read this.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
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