Why, what's this?

You mean, it's not obvious?

It's what happens when you ask your four-year-old son what kind of a vest he wants you to knit, thinking he'll say "blue" or "red" or maybe "with a green stripe."

Yeah, well. Maybe other kids say that. My kid is the son of a knitter. He aims a little higher.

He asked for a vest with a fire-breathing dragon.

What could I say? I knit him one.

I don't usually pass on tzedaka requests

But there's a first time for everything.

Fourteen-year-old survivor of the Mercaz HaRav (where, by the way, we would be happy to be zoche to send any of our sons) massacre needs surgery in the US to put his insides back together so that he can do things like eat and go to the bathroom. The family is from Sderot. The kupat cholim (insurance) is not covering it on the grounds that it could be done in Israel; his parents feel that he should have it done by specialists, and the specialists are in the US. If it were my kid, I would feel exactly the same way.

Full story, and address for donations, here.

Briefly

Before I forget...

At playgroup, Iyyar learned that immortal Jewish children's classic, "Dip the Apple in the Honey."
Lyrics, sung to the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine," run thusly:

Dip the apple in the honey
Make a bracha loud and clear
Shana tova u'mesuka
Have a happy sweet new year.

You know how there's a school of thought that toddlers are basically cavemen and need to be addressed as such? Well, Iyyar clearly belongs to the caveman school of songwriting, because his version of the above, rendered always at earsplitting volume, runs:

"APPLE! HONEY! BRA! KA!"

Nine

A friend's husband commented once that nine months is a significant milestone because it means more time out than in. For us, we passed that marker about a month ago, but never mind. Avtalyon is nine months old, and cut his first tooth this morning.

I've mentioned before that he's on a developmental track that has him doing almost everything a good three months ahead of his brothers. It's fun, and really different--it's also a little disconcerting sometimes (but in a good way) because he looks absolutely exactly like Barak--the pictures will be indistinguishable--but Barak, at this age, couldn't yet roll over both ways, didn't know his name, and couldn't reliably sit up on his own--pictures of him sitting up at ten months show lots and lots of pillows and soft bedding in the background, because he always fell over.

Avtalyon started saying "Abba" last week. I am "Mmmmm! Mmmmmmma! Ammmmmmmma!" I wasn't sure if he was really saying my name or just being hungry; speculation on this subject in Asnat's presence was met with the kind of look you can only manage if you're Israeli. It manages to convey "You are completely, totally, definitively out of your mind," without a single vowel or consonant. Pretty impressive, actually. Anyway, so, Asnat thinks he's saying my name. He also seems to be saying Barak and Iyyar's names; Barak is "Ah yah!" and his version of Iyyar's name is so close to Iyyar's actual name I don't think I'll post it.

He now waves at people regularly; if I'm holding him and there's someone new and I ask him to wave, even if I don't do it myself or hold his hand up as a hint, just the word is enough; he almost always waves, multiple times, and expects the courtesy returned. He's gotten interested in anything with a baby lock and has expressed ambitions in the area of emptying low-lying kitchen cupboards of their contents. Yesterday I made macaroni and cheese--the genuine article, with a Bechamel sauce and grated sharp cheddar, as opposed to just cheese melted on noodles--and he liked that. A lot.

What else? He doesn't really nap--an hourlong nap is a major accomplishmentl--but he spends most of the day happy so it's okay with me. He goes to sleep at around 6 PM and stays asleep until sometime around 6 or 7 am; he wakes up a few times in between, but usually before midnight. Everything's relative; to us, that's amazing sleeping for a nine-month-old.

The problem right now is finding a place for him to sleep. You wouldn't think this would be a problem in a five-room apartment, but it is; he's a very, very light sleeper, so really can't sleep with the boys, and if he sleeps in our room he's up nursing all night long. I tried putting a second pack and play in my office and moving him back here when I go to bed (and, inevitably, he wakes up); that worked fine for a few weeks but the problem is that now it's cold out and this room (three external walls) gets freezing cold at night--and even with two pairs of pajamas and a wool sweater in between he gets cold enough to wake up and cry. The current system involves the second pack and play in the living room, but besides obvious issues of not being able to go get the baby without being fully dressed (huge, huge picture window facing the street, we are on the first floor, and the curtains don't fully cover the windows), it's pretty cold there too. The only rooms in the house that are really warm at night are our bedroom and the boys' room. We might resort to sleeping in the guest room and letting the baby have our room till he outgrows the light sleeping or it gets warm, whichever comes first. We'll see how it goes.

The thing that's so funny about this whole developmental thing is that I'm just not used to so much going on with such a tiny baby. I mean, only nine months on planet earth! and he's already opening the garbage cans and pulling out the dirty diapers! and falling in love with the bath ducky! and escaping diaper changes with the stealth of Houdini and the courage of Tarzan! How'd he figure out all out so fast?

It's all pretty neat.

assorted

But first, a public service announcement to a few people who annoyed me this morning.

a) If you expect me to address you as Rabbi Plony, please do not address me by my first name. If you want the kavod of your title, please give me mine. Thanks.

b) If you have a kindergarten-aged girl, please dress her accordingly. Do not dress her in knee-high black boots with inch-and-a-half platform heels. Especially not if you are Orthodox Jews.

c) If you have small children with you at a shul kiddush in honor of a bris, and if there is candy at said bris but not endless quantities of same, please do not allow your small children to fill styrofoam coffee cups to the brim with candy before kiddush has been said. This will mean that the small children whose mothers make them wait for kiddush, make them wait for the adults, and promise them two pieces of candy for their patience will get nothing but negative reinforcement for good behavior.

Thanks.

Now that that's out of the way...

1. Ada came over for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, to buy me a couple of hours of desperately needed writing time. She usually only comes on Wednesdays, which means she hasn't been around for a few weeks, and Iyyar, who adores her, had been asking for her for days. She is usually extremely punctual so about two minutes before she was scheduled to arrive, I told Iyyar she was coming. She must have hit traffic or something, because she was about 25 minutes late--25 long, long, looooong minutes during which Iyyar asked me, repeatedly and with ever-mounting alarm, "Where Ada go? Coming? Coming soon? Onna way?" He looked at the back door. He looked at the front door. He looked at the back door again. I had to check the mail, and when he saw me opening the front door thought that perhaps Ada might be down there, you know, hiding or something. He came down with me, and was standing behind my legs as I checked the mail, foot wedged in the door at the bottom of the stairs to keep it open.

"Ada? Ada come? Ada comin?"

"I don't think Ada's there, sweetie. She usually comes in the back. Come on, let's go check the back door [so I can get you back in the apartment]."

Then Iyyar started to giggle. Because guess what--she was on the other side of the door! He saw her, because he's three feet tall, but I didn't. He grinned up at me with total vindication and then flung his arms around Ada, content.

2. It had been a very busy Friday and between having Asnat here in the morning, rushing around like crazy for two hours at lunchtime, and having Ada here in the afternoon while I hid in my office and wrote as fast as possible, I, um, forgot to feed the baby. I know--it's pretty bad. I nursed him, so it's not like he was starving, but he didn't get any actual food, so he was getting pretty hungry, and I totally missed it even as he got more and more angry, annoyed, and finally frantic when I put him to bed without having given him dinner. He usually goes to sleep really easily at bedtime so the hysterical screams from the crib gave me pause. I stood in the kitchen listening and suddenly OH NO the lightbulb went on.

"Ada, did you give Avtalyon dinner?"

"No. I didn't know you wanted me to."

Oh. Oh dear. I went and retrieved the baby, put him in his high chair and started pushing fingerfuls of spanakopita in his mouth. Magically, the miserably wailing baby was transformed into happy, cooing, gurgling baby, who nevertheless directed a number of extremely dirty looks toward Ada ("See? See? I kept telling you I was HUNGRY but did you listen? No....") despite the fact that it was patently my fault he hadn't eaten.

He is a forgiving sort, however, and by the time Ada left they were friends again. So much so that when we accompanied Ada to the front door, he waved at her. And she waved back. And he waved again! And again! It was a hilarious sort of stiff-armed salute, part campaign for office, part royal wave, part 1939 Germany (only hilarious when rendered by a nine-month-old Jewish baby in 2008). And he was so pleased with himself, too--almost as pleased as I was.

3. All the yarn has been arriving. It's amazing. I got my Webs box yesterday (3 balls of purple and gray Kauni, 5 of purple-and-green Kureyon, and a sweater's worth of Kathmandu DK tweed) and it was all so lovely I actually gasped.

However, I have a problem. I can't find the pattern I wanted to use the Kureyon for. Does anyone remember seeing, in an old Knitter's or possibly IK (the more I think about it, the more I think it's IK), a pattern for a yoked sweater in royal blue with a yellow swirly motif around the yoke? The yarn was a mohair blend, and I think the model was African American and possibly riding a motorcycle. The picture was definitely on the right side of the page, pattern on the left; the gauge was 16 sts/4 in. I know, I know, all very helpful. I can't find it on ravelry and I can't take two years to hunt through all my back issues for it. Anyone? Anyone?

4. Adding to the fiber bonanza of recent weeks, Grandma E sent me a lovely box (is there any other kind?) full of spinning batts--a gorgeous red wool/black mohair blend--and a pair of socks! Handknit socks! Made from Socks That Rock! No one's ever knit me socks before! I wore them yesterday and had happy feet all day long. :)

5. Iyyar's speech is getting a lot clearer these days. He can really pronounce his own name now (he used to say it "Eddie" which I found hilarious) and is surprisingly good at pronouns, which Barak didn't have down until he was almost four.

His stock way of claiming something is saying, "Not yours!" Lately, this has morphed from being a circumlocution for the forbidden word "Mine!" into a commentary on ownership. As in, the other day we saw a tricycle on a lawn.

"Bikull!"

"Right, a tricycle!"

"Ride it!"

"No, we can't ride that."

"Not ours."

"Right. Not ours."

6. With the occasional exception, the boys have been really fun and funny lately. Barak and Iyyar have been playing together unusually well, with only the obligatory minimum of tears and screaming, and both of them have been treating Avtalyon like a celebrity. I love it. Yesterday Avtalyon, who is now pulling up and cruising on the furniture, fell over and bonked his head. Iyyar got there before I did, trying to pick him up while cooing comfortingly, "Baby hurt! Oh no! Avtalyon! Oh no Avtalyon! Iss okay! Okay baby!" And tonight, when Iyyar was wailing frantically from his crib for Abba, who had gone to shul ("ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU! ABBA! WANT ABBA HOLD YOU CHAIR!") and I was cruelly ignoring it (if I'd gone in, it would have lasted for hours, but ignoring it usually means he's asleep in five minutes) I heard Barak:

"Iyyar! Iyyar, look! Look at this!" [Sound of toy.] "Isn't that cool! Here! Have this toy! It's okay! You don't have to yell! Abba's going to be home soon." And so on.

Isn't that amazing? They like each other and want each other to be happy. How about that?

And more amazing still was Barak, in my lap tonight at bedtime, snuggled close and getting sleepy,

"Imma, I like you the best. I like you the best from everybody."

"I like you the best from everybody too. Also Iyyar and Avtalyon."

"Me too. I like you, and Abba, and Iyyar, and Avtalyon, and everybody in this house. I like you all a hundred thousand gotchion billion ten much."

"Wow, that's really a lot."

"Yeah. I like you a lot a lot much."

It just doesn't get better than that.

Dreams deferred

Way back in grad school days, my knitting buddy Cecilia and I used to have several recurring discussions in our (many, many) emails. One of them was "how much money would we have that we don't now have if we didn't knit?" (Answer "better not to think about it, and probably not much anyway, because if we didn't knit we'd do something else.")

When I was working at an insultingly low-paid job and she was working on her dissertation, we had a memorable exchange over the question, "If you had a thousand dollars to blow on fiber-related purchases, what would you do with it?" I don't have the exchange anymore (or if I do, it's buried in the 11,000-email "Cecilia" box) but I remember dreamy lists of full sets of Clover DPs and circulars in all sizes, sweater quantities of Noro, and other luxuries. On the budgets we both had at the time, though, there was no way. The whole discussion was firmly in the realm of fantasy.

Fast forward seven years.

A few weeks ago, I sold my spinning wheel. There was a lot of emotional baggage attached to that spinning wheel and looking at the pile of $20 bills that replaced it was an odd experience. They seemed... icky, somehow. The space in my closet where the wheel used to be looked strange. It was, and is, very weird to think of it as being really gone.

I think I sold it on a Thursday, and so the next day I used some of the money to pay my babysitter. The rest I put in the bank, with no particular earmark. Then I thought, well, I'll use some of it to buy things I've been putting off buying. And I did. I bought a new pack and play for Avtalyon, so that he doesn't have to be sleeping in our room (and waking us up all night) until Iyyar outgrows his crib. I bought a new umbrella stroller to replace the one we left in Israel with my SIL. And I bought a new high chair for Avtalyon, so he doesn't have to keep bonking his head on the wooden chair back behind the booster seat he's currently using. All told, a couple hundred dollars.

I still had quite a lot of money left though--after all, I sold a DT Lendrum with lots and lots of goodies. And so I decided to spend it on unjustifiable acquisition of yarn. All of it. I did some math and I actually have bought the wheel's worth of yarn, because I bought some yarn before I sold the wheel for about as much money as I spent on the baby items. It's not all here yet, but when it does get here I should really take a picture. It's pretty impressive. I've got the sweater's worth of Noro, and another sweater's worth of purple Kauni; some new books; some spinning fiber, a big box of Brown Sheep millends and a huge pile of sock yarn. I also, of course, got some presents for Cecilia.

What happens to a dream deferred? Yup. It explodes. Out of cardboard boxes, and all over the floor of the knitting room.

Avtalyon updates

He's eight and a half months now, crawling like a madman, eating immersion-blended vegetables and the squishier parts of onion kugel and potato knish. He laughs his head off while playing with his big brothers, and admirably fulfills his role as baby brother by summarily destroying big-brother Lego structures on sight. He pulls up to standing on everything, including lots of things he shouldn't (glider rocker footstools...) and does a little bit of creeping from one piece of furniture to the next when he can. No signs of launching into space though--he can't stand independently yet.

He's sleeping, B"H, much better; he doesn't do much in the way of napping but he doesn't spend much of the day screaming either so I don't mind. His usual schedule right now is to go down in the pack and play in our room at around 6 and wake up somewhere between 9 and 11 for a late-night snack; he goes back to sleep until Abba or I go to bed, at which point he usually wakes up instantly. I swear that baby has sonar. No sooner have I swung the door silently open than he's scrabbling up the side of his pack and play, staggering out of sleep to let me know that he's HUNGRY AND ALL BY HIMSELF. That's when I nurse him again and transfer him to pack and play #2, in my office. I don't really like having him that far away but he's such, such, such a light sleeper it was the only way. Before I finally cracked and bought a second p & p for the office, MHH was sleeping on the couch, I was sleeping on the guest bed, and Avtalyon had the master bedroom all to himself. Then we realized that something was wrong with that picture. The back bedroom/office, unfortunately, is not only at the opposite end of our railroad-style apartment, but it's the only room with three external walls and it's really cold. He sleeps in two pairs of pajamas already--I think when it really does get cold out we're going to have to figure out a new arrangement.

Barak and Iyyar treat him like some kind of celebrity. It's really funny. Now that he has an obvious personality, but is still little and (mostly) harmless, they think he's a riot. Iyyar carols his name in a ridiculously funny pronunciation, and happily runs to get me diapers, pluggies, whatever. Oh, and speaking of diapers... I can't believe I didn't mention this first but seriously, Avtalyon is the pod baby. He's unnaturally strong. Okay, both Barak and Iyyar were kind of pipsqueaks and both of them have some unusual stomach muscle weakness (neither can do a sit up from lying on their back--they both roll over onto their stomachs first) but holy cow, Avtalyon is not normal! If I'm changing his diaper and he spies something he wants right above his left ear, in about three hundredths of a second he's flipped himself over, wrenched his feet out of my right hand, shot over to where it is and is happily playing with it, naked tushy stuck straight up in the air. He accomplishes all of this in less time than it takes me to reach for a wipe. If he really didn't want you to change his diaper, you'd have a really, really hard time doing it against his will--at least not without an extra pair of hands holding him down. I even have to keep my wits about me while nursing--no dozing off for me, because if he got interested in something he'd shoot right out of my lap before I could stop him.

No teeth yet, and he still hasn't mastered the pincer grip, which is okay by me. He's enough of a menace already--I can wait a little bit for him to be able to pick up tiny choking hazards off the floor on his own. (Yes, I do try to keep choking hazards far from babies in general, but with two older brothers around sometimes things appear.)

My current suspicion is that he's not going to nurse for as long as his brothers did. He just gets so distracted--granted, there is a lot more going on around him than there was around Barak at the same age, but Avtalyon just seems to want to leap into the fray much more. For the time being, though, he's still a baby--still little and soft and cuddly and sweet. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Look!

Look what Cecilia made me!

I'm so excited. :)

(You have to be on ravelry to follow the link. It's a swallowtail shawl, made in red Kauni. Aren't I lucky?)

Wonder how long it will take to get here from Australia...

Cecilia and I have both concluded that there is an inverse correlation between time available for knitting and desire to purchase yarn. I have, currently, pretty much no time to knit. This doesn't mean that I don't knit, it just means that I sneak time for knitting that I should be spending folding laundry or sleeping. It also means that on many of the nights that I am up into the wee hours writing speeches that someone else couldn't have their act together to request in a timely manner, I tally up the pay for those overtime hours and think, "Well, I could use just a little bit of that and get..." and put in an order for a ball of yarn. I know ALL the places that have free shipping.

When Deb came a couple of weeks ago (still haven't blogged about that! and be careful, if you follow the link, don't scroll down too far, because if you do you will find a truly disgusting picture of degloved squirrels. In a pot. You have been warned.) she commented on the size of my stash and the fact that it would probably take me the rest of my life to knit through it at my current rate. I muttered something noncommittal and hoped she would be out when the mailman arrived. She wasn't, and saw how much Noro I'd bought from the littleknits sale. But being a true knitter, not only did she not hold it against me, she started hankering after some Noro of her own. So it was all ok. :)

In case you're wondering how much sock yarn I have, I have this much:

Not that bad. Most of the bottom shelf isn't even sock yarn, and ergo doesn't count. Or maybe it's the sock yarn that doesn't count? Well, whatever. See that red on the second to bottom shelf? That's my shawl now. The wheel in the lower left corner is Iyyar's tricycle, or "bikull!" as he calls it.

Back to cleaning the kitchen. And then maybe a couple of rows on my Cobblestone. Before I start making Shabbos. Because we're having guests.

And I haven't even gone shopping yet.

Motzai shabbos

Thanks for all the emails.

I keep and enjoy this blog for many reasons but emotional catharsis, generally speaking, is not one of them. So I'm not going to be writing much about my granny and the last couple of weeks here, at least not anytime soon. But if you want to know more about her, you can read this.

1922-2008

12:54 AM

This is what's in the freezer downstairs, mostly courtesy of Deb's visit with her daughter last week:

-six doughless potato knishes
-three carrot kugels
-four pans of stuffed cabbage
-two pans of meatloaf
-a lot of challah
-some chicken soup (not enough, but it'll have to do)

In the fridge:

-parve cream of asparagus soup
-the corn/black bean salad I always make

Cooling on the table:

-one large and three small onion kugels
-a big pan of peanut butter rice krispie treats (I don't like them, but certain husbands do)
-one big pan and two small pans of chocolate rice krispie treats (yum!)

To be made tomorrow:

-round raisin challah
-chicken schnitzel--I was going to do it tonight but the chicken isn't thawed yet
-gefilte fish (stick in oven and bake)
-a castle cake, if I have time, which I recognize I may not. I've got plenty of dessert (see above) but castle cakes are a big deal around here. I even bought some candy to decorate one with.

Paper goods, paper towels, grape juice and seltzer: check. Pomegratates, kiwis and mangos for new fruit: check. Elmo paper plates for the preschool set: check. Candy for shofar-blowing pekelach purposes: check. MHH is planning a supermarket run with Barak, via bus, tomorrow morning to pick up the necessary supply of Shabbos yogurts, without which no yom tov can be complete. He may also get a roast; I was going to buy one last week, cheaped out, and then regretted it; Rosh Hashana comes once a year and I can afford one roast a year. Vicky, B"H, is scheduled to come at 1 tomorrow, so my plan of attack is to finish cooking in the morning while Asnat is here, work in the afternoon while MHH is home, and, ideally, turn off my computer at 5 pm to a clean house full of yummy food.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Gmar chasima tova, everyone. Only good things.

Flowers

Does it ever happen to you that you remember something suddenly, some little thing you hadn't thought of in years?

My grandmother loves flowers. When she still had her house, she used to plant flowers all along the side of her house and on the other side of the little patch of grass between that and the fence. Usually she had impatiens, or the Hungarian equivalent. When I was in college, I discovered a greeting card that was essentially a two-page pop-up book of a flower arrangement. They had a few different designs, different flowers--violets, roses, whatever. For me at the time, they weren't so cheap, but I loved them so I bought them anyway. I sent one whenever I thought of it and the next time I visited found she'd kept them all; they were displayed in her china closet in the kitchen, next to the dusty origami birds I'd made in junior high. I haven't seen those cards in years. I wonder if anyone still makes them.

When I had just moved to England, in September of 1998, I saw bags of flower bulbs--daffodils and tulips--for sale in front of a store, ten bulbs for a pound (meaning, a pound in money). I thought that was pretty cheap and briefly considered planting some in front of my new home, then discarded the idea--I didn' t even have a spade, and clearly nothing had been planted there in years. Instead, I bought three bags of tulip bulbs and a bag of daffodil bulbs and brought them to my grandmother. I went that time by bus--yes, you can take the bus from Birmingham to Budapest, but I wouldn't say I'd recommend it. She was delighted, and got them in the ground before I left. The next time I visited, in December, she said I'd have to come back to see them. I said I didn't know when that would be, but when I got back to England I bought a disposable camera and mailed it to her so she could take pictures. I brought the camera back with me when I came, late that May, for a two-day trip I managed to attach to a job interview I had in Vienna. When I developed the film, it was 24 pictures, one after the other, of daffodils and tulips, from every angle.

I wish I'd kept some of them.

The deed is done

A very happy new spinner is driving away with my Lendrum right now, and there is a pile of $20 bills on my desk. I'm feeling slightly more traumatized than I thought I would--I was really okay with seeing the loom go but the wheel is a different thing. Oh well. I do have my Hall to console me, as well as an incredibly gorgeous ball of autumn-colored roving that just arrived yesterday from Grandma E...

What they're up to these days

A long-overdue roundup:

1. Avtalyon is almost eight months old. He's been seriously crawling for the last couple of weeks, up on all fours with his tummy off the ground and moving at a pretty impressive speed. He's also started pulling up to stand (last week sometime) and now when I come get him in his crib he's usually standing up, which adds a certain pitifulness to the wails. This ability also brings us into the land of Baby Menace. Ooh, the plastic bag in the garbage can looks tasty! Hey, I bet I can pull myself up on that rocker footstool! Think I can haul this 50-lb Gemara off the shelf?

He loves loves loves the baby swings at the park. Barak hated them, Iyyar thought they were okay, but Avtalyon adores them; he'll dangle there happily, enjoying the view, or, if you swing him and stand in front of him pretending he's about to knock you over, screech with laughter. It's awesome. There's nothing better than a baby in a swing laughing with his whole body.

He's babbling, but mostly only when annoyed. He's eating bananas, rice cereal (which he LIKES--huwhat?), oatmeal, and of course Cheerios. Standard routine in the morning is plunking him in his booster with a few handfuls while I get the older kids breakfast; I'm sure some of them must get into his mouth but I find the rest in all kinds of places. So far as sleep, it's B"H been better the last couple of nights; he screamed a lot last week but since then has been going to sleep reasonably nicely at around 7, waking up twice, and waking up for the day in the vicinity of 6:15. I'll take it.

2. Iyyar is talking more and more. It's hilarious to listen to. You can sort of have conversations with him now, and sometimes they even make sense. My favorites happen after we drop Barak off with carpool at 8:10 and are on our way to his playgroup, which starts at 9; the intervening 50 minutes are my time for some exercise, errand-running, and quality time with Iyyar.

This morning we saw a garbage truck. "Hey, Iyyar, is that a garbage truck?"

Inquisitively: "Jarba?"

"Yeah, it's a garbage truck! Look, it's a blue one."

"Jarba! Put in!"

Or last week, when we passed a van with a somewhat smashed-in side (still driveable, apparently, because we see it daily in different parking spots):

In a bereft tone: "Truck! Broken!"

"Yeah, the truck's broken."

Inquisitively: "Break it?"

"I guess someone did break it, yeah."

With relish: "Rip it!"

Er...

Since Jenny let him "drive" her car (read "climb around front seat while Jenny holds keys firmly in her hand and watches to be sure they don't put the car in neutral) his ambitions have been growing. He now points out vehicles he'd like to try out. Like, you know, pieces of heavy earthmoving equipment. "Backhoe! Drive it!" Then, "Jenjy?"

3. Barak LOVES school. He leaps out of bed in the morning and gets himself dressed with lightning speed; if he's not moving fast enough, a mere "Barak, do you want to go to school?" suffices to get him going. I don't hear much about what goes on there, other than the occasional "It was Fraidy's birthday" to explain the pekele, or, "We had an aleph-bais party" when he comes home with an aleph crown and unmistakable signs of lollipop consumption. They don't start doing the parsha until after yom tov, but someone is coming in to blow shofar for them every morning and he was definitely into that. He gets a newsletter home every week, so I know what they're learning, and occasionally I surprise him by singing the songs I know he's learning in school. He clearly wonders how I know them, since I'm not anywhere to be seen in his class.

Dovie, fortunately, is not in his class this year; a few other boys from last year are, though, which is nice. Barak's been playing more with Iyyar, and even with Avtalyon sometimes; he likes to hold Avtalyon but needs supervision. His favorite thing lately has been building houses with the cushions of our blue couch (this is why $65 yard-sale couches are the bomb--who cares if they get messed up?) The other day in a flash of inspiration I brought out a blue sheet. "Here, put this on the roof," I told him. "It's tar paper." Barak's eyes simultaneously lit up and got that serious worker-man look. I grabbed two corners, he grabbed the other two, and I lifted it up and over the couch construction site. Last I looked in there, he'd actually furnished his house: there are books, some things made out of Clicks, and several beanie babies in residence. They look comfy, too.

Wanna buy a wheel?

I have, like many dedicated spinners, more than one wheel. I have a Lendrum double-treadle castle-style wheel, which I bought about a year after I learned to spin on an Ashford Traditional; and I have, um, a Norm Hall, which is the only inanimate object I can honestly say I love.

I bought both wheels in 1997. Once I bought the Hall, I didn't have much incentive to use the Lendrum. Add to this that the Lendrum was rather beautifully painted with lovely little flowers by a person I now try hard not to think about, and you have a situation where the Hall sees a lot of use, while the Lendrum has been hanging out in a closet in its custom bag for most of the last decade.

For a long time I thought I would never sell it, because it's much more portable than the Hall, and for sentimental reasons. But I don't have a guild anymore, and the sentiments attached to the wheel, these days, are more of a reason to sell it than to keep it.

So... wanna buy a wheel? It's got the regular and jumbo flyers, ten standard and two jumbo bobbins, the quill head, two fast flyers (why, I don't know), the lazy kate (with no sticks--I used skewers), a custom Fox Fibre bag by the Bag Lady, a hand-turned maple threading hook or two, and, oh yes, half a can of 3-in-1 oil.

I just put it together to make sure it all worked and it spins beautifully. So much so that now I'm thinking I don't really want to sell it. But I do (she tells herself bracingly)--I do. I've even posted it on ravelry.

And here it is:

The challah recipe

As requested

So there.

Ten pounds of flour worth--ten loaves and 12 rolls.

Challah catastrophes

You'll notice that that's in the plural.

1. I add all the liquid ingredients for my challah (7 eggs, plus honey, sugar, oil etc.), all the dry ingredients less the flour, a little bit of flour, and start the mixer mixing. Only it doesn't mix--the mixer blade on my Bosch pops up. I turn off mixer, reach in to set the blade in correctly, and instead of setting it correctly I suddenly realize that the entire contents of the bowl are rapidly draining out the 1.5-inch-diameter hole at the bottom of the bowl, because the bolt that holds the blade assembly together was not in and fell out. So I now have all the liquid and whatever of the solid ingredients have dissolved, all over my floor.

2. After cleaning this up (which took a LONG time), I go to open bag of flour #2--only to see the inside of the bag festooned with webs. Because it's infested with bugs. Heavily, heavily infested. I waste some time sifting, then realize that this is never going to work because it's organic whole wheat and I'm sifting out half the flour and probably none of the insects. I toss entire $6.19 bag of flour into trash, and open bag of flour #3, which looks OK.

3. I hazard guesses at how much of which ingredients are missing from the challah, add them, and start the dough mixing again in my smaller Bosch bowl. Then I realize that the counter I have just scrubbed (salmonella, y'know) is again covered with raw eggs, because the wet ingredients are not being incorporated into the now hard and solid lump of dough that was left when I lost the liquid the first time.

4. I will not be defeated! I unplug mixer, squish ingredients together by hand, add more water and oil and another couple of eggs, and turn the mixer back on. The dough looks lovely.

5. And then I notice that the top of the mixer, the plastic splash ring, is not sitting right. That's because the solid lump of dough that was revolving around the bowl pushed up against it hard enough to snap all three latch points, irretrievably destroying splash ring on my I-don't-want-to-remember-how-much-it-cost Bosch bowl. I toss splash ring into garbage.

6. I briefly consider fishing through the dough for the broken pieces of plastic, then laugh bitterly at the idea, because these pieces of plastic are, well, deadly, and it's not even a tiny little bit worth it. I toss entire batch of challah into garbage.

7. And start a new one. Stay tuned. I'm going to take out the garbage.

School

The first day of school was last week. Barak is going to the nursery school attached to the local bais yaakov, so is enjoying what will probably be his last year of coeducational schooling until college at least; Iyyar started a playgroup run by a friend of mine. Barak is, I think, mostly excited by the fact that he now goes to school via carpool, meaning that he gets to drive in a car every single day. This, for my car-deprived son, is a Very Big Deal. He is, fortunately, not in the same class as the infamous Dovie, although they do see each other occasionally. I asked Barak if Dovie was his friend and was told, "He's not very nice to me." But he hasn't brought it up and didn't seem bothered, so I left it alone. Barak does have some other friends from his last year's playgroup, two of whom I know to be really nice boys, so that's all good.

And Iyyar is having a blast. One of the things I didn't post much about but that has been a big part of the last couple of weeks is that a friend of mine (who I think I'm going to call Yehudis, now that the blog is open again) has been in the hospital, twice, with her baby, who had Kawasaki disease. (White, female baby. Go figure.) Yehudis does Iyyar's playgroup, but since she'd just gotten back from the hospital with a still-sick baby, had her mother helping her. The playgroup is in the basement, and the baby was upstairs with her Bubbe. Not surprisingly, the baby spent some part of the morning crying. This distressed Iyyar, apparently; when he got home, he spent a treat deal of time informing me, urgently: "Baby crying. Want. Imma." And, "Baby tired. Nap. Baby needa nap." Then a few minutes would go by, and he'd tell me again. "Baby. Want. Imma!" I told him I knew, but the baby was fine. He didn't believe me, and looked at me like I was being... well, negligent.

The next morning I told Yehudis this. She was not surprised. In fact, Iyyar had taken the baby's welfare upon himself as a personal responsibility, and had spent much of the morning tailing Yehudis, trying to make her realize that HER BABY WAS CRYING AND WASN'T THERE SOMETHING SHE SHOULD BE DOING ABOUT THAT?! Yehudis kept reassuring Iyyar that the baby was with her Bubbe, and she was fine, but Iyyar was unconvinced. "Baby CRYING." Don't you hear her?! What are you, heartless? You've got a crying baby up there, lady!

I found it kind of sweet. :)

Iyyar, as you may have noticed, is now talking a lot more. If I give him something he doesn't want to eat, he hands it back with a disdainful "No gink gyou." He tells me about his day--about the baby crying, and also about playing with trucks. ("Go school! Trucks! Fun!") and remembers, mournfully, his cousins and friends from the summer. ("Want Yanky. Want Yaakov Naya. Play. Fun...") Abba is very much the Preferred Parent these days--sometimes I go into Iyyar's room when he wakes up at night and get, "No want Imma. Want Abba!" Okay then. Iyyar is also now enjoying Abba's fabulous bedtime stories. "Dory off from? Dory off from?" Meaning, are you going to start the story from where you left it off last night?

Avtalyon, the only one in the house who doesn't have to get out the door in the morning (well, except that of course he does, because I take him with me) is now crawling like a maniac. He has totally skipped that stage of sitting up, playing with toys, but not being mobile; he can get himself nicely into a sitting position, although he does still wobble a little. He's eating rice cereal, oatmeal, mashed bananas, applesauce and mashed peas; last night he slept from 7 pm till 7 am only waking up at 11 and 5. I think. At least, those were the only times I woke up...

By the numbers

When I was growing up, I was always a little bit heavy. Not enormously, but enough to feel self-conscious, and certainly enough to get teased.

When I went off to college, and suddenly found my diet in my own control, I dropped a lot of weight--more than I should have initially, but then it stabilized pretty soon and I stayed within 5 lb of the same weight for about ten years.

Then came the tail end of my grad school career, and all the stresses that came with it, and I gained about 15 lb. I moved to New York, joined a gym, did Weight Watchers, and lost it all by my wedding; then, um, I was married, and gained it all back.

By the time I got pregnant with Barak, about five months after I got married, I was at a weight that horrified me at the time but at the moment would look pretty great. Let's call that weight X. X, for the record, is the maximum "healthy weight" for someone of my height, according to the charts.

By the end of my fourth month, I was at X + 13.

When Barak was born, I was at X + (gulp) 41.

By the time Barak was 1, I was back down to X + 5. That was pretty good, but a few months later, before I got pregnant with Iyyar, I was back up to X + 10.

Then I was pregnant with Iyyar, and got up to X + 46.

I never lost all of it--the lowest I got to after Iyyar was X + 15.

Then I got pregnant with Avtalyon, and managed not to gain quite as much weight--probably because I was carrying so much extra to begin with. Final weight with Avtalyon was also X + 46.

By the end of my maternity leave, I was at X + 25. When we left for Israel, I think I was at X + 22.

When we got back, I was at X + 14. As of last week, I'm at X + 11.

Let's be clear--X + 11 is not a great, healthy weight for me. But it's the thinnest I've been since before Iyyar was born. I'm fitting into clothes--I'm wearing a skirt now, in fact--that I haven't worn since before Iyyar was born. I categorically do not look pregnant. My face isn't as round. It feels pretty good.

I'm really, really hoping I can keep it up all the way back down to X. I have no aspirations right now to get down past that, and in fact gave away my whole size 6 wardrobe last year. But I'll admit it. I've got my eye on those 8s.