I sat down ready to blog about all kinds of things but for some reason when I clicked into the little Blogger box that says, "Title," my fingers put in, "Blah." Not sure why. Am I feeling blah and not realizing it? Or is it just a nod to the speeches I should be writing at. this. very. moment?
Anyway...
1. Lice. We have lice. I saw something horrible walking around in Barak's hair not a week after an obsessive full-family lice combing turned up nothing. Not only did he have them, but so did Iyyar. AND SO DID I. Dealing with lice in three little boys with crew cuts is unpleasant but mostly manageable. Dealing with lice when you yourself have waist-length hair that is fine, wavy, and prone to intense tangling is entirely different. I hacked off six inches before I even started and I think the lice comb pulled out at least half of what was left. Ew. Ew ew ew. Also, massive laundry.
2. I told Deb, when we were on the phone booking her tickets (to come! and visit me! in two and a half weeks woohoo!) that I planned to clean the whole apartment before she got here. My friends, she LAUGHED. She did. I take this as a challenge. Operation Get the Damn House Clean Already, 5772, has already begun: our bedroom is totally clean (I did that first because it's the one least likely to get messed up) and the closet is cleaned out and organized. Marika's room is next (I'm doing this in descending order of how likely something is to stay clean once I've cleaned it.) Next is the office, which, no matter how perfect I get it, is always trashed within 48 hours; the kitchen, well... yeah. I can do that the morning she gets here, I guess.
3. Succos! Succos is fun. The kids are all off school for two and a half weeks, which is OK because Mr. Bigfoot is off too. I am not even a little bit off work, however, which makes it all kind of exhausting. Also, the yom tov prep this year is... well.
I've sort of talked in general terms about where we live and the setup here, although I think if you travel in the same circles I do you've figured it out already. If you haven't, we're in kollel housing, which in our case is one large apartment building with about 30 apartments. Last year, there were two buildings, about 30 families and 4 single guys, one of whom got married during the year. This year, funding has been cut significantly. We are no longer getting meals at a dining hall, and we are paying our own utilities; this has been replaced by a stipend of $250/month which for us represents a little more than what we spend on a week's groceries. Stipends are the same regardless of family size. Not surprisingly, this change meant that far fewer families are here this year, and many more single guys, who can almost, if not entirely, make ends meet with a free apartment and that amount of money. Last year, the family: single guy ratio was 10:1. This year, it's close to 1:1.
Now. Why is this a problem for us? It's a problem for us because in general the expectation in past years has been that the single guys eat by the families on Shabbos. There was a dining hall during the week, and it closed on Shabbos, and then the families invited the single guys over. Last year, with the 10:1 ratio, it was no problem. This year, the single guys are mostly still eating in the dining hall--they can pay to do it and it's just about what they get with their stipend. However, the expectation still is that they will eat by the families for Shabbos. These days, that is harder. And this Succos, there are only four families around and seven single guys and also some other guys from the yeshiva we share our campus with, and a whole bunch of them just kind of showed up to the succah meals for which four families (read: four women) were cooking, expecting to get fed.
Some had RSVP'd. Some had not. Some had signed up on the Google Doc to bring stuff, but even those who had did not bring enough and did not seem to see why this was a problem. (If you signed up to bring X number of plastic forks, plates, table covers, grape juice, cake, and a woman says to you, "Where is it?" and you say, "I think there are still some forks in that bag" and walk off, she will want to kill you. FYI.) So by Shabbos lunch, when there were NINETEEN people, half of them single guys who had not contributed in any way to the meal, sitting there expecting to get fed... I was not pleased. The other women were not pleased.
And it's complicated, you know, because--well on the one hand it isn't complicated at all. They're schnorring and they shouldn't do that. But on the other hand, this is always the way it's been and no one has sat them down and explained that they can't expect the families to feed them anymore. And who's going to do it? And there's also this cultural expectation that most of them were raised in, that the women deal with the food. AND there's the cultural expectation that it's a mitzva to host meals, and while most--really, all--of us generally enjoy doing that, none of us can afford to feed half the kollel, and we don't like feeling taking advantage of.
Anyway. It kind of put a damper on my yom tov, wondering what kind of a mess was going to be in the succah and how many guys would be at the next meal and whether there would be enough food and plastic goods etc. And seeing 19 people there to eat the 24 rolls of stuffed cabbage I'd made, expecting 12 people. And knowing that I'd signed up for almost all of the meat, to be sure that there wasn't any with soy, and had ergo spent about twice what anyone else did.
Yeah. I think next time there's a communal meal, we'll be passing. And you know what? It makes me not want to host the single guys anymore. Even though individually, I really like them, and they're not really doing anything wrong. Because in order to keep inviting them and not resenting it, I'd have to sit them down and say, "Stop schnorring" and I'm just... not going to be the only one to do that.
3. I am trying really hard not to panic about a bunch of stuff. For example: I really want to move. I know I can't move now, but I want to at least plan/prepare for moving this coming summer. However, in order to do that I have to, you know, KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING. Which I don't. Because Mr. Bigfoot doesn't have a job for next year, and we STILL do not know what is going to be with his teacher's license because--wait for it--the person who was supposed to give the final answer for what he was going to be required to do to get it, went on vacation the day before he'd promised to write the list out.
You got that right.
In the meantime, Mr. Bigfoot was offered work--poorly paid and part-time, but with potential. And he took it, because he wasn't about to say no to work because it might conflict with the program he doesn't yet know whether or not he'll be doing! But now... oh you see the problem already?
So we don't know, and it's more uncertainty than I can deal with.
4. Our condo in America. I'd tell you, but then I'd really have a full-blown panic attack and probably not be able to finish this post. So let's just pretend it's not there, mmmmmkay?
5. Yesterday, in the middle of the lice and the laundry and the aftermath of the whole yom tov food debacle, and the subsequent flying emails from all the politely enraged kollel wives, I sat down at my computer and bought a spinning wheel. Because really, what else was there to do?
It's a used Ashford traditional, which was my first wheel about, uh, oh wow... 16 years ago?! It's mass-produced, functional, and solidly built; it will survive the trip here in a box and I will again be able to spin. And somehow, I think that this will make things better.
Now, rationally, this makes no sense. I have almost no time to knit so why would I be able to find the time to spin? I don't really have anywhere to put a wheel, although that I think I can manage. But the wheel, somehow, is about normalcy. It's just something stable and settled and the way things used to be when we had our own place. I can't bring over my Hall and I don't know when I'll be able to, but a Trad... it'll be something.
6. Huh. I'm starting to see why I titled this, "Blah."
7. We had a really fun evening tonight. (I'm trying!) Took the kids on the bus, and attempted to take them on the train downtown, only to find as soon as we got off the bus (which would also have taken us exactly where we were heading, only not as exciting-ly) that the train was ON STRIKE. Didn't it just... start running two months ago? Anyway, we got back on the bus, and went to Ben Yehuda and all had Moshiko, and then walked down Yaffo as it got dark and saw all the succahs out and the people eating in them, and went down to Kikar Safra and went into the big giant city succah and saw the mayor (hi Nir!) who was the only guy there in a suit and tie, and then came back up Yaffo and got cookies to eat in the Holy Bagel succah, which was the only one that passed Mr. Halachic Man's test (if you saw a guy tonight squatting down next to a succah and measuring it with his fists, that was my husband.)
It was fun. The kids had fun. I did too. It was really special, being out there on a balmy October night with thousands of other people and dozens of succahs in Jerusalem. I know I'm sounding cranky now, but it really was.
8. My husband just walked in from the succah and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was blogging. He said, "You've got five minutes. Then go to sleep." He's right, of course.
(Now he's looking over my shoulder to see if I made him sound mean. I didn't! See!)
Trying to think of some good way to wrap this up but I can't, because he's right, I'm really really tired. Going to bed now, in hopes of better Perspective in the morning.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Ouch
I hear that there are certain traits that are considered common to oldest children. I guess you could find different people saying different things on this topic, but Barak, for whatever reason--nature or nurture--has always been a soother. One of our family lines, when Mr. Bigfoot is getting a little too stressed about his comps or class prep or the invisible airborne particles of chicken soup that might have landed in his yogurt, is, "It's okay, Abba." I actually can't remember the full origin story of this line, but when Barak was around two and a half or three and Mr. Bigfoot was getting worked up about something, Barak came up to him, patted him on the leg, and said, soothingly, "Iss okay, Abba. Iss just fine."
Iyyar is the same way in a lot of circumstances, but it comes from a different place somehow. Iyyar is really sensitive to other people's feelings and is upset when other people are upset; if the baby is crying, he is really alarmed, and once when he was in Yehudis's playgroup and Yehudis's baby was crying upstairs (with her grandmother--she was sick), Iyyar followed Yehudis around all morning urgently trying to make her aware that the baby was CRYING and shouldn't she DO something about this?! Barak, at this age anyway, does not seem over sensitive socially and brushes off slights from other kids; Iyyar is deeply troubled by them. Right now this seems to be the biggest issue at school--other kids not playing with/not talking to him, and his inability to figure out how to deal with this constructively. We're working on it, but right now it's hard.
Anyway. That is not where I meant to go with this post, but Iyyar and gan are really on my mind right now. What I meant to blog about was my kitchen.
My kitchen is really hard.
Most days it doesn't bother me too much. I'm used to it. I have a two-burner solid ring hot plate and two toaster ovens, a dairy one I brought back from the States and a parve one I bought here. You really can do a lot with that. But it's not easy and it's not so much fun, especially when you have almost no counter space for prep work. And what's kind of extra-specially frustrating is that now that we live here, there are so, so many good ingredients to work with. So much good produce. So much amazing dairy. The shuk! For Rosh Hashana, I didn't do anything fancy, but I stayed up all night (literally--till 9 am) the night before making banana bread, carrot kugel, chicken soup, matzo balls, salad, garlic mashed potatoes, chocolate cake and schnitzel. Then on Shabbos we went to the home of friends who used to live where we live, and moved last summer to an apartment with a real (read: normal) kitchen. She has been glorying in this kitchen, which is nothing fancy but to me is the stuff of dreams: a gas stove! A normal (Israeli-sized) oven! Sinks not full of mold! Counters! Cabinets! And lunch was amazing. Amazing yummy vegetable salads, amazing yummy chicken and carrots. So so good.
A few weeks ago, for whatever reason, I just really really wanted to cook. I found a new recipe and I made meatloaf. I doubled it and put it in a 9 x 13. I covered it and put it in my toaster oven.
And the rack crashed to the floor of the oven because it was designed for toast, not the weight of a 9 x 13 pan full of meat.
The kids were in bed but Mr. Bigfoot was around, and I just lost it. I screamed. "I hate this kitchen! I hate it! I hate it so much!" The entire screaming outburst lasted about fifteen seconds but it is not my usual thing. Mr. Bigfoot was alarmed. "Just one more year. Then you'll b'ezrat Hashem have a kitchen again."
Just one more year.
It's taking me a while, but this is where I started: last week, I decided I wanted to make challah. I haven't made challah since we've been here and for whatever reason I just wanted to do it. So I broke out a recipe (I couldn't find my usual one--I made it so often in ye olde country that I had it memorized, and here I'd forgotten it and had to get it from a friend) and I made a half-sized batch of challah.
I kneaded by hand. (I had to move the burners to the top of the fridge to make space.) I let it rise. I rolled out strands and braided them. I gave each kid a glob of dough to make into a roll. I baked them.
And.
The oven is so small that the outsides of the challah are too close to the heating elements. The crust was hard and dry, the inside not quite baked through. It wasn't my usual recipe--not as rich, not as sweet. The kids were SO excited to see me bake challah. They wanted SO much for it to be "my" challah. But it just... wasn't.
Iyyar: "Imma? Why is this challah all hard and not sweet?"
Me: "I'm sorry, sweetie. It's because the oven is so small. The challah is really close to the heating element, and that means that the outside of the challah gets too hot and kind of dried out. I need a bigger oven."
Iyyar looks crushed. Barak looks up and all of a sudden his eyes get all big and encouraging.
"Iyyar! Do you know what? One day, we're going to have an apartment with a real kitchen! With a stove! A real stove that Imma can cook on! And then she'll make challah and bagels! Do you remember Imma used to make bagels? And cookies! She used to make cookies too! And then we'll also have a bathtub!"
I wanted to cry. Partly because he was being so good and brave about it, and so clearly trying to make us both feel better; partly because what is wrong here that I can't bake cookies anymore, and my kids are dreaming about one day having a bathtub?
Just one more year. Of course, first Mr. Bigfoot needs to find a job. Things have been looking moderately encouraging on that front. He's been picked up by a local yeshiva high school as a regular tutor for their Anglo olim boys, and is now up to 9 hours a week of Gemara bagrut tutoring. The pay isn't great, but if he can get enough hours it will add up. He's got some cartooning work, which again, pay isn't great but hopefully it will lead to something. And he's waiting to hear back from the Misrad haChinuch about what, exactly, he's going to have to do to get his Israeli teacher's license. Ideally, he'll be able to finish all the requirements this year, although we won't know until they tell us and this has been dragging on for months already--since before Pesach.
In the meantime, Marika is settled into gan, Avtalyon is enjoying his new gan, and Iyyar, well, Iyyar is trying his best. Barak really likes his school, although homework is a struggle and he doesn't love his gym teacher.
And me? I'm still here, plugging away. Cooking some semblance of dinner nightly.
Iss okay, Imma. Iss just fine.
Iyyar is the same way in a lot of circumstances, but it comes from a different place somehow. Iyyar is really sensitive to other people's feelings and is upset when other people are upset; if the baby is crying, he is really alarmed, and once when he was in Yehudis's playgroup and Yehudis's baby was crying upstairs (with her grandmother--she was sick), Iyyar followed Yehudis around all morning urgently trying to make her aware that the baby was CRYING and shouldn't she DO something about this?! Barak, at this age anyway, does not seem over sensitive socially and brushes off slights from other kids; Iyyar is deeply troubled by them. Right now this seems to be the biggest issue at school--other kids not playing with/not talking to him, and his inability to figure out how to deal with this constructively. We're working on it, but right now it's hard.
Anyway. That is not where I meant to go with this post, but Iyyar and gan are really on my mind right now. What I meant to blog about was my kitchen.
My kitchen is really hard.
Most days it doesn't bother me too much. I'm used to it. I have a two-burner solid ring hot plate and two toaster ovens, a dairy one I brought back from the States and a parve one I bought here. You really can do a lot with that. But it's not easy and it's not so much fun, especially when you have almost no counter space for prep work. And what's kind of extra-specially frustrating is that now that we live here, there are so, so many good ingredients to work with. So much good produce. So much amazing dairy. The shuk! For Rosh Hashana, I didn't do anything fancy, but I stayed up all night (literally--till 9 am) the night before making banana bread, carrot kugel, chicken soup, matzo balls, salad, garlic mashed potatoes, chocolate cake and schnitzel. Then on Shabbos we went to the home of friends who used to live where we live, and moved last summer to an apartment with a real (read: normal) kitchen. She has been glorying in this kitchen, which is nothing fancy but to me is the stuff of dreams: a gas stove! A normal (Israeli-sized) oven! Sinks not full of mold! Counters! Cabinets! And lunch was amazing. Amazing yummy vegetable salads, amazing yummy chicken and carrots. So so good.
A few weeks ago, for whatever reason, I just really really wanted to cook. I found a new recipe and I made meatloaf. I doubled it and put it in a 9 x 13. I covered it and put it in my toaster oven.
And the rack crashed to the floor of the oven because it was designed for toast, not the weight of a 9 x 13 pan full of meat.
The kids were in bed but Mr. Bigfoot was around, and I just lost it. I screamed. "I hate this kitchen! I hate it! I hate it so much!" The entire screaming outburst lasted about fifteen seconds but it is not my usual thing. Mr. Bigfoot was alarmed. "Just one more year. Then you'll b'ezrat Hashem have a kitchen again."
Just one more year.
It's taking me a while, but this is where I started: last week, I decided I wanted to make challah. I haven't made challah since we've been here and for whatever reason I just wanted to do it. So I broke out a recipe (I couldn't find my usual one--I made it so often in ye olde country that I had it memorized, and here I'd forgotten it and had to get it from a friend) and I made a half-sized batch of challah.
I kneaded by hand. (I had to move the burners to the top of the fridge to make space.) I let it rise. I rolled out strands and braided them. I gave each kid a glob of dough to make into a roll. I baked them.
And.
The oven is so small that the outsides of the challah are too close to the heating elements. The crust was hard and dry, the inside not quite baked through. It wasn't my usual recipe--not as rich, not as sweet. The kids were SO excited to see me bake challah. They wanted SO much for it to be "my" challah. But it just... wasn't.
Iyyar: "Imma? Why is this challah all hard and not sweet?"
Me: "I'm sorry, sweetie. It's because the oven is so small. The challah is really close to the heating element, and that means that the outside of the challah gets too hot and kind of dried out. I need a bigger oven."
Iyyar looks crushed. Barak looks up and all of a sudden his eyes get all big and encouraging.
"Iyyar! Do you know what? One day, we're going to have an apartment with a real kitchen! With a stove! A real stove that Imma can cook on! And then she'll make challah and bagels! Do you remember Imma used to make bagels? And cookies! She used to make cookies too! And then we'll also have a bathtub!"
I wanted to cry. Partly because he was being so good and brave about it, and so clearly trying to make us both feel better; partly because what is wrong here that I can't bake cookies anymore, and my kids are dreaming about one day having a bathtub?
Just one more year. Of course, first Mr. Bigfoot needs to find a job. Things have been looking moderately encouraging on that front. He's been picked up by a local yeshiva high school as a regular tutor for their Anglo olim boys, and is now up to 9 hours a week of Gemara bagrut tutoring. The pay isn't great, but if he can get enough hours it will add up. He's got some cartooning work, which again, pay isn't great but hopefully it will lead to something. And he's waiting to hear back from the Misrad haChinuch about what, exactly, he's going to have to do to get his Israeli teacher's license. Ideally, he'll be able to finish all the requirements this year, although we won't know until they tell us and this has been dragging on for months already--since before Pesach.
In the meantime, Marika is settled into gan, Avtalyon is enjoying his new gan, and Iyyar, well, Iyyar is trying his best. Barak really likes his school, although homework is a struggle and he doesn't love his gym teacher.
And me? I'm still here, plugging away. Cooking some semblance of dinner nightly.
Iss okay, Imma. Iss just fine.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Disjointed
Since I got back from the US, what was it, almost three weeks ago now? I have not been able to sleep. Like, REALLY not able to sleep. Like awake until 4 or 5 AM, and then falling asleep during the day at inconvenient and inappropriate times. I wasn't like this before, so I have to assume it's the jetlag, which technically I "should" be over by now--but the thing is, it's really hard to adjust back when I'm not really adjusting back. I'm still working on US time. I'm still going to sleep (for a nap) not too far off the time I would have gone to bed in America. So it's not crazy that my body thinks that my nighttime sleep is the nap and my morning sleep is the real sleep, and doesn't let me wake up conscious and refreshed after only three or four hours.
Anyway. Right now I am in an empty house, which I have been cleaning up; I just ate some breakfast and have a sinkful of dishes soaking in hot water. Quick blog post, then dishes, then nap. So: a list?
1. Did you hear about El Al's new baggage policy? As in, only one 50 lb bag per passenger?! Wasn't it only three or four years ago that you got 2 70 lb bags? All of the European carriers have been doing this for a while but I think a lot of people, myself certainly among them, were shocked to see it from El Al. Because the people who are most loyal to El Al are the people who come frequently, who have family here, who tend to bring a lot of stuff. And the kids who come for a year for seminary and yeshiva, and bring a lot of stuff. And the people like me, who go back for work and regularly come back with a lot of stuff.
There was a time when I would have shrugged and said, who needs more than 50 lb of luggage? But now? I DO. This last trip I came back with two 49.5 lb bags and had to leave a laundry basket full of stuff that didn't fit by Yehudis. OK, some of it I didn't strictly need. The Tootsie Rolls, for example. And my policy with these trips is to let each kid make one food and one non-food request, and it happened to be that Iyyar and Avtalyon requested soy-free hot dogs and bologna, and Barak requested Rice Chex (!!) so that took up a lot of space. But the rest of it? Six pairs of kids' leather Shabbos shoes of good quality and reasonable price, a combination nonexistent here, for my sister-in-law (a gift from her father-in-law, that he ordered and had sent to me). Scary underwear for the boys. A huge box full of kids' clothes from the last time Lands' End did a $40 off any order of $100 sale. Tons and tons of Hanes socks, which last longer than any socks I've come across here, for the boys. Sneakers for my own boys. Books I needed for work, English books for the kids. Chanuka presents--toys that will not disintegrate into choking hazards after a few days and that cost less than a week's groceries. School supplies, good quality at a third the price of what you see here. Diaper cream, a third the price it is here. Tums, ditto. Aquaphor, not available at any price. The list goes on. And no, mail is not an option, for a number of reasons: exorbitant cost, unreliability, customs fees among them.
El Al! Don't you realize what this is going to do to your customer loyalty? Because I for one am going to go with any airline that isn't Turkish that will let me have two bags. Is it really worth it? Does it really save you that much money? How about charging something reasonable for the second bag--say, $50 or $75?
Grumble.
2. Marika is getting so verbal. She says so much! "Thank you" is no longer "ta ta" but "dangoo Imma!" She loves plums and calls all plums apples. She calls all bread pita ("deeda!") As of today, she didn't cry when I dropped her off at Carmit and was even excited on the way over ("Mee!") And she brings me her clothes and shoes when it's time to get dressed, and even asks me to put kukus in her hair ("dyoudyou!") and, if she finds a barrette, demands that as well. Asking her to stay still while I comb her hair and put it in pigtails, however, is a different story entirely.
3. Her favorite thing to do these days is look out the window. Either she climbs up on Iyyar's bed to look out toward the playground, or gets up on her little yellow chair to look out the living room window (over the windowboxes containing dead tomato plants that I really need to deal with. Soon.) She loves to holler Barak's name out the window, even when he patently is not out there. I think she is hoping it might help, somehow.
4. School and Iyyar are sort of touch and go right now. He comes home and says other kids aren't playing with him. I want to think this isn't true but I don't know. The teacher says he hasn't made friends yet but gave me a list of names of kids she think have potential. Unfortunately the one he likes best is in tzaharon (afternoon daycare) but Succot is coming so hopefully we'll manage some playdates then. In the meantime, he is much much better behaviorally at home. MUCH. I still see things that worry me--the singing-while-eating, the in-his-own-worldness, how hard it is for him to stay on task long enough to just get dressed--but I don't want to smack him fifty times a day anymore, or, usually, even once. The degree to which this is an improvement, for my own mental health along with everything else, cannot be overstated.
5. I cleaned up our bedroom. Thoroughly, including a full closet clean-out. It is a little embarrassing what a mammoth undertaking this was, but it was so satisfying once done. Now I want to do all the bedrooms. Cleaning mojo is not a thing to be wasted, and I have a visit from Deb coming up to motivate me, so let's see how this one goes.
6. Oh! And Deb is coming!! This is quite exciting. She is also planning on coming back with me when I come back from the trip that is supposed to be happening next month (that I still don't have dates for), which is also exciting. I am hoping she allows me to hijack at least some of her luggage allowance for books, yarn and Tootsie Rolls.
7. Speaking of ADD (I wasn't? Oh. Sorry) I think I may have mentioned that Mr. Bigfoot has a pretty raging case of it himself, which has never been diagnosed or treated but is blindingly obvious to anyone who lives with him or works with him for any length of time. He's developed coping strategies for some of it, and I sort of kick him along for some of it, but there's no pretending it's not an issue. Someone recommended to him an herbal ADD remedy (gingko, crataegus, scutelleria, verbana etc.) that is supposed to help and he started with it last week. So far, it doesn't seem to be doing anything but it hasn't been that long. Does anyone have any experience with using that? For adults or for kids?
8. The rash. Oh dear. The rash has been getting... worse. And I looked back at my blog and yes I did have this with Marika. How did I forget that? (Probably got lost in there somewhere with the shingles and the exploding toaster ovens and the month I waddled around at 5 cm.) Yehudis said, take a good probiotic. That never hurts, but... I'm not sure what else to do. I can't smear ANYTHING on it right now--it sends me straight through the roof. Oh for a bathtub...
9. What should I make for dinner? Ideas? Anyone? There is that last pack of soy-free hot dogs...
10. Because shabbos has effectively been canceled this week due to Yom Kippur, I decided to make chicken soup (really turkey soup, since I discovered how well turkey necks work for soup and how very very cheap they are) on Sunday, for dinner and the break-fast. Usually, when I make chicken soup, I do all the prep on Thursday night and go to bed with a pot full of vegetables and a cheesecloth bag full of bones and greenery in the fridge. Then in the morning when the kids leave for school, I add the water and put it on the stove, so that by the time the kids are home I am at the matzo ball stage. This time, I started cutting up vegetables at about 1 PM, aiming for dinner at 6. Wow. BIG mistake. Avtalyon saw me, Iyyar saw me, Barak saw me, and I think someone asked me when oh when oh when the kitchensoupandmatzoballs would be ready at least every five minutes for five hours straight. I think it was just too much for them to see the pot and smell the soup and be told, nope, sorry, not ready yet, allllll afternoon. That's the last time I do something like that for a very very long time.
Time to wash dishes. Thanks for not giving up on me, even though I don't post so regularly these days. I mean to, I want to, it's just, you know... I'm a little busy.
Anyway. Right now I am in an empty house, which I have been cleaning up; I just ate some breakfast and have a sinkful of dishes soaking in hot water. Quick blog post, then dishes, then nap. So: a list?
1. Did you hear about El Al's new baggage policy? As in, only one 50 lb bag per passenger?! Wasn't it only three or four years ago that you got 2 70 lb bags? All of the European carriers have been doing this for a while but I think a lot of people, myself certainly among them, were shocked to see it from El Al. Because the people who are most loyal to El Al are the people who come frequently, who have family here, who tend to bring a lot of stuff. And the kids who come for a year for seminary and yeshiva, and bring a lot of stuff. And the people like me, who go back for work and regularly come back with a lot of stuff.
There was a time when I would have shrugged and said, who needs more than 50 lb of luggage? But now? I DO. This last trip I came back with two 49.5 lb bags and had to leave a laundry basket full of stuff that didn't fit by Yehudis. OK, some of it I didn't strictly need. The Tootsie Rolls, for example. And my policy with these trips is to let each kid make one food and one non-food request, and it happened to be that Iyyar and Avtalyon requested soy-free hot dogs and bologna, and Barak requested Rice Chex (!!) so that took up a lot of space. But the rest of it? Six pairs of kids' leather Shabbos shoes of good quality and reasonable price, a combination nonexistent here, for my sister-in-law (a gift from her father-in-law, that he ordered and had sent to me). Scary underwear for the boys. A huge box full of kids' clothes from the last time Lands' End did a $40 off any order of $100 sale. Tons and tons of Hanes socks, which last longer than any socks I've come across here, for the boys. Sneakers for my own boys. Books I needed for work, English books for the kids. Chanuka presents--toys that will not disintegrate into choking hazards after a few days and that cost less than a week's groceries. School supplies, good quality at a third the price of what you see here. Diaper cream, a third the price it is here. Tums, ditto. Aquaphor, not available at any price. The list goes on. And no, mail is not an option, for a number of reasons: exorbitant cost, unreliability, customs fees among them.
El Al! Don't you realize what this is going to do to your customer loyalty? Because I for one am going to go with any airline that isn't Turkish that will let me have two bags. Is it really worth it? Does it really save you that much money? How about charging something reasonable for the second bag--say, $50 or $75?
Grumble.
2. Marika is getting so verbal. She says so much! "Thank you" is no longer "ta ta" but "dangoo Imma!" She loves plums and calls all plums apples. She calls all bread pita ("deeda!") As of today, she didn't cry when I dropped her off at Carmit and was even excited on the way over ("Mee!") And she brings me her clothes and shoes when it's time to get dressed, and even asks me to put kukus in her hair ("dyoudyou!") and, if she finds a barrette, demands that as well. Asking her to stay still while I comb her hair and put it in pigtails, however, is a different story entirely.
3. Her favorite thing to do these days is look out the window. Either she climbs up on Iyyar's bed to look out toward the playground, or gets up on her little yellow chair to look out the living room window (over the windowboxes containing dead tomato plants that I really need to deal with. Soon.) She loves to holler Barak's name out the window, even when he patently is not out there. I think she is hoping it might help, somehow.
4. School and Iyyar are sort of touch and go right now. He comes home and says other kids aren't playing with him. I want to think this isn't true but I don't know. The teacher says he hasn't made friends yet but gave me a list of names of kids she think have potential. Unfortunately the one he likes best is in tzaharon (afternoon daycare) but Succot is coming so hopefully we'll manage some playdates then. In the meantime, he is much much better behaviorally at home. MUCH. I still see things that worry me--the singing-while-eating, the in-his-own-worldness, how hard it is for him to stay on task long enough to just get dressed--but I don't want to smack him fifty times a day anymore, or, usually, even once. The degree to which this is an improvement, for my own mental health along with everything else, cannot be overstated.
5. I cleaned up our bedroom. Thoroughly, including a full closet clean-out. It is a little embarrassing what a mammoth undertaking this was, but it was so satisfying once done. Now I want to do all the bedrooms. Cleaning mojo is not a thing to be wasted, and I have a visit from Deb coming up to motivate me, so let's see how this one goes.
6. Oh! And Deb is coming!! This is quite exciting. She is also planning on coming back with me when I come back from the trip that is supposed to be happening next month (that I still don't have dates for), which is also exciting. I am hoping she allows me to hijack at least some of her luggage allowance for books, yarn and Tootsie Rolls.
7. Speaking of ADD (I wasn't? Oh. Sorry) I think I may have mentioned that Mr. Bigfoot has a pretty raging case of it himself, which has never been diagnosed or treated but is blindingly obvious to anyone who lives with him or works with him for any length of time. He's developed coping strategies for some of it, and I sort of kick him along for some of it, but there's no pretending it's not an issue. Someone recommended to him an herbal ADD remedy (gingko, crataegus, scutelleria, verbana etc.) that is supposed to help and he started with it last week. So far, it doesn't seem to be doing anything but it hasn't been that long. Does anyone have any experience with using that? For adults or for kids?
8. The rash. Oh dear. The rash has been getting... worse. And I looked back at my blog and yes I did have this with Marika. How did I forget that? (Probably got lost in there somewhere with the shingles and the exploding toaster ovens and the month I waddled around at 5 cm.) Yehudis said, take a good probiotic. That never hurts, but... I'm not sure what else to do. I can't smear ANYTHING on it right now--it sends me straight through the roof. Oh for a bathtub...
9. What should I make for dinner? Ideas? Anyone? There is that last pack of soy-free hot dogs...
10. Because shabbos has effectively been canceled this week due to Yom Kippur, I decided to make chicken soup (really turkey soup, since I discovered how well turkey necks work for soup and how very very cheap they are) on Sunday, for dinner and the break-fast. Usually, when I make chicken soup, I do all the prep on Thursday night and go to bed with a pot full of vegetables and a cheesecloth bag full of bones and greenery in the fridge. Then in the morning when the kids leave for school, I add the water and put it on the stove, so that by the time the kids are home I am at the matzo ball stage. This time, I started cutting up vegetables at about 1 PM, aiming for dinner at 6. Wow. BIG mistake. Avtalyon saw me, Iyyar saw me, Barak saw me, and I think someone asked me when oh when oh when the kitchensoupandmatzoballs would be ready at least every five minutes for five hours straight. I think it was just too much for them to see the pot and smell the soup and be told, nope, sorry, not ready yet, allllll afternoon. That's the last time I do something like that for a very very long time.
Time to wash dishes. Thanks for not giving up on me, even though I don't post so regularly these days. I mean to, I want to, it's just, you know... I'm a little busy.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
I was going to write email to Grandma E
but then I figured I might as well just put everything I was going to tell her in a blog post instead. Except in a list with numbers, since it's a blog post.
1. Right before I left for the airport to come back home, I found a Priority Mail box on Yehudis's porch, with Grandma E's return address. It was full of cute little girl dresses in sizes 2T and 3T for Marika. We put one of them on her today, a long-sleeved striped T-shirt dress with a crossover (surplice? is that what they call it? top) and little ruffles along the neck and waist. It might possibly be the cutest thing ever, and Marika, in pigtails and little pink sandals, might possibly have been the world's cutest little girl.
She understands so much of what we say now. Mr. Bigfoot kept saying all day how cute the dress was, and at one point when he said it she looked up at him with a big grin and her hands on her skirt. "Dwess!" When I get her dressed, she is there like lightning, and if I don't have her shoes to hand, she dashes off and finds them for me. And then runs to Mr. Bigfoot and shows off how pretty she looks. Seriously. She is barreling out of babyhood at shocking speed, that one.
2. A few weeks ago I got a copy of the Schoolhouse Rock CD. Maybe there's more than one, but this is the "best of" that has such classic hits as Conjunction Junction, Interjections, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. My personal favorite is "Interjections! Show excitement! Or Emotion! They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong." Marika's favorite is "Zero My Hero." Except she pronounces it, "Dzeewoh!"
3. Iyyar's ganenet gave us the filled-out six-page evaluation form for us to take to get him a develomental exam/therapy. She checked almost every box and commented on everything we've seen in him plus some things we haven't. And she made it sound so... dire. I mean, I understand that there is a strong motivation for her to do this, because if she said the reassuring things that I, his mother, want to hear ("He's fine and will surely outgrow all of this,") well, then he wouldn't be getting any help. One of the things I noticed was that she said, "He hasn't made any friends in gan yet, probably because of the language issue." Last year, one of the things Iyyar told me all the time was that he didn't have friends, nobody played with him, the other kids were mean etc. Both the ganenot totally and absolutely denied that this was true. They said he had friends and he played nicely with the other kids, and that all kids said things like this sometime. And then they'd say things like, "He bothers the other children so they don't want to play with him." It never made much sense, except for the overwhelming impression that whatever the problem, it was all him and not the gan.
Last week, Iyyar came home dancing and singing: "I have a friend in gan!" I dropped him off the next day and he pointed out a kid with huge payes. "That's my friend!" All was sunshine and roses. Yesterday, he came home and it was like he had regressed, not quite to last May, but maybe to July sometime. I had to ask him ten times to do anything, kept having to tell him to look at my face, kept repeating his name before he'd pay attention to me and even then didn't make eye contact. I couldn't get out of him what the problem was, until bedtime when we were cuddling in his bed together and he suddenly burst out, "I had a bad day in gan today. Nobody played with me!" Hmmm.
I'm starting to wonder about a lot of things that went on in his gan last year. And tomorrow I'm going to take a copy of the class list to his ganenet and ask which kids would be good to invite over to play during Succos break.
4. Barak's second-grade homework is already way over my head. They get a pasuk in Chumash to look up (a verse of Bible) and a list of ten questions to answer. Right now, they're doing Lech L'cha (Genesis 12). They're supposed to find the pasuk and answer the questions WITHOUT HELP. For Barak, this is not happening; his Hebrew is getting much better but he just doesn't have the vocabulary. I don't either! On Thursday, he broke out his homework and I just couldn't help him. I mean, I could have done it if I'd sat down for an hour with a dictionary and ignored all my other children, but an hour before dinnertime on Thursday it wasn't happening. I sent him up to find Abba in the beis medrash, and he came back ten minutes later saying, "Abba says I should eat dinner now and he'll help me at dinnertime." Okay, except that dinner is currently a pot full of raw vegetables and another pot of water that hasn't yet boiled for pasta. So after dinner the two of them sat down together and did two of the ten questions before he (Abba) had to leave for night seder.
Barak was upset. "I have to do TEN questions Imma! That's my homework!" "Barak, it's OK. Abba's going to call your morah and ask her what to do." So after night seder, Abba called Morah Tzipora and explained the issue: he's only home for an hour at night, Barak can't do it on his own, what do we do? She said, it's ok if he only does a few of them as long as he understands what he's doing. She also said that he needs help in general; he asks for a lot of help in class and is having trouble keeping up. This isn't so surprising; Barak has, after all, only been here a year, and his Hebrew is more on the level of "He took my pencil!" and "Let's play Lego" than it is on the level of "And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land."
What to do? We talked. We could hire a tutor, but we both don't like that idea; it's good for fathers and sons to learn together. "But the only time I have is night seder." Night seder begins at 8. We looked at each other. "He's never asleep by 8 anyway. He's always reading in bed till 9 at least. He might as well be learning Torah. Is he awake now?" Yes he was, at 9:30 PM.
"Barak?"
Barak came bounding out of bed. "How would you feel about going to night seder with Abba to do your Chumash homework?"
"Instead of going to bed? Going to the bais medrash with Abba?"
"Right."
Solemnly, trying very hard to contain any unseemly excitement: "I would feel very very good about that."
5. There was going to be more to this list, but I just got a phone call with a speech I need to write RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND. So I'm off to accept an honorary degree, and I'll just have to finish this later. Stay tuned!
1. Right before I left for the airport to come back home, I found a Priority Mail box on Yehudis's porch, with Grandma E's return address. It was full of cute little girl dresses in sizes 2T and 3T for Marika. We put one of them on her today, a long-sleeved striped T-shirt dress with a crossover (surplice? is that what they call it? top) and little ruffles along the neck and waist. It might possibly be the cutest thing ever, and Marika, in pigtails and little pink sandals, might possibly have been the world's cutest little girl.
She understands so much of what we say now. Mr. Bigfoot kept saying all day how cute the dress was, and at one point when he said it she looked up at him with a big grin and her hands on her skirt. "Dwess!" When I get her dressed, she is there like lightning, and if I don't have her shoes to hand, she dashes off and finds them for me. And then runs to Mr. Bigfoot and shows off how pretty she looks. Seriously. She is barreling out of babyhood at shocking speed, that one.
2. A few weeks ago I got a copy of the Schoolhouse Rock CD. Maybe there's more than one, but this is the "best of" that has such classic hits as Conjunction Junction, Interjections, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. My personal favorite is "Interjections! Show excitement! Or Emotion! They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong." Marika's favorite is "Zero My Hero." Except she pronounces it, "Dzeewoh!"
3. Iyyar's ganenet gave us the filled-out six-page evaluation form for us to take to get him a develomental exam/therapy. She checked almost every box and commented on everything we've seen in him plus some things we haven't. And she made it sound so... dire. I mean, I understand that there is a strong motivation for her to do this, because if she said the reassuring things that I, his mother, want to hear ("He's fine and will surely outgrow all of this,") well, then he wouldn't be getting any help. One of the things I noticed was that she said, "He hasn't made any friends in gan yet, probably because of the language issue." Last year, one of the things Iyyar told me all the time was that he didn't have friends, nobody played with him, the other kids were mean etc. Both the ganenot totally and absolutely denied that this was true. They said he had friends and he played nicely with the other kids, and that all kids said things like this sometime. And then they'd say things like, "He bothers the other children so they don't want to play with him." It never made much sense, except for the overwhelming impression that whatever the problem, it was all him and not the gan.
Last week, Iyyar came home dancing and singing: "I have a friend in gan!" I dropped him off the next day and he pointed out a kid with huge payes. "That's my friend!" All was sunshine and roses. Yesterday, he came home and it was like he had regressed, not quite to last May, but maybe to July sometime. I had to ask him ten times to do anything, kept having to tell him to look at my face, kept repeating his name before he'd pay attention to me and even then didn't make eye contact. I couldn't get out of him what the problem was, until bedtime when we were cuddling in his bed together and he suddenly burst out, "I had a bad day in gan today. Nobody played with me!" Hmmm.
I'm starting to wonder about a lot of things that went on in his gan last year. And tomorrow I'm going to take a copy of the class list to his ganenet and ask which kids would be good to invite over to play during Succos break.
4. Barak's second-grade homework is already way over my head. They get a pasuk in Chumash to look up (a verse of Bible) and a list of ten questions to answer. Right now, they're doing Lech L'cha (Genesis 12). They're supposed to find the pasuk and answer the questions WITHOUT HELP. For Barak, this is not happening; his Hebrew is getting much better but he just doesn't have the vocabulary. I don't either! On Thursday, he broke out his homework and I just couldn't help him. I mean, I could have done it if I'd sat down for an hour with a dictionary and ignored all my other children, but an hour before dinnertime on Thursday it wasn't happening. I sent him up to find Abba in the beis medrash, and he came back ten minutes later saying, "Abba says I should eat dinner now and he'll help me at dinnertime." Okay, except that dinner is currently a pot full of raw vegetables and another pot of water that hasn't yet boiled for pasta. So after dinner the two of them sat down together and did two of the ten questions before he (Abba) had to leave for night seder.
Barak was upset. "I have to do TEN questions Imma! That's my homework!" "Barak, it's OK. Abba's going to call your morah and ask her what to do." So after night seder, Abba called Morah Tzipora and explained the issue: he's only home for an hour at night, Barak can't do it on his own, what do we do? She said, it's ok if he only does a few of them as long as he understands what he's doing. She also said that he needs help in general; he asks for a lot of help in class and is having trouble keeping up. This isn't so surprising; Barak has, after all, only been here a year, and his Hebrew is more on the level of "He took my pencil!" and "Let's play Lego" than it is on the level of "And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land."
What to do? We talked. We could hire a tutor, but we both don't like that idea; it's good for fathers and sons to learn together. "But the only time I have is night seder." Night seder begins at 8. We looked at each other. "He's never asleep by 8 anyway. He's always reading in bed till 9 at least. He might as well be learning Torah. Is he awake now?" Yes he was, at 9:30 PM.
"Barak?"
Barak came bounding out of bed. "How would you feel about going to night seder with Abba to do your Chumash homework?"
"Instead of going to bed? Going to the bais medrash with Abba?"
"Right."
Solemnly, trying very hard to contain any unseemly excitement: "I would feel very very good about that."
5. There was going to be more to this list, but I just got a phone call with a speech I need to write RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND. So I'm off to accept an honorary degree, and I'll just have to finish this later. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Ketchup
So I just read back through the last few posts and realized how much I’ve left out in the last few months. A lot. Really a lot. It was a busy summer and almost none of it is reflected in the blog. So here, little and late, is some review:
1. I did ulpan last summer. I started out in bet, moved to aleph because I preferred the teacher, and learned a tremendous amount. It was great for me, and also I think really good for Mr. Bigfoot, who for the first time was spending significant quantities of time on his own every day with all or most of his children. He got a lot more confident about taking care of them, and started feeling that being alone with all four of them was a normal, not an emergency, situation. That really helped when I was out of the country last week, and was also good bonding time—now that we are back to our school schedule, he really doesn’t see much of them at all.
The problem, through, was that when I was working and doing ulpan, I was so exhausted I couldn’t function. I’d come home from ulpan and collapse and sleep for three hours. This was not a huge problem over the summer, when Mr. Bigfoot was around, but doesn’t work now that he’s back to being out of the house all afternoon. So when September rolled around and it was time for me to start ulpan gimel, it was really a dilemma. I wanted to do ulpan. I NEED to do ulpan. But it’s just too much, especially since I now am working 35 (!) hours per week, almost all at night. So I’m not doing it, and not only that but I barely have to leave campus now that I don’t need to shlep Barak anymore. I need to figure out how, exactly, I am going to avoid losing all the Hebrew I learned in the last year, because as things stand I almost certainly will.
2. Before Barak was born, a few weeks into my pregnancy I think, I started getting some itchy spots on my calves. Slowly, week by week, it spread, until I had a horrendously itchy rash over most of my legs. I went to the dermatologist, who told me it was eczema and I should use moisturizer. I did, but it didn’t help at all, and by the last two weeks, it was everywhere but my face, hands, and neck, and I was indescribably miserable—the itchiness was horrendous, there was no way not to scratch, and… yeah. Awful. But a week after Barak was born, it was gone.
A few months ago, the back of one knee got itchy. Then it spread. Then it spread all the way around my calf and then it appeared on the other one. Then it spread all the way up one leg and now it’s starting on one arm. This time it’s not pregnancy-related. So what is it? It’s unbelievably itchy. It’s also really not going away, despite all the Aquaphor I smear on it. It looks exactly like it did last time. Another dermatologist run? Or any other suggestions for things to smear on a Horrible Itchy Rash that Won’t Go Away?
3. Grandma E asked me what I missed, besides the shopping (Target! Trader Joe’s!), about America. I’ve been thinking about it. Obviously it was really nice to see my friends. I ate the things I miss here (TJ’s tomato soup!). I was totally astounded and completely unprepared when it began to rain, in the beginning of September! But I think the only thing I actually missed, that gave me a sense of “ahhhh,” to be there, was being able to talk easily to anyone I met. My Hebrew just isn’t there yet. But it’s funny—a few weeks ago I overheard a couple of Hungarian girls talking on the bus (tourists) and started chatting. And I was really struck by how simple Hebrew is, at least when compared with Hungarian (okay fine ANY language is simple when compared with Hungarian, but…) There’s just so much less to keep track of. Surely I can do this. I just need to work at it some more.
4. Iyyar’s new gan, and his new ganenet, seem very very promising. The second week of school, she pulled Mr. Bigfoot aside and said that she wanted to get him a developmental exam so he could start therapy ASAP. She noted the things we’ve seen—how it’s hard for him to focus, hard to pay attention, how he’s in constant motion. She hasn’t noticed the anxiety, and that’s reassuring, because he really has been so much less anxious lately. I can’t even describe how much better things are with him at home. The faces, the inability to talk to him because he was just on another planet and wouldn’t look at you, the running around in circles yelling at nothing—all gone. He’s still a little spacy, still kind of oblivious—he’ll never notice what I’m in the middle of when he asks for something or starts talking to me, for example, and still sometimes does things that are wildly dangerous without realizing it—but nothing that’s so far off normal for a five-year old. I’m feeling a lot more optimistic.
5. Have I mentioned the Scary Underwear? Can’t remember. Anyway, in case I didn’t:
When Barak was ready for underwear (or when I hahahaha thought he was and bought it for him), he got Sesame Street underwear. Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover etc. He liked this very much. When Iyyar was ready for underwear, he inherited Barak’s underwear, with the addition of some extra Super Grover underwear because he loved Grover. This was fine and great.
I don’t remember when, exactly, I bought Barak his first package of superhero underwear, but it must have been around age four. I don’t remember Iyyar saying much about it, but Avtalyon used to take any underwear he could find and pull it on over his diaper and even over all his clothes—I have some cute pictures of him aged 18 months or so, wearing Grover underwear over his overalls. When we came here he was still in diapers, and I brought superhero underwear (Batman, Spiderman, Justice League etc.) for Barak and Iyyar and the Sesame Street underwear for Avtalyon.
This, clearly, was an error in judgment on my part.
Because right from the beginning, when Avtalyon was out of diapers last December sometime, he resented this. He did not want Sesame Street. He wanted what his big brothers had, namely, “scary underwear.” And he was not taking no for an answer. He’d sneak it out of his brothers’ drawers when they weren’t looking, and they would get enraged. He started waking up at the crack of dawn to raid their underwear drawers before they got up, to snag the Batman underwear before they caught him. They responded to this by—you got it—hiding their underwear on high shelves that he couldn’t reach. One morning we were all woken at about 5 am by the hysterical wails of a distraught Avtalyon, the stealthy one-child Scary Underwear Liberation Front, thwarted: “I HATE Cookie Monster! Cookie Monster’s STUPID!”
I felt bad for him. Mr. Bigfoot, who better than I understands the appeal of Scary Underwear, felt bad too. So I told the other boys, “Just let him. When I go to America next time, I’ll bring back lots and lots of scary underwear. He won’t wear it out before then, and you can all have new underwear. I'll even get Star Wars if they have it.”
I was as good as my word. I bought SIX packages of scary underwear at Target. Star Wars, Captain America, Star Wars in Lego incarnation, whatever they had in the right sizes. And when I came home, I pulled them out of my bag and handed them over.
The look on his face made it all worthwhile. Mr. Bigfoot was pointing out Captain America and how he had bullets bouncing off his shield. The next day, Avtalyon bounced out of bed, naked except for underwear, beaming, and danced over to me to show off his tush. “Look! It’s Captain America! Dere are bullets bouncing off his shield!”
6. Last thing: When I was away, Mr. Bigfoot emailed me, “Remind me when you get back to tell you the cutest thing ever.” I wasn’t here for this, obviously, but I can picture it. Apparently one morning Mr. Bigfoot woke up to find a sad, sad, sad Avtalyon, sitting in the corner of the hall, knees up to his chest, naked except for socks.
“What’s wrong, Avtalyon? Why are you looking so sad?”
“I can’t finda Hulk shirt.”
“Why don’t you just wear a regular undershirt?”
"I needa HULK shirt!”
“Why?”
Lips atremble, face awash in tragedy, “If I had a Hulk shirt, I be a little bit powerful.”
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Loud and clear
One of Marika's favorite words is "empty," which she pronounces in three syllables: "ah-ba-dee!" She'll pick up a cup off the floor, inspect it, and offer it to me delightedly: "Ah-ba-dee!" Or she'll take her own cup of water, dump the contents on her high chair tray, hold it up and comment cheerily, "Ah-ba-dee!" It's very cute.
This is the necessary information for the Cute Baby Story of last week. As you may already know I went to the States last week for about five days, all by myself, for work. No kids, no baby, just me. It was very strange but ultimately not as bad as I'd feared--I didn't have a nervous breakdown and everyone here managed just fine without me. Starting a week or two before I left, I was trying to get Marika to ease off on the nursing, knowing that I was heading to the States without her for nearly a week and I wanted her to be done nursing before I left. We got down to one nurse a day for about a week, then went two or three days without any. I thought, okay, that's that, but then on Thursday night I went in to check on her and of course she instantly woke up, stood up in her crib and stretched her arms out to me to be picked up. I can never resist this, so I sat down with her in the rocking chair--and she looked at me brightly and started pounding my chest suggestively with her fists.
"You want to nurse?"
"Yeah!"
"I don't think you're going to get very much."
"Nuh!"
"Oh okay fine. Just this one last time." So she nursed, although I can't imagine there was really much of anything to be had, and went happily back to sleep.
Next morning, I was sitting in the living room checking Barak's backpack when she came over to me and started climbing into my lap. And grabbed the neck of my t-shirt with both hands, peered down inside pensively, gave me a big grin and informed me, "ah-ba-dee!"
Indeed.
This is the necessary information for the Cute Baby Story of last week. As you may already know I went to the States last week for about five days, all by myself, for work. No kids, no baby, just me. It was very strange but ultimately not as bad as I'd feared--I didn't have a nervous breakdown and everyone here managed just fine without me. Starting a week or two before I left, I was trying to get Marika to ease off on the nursing, knowing that I was heading to the States without her for nearly a week and I wanted her to be done nursing before I left. We got down to one nurse a day for about a week, then went two or three days without any. I thought, okay, that's that, but then on Thursday night I went in to check on her and of course she instantly woke up, stood up in her crib and stretched her arms out to me to be picked up. I can never resist this, so I sat down with her in the rocking chair--and she looked at me brightly and started pounding my chest suggestively with her fists.
"You want to nurse?"
"Yeah!"
"I don't think you're going to get very much."
"Nuh!"
"Oh okay fine. Just this one last time." So she nursed, although I can't imagine there was really much of anything to be had, and went happily back to sleep.
Next morning, I was sitting in the living room checking Barak's backpack when she came over to me and started climbing into my lap. And grabbed the neck of my t-shirt with both hands, peered down inside pensively, gave me a big grin and informed me, "ah-ba-dee!"
Indeed.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
For what it's worth
We have a new family upstairs. They are nice. The mother is Israeli, the father is American, and they’ve all been living in America for the last six years so the kids are all American. The mother has been stopping by a lot for help/questions/stuff she needs to borrow, which is fine with me; I’m glad to pass along the favors, since we got plenty of them at the beginning.
Friday night she stopped by after she realized she didn’t have a Shabbos tablecloth. I found an extra for her and we stood there chatting as the kids sat at the table devouring their Friday night chicken soup and banana nut bread. I hadn’t made chicken soup in a couple of months (too hot) and the banana bread was really good if I do say so, so they were all happily blessed out and very quiet.
Suddenly she looked at them and said, “Your kids are so good. How are your kids so good? Why are they so quiet? How do you do that?”
And it turned into a whole long conversation about parenting, because she really truly had no idea how she was supposed to get her kids to behave. “I threaten them but then I don’t know what to do. I put them in time out and then just come out and laugh!” So we talked about it for a while and it got me thinking.
Now, if you have met my children (or, um, babysat for all four of them at once) you will know that my children are anything but perfect. They act up and they test limits and they can be obnoxious and they do all kinds of things they shouldn’t do. But mostly? They are really sweet kids. I mean, I’m their mother, so I’m biased, but I do think this is true. The other day, Barak sat down on the couch with Iyyar and taught him to read the word “and.” Then he read him “Where the Wild Things Are” and every time he got to the word “and,” he’d point at it and say, “What’s that?” and Iyyar would triumphantly crow, “And!”
(Sorry, just had to tell that story. It was so cute.)
Anyway, like I said it got me thinking. About parenting, about how I was parented, about the aspects of the way I was raised that I incorporate and those I avoid like the plague. And also about what I see other people doing sometimes, things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t! don’t! don’t!”—not that I do.
I should probably mention, if you’re not already aware, that I am permanently afraid that I am really messing my kids over. I don’t think I am, but it’s a subject of constant worry. So maybe I’m completely self-deluded and a terrible parent and you shouldn’t listen to anything I say, but for what it’s worth, this is what I told my neighbor, and these are the things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t!”
1. Don’t threaten your kid if you’re not going to follow up. “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s one,” followed by “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s two,” has to be followed by, “Okay, I said three and you didn’t put it down, so now it’s gone until tomorrow at X time.” Tears and screaming and whatever, as the object goes away and stays away until tomorrow at X time. If tears and screaming continue, you might extend the object’s time-out. No positive consequences should ever, ever, ever come from whining, screaming, misbehaving, or pitching a fit.
Counting only to two, then saying “I said put that down!” and yanking the object out of child’s hand as you roll your eyes is not helpful to anyone. You don’t teach anything that way, other than that it’s OK to not listen. Use your judgment when you see that the kid is tired or hungry or strung out, but in general, Be Consistent.
2. Don’t say derogatory things about your child in their hearing. Saying that Plony doesn’t listen, doesn’t respect you, thinks rules don’t apply to him, doesn’t play nicely, doesn’t do his homework, isn’t nice to his friends and ergo doesn’t have any, can’t pay attention, thinks he’s so smart and will find out someday… not helpful. Really. If you’re talking to your friend about your kids and your kids are at all within earshot, or even IN THE SAME HOUSE, don’t talk this way. Say, “it’s hard for him to listen and we need to really work on that,” or “I’m worried about how he does X,” or “she needs to work on Y.” Because saying negative things about your child’s character is asking your child to live up to your expectations. And overhearing things like, “They think they don’t need to listen to me,” isn’t going to encourage them to listen. Trust me.
3. You are in charge. Not your kids. If there is a rule it should be a rule. Yes sometimes we make exceptions about cookies after school or artificial coloring or bedtime, but if the rule is that if you hit you spend ten minutes in your room and your kid hits, no matter how much you don’t feel like getting off the couch to wrestle him into his room, you have to do it. If you told him, come here or we’re going home right now, and he doesn’t come, no matter how much you don’t want to go home, you have to do it. Don’t just roll your eyes. Don’t just yell. Cf: Be Consistent. Kids want to know the expectations. If they don’t know what the limits are, the only way for them to find out is to test them. And if the limits change all the time, they have to be testing all the time. That isn’t fun for anyone.
4. Don’t just punish. Debrief. Talk about it afterwards. Nicely. With hugs and kisses and reassurance. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.
5. Last, but first. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. If you want your kid to speak nicely, speak nicely to your kid. If you want them to say please, you also have to say please. If you tell them they’re bad, they’ll believe it. Be polite to them. Treat them with respect if you expect them to treat other people with respect. Don’t think that they should have to earn your respect but you should get it automatically. If you love each other, you respect each other.
Friday night she stopped by after she realized she didn’t have a Shabbos tablecloth. I found an extra for her and we stood there chatting as the kids sat at the table devouring their Friday night chicken soup and banana nut bread. I hadn’t made chicken soup in a couple of months (too hot) and the banana bread was really good if I do say so, so they were all happily blessed out and very quiet.
Suddenly she looked at them and said, “Your kids are so good. How are your kids so good? Why are they so quiet? How do you do that?”
And it turned into a whole long conversation about parenting, because she really truly had no idea how she was supposed to get her kids to behave. “I threaten them but then I don’t know what to do. I put them in time out and then just come out and laugh!” So we talked about it for a while and it got me thinking.
Now, if you have met my children (or, um, babysat for all four of them at once) you will know that my children are anything but perfect. They act up and they test limits and they can be obnoxious and they do all kinds of things they shouldn’t do. But mostly? They are really sweet kids. I mean, I’m their mother, so I’m biased, but I do think this is true. The other day, Barak sat down on the couch with Iyyar and taught him to read the word “and.” Then he read him “Where the Wild Things Are” and every time he got to the word “and,” he’d point at it and say, “What’s that?” and Iyyar would triumphantly crow, “And!”
(Sorry, just had to tell that story. It was so cute.)
Anyway, like I said it got me thinking. About parenting, about how I was parented, about the aspects of the way I was raised that I incorporate and those I avoid like the plague. And also about what I see other people doing sometimes, things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t! don’t! don’t!”—not that I do.
I should probably mention, if you’re not already aware, that I am permanently afraid that I am really messing my kids over. I don’t think I am, but it’s a subject of constant worry. So maybe I’m completely self-deluded and a terrible parent and you shouldn’t listen to anything I say, but for what it’s worth, this is what I told my neighbor, and these are the things that make me want to jump up and scream “don’t!”
1. Don’t threaten your kid if you’re not going to follow up. “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s one,” followed by “Put that down or you will lose it until tomorrow, that’s two,” has to be followed by, “Okay, I said three and you didn’t put it down, so now it’s gone until tomorrow at X time.” Tears and screaming and whatever, as the object goes away and stays away until tomorrow at X time. If tears and screaming continue, you might extend the object’s time-out. No positive consequences should ever, ever, ever come from whining, screaming, misbehaving, or pitching a fit.
Counting only to two, then saying “I said put that down!” and yanking the object out of child’s hand as you roll your eyes is not helpful to anyone. You don’t teach anything that way, other than that it’s OK to not listen. Use your judgment when you see that the kid is tired or hungry or strung out, but in general, Be Consistent.
2. Don’t say derogatory things about your child in their hearing. Saying that Plony doesn’t listen, doesn’t respect you, thinks rules don’t apply to him, doesn’t play nicely, doesn’t do his homework, isn’t nice to his friends and ergo doesn’t have any, can’t pay attention, thinks he’s so smart and will find out someday… not helpful. Really. If you’re talking to your friend about your kids and your kids are at all within earshot, or even IN THE SAME HOUSE, don’t talk this way. Say, “it’s hard for him to listen and we need to really work on that,” or “I’m worried about how he does X,” or “she needs to work on Y.” Because saying negative things about your child’s character is asking your child to live up to your expectations. And overhearing things like, “They think they don’t need to listen to me,” isn’t going to encourage them to listen. Trust me.
3. You are in charge. Not your kids. If there is a rule it should be a rule. Yes sometimes we make exceptions about cookies after school or artificial coloring or bedtime, but if the rule is that if you hit you spend ten minutes in your room and your kid hits, no matter how much you don’t feel like getting off the couch to wrestle him into his room, you have to do it. If you told him, come here or we’re going home right now, and he doesn’t come, no matter how much you don’t want to go home, you have to do it. Don’t just roll your eyes. Don’t just yell. Cf: Be Consistent. Kids want to know the expectations. If they don’t know what the limits are, the only way for them to find out is to test them. And if the limits change all the time, they have to be testing all the time. That isn’t fun for anyone.
4. Don’t just punish. Debrief. Talk about it afterwards. Nicely. With hugs and kisses and reassurance. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.
5. Last, but first. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. If you want your kid to speak nicely, speak nicely to your kid. If you want them to say please, you also have to say please. If you tell them they’re bad, they’ll believe it. Be polite to them. Treat them with respect if you expect them to treat other people with respect. Don’t think that they should have to earn your respect but you should get it automatically. If you love each other, you respect each other.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Oops
A month since I last posted? Really?
Sorry about that.
We're all fine here. August was a little crazy; everyone was home, I was attempting to work close to full-time hours, and you know, the stuff? It kept on happening.
Exciting news of the hour: the world's most beautiful middle-aged Mercedes minibus is now opening its doors to Barak twice a day. Yes, folks, you understood correctly: he finally, finally, B"H, has a HASAA!
The extent to which this is revolutionizing my world cannot be underestimated. Seriously. Now, all I have to do is get him to his bus stop, about a 10-15 minute walk from here, by 7:25 AM. Right now I'm still meeting him in the afternoon, but when I'm confident he knows where to get off, he can walk home on his own; there are no streets to cross, except for the driveway right in front of our building, which he's been doing alone all year.
The van is punctual. It has seatbelts. So far, the kids even behave.
It's a miracle. Seriously.
In other news, Iyyar and Avtalyon have started gan, in different rooms (there are only 2) of the same building. So far, so good. Parents' meeting tonight; further bulletins, I am sure, forthcoming.
Marika also (gasp!) started gan today. Thursday was a day for the kids and their mothers; today was the first day they went solo and by all accounts she did great. She was crying when I left but I am told she stopped within a few minutes; when I walked in, she was happily playing, and when she saw me, did not run to me but instead ran to the teacher and pointed at me and jumped up and down! Then she ran to me. And got lots of hugs. She also (kind of) ate her sandwich, although that, for her, usually involves licking the peanut butter and dropping the bread on the floor. She'll figure it out.
She is, somewhat unbelievably, still nursing; I know that Month 22 is not that big of a deal for some of you out there (ahemshanna) but it's certainly a record in this house. Barak went to 18 months and change, the next two boys stopped at 16. Marika is down to one or maybe two ten-minute nurses a day, but seems to have no intention of giving them up. However, she's going to have to, because what she doesn't know, and I am in some degree of denial about, is that in a mere six days (aaaiiiieeeeeee!) I am going to the US, for five days, ALL BY MYSELF. WITH NO CHILDREN AT ALL.
*thud*
A little bit of me is looking forward to it; mostly I'm terrified. I think I'll have a nervous breakdown on the way to the airport and I'm sure I'll be crying when I see the city lights under the plane turn into ocean. What Mr. Bigfoot reminded me yesterday, and I need to keep reminding myself of this too, is that going on a work trip is not abandoning my kids. It's taking care of my kids. It's what's necessary to have a job that allows me to be with them pretty much all the time. I have a good babysitter, they'll all be in school in the morning, Mr. Bigfoot won't be that far away. They have all been allowed to make two requests, one food and one non-food, from the US: they have requested soy-free hot dogs, Trader Joe's fig bars, bologna, and Rice Chex. And they all want Lego. Like we don't have enough, but fine; I've added it to the already enormous "things to buy at Target" list.
I think that's all the big news for now. No real news on the Mr. Bigfoot job situation; many developments, none of them leading to anything definitive. Further bulletins, as always, as events warrant.
Sorry about that.
We're all fine here. August was a little crazy; everyone was home, I was attempting to work close to full-time hours, and you know, the stuff? It kept on happening.
Exciting news of the hour: the world's most beautiful middle-aged Mercedes minibus is now opening its doors to Barak twice a day. Yes, folks, you understood correctly: he finally, finally, B"H, has a HASAA!
The extent to which this is revolutionizing my world cannot be underestimated. Seriously. Now, all I have to do is get him to his bus stop, about a 10-15 minute walk from here, by 7:25 AM. Right now I'm still meeting him in the afternoon, but when I'm confident he knows where to get off, he can walk home on his own; there are no streets to cross, except for the driveway right in front of our building, which he's been doing alone all year.
The van is punctual. It has seatbelts. So far, the kids even behave.
It's a miracle. Seriously.
In other news, Iyyar and Avtalyon have started gan, in different rooms (there are only 2) of the same building. So far, so good. Parents' meeting tonight; further bulletins, I am sure, forthcoming.
Marika also (gasp!) started gan today. Thursday was a day for the kids and their mothers; today was the first day they went solo and by all accounts she did great. She was crying when I left but I am told she stopped within a few minutes; when I walked in, she was happily playing, and when she saw me, did not run to me but instead ran to the teacher and pointed at me and jumped up and down! Then she ran to me. And got lots of hugs. She also (kind of) ate her sandwich, although that, for her, usually involves licking the peanut butter and dropping the bread on the floor. She'll figure it out.
She is, somewhat unbelievably, still nursing; I know that Month 22 is not that big of a deal for some of you out there (ahemshanna) but it's certainly a record in this house. Barak went to 18 months and change, the next two boys stopped at 16. Marika is down to one or maybe two ten-minute nurses a day, but seems to have no intention of giving them up. However, she's going to have to, because what she doesn't know, and I am in some degree of denial about, is that in a mere six days (aaaiiiieeeeeee!) I am going to the US, for five days, ALL BY MYSELF. WITH NO CHILDREN AT ALL.
*thud*
A little bit of me is looking forward to it; mostly I'm terrified. I think I'll have a nervous breakdown on the way to the airport and I'm sure I'll be crying when I see the city lights under the plane turn into ocean. What Mr. Bigfoot reminded me yesterday, and I need to keep reminding myself of this too, is that going on a work trip is not abandoning my kids. It's taking care of my kids. It's what's necessary to have a job that allows me to be with them pretty much all the time. I have a good babysitter, they'll all be in school in the morning, Mr. Bigfoot won't be that far away. They have all been allowed to make two requests, one food and one non-food, from the US: they have requested soy-free hot dogs, Trader Joe's fig bars, bologna, and Rice Chex. And they all want Lego. Like we don't have enough, but fine; I've added it to the already enormous "things to buy at Target" list.
I think that's all the big news for now. No real news on the Mr. Bigfoot job situation; many developments, none of them leading to anything definitive. Further bulletins, as always, as events warrant.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
The zoo
Today was a really fun day.
For ages (like, really months) I've been trying to find time to eat falafel with Projgen, who's been commenting on my blog since Barak was a baby and who I finally got to meet when we moved here. Today we actually managed it, although we didn't eat falafel in the end (9 days, so Burger's Bar had fish and chips! Who can resist? Not me.) I went with just Barak and Avtalyon, and we also went up to the big ball pit thingy at Burger Ranch (awful food, great ball pit) and bought the cheapest things on the menu just so that they could play. Totally worthwhile: they both had a blast.
After "real" food and the Great Tootsie Roll handover (onetiredema sent me Tootsie Rolls back from the States! And some other stuff, but nothing as important as Tootsie Rolls!) we went down to the bookstore and met up with Mr. Bigfoot and Marika and Iyyar, said goodbye to Projgen, and hopped on the 33 for the six-minute ride from the mall to the zoo.
And the zoo was a blast. The kids were fantastic. I mean, they're kids. They weren't perfect. The boys all wanted to climb on things they weren't allowed to climb on, and Avtalyon got a little too overconfident in wandering off all by himself and had to be reined in, a lot. But mostly? It was just great. They were great. Seeing all three of them from the back, in height order, staring at the penguins, made my heart melt. And Marika was a total smiley delight, despite being trapped in the stroller for hoooooouuurs.
I just love them all so much. There's a reason why I do all of this, you know--the exhaustion, the crazy, the moving to Israel. It's because I really really love my kids. I want them to be good people, to have good lives, to be happy, to love and be loved. I loved seeing Iyyar and Marika's faces when they found us in the bookshop. I love Marika's "yeah!" when I ask her if she wants to nurse. I love how Barak always always wants to sit next to me, wherever we are and whatever we're doing. I love how Iyyar and Avtalyon can now clean up their room really well, all by themselves, and I love even more going in there to ooh and ahh and tell them what a great job they did. I love Iyyar jumping around joyously with a bloody mouth and a newly fallen-out tooth, even though it seems like that tooth only came in last week sometime.
I love walking through the zoo as a family of six.
Progjen mentioned to me that I don't blog about the kids as much as I used to. She's right and it's not good. I need to bring the focus back on them--on the cute stuff, the stuff I want to remember, the stuff that's important.
Hey, this is important. Know what's important? Garbage! Garbage is important. Because each of my kids has had a different and distinct word for "garbage," and for all of them, it was one of their first words. Barak said "gahbitch!" which, when you write it out like that, sounds almost like the word you and I might say, but... believe me, it wasn't.
Iyyar said, "jarba!"
Avtalyon said, "barkip!" or, referring to the receptacle, "barkistan!"
Marika says, "barjinih!"
She also, on a similar note, refers to poop as "bee!" This started out, "Marika, are you poopy?" She'd grab her diaper and agree, "bee!" However, she got wise pretty quickly to the idea that having a bee meant getting out of her crib/highchair/whatever. So now, you'll go in there to get her after a nap and she'll leap up, grab her diaper, and tell you, soulfully and imploringly, "bee!" She is, usually, lying through all five of her teeth.
She also looks like a sheepdog if you don't put her hair in a pigtail. She knows this and is very happy when I tell her I'm going to get her a kuku.
She loves shoes. If I tell her I'm going to get her shoes, she is RIGHT there. And then next to the door, caroling, "dowdide! dowdide!"
She loves water. Drinking it, playing in it, bathing in it. "Wawa!" is heard about fifty times a day. Usually when you give it to her in a cup, she drinks half a sip, then dumps it out on her high chair tray and smacks her hands in it. Gleefully.
She only eats the top off her pizza. Today I gave her half a piece with olives. She ate all the olives and all the cheese and dropped the rest on the floor.
She loves plain yogurt and will eat a whole container of 4.5% herself, with a spoon. And her fist, of course.
She loves loves loves Barak. Sometimes the two of them get on our bed and Barak tickles her until she's shrieking. Then he stops so she can get some air. They she hollers, "MO!"
Avtalyon is all about food lately, even though he's getting skinnier and skinnier, just like his brothers. Standard refraim, "K'I eat someping? What c'I eat?" He loves vegetables, especially cucumbers, which he calls hinkumbers. Now we all do, because it's just such a great word.
Iyyar likes Hungarian noodles better than anything else in the whole world. It's incredible how many he can eat. If I am making them for the whole family, I use four cups of flour, and five eggs, and they all get eaten.
Iyyar has also been getting dressed lately, all by himself, unprompted. And getting stars on his star chart, for another Wallace & Grommit movie. I hope I can find one. We have The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and I actually haven't seen any of the others here.
Barak is in the middle of having Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH read to him. We're up to where Mrs. Frisby meets Brutus. He loves it.
Iyyar is just beginning to put letters together.
All of the boys are playing musical beds. They all want to sleep in our bed, and they never seem to want to sleep in their own. Sometimes Mr. Bigfoot has to relocate all three of them at 1 am for us to go to bed.
They all love French fries. Only Iyyar likes ketchup.
Iyyar likes onion rings better than French fries. He discovered this the other day, when he had French fries and I had onion rings.
I need to go to bed now. But I thought you should know.
For ages (like, really months) I've been trying to find time to eat falafel with Projgen, who's been commenting on my blog since Barak was a baby and who I finally got to meet when we moved here. Today we actually managed it, although we didn't eat falafel in the end (9 days, so Burger's Bar had fish and chips! Who can resist? Not me.) I went with just Barak and Avtalyon, and we also went up to the big ball pit thingy at Burger Ranch (awful food, great ball pit) and bought the cheapest things on the menu just so that they could play. Totally worthwhile: they both had a blast.
After "real" food and the Great Tootsie Roll handover (onetiredema sent me Tootsie Rolls back from the States! And some other stuff, but nothing as important as Tootsie Rolls!) we went down to the bookstore and met up with Mr. Bigfoot and Marika and Iyyar, said goodbye to Projgen, and hopped on the 33 for the six-minute ride from the mall to the zoo.
And the zoo was a blast. The kids were fantastic. I mean, they're kids. They weren't perfect. The boys all wanted to climb on things they weren't allowed to climb on, and Avtalyon got a little too overconfident in wandering off all by himself and had to be reined in, a lot. But mostly? It was just great. They were great. Seeing all three of them from the back, in height order, staring at the penguins, made my heart melt. And Marika was a total smiley delight, despite being trapped in the stroller for hoooooouuurs.
I just love them all so much. There's a reason why I do all of this, you know--the exhaustion, the crazy, the moving to Israel. It's because I really really love my kids. I want them to be good people, to have good lives, to be happy, to love and be loved. I loved seeing Iyyar and Marika's faces when they found us in the bookshop. I love Marika's "yeah!" when I ask her if she wants to nurse. I love how Barak always always wants to sit next to me, wherever we are and whatever we're doing. I love how Iyyar and Avtalyon can now clean up their room really well, all by themselves, and I love even more going in there to ooh and ahh and tell them what a great job they did. I love Iyyar jumping around joyously with a bloody mouth and a newly fallen-out tooth, even though it seems like that tooth only came in last week sometime.
I love walking through the zoo as a family of six.
Progjen mentioned to me that I don't blog about the kids as much as I used to. She's right and it's not good. I need to bring the focus back on them--on the cute stuff, the stuff I want to remember, the stuff that's important.
Hey, this is important. Know what's important? Garbage! Garbage is important. Because each of my kids has had a different and distinct word for "garbage," and for all of them, it was one of their first words. Barak said "gahbitch!" which, when you write it out like that, sounds almost like the word you and I might say, but... believe me, it wasn't.
Iyyar said, "jarba!"
Avtalyon said, "barkip!" or, referring to the receptacle, "barkistan!"
Marika says, "barjinih!"
She also, on a similar note, refers to poop as "bee!" This started out, "Marika, are you poopy?" She'd grab her diaper and agree, "bee!" However, she got wise pretty quickly to the idea that having a bee meant getting out of her crib/highchair/whatever. So now, you'll go in there to get her after a nap and she'll leap up, grab her diaper, and tell you, soulfully and imploringly, "bee!" She is, usually, lying through all five of her teeth.
She also looks like a sheepdog if you don't put her hair in a pigtail. She knows this and is very happy when I tell her I'm going to get her a kuku.
She loves shoes. If I tell her I'm going to get her shoes, she is RIGHT there. And then next to the door, caroling, "dowdide! dowdide!"
She loves water. Drinking it, playing in it, bathing in it. "Wawa!" is heard about fifty times a day. Usually when you give it to her in a cup, she drinks half a sip, then dumps it out on her high chair tray and smacks her hands in it. Gleefully.
She only eats the top off her pizza. Today I gave her half a piece with olives. She ate all the olives and all the cheese and dropped the rest on the floor.
She loves plain yogurt and will eat a whole container of 4.5% herself, with a spoon. And her fist, of course.
She loves loves loves Barak. Sometimes the two of them get on our bed and Barak tickles her until she's shrieking. Then he stops so she can get some air. They she hollers, "MO!"
Avtalyon is all about food lately, even though he's getting skinnier and skinnier, just like his brothers. Standard refraim, "K'I eat someping? What c'I eat?" He loves vegetables, especially cucumbers, which he calls hinkumbers. Now we all do, because it's just such a great word.
Iyyar likes Hungarian noodles better than anything else in the whole world. It's incredible how many he can eat. If I am making them for the whole family, I use four cups of flour, and five eggs, and they all get eaten.
Iyyar has also been getting dressed lately, all by himself, unprompted. And getting stars on his star chart, for another Wallace & Grommit movie. I hope I can find one. We have The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and I actually haven't seen any of the others here.
Barak is in the middle of having Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH read to him. We're up to where Mrs. Frisby meets Brutus. He loves it.
Iyyar is just beginning to put letters together.
All of the boys are playing musical beds. They all want to sleep in our bed, and they never seem to want to sleep in their own. Sometimes Mr. Bigfoot has to relocate all three of them at 1 am for us to go to bed.
They all love French fries. Only Iyyar likes ketchup.
Iyyar likes onion rings better than French fries. He discovered this the other day, when he had French fries and I had onion rings.
I need to go to bed now. But I thought you should know.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The things that make it all worthwhile
Ever since Barak was born, Mr. Bigfoot has been the Man in Charge of Laundry. I won't pretend that there haven't been a few disasters in the laundry arena since then, but overall it's been a successful term in office. I make sure the laundry gets into the hampers, he stain-sticks it religiously, washes it, and hangs it to dry, and one of us puts it away. It's a good system.
So today, on the eve of the 9 Days (when it is for the most part forbidden to do laundry) Mr. Bigfoot staged an all-day laundry marathon. On Friday we moved all the furniture and dug behind all the toys to find every last scrap of laundry; from last night until today, he ran load after load. I went out at around 1:30 with Barak and Marika to the shuk, where I bought a staggering quantity of fruit and vegetables and bread for about $40; when I got home, Mr. Bigfoot looked perturbed.
"What happened to all my underwear?" he asked.
"What?"
"I only have about ten pairs. I used to have a lot more."
"Well, yeah. But we use bleach on our whites and some of them got holes. I threw those out."
Silence.
"I don't have enough underwear."
"I think you can wash that if you really have to."
"It's better not to."
Pause.
"Do you want me to go buy you some new underwear right now?"
"Um, yes please."
"OK. I can get some at the bus station. But if I go to the bus station, I'm going to take advantage of the air conditioning and get myself a diet coke and sit down for a little bit."
Mr. Bigfoot thought this was fair enough so, after a fruitless attempt to get Alisha to come meet me and split a last-chance-at-meat-before-the-9-Days hamburger, off I went.
I admit that I really like the Tachana Merkazit (otherwise known as the Central Bus Station). It's just a regular bus station, with stores on the first floor, stores and a food court on the second, and departure/arrival gates and a few more stores and food stands on the third. But there are several key differences. First off, all the food in the entire bus station is kosher, at least to the level of rabbanut stam. There is a kosher McDonald's. There are clothing stores where you can buy modest skirts and tops and just about everything, and you can also buy headscarves and kippot and tzitzit and washing cups, and there is a secular bookstore with books in Hebrew and English, and there are four or five bakeries, each of which sells challah on Friday and cheesecake erev Shavuos. On Fridays and Saturday nights it's packed with people traveling for Shabbos. The restaurants in the food court have specials for soldiers in uniform. There are a lot of machine guns. There are a lot of children. It's not like any other bus station anywhere else in the world.
So I didn't mind too much going on this spur-of-the-moment underwear run, without children. The bus came right away and I went in, through the security that's not much different than what you get at an American airport. I bought what I came for, plus some pretty little hairclips for Marika, and went up to the food court to buy a diet coke and bask in AC for a little while. Then I decided to get onion rings. I ordered my onion rings and there was a secular-looking French woman trying to order the soldiers' special and not understanding what the problem was. I translated for her and all was well. Then this woman in jeans with permed hair turned to me, looking worried, and said (in French) "The 9 days start tonight, right? So I can still eat meat now?" I assured her that she was in the clear to eat a burger. I stood there waiting for my onion rings and as the orders ahead of me came up one by one, the tough-looking probably-just-out-of-the-army 20-something guy at the counter bellowed out the names. "Eliyahu? Eliyahu? Where's Eliyahu? Eliyahu, your order is ready!" And up comes a guy in a black kippa and tzitzit. "Mordechai! Mordechai!"
And it's normal. That's the thing. You can get a kosher burger in Manhattan or Chicago or LA. But you can't get one at the bus station. You have to go to the kosher places in the Jewish neighborhoods, and if you want a kosher burger at the bus station you are probably flat out of luck. My kids can wear kippot and tzitzit on the street, but they got looks when we left our neighborhood. They could get a Jewish education, but only in private schools. I could get a good job and my coworkers were nice about my religious idiosyncracies, but they all thought I was weird and a little crazy and I had to deal with it. Once we left our bubble, we all had to navigate our way somewhere we really didn't belong.
Here, my kids can just be themselves and be, well, normal. It's nice. It's amazing. And the onion rings were pretty good too.
* * * * *
One more thing: after we got back from the shuk (with 1.5 kg of cherries, 2 kg of nectarines, 2 kg of peaches, 1 kg of grapes, a whole bag of stuff from the bakery, another whole bag of leafy greens of every description, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, and... whatever else I forgot) I washed all the cherries and we (the kids and I) sat down to pit and devour them on the spot. I got a bottle of water out of the fridge and asked Iyyar to get cups. He got three green cups and a blue one. Barak asked for the blue one. Iyyar declined to give it. Barak, who doesn't deal with things like this well at the best of times and was hot, tired, and thirsty, began to howl.
"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID! I SAID I wanted the blue one and he WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME! It's NOT FAIR!"
I, being a mean and heartless mommy, said, dryly, "I don't think it's actually that big of a deal. The water tastes the same and he was the one who got the cups. Why is it not fair that he wanted the blue cup?"
"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID!" etc.
"You know what? Other women, they have babies, and a week later? They're skinny again. It's true. I've seen it. I've totally seen immas who are skinny again a week after their babies are born. I'm NEVER skinny a week after. It takes me forever to lose the weight and I haven't been skinny since before you were born! It's NOT FAIR!"
Barak stared at me with an incredibly endearing mixture of confusion, amusement, hesitation, and disdain. "That doesn't matter."
"But it's not FAIR. I want to be skinny a week after I have a baby."
"But it doesn't matter. You're more cozy this way."
"But it's not FAIR! It's stupid and I hate it!"
"You're being silly, Imma. You're just more cozy like that."
"Oh. Okay."
Barak, who at this time was grinning a little self-consciously, drank his water. From the green cup.
So today, on the eve of the 9 Days (when it is for the most part forbidden to do laundry) Mr. Bigfoot staged an all-day laundry marathon. On Friday we moved all the furniture and dug behind all the toys to find every last scrap of laundry; from last night until today, he ran load after load. I went out at around 1:30 with Barak and Marika to the shuk, where I bought a staggering quantity of fruit and vegetables and bread for about $40; when I got home, Mr. Bigfoot looked perturbed.
"What happened to all my underwear?" he asked.
"What?"
"I only have about ten pairs. I used to have a lot more."
"Well, yeah. But we use bleach on our whites and some of them got holes. I threw those out."
Silence.
"I don't have enough underwear."
"I think you can wash that if you really have to."
"It's better not to."
Pause.
"Do you want me to go buy you some new underwear right now?"
"Um, yes please."
"OK. I can get some at the bus station. But if I go to the bus station, I'm going to take advantage of the air conditioning and get myself a diet coke and sit down for a little bit."
Mr. Bigfoot thought this was fair enough so, after a fruitless attempt to get Alisha to come meet me and split a last-chance-at-meat-before-the-9-Days hamburger, off I went.
I admit that I really like the Tachana Merkazit (otherwise known as the Central Bus Station). It's just a regular bus station, with stores on the first floor, stores and a food court on the second, and departure/arrival gates and a few more stores and food stands on the third. But there are several key differences. First off, all the food in the entire bus station is kosher, at least to the level of rabbanut stam. There is a kosher McDonald's. There are clothing stores where you can buy modest skirts and tops and just about everything, and you can also buy headscarves and kippot and tzitzit and washing cups, and there is a secular bookstore with books in Hebrew and English, and there are four or five bakeries, each of which sells challah on Friday and cheesecake erev Shavuos. On Fridays and Saturday nights it's packed with people traveling for Shabbos. The restaurants in the food court have specials for soldiers in uniform. There are a lot of machine guns. There are a lot of children. It's not like any other bus station anywhere else in the world.
So I didn't mind too much going on this spur-of-the-moment underwear run, without children. The bus came right away and I went in, through the security that's not much different than what you get at an American airport. I bought what I came for, plus some pretty little hairclips for Marika, and went up to the food court to buy a diet coke and bask in AC for a little while. Then I decided to get onion rings. I ordered my onion rings and there was a secular-looking French woman trying to order the soldiers' special and not understanding what the problem was. I translated for her and all was well. Then this woman in jeans with permed hair turned to me, looking worried, and said (in French) "The 9 days start tonight, right? So I can still eat meat now?" I assured her that she was in the clear to eat a burger. I stood there waiting for my onion rings and as the orders ahead of me came up one by one, the tough-looking probably-just-out-of-the-army 20-something guy at the counter bellowed out the names. "Eliyahu? Eliyahu? Where's Eliyahu? Eliyahu, your order is ready!" And up comes a guy in a black kippa and tzitzit. "Mordechai! Mordechai!"
And it's normal. That's the thing. You can get a kosher burger in Manhattan or Chicago or LA. But you can't get one at the bus station. You have to go to the kosher places in the Jewish neighborhoods, and if you want a kosher burger at the bus station you are probably flat out of luck. My kids can wear kippot and tzitzit on the street, but they got looks when we left our neighborhood. They could get a Jewish education, but only in private schools. I could get a good job and my coworkers were nice about my religious idiosyncracies, but they all thought I was weird and a little crazy and I had to deal with it. Once we left our bubble, we all had to navigate our way somewhere we really didn't belong.
Here, my kids can just be themselves and be, well, normal. It's nice. It's amazing. And the onion rings were pretty good too.
* * * * *
One more thing: after we got back from the shuk (with 1.5 kg of cherries, 2 kg of nectarines, 2 kg of peaches, 1 kg of grapes, a whole bag of stuff from the bakery, another whole bag of leafy greens of every description, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, and... whatever else I forgot) I washed all the cherries and we (the kids and I) sat down to pit and devour them on the spot. I got a bottle of water out of the fridge and asked Iyyar to get cups. He got three green cups and a blue one. Barak asked for the blue one. Iyyar declined to give it. Barak, who doesn't deal with things like this well at the best of times and was hot, tired, and thirsty, began to howl.
"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID! I SAID I wanted the blue one and he WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME! It's NOT FAIR!"
I, being a mean and heartless mommy, said, dryly, "I don't think it's actually that big of a deal. The water tastes the same and he was the one who got the cups. Why is it not fair that he wanted the blue cup?"
"It's not FAIR! I ASKED him for the BLUE one and he said NO! I HATE that! It's STUPID!" etc.
"You know what? Other women, they have babies, and a week later? They're skinny again. It's true. I've seen it. I've totally seen immas who are skinny again a week after their babies are born. I'm NEVER skinny a week after. It takes me forever to lose the weight and I haven't been skinny since before you were born! It's NOT FAIR!"
Barak stared at me with an incredibly endearing mixture of confusion, amusement, hesitation, and disdain. "That doesn't matter."
"But it's not FAIR. I want to be skinny a week after I have a baby."
"But it doesn't matter. You're more cozy this way."
"But it's not FAIR! It's stupid and I hate it!"
"You're being silly, Imma. You're just more cozy like that."
"Oh. Okay."
Barak, who at this time was grinning a little self-consciously, drank his water. From the green cup.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Again
Schools. Transportation.
You'd think that it would have all worked out by now. But no.
I moved Iyyar's gan to a closer and I hope more appropriate gan for him. He started there a month ago, just for camp, which I think was a good intro; smaller group, more mellow with the schedule, more fun stuff. He's liked it so far and the ganenet, who will not the same as the one he'll have in the fall, has seemed positive about how he's been doing. Avtalyon will be there too; like many ganim here, it's one school with two classrooms, one for the younger kids and one for the older kids. So that part is good.
What's less good is that it's not all that much easier to get to. Faster, but not easier. It's still up a lot of steps and, more problematic, across a really dangerous-to-cross street; the only way to do it safely is to take the bus (the bus!) up two stops to the next crosswalk, cross the street and then walk back down. To get home, that's not practical because you'd have to haul the kids straight up a really big hill. However, it is easier to cross in the other direction, because of the curve of the road--you can at least see what is coming. So that's something. But it's still really not ideal.
Bigger problem: Barak's transportation. The school has been a great fit for him, he had a really good year and I don't want to move him. But it is looking increasingly unlikely that there will be any kind of a bus. Why? Well.
Because they are opening a new boys' elementary school, literally five minutes from our front door. Opening with first grade only.
I can't even express how I feel about this. If it had been here last year, when we came, my year would have been completely transformed. He could have walked by himself. It's up some stairs, down the driveway, through a gate and up four steps. There you are. Now, not only can we not avail ourselves of it, but the fact that they are opening means that all the boys--all EIGHT boys--who were registered in Barak's school for the fall, and who wanted to arrange a bus, are now going there. Naturally enough. So not only was the school not there when we needed it, it is now taking away the bus that I thought Barak would have.
Anyway. Nothing I can do about the school. But the hasaa. I cannot, and I really mean cannot, do again what I did this year. I don't have a hasaa for the two younger boys. Marika is no longer in the Snugli. Mr. Bigfoot has some part-time work. For me to take them all, and I feel sick just thinking about this, would entail me taking all three boys on the bus in the morning, stopping halfway up the hill, walking all of them back down, dropping off the younger two, getting back on the bus with Barak, taking it to the city entrance, and walking him up the hill another 15-20 minutes to his school before continuing on to my ulpan. It means taking the long slow bus instead of the short fast bus we took last year, and it also makes us vulnerable to rush hour traffic. It's what I was doing the last four weeks, just with Iyyar; one day we hit traffic so bad that Barak was an hour and a half late. For camp it doesn't matter. For school, it does.
And in the afternoon, I would have no choice but to load all three other kids on two buses each way to get him. Every day. Because this past year, the person who took him home half the days was Other Father, who as you may recall was the one responsible for allowing Barak to travel solo to the mall. So he's off the list of Approved Transport Options.
And add to all of this that I am now working more. I have Marika in gan in the mornings because I must, and I really mean must, not only work more but sleep more. I can't do this year again. I can't.
School starts in five weeks. I don't know what to do.
You'd think that it would have all worked out by now. But no.
I moved Iyyar's gan to a closer and I hope more appropriate gan for him. He started there a month ago, just for camp, which I think was a good intro; smaller group, more mellow with the schedule, more fun stuff. He's liked it so far and the ganenet, who will not the same as the one he'll have in the fall, has seemed positive about how he's been doing. Avtalyon will be there too; like many ganim here, it's one school with two classrooms, one for the younger kids and one for the older kids. So that part is good.
What's less good is that it's not all that much easier to get to. Faster, but not easier. It's still up a lot of steps and, more problematic, across a really dangerous-to-cross street; the only way to do it safely is to take the bus (the bus!) up two stops to the next crosswalk, cross the street and then walk back down. To get home, that's not practical because you'd have to haul the kids straight up a really big hill. However, it is easier to cross in the other direction, because of the curve of the road--you can at least see what is coming. So that's something. But it's still really not ideal.
Bigger problem: Barak's transportation. The school has been a great fit for him, he had a really good year and I don't want to move him. But it is looking increasingly unlikely that there will be any kind of a bus. Why? Well.
Because they are opening a new boys' elementary school, literally five minutes from our front door. Opening with first grade only.
I can't even express how I feel about this. If it had been here last year, when we came, my year would have been completely transformed. He could have walked by himself. It's up some stairs, down the driveway, through a gate and up four steps. There you are. Now, not only can we not avail ourselves of it, but the fact that they are opening means that all the boys--all EIGHT boys--who were registered in Barak's school for the fall, and who wanted to arrange a bus, are now going there. Naturally enough. So not only was the school not there when we needed it, it is now taking away the bus that I thought Barak would have.
Anyway. Nothing I can do about the school. But the hasaa. I cannot, and I really mean cannot, do again what I did this year. I don't have a hasaa for the two younger boys. Marika is no longer in the Snugli. Mr. Bigfoot has some part-time work. For me to take them all, and I feel sick just thinking about this, would entail me taking all three boys on the bus in the morning, stopping halfway up the hill, walking all of them back down, dropping off the younger two, getting back on the bus with Barak, taking it to the city entrance, and walking him up the hill another 15-20 minutes to his school before continuing on to my ulpan. It means taking the long slow bus instead of the short fast bus we took last year, and it also makes us vulnerable to rush hour traffic. It's what I was doing the last four weeks, just with Iyyar; one day we hit traffic so bad that Barak was an hour and a half late. For camp it doesn't matter. For school, it does.
And in the afternoon, I would have no choice but to load all three other kids on two buses each way to get him. Every day. Because this past year, the person who took him home half the days was Other Father, who as you may recall was the one responsible for allowing Barak to travel solo to the mall. So he's off the list of Approved Transport Options.
And add to all of this that I am now working more. I have Marika in gan in the mornings because I must, and I really mean must, not only work more but sleep more. I can't do this year again. I can't.
School starts in five weeks. I don't know what to do.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
QOTD
This afternoon Iyyar asked me to read him Tikki Tikki Tembo. I think this book appeals to him as the second son. Anyway, the very last page has a picture of the mother, who has seen the error of her favoritist ways, sitting with Chang in her lap as Tikki Tikki Tembo recovers from his unfortunate dip in the well. Iyyar studied this picture and then asked, "How come there's only one bed?"
Me: "I think they're very poor. Probably they only have one bed."
Iyyar: "Why doesn't the mother write more speeches? She should write more speeches. Then they could have more money and buy another bed."
Me: "Iyyar, do you think most mothers write speeches at night?"
Iyyar: (blankly) "They do. Mothers write speeches at night to earn money."
Pause. "Most mothers do."
In other news, I bought three and a half kilos of cherries at the shuk on Friday. They are all gone now, as is the entire kilo of cherry tomatoes and a shocking quantity of nectarines. Strangely, there was a lot of competition for the bathroom this evening. Can't imagine why.
Me: "I think they're very poor. Probably they only have one bed."
Iyyar: "Why doesn't the mother write more speeches? She should write more speeches. Then they could have more money and buy another bed."
Me: "Iyyar, do you think most mothers write speeches at night?"
Iyyar: (blankly) "They do. Mothers write speeches at night to earn money."
Pause. "Most mothers do."
In other news, I bought three and a half kilos of cherries at the shuk on Friday. They are all gone now, as is the entire kilo of cherry tomatoes and a shocking quantity of nectarines. Strangely, there was a lot of competition for the bathroom this evening. Can't imagine why.
אני בקניון עם הבן שלך
What I was able to gather from the woman on the phone was that she'd been on the 33 bus and had seen Barak alone and crying in the back. She'd asked him what the problem was, he'd said, "I don't know where my Imma is" and she'd asked him if he knew his phone number. THANK GOD he did--I had drilled it into him, singsong, with the promise of a ruggel when he knew it cold, months earlier. Efes-chamesh-arba, shesh-shesh-echad, etc. She said, I'm waiting with him at the entrance to the mall, and asked me if I wanted him to put him in a cab with directions to get to me. I said no, I think he'd be too scared (and never mind the booster seat etc.) I told her I'd be there as soon as I could and that I was calling a cab that second. Ran out the door with a booster in hand, then turned around at the top of the stairs when I realized I had no money in my wallet; got money from inside our apartment, ran back out, and took a cab to the mall.
Now. Where was Barak supposed to be? Barak was supposed to be at his friend's house. You know that whole hasaa issue you've been hearing about for the last year? The current deal is that three afternoons a week, I take Barak and his friend home, and the other three afternoons, said friend's father takes him. Today was friend's father's day, and the plan was that he was supposed to stay at his friend's house to play until 3. Apparently what happened was that Barak ran to the back of the bus (where it is more fun to sit) and friend and friend's father did not follow him; the bus got crowded; when it was time to get off, friend and friend's father somehow got off without Barak. From what I understand, the father thought he was already off and he wasn't.
Barak was right where the woman who called (whose name was Avital) said he was; sitting on the steps by the bus stop, face streaked with tears and dirt, eating noodles out of a container she'd got him at Cafe Neeman. She was lovely and told me again what had happened, now speaking in English; I thanked her profusely, she refused to take money for the noodles, and went off (to her job? or to go shopping?) inside the mall. I talked to Barak very sternly about the whole running-to-the-back-of-the-bus issue. He told me with maximum Barakian earnestness (and that is pretty... maximum) that he was NEVER EVER GOING TO DO THAT AGAIN. "Were you really scared?" "I was so scared. I thought I was going to be lost forever. I thought I wasn't even in Yerushalayim anymore. We went past the zoo!"
Since at this point Mr. Bigfoot was missing his ulpan, we went inside the mall and did some shopping I'd been needing to do--got an adult-sized sunhat and an easy-Hebrew newspaper for Mr. Bigfoot and some first-grade-appropriate books for Barak. And we stopped and got something to eat. And talked about how scary it was to be lost.
And then we went home, on the six.
Now. What's the sixty-thousand-dollar question here? It's how, exactly, Other Father got off the bus without Barak.
I can sort of see it, but not really. If it had been another mother with a stroller, I could have seen it more. With a stroller you have to get on in the back, but the kids have to get on in the front to pay, so it's easy, on a crowded bus, to lose sight of them. But he didn't have a stroller, just two first-grade boys. Barak ran to the back of the bus, which he should not have done. When I talked to the friend's mother, though, she told me that he did this a lot and often didn't listen. To which my question is--why? And it sounds like other father is not into enforcing discipline with other people's kids. Which, frankly... well. Barak does what he is told with me. He does what he is told at school. He's not a wild or crazy or rebellious kid. If he was doing his own thing, he thought it was, tacitly at least, permitted, even if not ideal. He's not a saint, but he's generally well-behaved. Where is the other father in all of this? This is why we have discipline, in large part, isn't it? So that our kids stay safe?
And what the other father did when he realized he didn't have Barak made no sense. He didn't jump in a cab and go after the bus. He didn't call me. He didn't call the police. He called Egged. What could Egged do? The buses, so far as I know, don't have radios. He doesn't have a cell phone, so I'm not sure what he did exactly--I don't know if he even had my number with him. But Barak had been on his own for close to an hour when I first heard about it. A lot can happen in an hour. Anything, really.
I don't get it, why he didn't keep an eye on him, and how on earth he got off the bus without him. And I am not planning on allowing Barak to travel with said father again, which takes care of Plan B for afternoon transport. So I really, really, really have to find a Plan A.
In the end it's good that this happened: Barak now understands the importance of bus safety, and is unlikely to go running off to the back EVER AGAIN; nothing bad happened; he learned an important lesson.
But so scary. It could easily have... well. Let's not think about that, okay?
Now. Where was Barak supposed to be? Barak was supposed to be at his friend's house. You know that whole hasaa issue you've been hearing about for the last year? The current deal is that three afternoons a week, I take Barak and his friend home, and the other three afternoons, said friend's father takes him. Today was friend's father's day, and the plan was that he was supposed to stay at his friend's house to play until 3. Apparently what happened was that Barak ran to the back of the bus (where it is more fun to sit) and friend and friend's father did not follow him; the bus got crowded; when it was time to get off, friend and friend's father somehow got off without Barak. From what I understand, the father thought he was already off and he wasn't.
Barak was right where the woman who called (whose name was Avital) said he was; sitting on the steps by the bus stop, face streaked with tears and dirt, eating noodles out of a container she'd got him at Cafe Neeman. She was lovely and told me again what had happened, now speaking in English; I thanked her profusely, she refused to take money for the noodles, and went off (to her job? or to go shopping?) inside the mall. I talked to Barak very sternly about the whole running-to-the-back-of-the-bus issue. He told me with maximum Barakian earnestness (and that is pretty... maximum) that he was NEVER EVER GOING TO DO THAT AGAIN. "Were you really scared?" "I was so scared. I thought I was going to be lost forever. I thought I wasn't even in Yerushalayim anymore. We went past the zoo!"
Since at this point Mr. Bigfoot was missing his ulpan, we went inside the mall and did some shopping I'd been needing to do--got an adult-sized sunhat and an easy-Hebrew newspaper for Mr. Bigfoot and some first-grade-appropriate books for Barak. And we stopped and got something to eat. And talked about how scary it was to be lost.
And then we went home, on the six.
Now. What's the sixty-thousand-dollar question here? It's how, exactly, Other Father got off the bus without Barak.
I can sort of see it, but not really. If it had been another mother with a stroller, I could have seen it more. With a stroller you have to get on in the back, but the kids have to get on in the front to pay, so it's easy, on a crowded bus, to lose sight of them. But he didn't have a stroller, just two first-grade boys. Barak ran to the back of the bus, which he should not have done. When I talked to the friend's mother, though, she told me that he did this a lot and often didn't listen. To which my question is--why? And it sounds like other father is not into enforcing discipline with other people's kids. Which, frankly... well. Barak does what he is told with me. He does what he is told at school. He's not a wild or crazy or rebellious kid. If he was doing his own thing, he thought it was, tacitly at least, permitted, even if not ideal. He's not a saint, but he's generally well-behaved. Where is the other father in all of this? This is why we have discipline, in large part, isn't it? So that our kids stay safe?
And what the other father did when he realized he didn't have Barak made no sense. He didn't jump in a cab and go after the bus. He didn't call me. He didn't call the police. He called Egged. What could Egged do? The buses, so far as I know, don't have radios. He doesn't have a cell phone, so I'm not sure what he did exactly--I don't know if he even had my number with him. But Barak had been on his own for close to an hour when I first heard about it. A lot can happen in an hour. Anything, really.
I don't get it, why he didn't keep an eye on him, and how on earth he got off the bus without him. And I am not planning on allowing Barak to travel with said father again, which takes care of Plan B for afternoon transport. So I really, really, really have to find a Plan A.
In the end it's good that this happened: Barak now understands the importance of bus safety, and is unlikely to go running off to the back EVER AGAIN; nothing bad happened; he learned an important lesson.
But so scary. It could easily have... well. Let's not think about that, okay?
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Briefly
1. I think that the Egged bus driver training school is actually housed in the Department of Secrets at the Ministry of Magic. Because there's no other explanation for the behavior of the #13 today: right at the end of the route in Katamon, it went down a one-lane road with cars parked on both sides, on the sidewalk, at angles, doing deliveries etc. There was, looking down the road we were about to descend, clearly not enough room for a bus or even a car to pass through the aisle that was left. A Vespa, maybe. A bus? No way. This did not, however, deter the driver of my bus in any way, and I looked out my window in stupefaction at the cars/trucks/delivery vans that were passing within millimeters of my window and in some cases seeming to bend out of the way altogether.
The bus I was riding was not, for the record, purple, and the driver did not have pimples or, to my knowledge, answer to the name of Stan. Still. Suspicious.
2. For the first time ever, yesterday Barak curled up on the couch with a Hebrew book with only a few pictures. And started reading it. As in, reading the words. I was blown away enough by this; but then today, when his friend David was here, I saw him (Barak, not David) sitting on the couch reading a Baba comic book out loud to him.
Baba? Baba is written without nikkud. No vowels. I... the mind reels. Two months ago he still didn't understand anything Rav Eli was saying. Now he's coming home telling me the entire story he heard in class, he knows what they're doing the next day in camp, and he is READING INDEPENDENTLY IN UNVOWELIZED HEBREW.
*thud*
3. And now, a cliffhanger, for the few readers who don't already know this:
The day before yesterday I went to lie down for a few minutes between my ulpan and Mr. Bigfoot's ulpan. I heard the phone ring. I ignored it. Fortunately Mr. Bigfoot didn't. Half a minute later, I heard him yelling, "Imma, get up! You have to get up right now!" That was pretty effective, and I vaulted out of bed to see which child was covered in blood. Instead, it was Mr. Bigfoot holding the phone out to me and looking horrified. "It's a woman speaking Hebrew and she's saying that she found Barak on the bus by himself. They're at the mall."
TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION.
The bus I was riding was not, for the record, purple, and the driver did not have pimples or, to my knowledge, answer to the name of Stan. Still. Suspicious.
2. For the first time ever, yesterday Barak curled up on the couch with a Hebrew book with only a few pictures. And started reading it. As in, reading the words. I was blown away enough by this; but then today, when his friend David was here, I saw him (Barak, not David) sitting on the couch reading a Baba comic book out loud to him.
Baba? Baba is written without nikkud. No vowels. I... the mind reels. Two months ago he still didn't understand anything Rav Eli was saying. Now he's coming home telling me the entire story he heard in class, he knows what they're doing the next day in camp, and he is READING INDEPENDENTLY IN UNVOWELIZED HEBREW.
*thud*
3. And now, a cliffhanger, for the few readers who don't already know this:
The day before yesterday I went to lie down for a few minutes between my ulpan and Mr. Bigfoot's ulpan. I heard the phone ring. I ignored it. Fortunately Mr. Bigfoot didn't. Half a minute later, I heard him yelling, "Imma, get up! You have to get up right now!" That was pretty effective, and I vaulted out of bed to see which child was covered in blood. Instead, it was Mr. Bigfoot holding the phone out to me and looking horrified. "It's a woman speaking Hebrew and she's saying that she found Barak on the bus by himself. They're at the mall."
TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
In which I reassure you that I really am OK
I talked to Alisha erev Shabbos and mentioned that I'd just talked to Grandpa M on the phone. "He kept saying how good I sounded. And sounding really surprised."
"Does he read your blog?"
"Sometimes Grandma E reads it to him."
"..."
I think she was implying that perhaps my blog has been a bit of a downer of late, and that Grandpa M might possibly have had some reasonable basis for concern based on the most recent few posts. I conceded that there was some possibility that she was right.
I should probably remind my faithful readers (all 17 of them) that I tend to blog late at night when Perspective may not be at its strongest. Also, when I start feeling sorry for myself I don't exactly focus on the positives.
Anyway: I am OK. Really. I am OK, Mr. Bigfoot is OK, the kids are, B"H, basically OK.
Rundown by family member, youngest first:
1. Marika now has enough hair for two actual pigtails. I am unspeakably besotted. She is in constant motion, climbs on and off the couch and the beds and can now do stairs standing up if she's holding my hand (up and down). Favorite foods: full-fat yogurt, nectarines, cherries, peanut butter licked off her sandwich. She is always demanding "wawa!" but after taking one dainty sip, dumps the entire contents of her cup on her high chair tray.
She's a little bowlegged still and I'm wondering if I should look into it. She's been walking for about 4 months, which seems like enough time for that to have sorted itself out if it's going to. I need to make an appointment for Tipat Chalav anyway, since I didn't quite manage her 18 month checkup. I know they're going to yell at me; she's not quite 10 kg at 19 months. At 12 months she was 7.8 kg, so she's gained around 4 or 5 lb, but she's still teeny tiny. And still nursing, every morning, before and sometimes after naptime, and at bedtime. And whenever she climbs into my lap and starts thumping my chest meaningfully with her palms.
2. Avtalyon is great. I went to his gan mesiba on Wednesday and he actually participated, as opposed to the Chanuka mesiba when he mostly just sat in his chair very close to me and watched. Phrase of the developmental stage: "I hate that!" and also, "That's stupidhead!" But the other day, he was sitting at the table eating a nectarine, and I told him he was cute and I liked him so much. He said, "I like you too." Pause. "We like each odder."
Just in the last week or so he's started playing much more with Marika. Instead of viewing her solely as an annoying obstacle in his path to wherever he's going at best, and a competitor for and messer-up of toys at worst, he's starting to view her as mildly interesting. I'm trying to think of specific things they've done together but can't really--it's just general, like if he's playing on the floor with Lego and she comes and starts playing with Lego too, they'll sit there companionably together instead of him chasing her off. It's an improvement, believe me.
Even bigger improvement: Avtalyon has B"H not been sick since THE WEEK AFTER PESACH. So, more than two months without one single ear infection, fever, or episode of vomiting. This is unbelievable and amazing and... fantastic. He no longer conks out at 4 PM when I put him in a time out. He no longer wakes up at night crying that his neck hurts. Even without the tubes. He's just, B"H about a billion times, doing much better. Finally.
3. Iyyar... well. Iyyar is more than a couple of paragraphs. He hasn't gone to gan for a few weeks, which I mentioned last time. We've had some good days and some less than good days. In the meantime, I started the ball rolling to get a developmental evaluation done. He's switching gan starting tomorrow and we'll see how that goes. Hopefully things will improve once he's in a different setting and back with a routine; if not, I've got some names of OTs to see privately, to see if we can't figure our what's going on with him a little. And since I've had more time with him over the last week, I've been able to figure out better ways of dealing with the freakouts/tantrums/behavioral stuff. Like, you can often talk him down, but you have to change his environment first. I don't know why, but this is true most of the time. And you can explain to him why what he's doing is OK, but he'll only listen if you give the example of Avtalyon. To wit, "If Avtalyon wanted a tomato and screamed I WANT A TOMATO, and I said no, and then he screamed I! WANT! A! TOMATO! and I still said no, and then he screamed GIVE ME A TOMATO RIGHT NOOOOOWWWWWW while throwing a chair across the room, and THEN I gave him a tomato, then what would he do the next time he asked me for a tomato and I said no?" Iyyar, giggling, "Throw a chair." "So should I give him a tomato when he yells and screams?" "No." "That's why any time you start yelling and screaming about anything, even if it was something that at first I was going to give you, then the answer is no. Because otherwise I'm teaching you to tell and scream." He gets it, it's just getting him to the point where he's able to listen that's... hard.
4. Barak is, B"H, really doing great. Thursday was the last day of kita aleph. He got a really nice report card that said he davened beautifully, had derech eretz, played nicely with his friends, and was good at math. There was also a sentence that I'm pretty sure was saying that his rebbe admired his ability to sit quietly for hours when he understood nothing. Erm. Anyway, his morah suggested that he should be working on reading comprehension over the summer, and that's what we're doing.
Enter Eitan (yes his real name), the 16-yo Israeli kid a friend of mine found. He rocks and Barak loves him. He's been coming over and sitting with Barakh and reading with him, and talking to him about it to make sure he understands. He came twice so far and has really been fantastic--they're reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea together, in a lavishly illustrated kids' version. I'm pretty sure Eitan knows at least some English, but I asked him to make sure Barak thinks he doesn't know a word. Last time they sat there reading together for an hour, and when they were done Barak told me all about Captain Nemo. "I think he's kind of weird and maybe not so nice." Indeed.
5. Mr Bigfoot is done with school for the year and like me has started ulpan. He's really enjoying it; it's three hours a day, four days a week, and the timing works out well since his is in the afternoon and mine is in the morning. Both of our sessions run until Erev Tisha b'Av, at which point I will reassess how well I can manage this long-term. In the meantime, we're both learning a lot. Plan for him for next year: do the program for getting an English teacher's license here, teach two mornings a week at an English-language high school near here, and do a couple of other (paid!!!) projects I am not at liberty to mention. He's only got two bechinas left for next year, and while he might not be working in the rabbinate at all, a recognized smicha bumps you up the teacher's pay scale, so that's good.
6. Oh, and me. I am fine, previous posts notwithstanding. A friend of ours is going to the US next month and has offered to bring an empty bag over just for me, so that I can do some online shopping and have stuff sent to his parents' house in NJ. This is a HUGE big deal, because Grandma E has books for us, and I want to buy the kids clothes and shoes that won't fall apart and that I can pay for in dollars. Everyone is at the end of the clothes sizes I brought with us, and especially Barak and Marika really need new stuff--Iyyar and Avtalyon have hand-me-downs, but they don't, at least not enough to get by with. Barak, incredibly, has grown through two full sizes this year and is now wearing size 7/8 almost everything--and it isn't too big at all. Marika is tall, so she's in 18-24 month clothes, even though some of them look like circus tents on her because she's so, well, skinny.
Anyway. Work is good; I just got a really good performance appraisal, and a raise, and my boss thinks staying here another year will not be a problem. My clients are happy with me. A few of the hardest things have turned around or are showing signs of turning around: Avtalyon's feeling better, Barak's picking up Hebrew, Mr. Bigfoot has some better job prospects. I have some contacts for the Orange debacle. The weather hasn't gotten horrible (yet).
It's all basically OK. Just, you know, exhausting. And a little overwhelming sometimes.
"Does he read your blog?"
"Sometimes Grandma E reads it to him."
"..."
I think she was implying that perhaps my blog has been a bit of a downer of late, and that Grandpa M might possibly have had some reasonable basis for concern based on the most recent few posts. I conceded that there was some possibility that she was right.
I should probably remind my faithful readers (all 17 of them) that I tend to blog late at night when Perspective may not be at its strongest. Also, when I start feeling sorry for myself I don't exactly focus on the positives.
Anyway: I am OK. Really. I am OK, Mr. Bigfoot is OK, the kids are, B"H, basically OK.
Rundown by family member, youngest first:
1. Marika now has enough hair for two actual pigtails. I am unspeakably besotted. She is in constant motion, climbs on and off the couch and the beds and can now do stairs standing up if she's holding my hand (up and down). Favorite foods: full-fat yogurt, nectarines, cherries, peanut butter licked off her sandwich. She is always demanding "wawa!" but after taking one dainty sip, dumps the entire contents of her cup on her high chair tray.
She's a little bowlegged still and I'm wondering if I should look into it. She's been walking for about 4 months, which seems like enough time for that to have sorted itself out if it's going to. I need to make an appointment for Tipat Chalav anyway, since I didn't quite manage her 18 month checkup. I know they're going to yell at me; she's not quite 10 kg at 19 months. At 12 months she was 7.8 kg, so she's gained around 4 or 5 lb, but she's still teeny tiny. And still nursing, every morning, before and sometimes after naptime, and at bedtime. And whenever she climbs into my lap and starts thumping my chest meaningfully with her palms.
2. Avtalyon is great. I went to his gan mesiba on Wednesday and he actually participated, as opposed to the Chanuka mesiba when he mostly just sat in his chair very close to me and watched. Phrase of the developmental stage: "I hate that!" and also, "That's stupidhead!" But the other day, he was sitting at the table eating a nectarine, and I told him he was cute and I liked him so much. He said, "I like you too." Pause. "We like each odder."
Just in the last week or so he's started playing much more with Marika. Instead of viewing her solely as an annoying obstacle in his path to wherever he's going at best, and a competitor for and messer-up of toys at worst, he's starting to view her as mildly interesting. I'm trying to think of specific things they've done together but can't really--it's just general, like if he's playing on the floor with Lego and she comes and starts playing with Lego too, they'll sit there companionably together instead of him chasing her off. It's an improvement, believe me.
Even bigger improvement: Avtalyon has B"H not been sick since THE WEEK AFTER PESACH. So, more than two months without one single ear infection, fever, or episode of vomiting. This is unbelievable and amazing and... fantastic. He no longer conks out at 4 PM when I put him in a time out. He no longer wakes up at night crying that his neck hurts. Even without the tubes. He's just, B"H about a billion times, doing much better. Finally.
3. Iyyar... well. Iyyar is more than a couple of paragraphs. He hasn't gone to gan for a few weeks, which I mentioned last time. We've had some good days and some less than good days. In the meantime, I started the ball rolling to get a developmental evaluation done. He's switching gan starting tomorrow and we'll see how that goes. Hopefully things will improve once he's in a different setting and back with a routine; if not, I've got some names of OTs to see privately, to see if we can't figure our what's going on with him a little. And since I've had more time with him over the last week, I've been able to figure out better ways of dealing with the freakouts/tantrums/behavioral stuff. Like, you can often talk him down, but you have to change his environment first. I don't know why, but this is true most of the time. And you can explain to him why what he's doing is OK, but he'll only listen if you give the example of Avtalyon. To wit, "If Avtalyon wanted a tomato and screamed I WANT A TOMATO, and I said no, and then he screamed I! WANT! A! TOMATO! and I still said no, and then he screamed GIVE ME A TOMATO RIGHT NOOOOOWWWWWW while throwing a chair across the room, and THEN I gave him a tomato, then what would he do the next time he asked me for a tomato and I said no?" Iyyar, giggling, "Throw a chair." "So should I give him a tomato when he yells and screams?" "No." "That's why any time you start yelling and screaming about anything, even if it was something that at first I was going to give you, then the answer is no. Because otherwise I'm teaching you to tell and scream." He gets it, it's just getting him to the point where he's able to listen that's... hard.
4. Barak is, B"H, really doing great. Thursday was the last day of kita aleph. He got a really nice report card that said he davened beautifully, had derech eretz, played nicely with his friends, and was good at math. There was also a sentence that I'm pretty sure was saying that his rebbe admired his ability to sit quietly for hours when he understood nothing. Erm. Anyway, his morah suggested that he should be working on reading comprehension over the summer, and that's what we're doing.
Enter Eitan (yes his real name), the 16-yo Israeli kid a friend of mine found. He rocks and Barak loves him. He's been coming over and sitting with Barakh and reading with him, and talking to him about it to make sure he understands. He came twice so far and has really been fantastic--they're reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea together, in a lavishly illustrated kids' version. I'm pretty sure Eitan knows at least some English, but I asked him to make sure Barak thinks he doesn't know a word. Last time they sat there reading together for an hour, and when they were done Barak told me all about Captain Nemo. "I think he's kind of weird and maybe not so nice." Indeed.
5. Mr Bigfoot is done with school for the year and like me has started ulpan. He's really enjoying it; it's three hours a day, four days a week, and the timing works out well since his is in the afternoon and mine is in the morning. Both of our sessions run until Erev Tisha b'Av, at which point I will reassess how well I can manage this long-term. In the meantime, we're both learning a lot. Plan for him for next year: do the program for getting an English teacher's license here, teach two mornings a week at an English-language high school near here, and do a couple of other (paid!!!) projects I am not at liberty to mention. He's only got two bechinas left for next year, and while he might not be working in the rabbinate at all, a recognized smicha bumps you up the teacher's pay scale, so that's good.
6. Oh, and me. I am fine, previous posts notwithstanding. A friend of ours is going to the US next month and has offered to bring an empty bag over just for me, so that I can do some online shopping and have stuff sent to his parents' house in NJ. This is a HUGE big deal, because Grandma E has books for us, and I want to buy the kids clothes and shoes that won't fall apart and that I can pay for in dollars. Everyone is at the end of the clothes sizes I brought with us, and especially Barak and Marika really need new stuff--Iyyar and Avtalyon have hand-me-downs, but they don't, at least not enough to get by with. Barak, incredibly, has grown through two full sizes this year and is now wearing size 7/8 almost everything--and it isn't too big at all. Marika is tall, so she's in 18-24 month clothes, even though some of them look like circus tents on her because she's so, well, skinny.
Anyway. Work is good; I just got a really good performance appraisal, and a raise, and my boss thinks staying here another year will not be a problem. My clients are happy with me. A few of the hardest things have turned around or are showing signs of turning around: Avtalyon's feeling better, Barak's picking up Hebrew, Mr. Bigfoot has some better job prospects. I have some contacts for the Orange debacle. The weather hasn't gotten horrible (yet).
It's all basically OK. Just, you know, exhausting. And a little overwhelming sometimes.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Orange you mad
Know what happened to a lot of that money?
Orange has been billing me for internet I specifically said I didn't want and didn't use. Total: 1,700 shekel. I argued for an hour and even cried and it got me nowhere. They also charged me 500 for a loaner phone while they fixed the one that dropped in the bathtub; that they credited me for.
Anyone know the number for pikuach tikshoret?
Orange has been billing me for internet I specifically said I didn't want and didn't use. Total: 1,700 shekel. I argued for an hour and even cried and it got me nowhere. They also charged me 500 for a loaner phone while they fixed the one that dropped in the bathtub; that they credited me for.
Anyone know the number for pikuach tikshoret?
Monday, June 27, 2011
For the record
Here's my kitchen, circa Pesach, ergo the taped cupboards. In fairness, I do now have a double-burner hotplate to cook on, and a somewhat larger and fully functional fridge. The rest is the same, except that the contact paper on the counter is coming apart and needs to be replaced.
Top toaster oven is dairy, bottom one is parve. They're so small you can't use them for both. The shelf over the sink is the one that I had my Shabbos dishes on when we first came. That's how I found out it wasn't strong enough to hold more than about five pounds.
While we're on the subject
Mr. Bigfoot went to the bank for me this morning. He got a new password and also a printed statement, which he went through with the bank guy. Where did all that money go? Turns out Orange has been billing us almost exactly twice what they should be. I called them and of course, they said that because I agreed to be billed twice what I was told I was getting billed, they could do nothing. They are billing me EIGHT HUNDRED SHEKEL A MONTH. Go ahead, convert that into dollars.
Fainted yet?
So now I have to go in there, in person, tomorrow, and argue. In Hebrew. And probably get nowhere. Again.
Also?
Barak was supposed to go to a friend's house. Said friend's mother just called and said that he wasn't there. I think he went with the wrong friend's father, and this said friend's father does not have a cell phone. I hope he gets home soon, because actually, I have no way of knowing where he is. I'm pretty sure he's with the other father, and it's OK. And in the meantime, I invited friend A here tomorrow afternoon. Because I am a lunatic. And I want my son to have friends.
Also?
Iyyar went to gan this morning, in that he got in the car of the neighbor who has been driving him. Then I got a call saying that he was refusing to get out of the car. Neighbor drove him back home.
He'd better not really be in that gan next year, like the registration form I just got in the mail says he is.
I know! How about if I turn this blog into all whining, all the time? How would that be?
::crickets::
Fainted yet?
So now I have to go in there, in person, tomorrow, and argue. In Hebrew. And probably get nowhere. Again.
Also?
Barak was supposed to go to a friend's house. Said friend's mother just called and said that he wasn't there. I think he went with the wrong friend's father, and this said friend's father does not have a cell phone. I hope he gets home soon, because actually, I have no way of knowing where he is. I'm pretty sure he's with the other father, and it's OK. And in the meantime, I invited friend A here tomorrow afternoon. Because I am a lunatic. And I want my son to have friends.
Also?
Iyyar went to gan this morning, in that he got in the car of the neighbor who has been driving him. Then I got a call saying that he was refusing to get out of the car. Neighbor drove him back home.
He'd better not really be in that gan next year, like the registration form I just got in the mail says he is.
I know! How about if I turn this blog into all whining, all the time? How would that be?
::crickets::
Sunday, June 26, 2011
In which I feel sorry for myself. Just a little.
Or a lot.
(Warning: I'm about to indulge in a lot of self-pity here. I need to get it out of my system. If you're going to judge me, stop reading now, and go read about gay pride in NY. It's a lot more cheerful than I'm about to be.)
Hey, remember how just a few days ago, I was feeling positively chipper?
Yeah. Well. Perspective fail, right here.
Let's start with last July, shall we?
We got here with a plan of a two-year stay, and the understanding that my husband would be learning full time with a very heavy schedule in exchange for a free apartment (free rent, free utilities) and food five days a week. We had all the boys registered in schools and we had a schoolbus that was supposed to stop at our door.
I had the daily schedule all worked out, and it was completely manageable and even easier than what I'd had the year before. I was going to work from 7 PM until 1 AM and sleep until 8, because Mr. Bigfoot would be able to manage getting the kids where they needed to be until then; not only would I have 7 hours to sleep, but I was going to also get a rest in the morning, because I was going to be home with Marika while the boys were in school, and Marika is a champion napper. We'd rented out our US apartment, because its value had fallen roughly $80k from what we'd paid for it and we couldn't sell it; we were going to take a loss of a couple hundred dollars a month, but that, we figured, was OK, since we were storing our stuff there anyway. We'd sell it eventually, at least get something back, buy a bigger place one day.
Anyone hear laughing?
Within a couple weeks of getting off the plane, Iyyar had gotten relocated from the ten-minutes-away-by-foot gan to a half-an-hour-away-by-bus-and-vertical-climb gan; Barak's school had vaporized with the schoolbus, and on September first I found myself with a schedule that involved a minimum of three hours of shlepping children on buses around Jerusalem, with between one and three separate forays per day. Mr. Bigfoot's lunches were also taken up with shlepping; he had less than an hour for dinner, so we hardly ever saw each other. Avtalyon started screaming the day gan started, and his ganenet kept calling saying I had to take him home. He woke up at night, he cried, he cried, he cried. And it took us well over a month to discover that he had strep and double ear infections, despite multiple doctor visits. We changed doctors. We got to know the new doctors very, very well.
Pinworms. Lice. Concussion. Strep. More strep. Stomach viruses. Three-day yom tov. We got a morning hasaa for Iyyar and an afternoon hasaa for Barak, finally, but I still had two trips a day, three hours. Succos, everyone was sick; during one seuda, two children threw up, right in front of our guests.
The boys just about blew up behaviorally, at first, although it calmed down a bit by October. The phone calls started coming from Barak's school: not reassuring. He was zoning out completely, not even trying to pay attention. Endless, endless calls trying to get him the help he was legally entitled to, which did not come until January. In the meantime, he seemed to be learning nothing. And we had stomach viruses, strep, ear infection after ear infection for Avtalyon, doctor's visits at least twice a week and sometimes twice in a single day. Cab fare, carseats, Mr Bigfoot had to miss class and seder.
In October, the dining hall switched caterers, and immediately Iyyar and Avtalyon started not feeling well. It turned out that the new caterer used a lot of soy. We'd go up to the dining hall and see hot dogs and hamburgers that nobody could eat. And turn around and start cooking at 7 PM. I kept trying to get them to tell me what food would have soy in it, but could never rely on it being accurate, and they kept getting sick.
In December, one good thing: we get the washing machine. If we hadn't, I can't even imagine what the rest of this little sob story would be like.
Friends come to visit us from the US. I have been looking forward to this for months. Iyyar is sick, Avtalyon is sick, we cancel everything we had planned except for a party at our place--during which I discover that the caterers are not trying, not even a little bit, to let me know what is going on with the food. They don't get it. They don't understand, or seem to care.
January, I asked, finally, if I could just have the recipes so I at least know what was in what, and was told no, a better solution would be for me to not feed them food from the dining hall, except for the things we know are safe: cornflakes, bread, raw fruit, salad, milk for Barak.
Then I lost Barak's afternoon hasaa and was back to getting him from school three times a week, in addition to taking him in the morning every day and bringing Iyyar home four times a week. I went back to buying monthly bus passes. They raised the price.
Iyyar's behavior worse, worse, worse. I keep trying to talk to his ganenet. She won't deal with me because of my awful Hebrew. This is a recurring theme. I need to work on my Hebrew. It is so demoralizing, not being able to say what I want to say. How am I going to do ulpan? I am working from the minute the kids are in bed until 1 or 2 am, and getting up at 6:30. I have Marika all morning and the only time I get to sleep is when she naps. Still, I decide to register in ulpan in the summer, part-time.
Now I am back to shopping, planning, cooking, cleaning for everyone. Remember how hard that was before? Now I'm doing it on a hot plate and in a toaster oven, in a 3/4sized fridge, in a kitchen with two square feet of counter space, hardly any cabinets and nowhere for a dishrack--and no gate to keep the children out. Instead of eating in the dining hall, we are eating at home, which means the floor needs to be cleaned, the dishes need to be washed, the different dietary needs need to be dealt with. Mr. Bigfoot has an IBS flare and needs IBS food. And we're buying almost all our own food--another two thousand shekel a month. So I needed to work more. I decided to invest in some cleaning help. After half a dozen visits, the administration found out and I was told I wasn't allowed. I learned how to sponja my own floor, and just when I finally got the hang of it was told no, I couldn't do it like that. My toaster oven stopped working. Alisha tried to get it fixed for me. It came back just the way it was, able to heat but not bake.
We got an email saying that the food was going to be completely canceled--no more cornflakes or anything else--and we were going to have to start paying for our own water and electricity. There would be a stipend for food, which was not adequate for one person and certainly not for six. I bought a new plastic cabinet for added cupboard space, and a rice cooker.
I got a letter saying that our taxes on our apartment had been raised by $160 a month.
Then the fridge stopped working. It froze my food, it didn't stay cold, the cucumbers rotted overnight. I put in a repair request and another one. They brought a procession of old fridges, one after another, from the miklat--none of which were an improvement. Can I have a new fridge? No. Can I buy my own fridge? No. I threw out so much food, every day something had to get tossed. Pesach came. First seder, the fridge died, completely, during the seder. The replacement to that came with chametz in it. I cried. They relented. I bought my own fridge.
More ear infections, another round of stomach flu. Avtalyon has been sick almost nonstop since we got here. Eight rounds of antibiotics, and that is not even counting the two concussions, all the viruses, the ear infections the ENT decides not to treat. We run completely out of children's Tylenol. Finally, his ENT says he needs tubes. Meuchedet denies them. As if in protest, Avtalyon's eardrums rupture. Again. I take him in for an audiogram, and yes, he has 40 dc of hearing loss.
The convention. For more than a month, I felt like I never slept at all. Every time I looked at my computer, another two or four or seven requests popped up. Endless revisions. So much work, so little time, so much pressure. If I mess up, if someone complains, will they terminate my telecommuting agreement? I'm the only one earning money.
A week later, my electric hotplate died. Where are we now? May?
Iyyar's behavior, which had gotten steadily worse until Pesach and then so much better, started to go downhill again. Every morning I'd wake up determined to be patient, and after ten minutes want to go in my room, close the door and scream. I kept talking to his ganenot, which got me nowhere. I decided to move his gan. Dozens of phone calls, three trips to the iriya, many tears later, it was done. A week later, I got a letter informing me that my boys were registered at their old gan. I hope this is a mistake. I haven't been able to check yet.
I found out that we were supposed to pay NIS 50 per person per night whenever we had guests. I should have known this, but had somehow not registered or forgotten. I had to sit down and figure out how many guests we had hosted, in our own home, since August, and pay for them. It cost NIS 1500.
In the meantime, I can't read the school newsletters. I can't help Barak with his homework. I have to learn Hebrew. I started ulpan, right before Shavuos.
The week before last Iyyar absolutely exploded, and I said that's it, he's staying home from school. I avoided calls from his ganenet. Things got better for a few days. Then worse. Today I went to talk to his ganenet, and that was... unhelpful. Iyyar took a bath, and poured in the entire bottle of soap; then I went into the bathroom and realized he'd smeared poop on the walls. On purpose.
What do I do with that?
Last week in ulpan, my teacher put me on the spot because after three nights of four hours of sleep, my attention had lapsed and I hadn't followed her instructions. She started telling me that if I didn't focus, if I didn't do what I was told, I wouldn't progress. I wouldn't learn Hebrew. Didn't I want to progress? Why wasn't I trying?
I started to cry, right there in class. Once I started, I couldn't stop.
I don't have any perspective anymore. I can't see past any of this. Last night I couldn't sleep until almost 4 am, worrying about everything. Mr. Bigfoot still doesn't have a job for next year. It's June. As of September, we'll have more bills, and everything will be coming out of my one part-time salary, less what we have to pay for our condo--more than $400 a month shortfall every month. I woke up and tried to work out online exactly where our money had been going, to see how to get it down, and was locked out of my bank's webpage. To get a new password, I have to go there, in person, and deal with the non-English-speaking bank staff. I did a lot of math last night and have realized that I can't account for about NIS 10000 of our outlays over the last 11 months, and what I thought was a statement of my bank account is actually a statement of my debit card--you wouldn't think it to look at it, but it is, and so I have no idea at all what's been going out of our account on our direct debit accounts to Meuchedet, Bituach Leumi, or Orange. Is someone billing us an extra NIS 1000 a month? Maybe. No way to tell until I can get to the bank.
I can't tell you how not like me it is to have lost track of my bank account like that. But I have no surplus cognitive space. None. Work, my actual job, is taking up so much of my brain right now. B"H, I like my job, I do it well, I enjoy it. But I have to really be on the ball. My kids need me. I need to be learning Hebrew, and that is not optional--pretty soon, my kids are really going to suffer if I can't keep on top of their academic and social needs.
I still haven't dealt with my Israeli taxes.
I don't even know where I'm going with all this. Just to get it out of my system, I guess. I've left out all the good stuff, of course: Barak is now thriving, Iyyar and Avtalyon are really speaking Hebrew much better, Marika is adorable and now has two pigtails. We got a great tax return. I am switching into a different ulpan, with a better teacher, tomorrow. My boss is happy with me. The convention went well. I got a good performance review. My husband is nice. We bought some bookshelves, and the living room looks better now. I've been growing tomatoes and basil on the windowsills, and they've been doing incredibly well and are fun for the kids to water. I don't have to travel this summer. Avtalyon hasn't been sick since right after Pesach--besides the odd stomachache or bout of diarrhea, nor has anyone else.
It could be worse.
But it's still really, really hard.
(Warning: I'm about to indulge in a lot of self-pity here. I need to get it out of my system. If you're going to judge me, stop reading now, and go read about gay pride in NY. It's a lot more cheerful than I'm about to be.)
Hey, remember how just a few days ago, I was feeling positively chipper?
Yeah. Well. Perspective fail, right here.
Let's start with last July, shall we?
We got here with a plan of a two-year stay, and the understanding that my husband would be learning full time with a very heavy schedule in exchange for a free apartment (free rent, free utilities) and food five days a week. We had all the boys registered in schools and we had a schoolbus that was supposed to stop at our door.
I had the daily schedule all worked out, and it was completely manageable and even easier than what I'd had the year before. I was going to work from 7 PM until 1 AM and sleep until 8, because Mr. Bigfoot would be able to manage getting the kids where they needed to be until then; not only would I have 7 hours to sleep, but I was going to also get a rest in the morning, because I was going to be home with Marika while the boys were in school, and Marika is a champion napper. We'd rented out our US apartment, because its value had fallen roughly $80k from what we'd paid for it and we couldn't sell it; we were going to take a loss of a couple hundred dollars a month, but that, we figured, was OK, since we were storing our stuff there anyway. We'd sell it eventually, at least get something back, buy a bigger place one day.
Anyone hear laughing?
Within a couple weeks of getting off the plane, Iyyar had gotten relocated from the ten-minutes-away-by-foot gan to a half-an-hour-away-by-bus-and-vertical-climb gan; Barak's school had vaporized with the schoolbus, and on September first I found myself with a schedule that involved a minimum of three hours of shlepping children on buses around Jerusalem, with between one and three separate forays per day. Mr. Bigfoot's lunches were also taken up with shlepping; he had less than an hour for dinner, so we hardly ever saw each other. Avtalyon started screaming the day gan started, and his ganenet kept calling saying I had to take him home. He woke up at night, he cried, he cried, he cried. And it took us well over a month to discover that he had strep and double ear infections, despite multiple doctor visits. We changed doctors. We got to know the new doctors very, very well.
Pinworms. Lice. Concussion. Strep. More strep. Stomach viruses. Three-day yom tov. We got a morning hasaa for Iyyar and an afternoon hasaa for Barak, finally, but I still had two trips a day, three hours. Succos, everyone was sick; during one seuda, two children threw up, right in front of our guests.
The boys just about blew up behaviorally, at first, although it calmed down a bit by October. The phone calls started coming from Barak's school: not reassuring. He was zoning out completely, not even trying to pay attention. Endless, endless calls trying to get him the help he was legally entitled to, which did not come until January. In the meantime, he seemed to be learning nothing. And we had stomach viruses, strep, ear infection after ear infection for Avtalyon, doctor's visits at least twice a week and sometimes twice in a single day. Cab fare, carseats, Mr Bigfoot had to miss class and seder.
In October, the dining hall switched caterers, and immediately Iyyar and Avtalyon started not feeling well. It turned out that the new caterer used a lot of soy. We'd go up to the dining hall and see hot dogs and hamburgers that nobody could eat. And turn around and start cooking at 7 PM. I kept trying to get them to tell me what food would have soy in it, but could never rely on it being accurate, and they kept getting sick.
In December, one good thing: we get the washing machine. If we hadn't, I can't even imagine what the rest of this little sob story would be like.
Friends come to visit us from the US. I have been looking forward to this for months. Iyyar is sick, Avtalyon is sick, we cancel everything we had planned except for a party at our place--during which I discover that the caterers are not trying, not even a little bit, to let me know what is going on with the food. They don't get it. They don't understand, or seem to care.
January, I asked, finally, if I could just have the recipes so I at least know what was in what, and was told no, a better solution would be for me to not feed them food from the dining hall, except for the things we know are safe: cornflakes, bread, raw fruit, salad, milk for Barak.
Then I lost Barak's afternoon hasaa and was back to getting him from school three times a week, in addition to taking him in the morning every day and bringing Iyyar home four times a week. I went back to buying monthly bus passes. They raised the price.
Iyyar's behavior worse, worse, worse. I keep trying to talk to his ganenet. She won't deal with me because of my awful Hebrew. This is a recurring theme. I need to work on my Hebrew. It is so demoralizing, not being able to say what I want to say. How am I going to do ulpan? I am working from the minute the kids are in bed until 1 or 2 am, and getting up at 6:30. I have Marika all morning and the only time I get to sleep is when she naps. Still, I decide to register in ulpan in the summer, part-time.
Now I am back to shopping, planning, cooking, cleaning for everyone. Remember how hard that was before? Now I'm doing it on a hot plate and in a toaster oven, in a 3/4sized fridge, in a kitchen with two square feet of counter space, hardly any cabinets and nowhere for a dishrack--and no gate to keep the children out. Instead of eating in the dining hall, we are eating at home, which means the floor needs to be cleaned, the dishes need to be washed, the different dietary needs need to be dealt with. Mr. Bigfoot has an IBS flare and needs IBS food. And we're buying almost all our own food--another two thousand shekel a month. So I needed to work more. I decided to invest in some cleaning help. After half a dozen visits, the administration found out and I was told I wasn't allowed. I learned how to sponja my own floor, and just when I finally got the hang of it was told no, I couldn't do it like that. My toaster oven stopped working. Alisha tried to get it fixed for me. It came back just the way it was, able to heat but not bake.
We got an email saying that the food was going to be completely canceled--no more cornflakes or anything else--and we were going to have to start paying for our own water and electricity. There would be a stipend for food, which was not adequate for one person and certainly not for six. I bought a new plastic cabinet for added cupboard space, and a rice cooker.
I got a letter saying that our taxes on our apartment had been raised by $160 a month.
Then the fridge stopped working. It froze my food, it didn't stay cold, the cucumbers rotted overnight. I put in a repair request and another one. They brought a procession of old fridges, one after another, from the miklat--none of which were an improvement. Can I have a new fridge? No. Can I buy my own fridge? No. I threw out so much food, every day something had to get tossed. Pesach came. First seder, the fridge died, completely, during the seder. The replacement to that came with chametz in it. I cried. They relented. I bought my own fridge.
More ear infections, another round of stomach flu. Avtalyon has been sick almost nonstop since we got here. Eight rounds of antibiotics, and that is not even counting the two concussions, all the viruses, the ear infections the ENT decides not to treat. We run completely out of children's Tylenol. Finally, his ENT says he needs tubes. Meuchedet denies them. As if in protest, Avtalyon's eardrums rupture. Again. I take him in for an audiogram, and yes, he has 40 dc of hearing loss.
The convention. For more than a month, I felt like I never slept at all. Every time I looked at my computer, another two or four or seven requests popped up. Endless revisions. So much work, so little time, so much pressure. If I mess up, if someone complains, will they terminate my telecommuting agreement? I'm the only one earning money.
A week later, my electric hotplate died. Where are we now? May?
Iyyar's behavior, which had gotten steadily worse until Pesach and then so much better, started to go downhill again. Every morning I'd wake up determined to be patient, and after ten minutes want to go in my room, close the door and scream. I kept talking to his ganenot, which got me nowhere. I decided to move his gan. Dozens of phone calls, three trips to the iriya, many tears later, it was done. A week later, I got a letter informing me that my boys were registered at their old gan. I hope this is a mistake. I haven't been able to check yet.
I found out that we were supposed to pay NIS 50 per person per night whenever we had guests. I should have known this, but had somehow not registered or forgotten. I had to sit down and figure out how many guests we had hosted, in our own home, since August, and pay for them. It cost NIS 1500.
In the meantime, I can't read the school newsletters. I can't help Barak with his homework. I have to learn Hebrew. I started ulpan, right before Shavuos.
The week before last Iyyar absolutely exploded, and I said that's it, he's staying home from school. I avoided calls from his ganenet. Things got better for a few days. Then worse. Today I went to talk to his ganenet, and that was... unhelpful. Iyyar took a bath, and poured in the entire bottle of soap; then I went into the bathroom and realized he'd smeared poop on the walls. On purpose.
What do I do with that?
Last week in ulpan, my teacher put me on the spot because after three nights of four hours of sleep, my attention had lapsed and I hadn't followed her instructions. She started telling me that if I didn't focus, if I didn't do what I was told, I wouldn't progress. I wouldn't learn Hebrew. Didn't I want to progress? Why wasn't I trying?
I started to cry, right there in class. Once I started, I couldn't stop.
I don't have any perspective anymore. I can't see past any of this. Last night I couldn't sleep until almost 4 am, worrying about everything. Mr. Bigfoot still doesn't have a job for next year. It's June. As of September, we'll have more bills, and everything will be coming out of my one part-time salary, less what we have to pay for our condo--more than $400 a month shortfall every month. I woke up and tried to work out online exactly where our money had been going, to see how to get it down, and was locked out of my bank's webpage. To get a new password, I have to go there, in person, and deal with the non-English-speaking bank staff. I did a lot of math last night and have realized that I can't account for about NIS 10000 of our outlays over the last 11 months, and what I thought was a statement of my bank account is actually a statement of my debit card--you wouldn't think it to look at it, but it is, and so I have no idea at all what's been going out of our account on our direct debit accounts to Meuchedet, Bituach Leumi, or Orange. Is someone billing us an extra NIS 1000 a month? Maybe. No way to tell until I can get to the bank.
I can't tell you how not like me it is to have lost track of my bank account like that. But I have no surplus cognitive space. None. Work, my actual job, is taking up so much of my brain right now. B"H, I like my job, I do it well, I enjoy it. But I have to really be on the ball. My kids need me. I need to be learning Hebrew, and that is not optional--pretty soon, my kids are really going to suffer if I can't keep on top of their academic and social needs.
I still haven't dealt with my Israeli taxes.
I don't even know where I'm going with all this. Just to get it out of my system, I guess. I've left out all the good stuff, of course: Barak is now thriving, Iyyar and Avtalyon are really speaking Hebrew much better, Marika is adorable and now has two pigtails. We got a great tax return. I am switching into a different ulpan, with a better teacher, tomorrow. My boss is happy with me. The convention went well. I got a good performance review. My husband is nice. We bought some bookshelves, and the living room looks better now. I've been growing tomatoes and basil on the windowsills, and they've been doing incredibly well and are fun for the kids to water. I don't have to travel this summer. Avtalyon hasn't been sick since right after Pesach--besides the odd stomachache or bout of diarrhea, nor has anyone else.
It could be worse.
But it's still really, really hard.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Still here
Just busy.
Things are good. I took a week of vacation and then had a slow week that let me recover from the convention; work now is busy but not unmanageable. The kids are mostly doing well; I feel good and go to bed at night happy about what I'm going to do the next day. I'm not overwhelmed, I feel energetic, things are good.
Just, you know, busy.
Updates in a nutshell:
1. I started ulpan. I know, I know. I have no time for ulpan. But it has to happen sometime and my rights expire in January; Mr. Bigfoot is off as of last Wednesday and he can be home with Marika in the morning (he'll be starting his own ulpan in the afternoon, so we can trade off.) It's 8:30-12:30, three days a week, so not as huge a time commitment as a regular ulpan; also, it's up the street from Barak's school, so very convenient. They put me in kita beit, which is appropriate; my spoken Hebrew is, I think, better than that of most of the other people in my class, but my grammar is atrocious so it's the right thing for me. And I'm learning a lot--I can see a difference in my Hebrew already. Current plan is to keep going until the session ends, erev Tisha b'Av, and reevaluate from there whether to continue into the year, which would require finding childcare for Marika.
2. I moved Iyyar and Avtalyon's gan for next year to a closer gan. I don't know what it is, but Iyyar's gan is not a good fit for him. I hope it's that, anyway, and not that gan in general is hard for him. His behavior over the year had gradually gotten more and more difficult; I was getting complaints from his ganenet that he wasn't paying attention, bothering the other kids, throwing things, running around when he was supposed to be sitting still, etc. Pesach, he had three weeks off, and by the end he was really doing great. I asked his ganenet, and she told me his behavior in school had also improved. However, by last week, it had gone back to horrible. If I didn't know that he was not always like that, I would have thought he should be evaluated for... I don't know what, but something major.
Last week I took him with me to check out a different gan. I got him early at school and we walked there together. At least, I walked--he mostly got dragged, because he was yelling and screaming and pitching fits the whole way. His arm was rigid with tension, he wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't respond to anything I said, wouldn't make eye contact at all, just screamed lots of things--some of which made sense "I don't want to go to a different gan!" and some of which didn't "They won't let me go out of there!" But he wouldn't explain or let me ask questions or figure out what the problem was. Anyway, we got there, we looked around, and I met Avtalyon's future gananet (who seems OK, not fabulous but OK) and Iyyar's (who seems great.) On the way home, his arm felt like an arm, not like an iron rod. What was he so afraid of that he didn't see? I don't know.
I think the problem in a nutshell is this: Iyyar is, for some unknown reason, unhappy and stressed at gan. This is resulting in difficult behavior. I want to find out what the problem is and deal with it. His ganenet wants to find out how to make the behavior problems stop. We are not getting anywhere with this. The new ganenet saw him at close to his worst and did not try to shove us out the door; instead, she said, "let's try him here and if it turns out he needs help, we'll get him some." That sounds better to me.
In the meantime, I have decided, with two weeks left to go, to make gan optional. He hasn't gone. Three days later, he's like a different kid.
3. Marika is great and hilarious and constantly on the go. I've noticed lately that she's a little bowlegged; her legs curve inward a bit from knees to ankles. Shouldn't she have outgrown that by now? I need to make her overdue 18-mo Tipat Chalav appointment so they can yell at me for how skinny she is (I'm guessing 22 lb or so) but they can't yell at me for any developmental milestones, at least.
4. Avtalyon is also hilarious and is eating like a horse. He never seems to stop--he's ALWAYS hungry. Except at school, where, apparently, he doesn't eat. What's up with that? I feel like I should have more to say about the child who currently has the greatest comedic value of anyone in our household, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
5. Mr. Bigfoot is now suddenly in a much better mood, having passed (woohoo!) his last bechina of the year. He's still looking for work and trying to figure things out for the fall, but the basic plan is there; learning two sedarim and day and something else (whatever comes up teaching-wise, and/or English teacher training) during the third seder. I think it will work out well, logistically, and having both Iyyar and Avtalyon in the same (closer) gan will help the daily schedule a lot. Barak is supposed to have a hasaa, too, and if that happens it'll be a whole new life in a lot of ways.
Anyway, that's it in a nutshell.
Things are good. I took a week of vacation and then had a slow week that let me recover from the convention; work now is busy but not unmanageable. The kids are mostly doing well; I feel good and go to bed at night happy about what I'm going to do the next day. I'm not overwhelmed, I feel energetic, things are good.
Just, you know, busy.
Updates in a nutshell:
1. I started ulpan. I know, I know. I have no time for ulpan. But it has to happen sometime and my rights expire in January; Mr. Bigfoot is off as of last Wednesday and he can be home with Marika in the morning (he'll be starting his own ulpan in the afternoon, so we can trade off.) It's 8:30-12:30, three days a week, so not as huge a time commitment as a regular ulpan; also, it's up the street from Barak's school, so very convenient. They put me in kita beit, which is appropriate; my spoken Hebrew is, I think, better than that of most of the other people in my class, but my grammar is atrocious so it's the right thing for me. And I'm learning a lot--I can see a difference in my Hebrew already. Current plan is to keep going until the session ends, erev Tisha b'Av, and reevaluate from there whether to continue into the year, which would require finding childcare for Marika.
2. I moved Iyyar and Avtalyon's gan for next year to a closer gan. I don't know what it is, but Iyyar's gan is not a good fit for him. I hope it's that, anyway, and not that gan in general is hard for him. His behavior over the year had gradually gotten more and more difficult; I was getting complaints from his ganenet that he wasn't paying attention, bothering the other kids, throwing things, running around when he was supposed to be sitting still, etc. Pesach, he had three weeks off, and by the end he was really doing great. I asked his ganenet, and she told me his behavior in school had also improved. However, by last week, it had gone back to horrible. If I didn't know that he was not always like that, I would have thought he should be evaluated for... I don't know what, but something major.
Last week I took him with me to check out a different gan. I got him early at school and we walked there together. At least, I walked--he mostly got dragged, because he was yelling and screaming and pitching fits the whole way. His arm was rigid with tension, he wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't respond to anything I said, wouldn't make eye contact at all, just screamed lots of things--some of which made sense "I don't want to go to a different gan!" and some of which didn't "They won't let me go out of there!" But he wouldn't explain or let me ask questions or figure out what the problem was. Anyway, we got there, we looked around, and I met Avtalyon's future gananet (who seems OK, not fabulous but OK) and Iyyar's (who seems great.) On the way home, his arm felt like an arm, not like an iron rod. What was he so afraid of that he didn't see? I don't know.
I think the problem in a nutshell is this: Iyyar is, for some unknown reason, unhappy and stressed at gan. This is resulting in difficult behavior. I want to find out what the problem is and deal with it. His ganenet wants to find out how to make the behavior problems stop. We are not getting anywhere with this. The new ganenet saw him at close to his worst and did not try to shove us out the door; instead, she said, "let's try him here and if it turns out he needs help, we'll get him some." That sounds better to me.
In the meantime, I have decided, with two weeks left to go, to make gan optional. He hasn't gone. Three days later, he's like a different kid.
3. Marika is great and hilarious and constantly on the go. I've noticed lately that she's a little bowlegged; her legs curve inward a bit from knees to ankles. Shouldn't she have outgrown that by now? I need to make her overdue 18-mo Tipat Chalav appointment so they can yell at me for how skinny she is (I'm guessing 22 lb or so) but they can't yell at me for any developmental milestones, at least.
4. Avtalyon is also hilarious and is eating like a horse. He never seems to stop--he's ALWAYS hungry. Except at school, where, apparently, he doesn't eat. What's up with that? I feel like I should have more to say about the child who currently has the greatest comedic value of anyone in our household, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
5. Mr. Bigfoot is now suddenly in a much better mood, having passed (woohoo!) his last bechina of the year. He's still looking for work and trying to figure things out for the fall, but the basic plan is there; learning two sedarim and day and something else (whatever comes up teaching-wise, and/or English teacher training) during the third seder. I think it will work out well, logistically, and having both Iyyar and Avtalyon in the same (closer) gan will help the daily schedule a lot. Barak is supposed to have a hasaa, too, and if that happens it'll be a whole new life in a lot of ways.
Anyway, that's it in a nutshell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)