It had better go well, is all I'm saying.

Yesterday and today, Iyyar did great. Not just good, or ok, or basically fine. Really great. Like, normal happy kid.

I asked him why. He said, joyously, "A kid played with me!"

Ah.

Michal has been saying that I need to find him playdates. And I agree with her, but the logistics... the logistics. We live at the bottom of a Huge Huge Hill. I have four kids who get home at 3 different times. I don't have a car. Everything is at least one and often two buses from here. If I am going to take a kid for a playdate, I have to bring multiple other children with me for dropoffs and pickups, and haul a stroller on the bus, and sometimes Iyyar flips out on the bus and that can range from not fun to downright dangerous. Oh, and have I mentioned that I'm due in about two weeks? Yes?

But Iyyar was SO happy that the other kid played with him. He was such a delight yesterday and today. The difference was so huge. And then when I asked him which kid it was, he said, "He's the kid who speaks English who has a brother in the other gan."

OH.

Because that means that he's the kid whose mother is the fluent English speaker who came to Israel aged 3. Who invited Iyyar to play a few weeks ago and I declined on the grounds of logistics.

So tonight, I told Mr. Bigfoot, "If anything ever happens to me, and you end up raising the kids, and one day Iyyar wonders how much Imma really loved him, you can tell him that when he was five, Imma took him and Avtalyon and Marika on three buses halfway across Jerusalem and up and down massive hills on both ends of the bus route while 38 weeks pregnant [okay, almost] so he could have a playdate because Imma thought it would help him grow up to be a happy well-adjusted human being."

Just, you know, telling it like it is.

So the date is set for tomorrow afternoon after gan. We're supposed to get there at around 3 and I need to leave at 5 to get home before the witching hour of child collapse. Barak is going to go hang out in the bais medrash with Abba. There is a Moshiko on the way. Also, Shaarei Tzedek is on the way, which could be handy if I go into labor while pushing the stroller back up The Hill.

Stay. Tuned.

More

I am not truly deeply concerned about this (yet), but I am very aware that Avtalyon's speech is not where it should be, either in Hebrew or in English. After a year and a half in a Hebrew gan environment his Hebrew is still really poor; also concerning is that his English is also starting to lag. A lot of the time he just doesn't have the words to express himself: he substitutes with a lot of hand motions and facial gestures and general jumping up and down to communicate his point. I know that it's normal for kids in bilingual environments to lag slightly in both languages, but it's worrying me and especially since he seems to have some of the same attention issues that Iyyar does, I am not waiting around.

I talked to his ganenet who has agreed to recommend him for a gan safah; I'm paying privately to get him evaluated by a speech therapist now to get all the paperwork in before the placement boards meet next month. And I think I will also pay privately to get him evaluated in English, just to have a general idea of where he is in terms of where he should be. The speech therapist I took Iyyar to for his English eval was very nice and seemed very good; well worth the NIS 400, I think.

His ganenet says he's happy at school, which is very important, but says he seems really spacy, which I agree with. Better to get on it early, before he becomes unhappy. Major goal: prevent a rerun of whatever happened to Iyyar last year. They do seem to have some similar issues so far as attention, although developmentally they've run on completely different schedules. Iyyar was late doing everything while Avtalyon was early, and Avtalyon has done a number of things that have given both me and previous ganenot the impression that he was really bright. Which I think he is, which is why I want even more to figure out what's getting in the way of him and, say, knowing where his cubby at school is. Because it's January and he still doesn't know where he's supposed to put his projects.

The real question right now is what to aim for with Iyyar for next year. At the moment, he's supposed to be getting an hour a week of speech therapy, although we can't start that until his evaluation is written up and sent to us in a couple of weeks. He's also supposed to be getting OT, and the eval is scheduled for Thursday; the person I am bringing him to is supposed to be good with sensory issues so hopefully she can let us know what is going on there and how to help. Also, we now have Racheli, who is a really delightful Israeli 14 yo whom we've hired to come over a few afternoons a week for an hour or two to just sit with Iyyar and Avtalyon and read them books, talk to them, make them talk etc. She's from a big family so unfazed by chaos and they have really taken to her, which is great; also, when he does start with speech therapy and we're supposed to be working with him on his Hebrew at home, I'm hoping she'll be able to help out there.

Iyyar's been having his ups and downs behaviorally. I made him that star chart to get him to look at me and listen when I call his name; that made for a good week, but then the next week was awful (even with a second star chart). Lots and lots and LOTS of talking to himself, handwaving, just checking out generally. Wednesday was a disaster and ended with everyone, including me, screaming and in tears. The last two days have been better and tonight after Shabbos I made a star chart for everyone in the family. Abba and I have rows on it too. Ours are for Not Screaming. Not that we usually do, but I felt like it was good to make it clear that not only children are expected to work on themselves, and I did scream once last week which was upsetting for everyone. Iyyar looked pretty happy when he saw me put that on the star chart. "I'm going to try really really hard not to scream. And you're going to try really really hard to look at Imma when Imma says your name, with no silly faces or silly hands or voices. OK?" He was OK with that.

This time he asked for a comic book (Bone #8) for his prize. Fair enough. I told Mr. Bigfoot that if I get a whole week of stars, I want takeout for dinner.

Oh, and want to hear some good financial news for a change? Notice all the "I'm paying privately for X" mentions above? Yes this is annoying in that it's supposed to be getting paid for and isn't and if I had known I'd be paying privately I could have just done this last September. But I just got a bonus at work equivalent to a bit more than a regular paycheck, plus an extra week's pay that I didn't realize I was getting because I had more unused vacation last year than I could carry over. So that's where the private therapy, and the star chart rewards, are coming from.

At the moment, Iyyar's ganenet wants him in a regular first grade with speech, OT and play therapy. Her main objection to a kita katana is that even though there exists such a class for kids with attention and emotional issues, and Iyyar certainly qualifies on both counts, he is not exactly a problem behaviorally. Yes he acts strangely, but he doesn't bother anyone. He doesn't hit. He's very nice to the other kids. He tries to listen, even if he doesn't always manage it. And he's very very sensitive to other kids who aren't nice. So if we put him in a class of 8 boys with emotional and attention issues, and say 2 of them hit... that would not be any improvement over the stressors of a regular class. Probably worse. Sure, you can get 2 kids hitting in a class of 30, but that's not the same as 2 out of 8. I hadn't really thought of this that much but both his ganenet and a friend with a kid in the Israeli special-ed system pointed it out to me. Peer group matters a lot, and if I have a kid who's acting strangely we'd rather he model his behavior on kids who aren't.

But. But but. In a kita katana he'll be getting all the therapy I haven't been able to get for him, and a small class, and trained teachers, and a lot more attention. So I really don't know what to do. I'm supposed to talk to the head of education in the school that we're planning to enroll the boys in next fall, and am going to try to get a sense of what next year's kita katana for first grade looks like. The gan psychologist will be observing Iyyar again on Thursday, and is going to talk to me and to Michal after that about what seems like the best plan. For myself, I really just don't know right now what's best. I wish I did.

Books

Before Marika was born, and before Avtalyon was born, I bought my kids some presents. New babies don't care about presents (their mothers enjoy them, but the babies couldn't care less). But their siblings? They are a different story. I think before Avtalyon was born I'd bought a ton of Beanie Babies for Barak and Iyyar, since they were really into those at the time. When Marika was born, there was a lot of Playmobil, since that was what kept everyone happy and quiet.

This time? Books. I bought a lot of books. Tzomet Sefarim had a sale that ended yesterday, with 4 books for NIS 100. Most of the books on the kids' sale table were hardcover and quite a few of them were hardcover comic books (Asterix, Tintin, Petie Pete) or creepy graphic novels (Bone). I made three trips to the store and I filled out our collections of all of the above. Then on Tuesday, when I had promised Iyyar lunch at the bus station, we did one last run.

Did I tell you about lunch? I don't think so. Iyyar had a star chart, see. It was a chart with a mere seven spots on it, where for each day that he stopped and looked at me when I called his name, without making faces, he got a star. He did great with it. He got a star every day. What did he want for his prize?

Guess.

Oh go on, guess.

He wanted a Happy Meal.

Yes, that's right. We brought our children 8,000 miles to live in Jerusalem so they could have Happy Meals at McDonald's.

(Whatever works. Seriously.)

Anyway, after the English speech therapy eval on Tuesday (which was really fun, unlike speech eval #1, and which he aced and which left him feeling happy and with some cool stickers on his shirt), we went to the bus station. We had our lunch (Happy Meal for him, Burger's Bar for me, thank you very much) and trooped down to the bookstore to get some more books. I picked two, he picked two. His were comics. Mine were both books with more words and less pictures, designed for Racheli (new member of the DN3 cast of characters! More on her anon). One of them was Fantastic Mr. Fox, in Hebrew.

Which Barak discovered when he got home from school today. And read, in one evening, in Hebrew. And summarized for me, pretty accurately, in English. Conclusion: "And the three guys just sit in the rain with their guns outside the foxes' door forever while the animals are eating all their food!"

Indeed.

Hot chocolate

It has been, as you may be aware, an unusually wet winter in Israel. This is a wonderful thing because we have been very short on rain for years now. January was the wettest month on record, ever, and today, February first, it rained, sometimes really hard, nearly the entire day.

All of this is great. It would be even better if I could convince a certain second-grader that it would be a really good idea for him to, you know, wear a coat.

Barak has decided that he is Too Cool for Coats. So today, when it was bucketing down rain and the wind was howling and it was maybe 50 out, he walked home from the bus stop with his water-resistant Thinsulate-lined LL Bean parka shoved IN HIS BACKPACK. And walked in the door soaked, dripping, and grinning the grin of the cool.

I should have yelled at him. I did chastise him, but mostly with a lot of eye-rolling. I made him take off his wet clothes and found him pajama pants and a brand-new sweatshirt that I brought back from the US in December but hadn't given him yet. It's a size 10, so I thought it would be way too big, but surprise--it's really not.

And I made him hot chocolate, for the first time since we moved here. Hot chocolate with milk and cocoa and sugar and real vanilla, in our one and only ceramic mug. He was pretty much in heaven. Soft cozy sweatshirt! Soft cozy pajamas! Hot chocolate!

The dishes have been piling up lately, mostly because I'm so busy with work that I haven't had a lot of time to do anything in the evenings, and I've got so much going on generally that the morning naps have been few and far between. Most mornings, I have running around to do. So as Barak rhapsodized over his hot chocolate, I did some damage control in the kitchen, and may have grumbled to myself just a little.

"Barak, when you grow up, you're going to tell your wife about this. You're going to say, 'When we moved to Israel, my Imma cooked for all of us for two whole years with just an electric hot plate and two toaster ovens!' And your wife won't believe you. She'll say, no she didn't. And you'll say, yes she did! And she'll say, how did she not lose her mind? How did she not yell and scream and throw things?"

At this, Barak looked up. Because it is possible that there may have been some yelling and screaming and dish-flinging a few days ago. On my part.

"...and you'll say, well, sometimes she did..."

Still here

37 weeks tomorrow. I am, to be honest, barely aware of this, because I am so busy with non-pregnancy-related things.

#1 on the list of Things that Are Taking All My Time and Attention is Iyyar. After months of slowly getting better, things with him lately have, well, tanked. It's not that he's behaving badly exactly. It's that he's behaving strangely and worryingly. He's talking to himself, he spends a lot of time in self-soothing behaviors (lots of waving his arms around as he conducts invisible fight scenes or writes letters in the air), and, predictably, this is not going over so well with the other kids, who do not want to play with him and by not wanting to play with him, stress him out more. And then he comes home from school and you can barely get through to him with anything. This doesn't happen every day, but it happens a lot, and today is February first. The "by Purim he'll be a different kid" we were hoping for when we started seeing so much improvement over the summer is not comng to pass.

After the psych eval of which you have already heard tell, we had a speech eval in Hebrew, which was a disaster, and a speech eval in English, which was great. "If anything he's above average." No language or processing issues evident at all. I'm trying to track down an OT to evaluate him for sensory issues: the one who was recommended to me lives in Ramot and that is just not practical for us. At this point the big question is where he's going to go next year, and it's looking like a kita mikademet, even though that brings its own host of issues with it. I got a call from someone today about the vaadat hasama (placement board) I requested last week. Today Iyyar is being observed by a gan psychologist and I guess we'll go from there.

In the meantime, Avtalyon has also been raising alarm bells and we've started the paperwork to get him into a gan safa. And Barak, who does not do well with not getting All The Attention All The Time, is feeling neglected. At least he's able to tell me this.

It's Wednesday, which is Mr. Bigfoot's David Yellin day, so I'm off to do the pickup rounds. Finally registered at the hospital last week, by the way. Oh, and does anyone have any experience with going to beit hachlama here? I'm thinking that would be a nice quiet place to make a million more phone calls for Iyyar.

Sometimes a French fry is just a French fry

So, I took Iyyar to get his speech therapy evaluation last Thursday. It was about what I expected, although I didn't realize his Hebrew was quite as bad as it is. The therapist seemed really taken aback when I told her how long we'd been here. "A year and a half? And he's been in a Hebrew educational framework the entire time? He can't even put a correct sentence together." Good news: he qualifies for speech therapy with, uh, flying colors. Bad news: there is a waiting list of several months (months!! I am looking now at the original forms we submitted for all of this and they are dated July...) and even when his turn comes up, he'll be getting an hour a week of therapy with the expectation of an hour a day at home of 1:1 attention from a Hebrew-speaking adult.

Riiiiiiight.

The good thing that came from it though was that the speech therapist was nice, and I took advantage of this by saying, look, why is nothing happening here? I brought along the eval with the referrals for various services he got in mid-December, and I said, he has gotten none of this, nobody has even called us with an appointments, I don't know who to talk to and every time I call it takes an hour to be told someone will call me, eventually. Which they don't do. The therapist was, to give her credit, horrified by this and said "But he needs help now!" to which I was, with difficulty, able to respond by politely agreeing instead of by banging my head on the pint-sized table I was sitting at.

Sunday morning the phone rang, and it was the psychologist, telling me that she had never gotten any of the messages I had left (which I know isn't true, because the speech therapist opened up a screen that showed all the messages I'd left WITH check boxes next to them showing she'd seen them) and telling me that Iyyar's report was ready and did I want to come in next week to pick it up. I said, can you fax it today? and she said, well, it's a lot of pages (for the record: "a lot" in this case = three) and why don't you come pick it up? Next week? I said, how about today? And she said, ok, can you come in at 11? It was 9:45 and I looked at my watch and said yes I could, so I went straight out the door.

So, I don't want this to turn into a giant long post, but in a nutshell (coconut shell?): there were no surprises so far as the cognitive stuff, except that his Hebrew is really bad (which I knew at that point) and he has some specific learning/cognitive issues (attention/speed of processing/attention/organization of thought) that she seemed to think were worse than I did, but having seen the testing taking place I also knew that he'd been pretty stressed during the testing itself and that never helps. The cognitive stuff was all testing that had taken place while I was there; the psychological/emotional testing had happened while I was in the US, and Mr. Bigfoot had been there.

Yeah. That.

So... how much stock does the field of child psychologist generally put in child apperception testing these days? Because... well. First she started telling me that she'd shown Iyyar pictures and that how he described them gave a window to how he perceived the world. Okay, fair enough. Then she started telling me that he felt small and insignificant, exploited (exploited??) by adults, that he wasn't being nurtured adequately, that parental figures were distant and absent and that authority figures were frightening. I said... uh. Where are you getting this from? She asked me if I wanted to see the pictures and I said yes.

First picture: three little chickens at a table happily tucking into bowls of food. Shadowy hen in background. Iyyar said, as best as I can recall: "The baby chickens are eating the food. They like it and they're happy. The mother is walking." Interpretation: because he did not say that the mother gave the food, the mother is not being seen as a source of nurturing. Instead of feeding them, she is WALKING.

But... she was. I mean, I saw the picture. I would have said the same thing.

And the rest of the pictures? They were scary. As in, I found them scary and I am 38! There was a huge toothy tiger about to attack a monkey, and it didn't look good for the monkey. There were two tiny bears huddled together in a crib in a dark shadowy room with a huge bed, empty except for an Ominous Lump under the covers. There was a big lion in a throne with a mouse visible in the corner in a mouse hole.

Everything Iyyar said seemed totally reasonable to me. He described the pictures. When asked to come up with more ideas, he said things like "Maybe the mouse wants to be friends but he's afraid the lion will eat him," and "The bear is sad because he got his fur cut, but it's OK, it'll grow back." I thought this was normal. The psychologist didn't. She also kept talking about how fixated he was on food. And food, see, it's not just food. It's everything a baby needs from a parent. It's nurturing, understanding, feeling understood. And Iyyar is NOT GETTING IT. How does she know this? Because he kept talking about food. Also, his thinking was all concrete and not abstract (he's five. You know he's five, right?) and he identified in every picture with the small/weak figure and not the large/strong figure (cf. "five" above). Oh, and he was much more relaxed with Mr. Bigfoot (visit two) than with me (visit one).

I walked out not being sure whether to be devastated or bewildered. Because I got the really, really strong impression that she thought that Iyyar's issues were due to my being a cold and absent mother and his being afraid of authority. And I may be many things, and I am sure I have MANY failings as a parent, but cold and absent? I... really don't think so.

Fast forward to home. I asked Mr. Bigfoot about this. "Oh. Yeah. Well, he didn't really want to go, so I told him that when we were done we would go out for lunch. We went and had schnitzel and French fries at the place down the street right after. He ate a huge amount so I think he might have been kind of hungry while we were there."

Oh. What about the pictures?

"Yeah, he wasn't so into them. He wanted to color them in, and she said that when they were done talking about them he could draw a picture. So he was kind of going through them as fast as possible so he could draw. And get French fries."

It's hard to write it off entirely, just because, well, who could? I know Iyyar doesn't feel understood and it is absolutely the case that I don't understand what is going on in his head. And if someone is sitting there in an office saying, we've tested your son and the results show that You Are A Rotten Mother, I don't think many people could take that with equanimity. Also, I got the really strong impression that she didn't think much of me or Mr. Bigfoot from the first meeting. Not sure why; just a personality clash, I think. I have a hard time with people who don't ever ever smile.

Anyway. Yeah. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah. And French fries.

The post that is not a list

I don’t read very many blogs anymore. I used to read quite a few but one by one their authors stopped writing, or I lost interest for whatever reason. Most of the links on my sidebar are dead these days (and yes I should probably do something about that.)

In the meantime, one of the blogs I read is this one, and if you know me at all you can probably guess why I read it. Completely different life situations, very similar day-to-day issues. One of them being one of the tags she uses: parental jealousy.

I am having a lot of that right now, as I often do late in pregnancy and even more when I have a new baby. I am finding it a lot harder here. I live somewhere that it is pretty common for women to have babies. Pretty much everyone here, with only a few exceptions, is either pregnant or has a new baby or is too recently married for either. This was also the case last year. And every time someone has a baby, without exception, there is family. Certainly a mother, often both parents, and frequently two sets of parents in turn. One of the women here had a baby about six week ago; she had her mother-in-law here already to take care of her daughter (who is in Marika’s gan) while she was in the hospital, and then a few days later her mother flew in and stayed for a MONTH, and her sister is in seminary nearby and was able to help out a lot too. I saw her a couple of weeks after giving birth and she looked… amazingly well rested. There is only one woman here who didn’t have that kind of luxury, and she had her mom visit for “only” a week postpartum; her mom works and couldn’t take off longer. I think her in-laws also came although I didn’t ask.

And you know, they don’t even think of it as luxury, so far as I can tell. It’s just a normal thing that normal mothers do. Apparently. Not that I would know.

And I am jealous. Which is actually a little bit out of character for me, broadly speaking, because I am pretty good at not coveting anything I know I can’t have.

For example: Mr. Bigfoot went to pay a shiva visit a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t go because it wasn’t practical; someone needed to be home with the kids and it made more sense for him to be the one to go, since the avel was more a friend of his. He came back and said, later, it’s just as well you didn’t go. You didn’t need to see that huge fancy house. And I was completely taken aback by this, because a) I wouldn’t be thinking about that at a shiva house anyway and b) truthfully, I have no problem with big fancy houses. I don’t covet them. It doesn’t bother me that other people have them. Yes, it bothers me—sometimes it bothers me a lot—that we live the way we do, but I don’t look at anyone in a big fancy house and say, “I want that.” I don’t want it and it doesn’t bother me that other people have it. It’s so beyond what is realistic for us that it doesn’t even enter into my thinking.

What does bother me is seeing things that I feel should be realistic for us given where we are in our lives but are still so totally out of reach. Like when we stayed, over the summer, for Shabbos in the house of friends of friends. It was a regular house, not huge, but it would have been perfect for us; smallish but totally adequate kitchen, comfortable living/dining room with lots of space for bookshelves and a nice bright playroom off to the side, a little office off the kitchen that would have been exactly right for me. Most of the furniture obviously acquired secondhand. Three bedrooms, two of them quite small but big enough for bunk beds and a crib. One and a half baths.

And somehow, the fact that it was a little bit run down, the bathrooms old and cramped, that there were water marks in the ceilings and floor tiles that were chipped and doors that didn’t quite close, and the kitchen was in the “small but workable” category—this made me wildly, ragingly, disturbingly jealous. Because that should be realistic for us, and yet it is still so completely out of reach for us right now. Right now, a second toilet, a bathtub, and a kitchen with a stove are the stuff of fantasy. And a house? Belonging to us? I might as well wish for the moon.

Or for parents.

Which I do. I am jealous. I know that I am independent by nature and generally want to do things by myself. I’m not used to being taken care of and I don’t expect it. Mostly, it’s enough for me that I am getting to take care of other people, which I waited so long to do. And I have a husband who really does take amazingly good care of me. It should be enough. But right around now, when it’s getting hard to walk, hard to sleep, when everything aches and there is so much to do, and it’s not easy to keep up already, and I don’t even know who’s going to watch the kids when I have to go to the hospital and it’s not at all out of the question that I’m going to have to go give birth by myself because there won’t be anyone but Mr. Bigfoot… the thought of a mother, the kind that would swoop down and take care of the kids and clean up and do baths and go grocery shopping for me, like they do for the other women here… yeah. It would be nice.

Like a lot of things that are just not going to happen. And I need to get over it. Again.

Moving right along...

I had my third-trimester ultrasound today. Yes! Third-trimester ultrasound! I’ve never had one of those before, since they don’t, you know, do them in America. B”H it was all fine. The kids had a good day, and although Iyyar got off to an unusually rough start this morning, he was doing much better later on. The ultrasound took a lot longer than I expected, because they were running really late, but I still got home with enough time to take a nap before Mr. Bigfoot left for the afternoon. And he got the boys from gan, and he also got Marika for me, so I could sleep.

By the way, I feel like I have been doing Mr. Bigfoot an injustice by more or less leaving him out of the blog most of the time. I don’t want to give the impression that he’s an absentee father, because he so isn’t. He gets up at 6 every morning, davens vasikin, and takes Barak to the bus. I get up around when he leaves, at about 7:30, and start getting Iyyar and Avtalyon up, and then Mr. Bigfoot walks them up the 88 steps to their gan. All I have to do is get Marika ready in the morning, which is easy as she is pretty delightful when she wakes up, and then walk the ten minutes of flat ground to her gan. Mr. Bigfoot even packs lunches. He does the laundry. He deals with the pee on the bathroom floor when the boys miss. He picks up the boys from gan four days a week and often gets Marika too. And he stops at the makolet on the way back from dropping off Barak, if I need him to, and gets milk or bread or whatever else we’ve run short of between big grocery shops and shuk runs. Me? I don’t even always have dinner on the table for him. Most days, but not every day by any stretch.

So, not fair to say I don’t have help. I totally do. And one of the huge advantages of our current situation is that he’s rarely very far away, and most of the time available in case of emergency. If I really really need him, I can call him and he can come home. I don't, in general, but I know I can if I have to. It’s not minor.

And it will be OK. I don’t need parents to be OK. The kids don’t need their biological grandparents in their lives to be OK. We will have a place to live and food to eat and they’ve already got a lifetime supply of Playmobil.

Iss okay, Imma. Iss just fine.

Also

Why is it that Israeli phlebotomists--every single one I have encountered--are SO MUCH BETTER than phlebotomists in America? Before we came here, every time I needed to get blood drawn, I heard about how small/deep/scarred/difficult/uncooperative my veins were. And got stabbed lots of times and often still didn't come up with enough blood for whatever it was. I can remember at least twice taking kids for blood draws and winding up with traumatized children and no bloodwork. Here? I go in, I feel a pinch and about a minute later there's a wad of cotton in the crook of my elbow. Today I went to get my 1-hour glucose test and saw a toddler getting blood drawn; he was mad about it, but you could tell just looking at it he was more indignant than anything else.

Weird.

Anyway, the good thing about needing bloodwork is that the big Meuhedet is right next to the shuk, where I had the chance to load up on all kinds of good stuff. Strawberries are in season here now (in JANUARY. I love it) and I got a huge bag of gorgeous red peppers for NIS 3.90/kg (around 50 cents a pound or so). And lots of apples/cucumbers/onions/mushrooms/etc. And a big bag of squishy carbohydrates. Which is always, let's be honest, the best part of the shuk.

So I'm back home now and ten minutes to go before I pick Marika up at gan. It's Tuesday, so Barak should be home in about an hour, and Mr. Bigfoot is getting Avtalyon and Iyyar. And I need to think of something to do with everybody all afternoon. So I can nap when Marika does. It might be a video afternoon. I've given myself a little bit of a pass on the videos lately, as long as they're in Hebrew--it's educational, right?

In which unexpected developments continue to develop

Yet again, I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve been thinking for a while about things to post. There are lots of things to post about. Marika, for example, is being really funny. She is obsessed with the Israeli happy birthday song and wants me to play it (we have an Israeli kids’ music CD) nonstop. The song is one minute long, so there’s a limit to what a body can stand, but while it’s playing she’s a riot; she literally runs around in circles because she’s so excited. We also have a book with the words to the songs on the CD, and she finds the page with the happy birthday song and shows me. “Yoma yoma dedet mee mee!” That would be, “yom huledet sameach to me!”

Work is going fine. The Bituach Leumi thing has gotten marginally worse; I realized that the accountants (if you want the name of an English-speaking accountant to stay away from, email me privately) had screwed up yet again and submitted my 2011 income incorrectly, and my actual monthly withholding should be NIS 3,000. That, for the record, is a little bit less than we anticipated paying in rent next year. This whole thing has put all of the financial tribulations of the last year in perspective; the rest of it just paled in comparison.

Until Saturday.

What happened on Saturday, you ask?

Well.

So on Saturday night, I called back our former upstairs neighbor, who is the head of our condo board (there were only four apartments, he was the only other owner who spoke good English, and the two of us basically made all of the decisions together) and who had left me a couple of messages over the previous week. We’d been playing phone tag for a few days but finally caught each other late Saturday.

He started out with the good news: that the property tax appeal had gone through and the city had agreed to reduce our annual taxes by $300. Not much, but something, although we owed 1/3 of that to the lawyer who had done the appealing for us. Fine.

“And we’re going to do it again for the next property tax cycle because of the foreclosure,” he said.

The what? The foreclosure. There’s a foreclosure?

So. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but one of the families in the building had been kind of problematic for a while. They did not pay their assessments, they had at least 10 people living up there, they did not maintain their apartment and they used an incredible amount of water. They also, apparently, were not paying their mortgage. We had gotten foreclosure papers sent to the condo association a couple of years earlier, but as of a few weeks ago, they were still there and said that it had been worked out; since they had obviously not gotten kicked out we believed them. But, the upstairs guy told me, their apartment was in fact foreclosed on in December. And sold at auction.

For $70,000.

Turns out they had not paid in THREE YEARS. Not only that, but the bank gave them money—thirty-eight THOUSAND dollars—to get out of their apartment by year’s end so that the bank could write off the loss in that tax year. So, almost nothing down, three years of free rent, and $38k to move out. Not bad, if the whole ethical issue doesn’t give you pause.

In the meantime? We paid almost the same for our apartment. Taxes have been doubled and we had to double the assessments as well. We have never missed or been late with a payment, and in fact made (before the crash) a lot of extra payments to principal too. We have a principal of $163k and monthly payments of $1608, counting the maintenance. We’re still paying them, even though the apartment (which is only partially rented out, because we still have all of our stuff there and I go back regularly) now loses us well over $400 a month. We’ve tried to refinance a few times but been told no: first off, our mortgage was sold to a private investor; second off, we have a perfect payment record and savings to boot, so why should the bank want to reduce our payments when we have proven ourselves perfectly capable of making them, and willing to do so even despite, well, everything? No reason at all. For us, the old rules still apply.

We did everything the way you’re supposed to. And because we’ve always played by the rules, we’ve lost so much money on that apartment I can’t even think about it. If we hadn’t bought that place, if we’d stayed in our old rental, we could have bought an apartment here with cash. As it is, we have this apartment that is nine thousand miles away that is sucking us dry and will continue to do so for as long as we remain responsible mortgage-payers.

So. I did the refinance paperwork, again, and explained the recent developments—the husband who has been unemployed for going on two years, the insurance that is now costing us $900/month out of pocket, the foreclosure upstairs. I also called a private mortgage broker today, to see if he had any other ideas. He suggested “letting it go.” As in, stopping payments and letting the bank take it. That, in his view, was the only reasonable course of action given our situation (which I described to him a bit more fully than I describe it on the internet). He agrees that it would make sense for the bank to reduce our payments and principal, but added that unfortunately the way these things work doesn’t often make sense.

Yeah. I’d noticed.

Remember how happy I was when we bought that place? I felt settled. I felt like a grownup. I loved painting the walls and putting in the shelves and feeling like I had my very own home. Like Grandma E said, we could never have imagined this then.

Somehow or other, this will be OK. I was IM’ing with my friend Shanna (who is a divorce lawyer) before and we both heartily agreed that it’s much better to need a real estate lawyer than a lawyer like her. It could be so much worse. It’s just money. Everyone is B”H healthy and we still have savings and I still have my job and somehow or other, b’ezrat Hashem it will be OK.

I joke sometimes that between me and my husband, I do the hishtadlus, he does the bitachon. I’ve done all the hishtadlus I can; now it’s just time for bitachon for both of us.

Two!

Sunday

So last week, after I got back from my trip, Iyyar had his appointment with the developmental pediatrician--the appointment that was supposed to be in February but magically happened the next day because I fell apart crying in the Hitpatchut haYeled office. Really, I should have taken him, but I was so tired and jetlagged I convinced myself that it would be fine if Mr. Bigfoot did it. (Note to self: no.) He went and gave me a report and brought home a typed report that includes many repetitions of "father does not know..." and ends with a recommendation for a social worker, among other things. Sigh.

The evaluation Mr. Bigfoot brought home was not informative. It told me that Iyyar can write his name nicely, has good reflexes, draws lopsided circles, draws complete people with all their features, and is communicative in English but less so in Hebrew. It also started out with "yeled chamud" ("Cute kid.") Is it me or is that an "only in Israel" thing? She felt, after observing him in a small room containing his father and a friendly adult, lots of toys, undivided cheery attention, and no environmental stressors or other children, that Iyyar would be best served by an additional year in gan. Both Michal and I strenuously disagree with this: he has an early birthday, he is tall for his age, he finds the "school" aspect of gan easy already and knows full well that he is supposed to be heading into kita aleph. Also, he is doing reasonably well socially. Keeping him back would serve no purpose; he would be upset, he'd be the tallest/biggest kid in his class, he doesn't need the time to catch up academically or socially, and I don't think it would address any of his actual problems (not that anyone seems to understand what those actually ARE).

Other recommendations are for a speech therapist (great) and a psychological evaluation (great, but didn't he already have four hours of that?). That was a week ago and we have yet to hear anything from anyone, so I am not feeling optimistic. I'm going to call tomorrow because apparently the speech therapist to whom his materials were given is available by phone on Mondays from 8:30-9:30 am and only then. (Better than nothing?)

In the meantime, Michal finally spoke to the psychologist who did the first eval. She (Michal) said that repeating gan was not the solution and instead recommended a kita katana (small class for kids with mild to moderate learning disabilities/emotional issues). This was at my behest; she said last week that she'd like to see Iyyar in a regular kita aleph (first grade) with therapy/support, and I said that while I would love to see that too, I wasn't at all sure he'd be ready, and given the incredible amount of hoop-jumping that would have to be achieved to get him into a kita katana, the last thing I wanted was to come to the conclusion in June (or, worse, October) that a regular first grade was not going to work--and then have to start from scratch, with Iyyar not in the good place he is in now. I said I was not at all willing to close the kita katana door, and she saw the logic in this. Also, Iyyar had a hard day today. It's too long to get into here but he had some kind of a mysterious blowup on the way home from gan with Mr. Bigfoot and Avtalyon. Mr. Bigfoot had no idea what triggered it, and I did figure it out later but only after a lot of time and indirect prodding.

Even after Iyyar told me what the problem had been, and explained it to me, and we talked about it and how he had reacted (running away from Abba while Abba was calling him to come) and why it was dangerous/not OK, and why we had to use words to explain when we were not happy about something etc. etc.--even after I understood what had gone on in his head, I had to realize how really not normal that thought process had been, even for a five-year-old. What he got upset at, how the distress manifested itself, both in the moment and afterward--he needs help. At least this time, with enough time and quiet and patience, I could help. He was able to use words, he was able to tell me what he'd been thinking at least to some extent, he calmed down, he felt OK later, he went to bed happy.

And that's the thing, see--Iyyar is doing better. He IS. He blows up less, he communicates more, he is happier and calmer. I've been pouring on the love and the patience and he is getting that at gan too. It is, despite the opinion of the psychologist (who seems to think I am wrapping him in cotton wool) exactly what he needs to recover from whatever the **** was going on in that gan last year. But it takes so little--next to nothing--to set him off. And what is happening right now, see, it's a spiral. It's a good spiral. Right now, he is calmer and happier, so he behaves better in gan, and he gets positive reinforcement, and he is motivated to behave/less stressed and ergo able to behave. Therefore he can play with the other kids, he can sit still, he can focus better, he can do the things he needs to do to manage in gan. Last year, it was exactly the opposite. But he is, and there is no other word for it, emotionally fragile. He is terrified of disapproval. It takes so little to bounce him in the opposite direction, and I look at him and I see how easily he could fall apart completely in kita aleph.

This is not me being a neurotic overprotective American mother. This is me being his mother, and knowing him better than anyone else. But still not knowing what is wrong, or how to help.

Because I should probably not leave that last post at the top of my blog for too long

Here's another one.

(You know the really pathetic thing? After I posted last time, I went to bed and thought of another half dozen things at least I could have vented about but didn't.)

Anyway.

The next day, I was sitting on the bed putting on my socks and muttering to myself. "Iyyar's doing much better. I don't have any cavities. The kids are healthy." Mr. Bigfoot overheard me. "Are you telling yourself good things?" "Yeah. Not everything is awful." "No." "It just FEELS that way." "Right."

Right.

So, here is a list of Things That Are Not Awful:

1. The kids are healthy. This is huge. Remember last year? That isn't happening now. We had a couple of weeks of stomach bugs, all of which passed relatively quickly. B"H, no major health issues currently going on with anyone. Pregnancy seems to be going fine, the kids are doing well.

2. Iyyar really is doing much better. He has his ups and downs, but overall he is taking many more steps forward than he is taking back. He loves his gan. He has not said he hates/doesn't want to go to gan in months--not since before the chagim. He tells me he loves Michal and he also tells me about how he is playing with the other kids. Just like he spiraled downward last year, and things got worse and worse in a vicious cycle of frustration/acting out/disapproval/anger/other kids not wanting to play with him, this year, it's heading in the opposite direction. He's happier, he's more cooperative, he's playing better with the other kids, he's less disruptive, more patient. This week Michal told me she was hoping to see him in a regular kita aleph next year. I'm not actually sure that would be best for him--far from it--but I was really, really happy to hear her say it.

3. Marika is one day away from turning TWO. The mind reels. That deserves a post of its own, but in the meantime, she is cuddly and adorable and has developed quite the personality. She has also recently figured out how to open doorknobs. That part I could have waited for, but I'm happy to see her growing and happy and doing new stuff all the time.

4. No cavities! I went to the dentist when I was in the US, because I really like the dentist (he's in the same building as my office) and I have been having issues lately with a really raw and painful mouth--certain foods (sesame seeds, tomatoes, citrus, hummous, anything acidic or rough-textured) seem to rip my tongue/inside of my mouth to shreds, and some of them make my mouth swell. It seemed weird that I could be developing multiple food allergies at once, and I was due for a cleaning, so I called to see if they had a cancellation and they did. Anyway, no cavities (yay!) and the mouth thing he told me was pregnancy-related; he gave me some fancy toothpaste and a special toothbrush (?) and told me to stay way from trigger foods. Also, he fixed a chipped filling. Even better, when I went to pay, the receptionist discovered that I had a huge credit on my account--apparently I overpaid last time--and only owed $9 for the visit. There was a sign on the desk that said, "Like us on Facebook and get a $10 credit!" so I asked if I could like them on Facebook and call it even. They said sure, so I walked out of there without paying anything. I'm not thrilled that they sat on $163 for almost a year without telling me, but it was a nice surprise nevertheless.

5. I brought back a lot of Tootsie Rolls. There is no Tootsie Roll shortage here.

6. I also brought back a lot of little plastic dinosaurs from the thrift shop. Twenty cents each--couldn't resist. The kids are happy, with that and also with the whole box of K'nex I bought for around $6.

7. Work is going well. Nobody expects me back in the US next summer.

8. This baby is the most active baby-in-utero I have ever had. S/he never seems to stop kicking, wiggling, rolling, and squirming. It's fun. I try not to wonder how this will translate into sleep habits in the outside world. Hopefully, just in the kicking off of many blankets.

9. The kitchen is clean. I made pizza for dinner and cleaned up while the kids were eating it. I also redid the contact paper on the counter on Tuesday, so it looks much better in there. And I bleached the sink. That helped too.

10. We are going to get a new washing machine, cost be damned. I can't not have a washing machine. Mr. Bigfoot says no more used appliances. The End.

11. We have three windowboxes full of ivy and geraniums, courtesy of Deb.

12. Barak can now do most of his homework by himself. He usually gets about halfway through it without help. This is a big improvement from September, when he'd do three out of ten questions after a lot of misery and suffering and parental involvement. His homework continues to be, in my opinion, wildly ambidiout; last night's Chumash homework involved reading and understanding and answering questions on TWENTY-SIX psukim. Which they had not done in class. Seriously.

13. Yesterday I heard Barak singing a song I didn't know. Mr. Bigfoot didn't know it either. He listened carefully for a minute and then grinned. "He's singing mishnayos." Last year he was singing Pirkei Avos, this year it's mishnayos. This is why we moved here.

14. I made a to-do list of all the horribly overwhelming things I had to do. I did three of them today. It's only a start, but it helps.

15. My computer is working much better now, after a lot of long-distance intervention from IT at work.

16. I brought back a lot of Trader Joe's chocolate chip granola bars. Marika has figured out that there is almost always a chocolate chip or four hiding in the bottom of the wrapper. I can open one, hand her the wrapper, and she will be so busy hunting for tiny chocolate chips that she leaves me alone with my granola bar until it's almost gone.

There. Sixteen good things. The seventeenth: I am going to bed.

Spew

I’m warning you. This one is not going to be pretty. If you’re not in the mood, just skip it, ok?

The last few weeks have been really hard.

So much has been going on that I don’t really know where to start.

I guess I’ll start with the meeting with the CPA, the day before I went to the US for my latest work trip. The meeting I’d been trying to schedule for months, while they ignored and ignored my emails, and didn’t do my return for MONTHS. The meeting where I thought I was showing up to sign my 2010 returns, and in which I was told that I owed Bituach Leumi (social insurance) 13% of my gross income, from the date of my aliya, retroactively, and henceforth forevermore. About $10k on the spot, and 13% of my gross—not net, gross—salary, going forward. This is not including taxes in any way. This is JUST social insurance. And I still have to pay social security and medicare in the US.

I had had no idea. I didn’t cry until I got home, when my friend Zahava called to check up on me and I lost it in a fit of hysterical tears and uncharacteristic profanity.

It’s just too much.

I’m working full-time now. But it still isn’t enough to support us. We’re just breaking even now, with the free apartment.

We are losing so much money on our condo in the US. We can’t refinance.

Mr. Bigfoot doesn’t have a job. He just lost most of his tutoring hours, not because of anything he did but because the at-risk kids he was tutoring left the school. And the cartoons he’s been doing for pay haven’t been renewed—because even though everyone says to him how much they like them, only two people have bothered to tell the magazine.

Our washing machine died. We’re back to the laundromat.

I am so jetlagged and so tired.

Every time I turn around, someone is mad at me about something. Now? Not the time to jump down my throat because I have not been in touch, did not stop by when I was in the US, did not phrase an email quite in the way you would have liked. I don’t have the emotional energy right now to deal with anything that is not a child or a speech. Leave me alone.

Hitpatchut ha’yeled is not helping Iyyar. Iyyar needs help. Now. He needs someone to help him function in school, he needs help with attention and auditory processing, he needs help learning how to deal with stress. He needs to learn how not to run around in circles singing to himself. He needs the ability to register when his name is being screamed at him, and respond, not stay lost in his own world as he walks obliviously into the path of moving vehicles. But everything takes weeks, and even though we have been trying to make this happen since last June, here we are in December and he does not have so much as an intake appointment for speech therapy or OT or anything else. As of this morning, he’s been recommended for all kinds of things, but nothing has happened. I also have a two-page evaluation of him sitting in front of me, which I can’t understand.

They don’t pick up the phone. They don’t return calls. They don’t do anything, except, this week, magically find an appointment for the next day when I fall apart crying upon being told that the next available appointment for the next hoop-jumping step on which everything depends is not for another two months. That, they did.

Avtalyon’s ganenot are also worried about him. Right now they think it’s a hearing problem but also want us to start paperwork with Hitpatchut Ha’yeled. I can’t get that moving until we get another hearing test. I went through the hoops to get the referral and the guarantee of payment—two separate trips to two separate offices, each requiring a morning of no sleep—and called the audiologist. Earliest available appointment: January.

Does he have attention/processing issues like Iyyar seems to? Or permanent hearing loss from all those eardrum ruptures? I took him to the ENT and his ears are clear. Whatever it is, it’s not going to self-resolve.

I just spent a week in the US, and while I was there, everyone but Iyyar got sick. I had to listen to Marika crying for me with a 102 fever from 8,000 miles away. I came home to a house with no visible floor or horizontal surfaces in any of the bedrooms or my office. And kids with diarrhea who couldn’t go to school. Avtalyon threw up a few times the night after I got home.

This was after Barak threw up at school and I had to go get him, by cab, and then he narrowly missed throwing up in the cab—the same cab that, by chance, came when I called later that afternoon to take Avtalyon to the doctor for his ears.

Barak doesn’t seem to have any friends at school. He doesn’t play with anyone. He doesn’t talk about other kids. His Hebrew is doing better, his teachers are happy with him, but socially, he seems to be heading into trouble.

Oh, and did I mention the fight he had at school? The one that was started by another kid who knocked him to the floor and punched him? Whose mother then called me because Barak had, from the floor, thrown his pencil case at him and hit him in the eye? And thought I should talk to Barak about how unacceptable violence was as a means of conflict resolution? That was a fun day of phone calls right there.

And the hasaa which sometimes doesn’t have seatbelts.

And the hasaa which is different every day, so Barak doesn’t always get on it, because he doesn’t recognize it. Which means I have to go get him by cab, and pull Mr. Bigfoot out of seder.

I still haven’t found a doula. Or registered at the hospital.

The house is a mess.

We got an absolutely huge water bill. I called the maintenance guy and said, there is no way we have used that much water. He looked around and found a leak in the toilet tank--the water has been running in there nonstop. Not our faulty plumbing, but the water bill? Still our responsibility.

We got an absolutely huge ($400) phone and internet bill. Considering we don't use the phone, and the internet is supposed to be the same every month, this is obviously a mistake, right? Multiple calls to the campus communication guy. He promises to look into it. So far? One guess.

I mentioned that the washing machine died, right? The one we bought less than a year ago? With no warranty?

I’m eating so badly. I’m pregnant, I need to be eating well, but cooking real food in my horrible little excuse for a kitchen is so hard, and what I should be eating/what the kids are willing to eat/what I can make in that kitchen are just not the same at all.

And oh, what we spend on food.

I brought back $26 worth of Target pullups. They leak. Avtalyon has wet the bed every night he’s worn them, and woken up crying that his bed is wet. It soaked right through the mattress pad and now the mattress is ruined.

Also, I have a new laptop from work, which is behaving strangely. Hours on the phone with computer support. Hours I should have been writing speeches.

The external keyboard I brought back doesn’t work at all. Not salvageable. It’s a toy now. Good thing I didn’t toss the old one—the one I’ve used so much the letters are worn off the keys.

I spent too much money in the US, some of it on stuff that I then had no room to bring back. Because I was using the space on a broken keyboard and leaky pullups.

And the Meuchedet insurance which has still not paid us back about NIS 650 we are owed. But in order to deal with it, I have to deal with endless Hebrew, and I just… can’t.

I hate my OB and don’t know where to find anyone better. Dr. Nili Yannai doesn’t seem to exist anymore, or at least, none of the numbers I have for her work. Anyone?

I am ignoring my 26-week gestational diabetes screening, even though I’m almost 30 weeks. Every single day, there is something else that can’t be put off.

Two simchas in the kollel this week, with signup sheets posted for who’s bringing food. I can’t ignore it. I can’t deal.

Three days a week, I have to do all the afternoon pickups. This means pushing a stroller up The Hill. That is really, really hard right now.

It’s 2 am. Did I mention jetlag? Or that I have to be up in 5 hours?

I’m leaving out the good stuff, of course. There is good stuff. I just can’t see it right now.

Further to the kinderlach chronicles

So Deb was just here last week and we had a lovely time, and I need to blog about that, but first, some kid blogging catch-up:

1. Avtalyon is being insanely cute lately. With Barak and Iyyar, three and a half was a Very Difficult Age. With Avtalyon for whatever reason it is an Incredibly Delightful Age. Favorite story of the week:

Avtalyon has grown extremely fond of the Steggie sweater made for him by the fabulous Tanta Cecilia. He puts it on and puts up the hood and gets this hilarious look on his face that's part "Look at me, I'm so cool" and part shyness about how totally cool he is. When he puts it on I pretend to be very scared that he is in fact transforming into a terrifying dinosaur. He grins and reassures me, "But it's really yarn, right Imma?"

The other day he came into my room when I was still asleep, hysterically wailing about something I didn't immediately get (being, as I just said, asleep). I finally got it out of him that Iyyar had been scaring him. Ah.

"Avtalyon! I know! I know what you can do!"

[Hysterical wailing]

"Go get your dinosaur sweater! Then put it on and you'll be so scary, you won't be scared of ANYTHING."

[Hysterical wailing instantly stops. Avtalyon gets that awesome look 3 yos get when every cog and wheel in their head is turning madly.]

Hiccup. Hiccup. "'Kay."

Two minutes later, he is back, naked except for pullup and dinosaur sweater, which he wants me to zip up. He puts up the hood and grins, a little self-consciously. "Now I'm very scary. Right Imma?"

Right!

2. Marika has lately taken to calling roll. She wakes up in the morning, or from her nap, and wants to know where everyone is. Barak, so far as she is concerned, is either home or on the bus, since she sees him leave for the bus in the morning and return on the bus in the afternoon. "Barak bus?" she inquires, standing in her crib in footie pajamas, hair in full sheepdog mode. "Right, Barak's on the bus," I agree. "Abba dabbis?" which means--actually I have no idea what it means. Abba Shabbos? Sometimes she asks, "Abba dowdide?" which is "Abba outside?" Then she asks after Iyyar and Avtalyon, or hears them, at which point she crows their names. Then, of course, she wants to get dressed, which requires pigtails ("Kuku! Kuku yeah?") and of course shoes ("Whoojh!")

3. A few weeks ago, on Succot, we went at night to see the succahs on Yaffo Street. We were on the bus just as it started to get dark, and I entertained Avtalyon by telling him to watch the lights "pop on." The streetlights are on light sensors so they go on when it gets dark and don't necessarily all go on at once, so it's fun, if you are three, to see this happen. Now Iyyar has associated lights popping on with night, and last week, at about 3 am, while I was working, he suddenly burst out of bed. I saw him walk past my door and came out to see what he was doing. He looked at me with those huge bottomless dark eyes of his and said, with a lot of expressive hand gestures and talking very fast,

"Imma I just needa look out the windows to see if the lights are on outside and if it's night."

"Okay, go ahead."

Two minutes later, with even more expressive hand-waving:

"Yes they are so it's definitely the night. Also! The moon! Kay Imma?"

"'Kay. Can you go back to bed now?"

Vigorous nodding. "Yeah."

Thirty seconds later:

"Imma, c'you tuck me in please?"

I could. And did. Of course.

4. Barak is really seriously reading now. Last night I started reading Charlotte's Web to the boys, after I put Marika to bed. I got up to chapter four before bedtime. Barak asked if he could take it to bed with him and I said yes. He was still busy reading when I wanted to go to sleep so I said he could keep reading, but please to go to sleep when he felt tired.

Ha.

Next morning, he was in bed with Iyyar, and inspection of the brand-new paperback made me very suspicious that he had read the entire thing. Suspicion was strengthened when he didn't wake up till 10 am, and then only because his brothers were in the room being loud.

"Barak, did you read the whole book last night?"

"No. I didn't read the last chapter."

"How far did you read? What happened."

"Charlotte died." Pause. "I was crying and so I went to bed."

Oy!

"Did you read the last page?"

"Yeah. All her children and grandchildren were Wilbur's friends after that. But Charlotte died."

"Why don't you read the last chapter now?"

"Okay."

He went off and read it.

He's seven and a half and he read almost all of Charlotte's Web in an evening. I'm impressed.

5. Hebrew reading, however, doesn't seem to be going as well. He's got 5 hours a week of tutoring, and his teacher is not terribly positive. She says things like, "He's a sweet boy who wants to learn" and "He needs a lot of help." Which, unfortunately, I can't really give him, because a lot of his homework is over my head. Anything that's regular second-grade--math, reading, workbook stuff--I can do. But half his day is religious studies, and do you know what he gets for Chumash (Bible) homework? A page with the pasuk (verse), name and number, and a list of eight or ten questions to be answered in full sentences. So he's supposed to look it up, read it, and answer them all. He can't do it and I can't either. So what happens is he goes up to the bais medrash with Mr. Bigfoot for night seder and usually they manage to get through half of it, but it's really hard. I need to get Barak into reading in Hebrew the way he's into reading in English, but don't know how. Eitan the Great is really not available enough; comic books are good but he mostly just looks at the picture. I think he'll get there eventually, but in the meantime don't want him falling even further behind.

6. Iyyar. Iyyar is... well.

Iyyar is doing much better than he was doing six months ago. That's where I should start. He is behaving better, he likes school, he tells me he loves his gan. The episodes of "nobody home" are fewer, but they are still there; the listening is there more often than not, but "not" is still pretty often. I talked to his teacher yesterday and she agreed with my feeling that he is not going to be able to deal with a regular first-grade classroom. She doesn't know what the problem is any more than I do, but we both feel it's a combination of attention and emotional issues that feed off each other. We, meaning Mr. Bigfoot and I, had our first meeting with the hitpaychut ha'yeled (child development) psychologist last week; the second appointment, with me and Iyyar, is next Wednesday, as in a week and a half from now. The psychologist was sure just from what we had told her that he would need OT but told us it could takes weeks to months to get it started; I told this to his ganenet on Friday and she had the same reaction I did. "No! No! Not okay! He needs help NOW." Which I agree with but I don't know how we can hurry anything along. I'm going to call them this week and ask the psychologist to call the ganenet, which she had already said she would do (but hasn't done yet). I'm not sure she'll do it, but at least I can get her full name and phone number for the ganenet to call her.

The ganenet (whose name is Michal--I might as well give her a name at this point) was very upbeat and said "You know, by Purim he could be a different kid, you never know..." but was saying the same things I was--I just don't know what's going on with him, I don't know what the problem is and I don't know how to help. She said, and this was really good to hear, that he is OK with the other kids. It's just with adults that he gets this deer-in-the-headlights look. And I really do think that a lot of that was from last year, from feeling that he was in trouble or doing something wrong all the time, and developing these really problematic coping mechanisms--the making faces, the dancing around and yelling, the impulsive behavior, the throwing things. He does it less now but he still does it, even at home. And it takes so little to set him off, especially if he's tired or stressed to begin with. It's almost like flipping a switch. You can see it happening--the switch from "Iyyar is here" to "nobody is home." And once it happens, it's almost impossible to talk to him.

So there is a lot to be done here, and it's kind of frustrating that it is all happening so slowly when he needs help NOW. Also, not knowing what kind of an environment he will need next year throws a major monkey wrench into our attempts at planning. If he needs a "kita katana," which is what seems the most likely, then that really limits the number of places we can go--although the community that was on the top of our list to begin with does have one, which could be really perfect if it works out. I'm going out there next week to visit and talk with the principal, who I'm told has excellent English so that will be a big help.

In the meantime, he is in a good place. Michal is amazing. She likes him a lot and she wants to help; she has a ton of patience and she communicates with me. Whenever Mr. Bigfoot or I pick him up, we at least make eye contact with a "How did today go?" Usually she indicates that it was a good day, and if not, she'll stop and give details. But he can have several good days and then a day that is Not Good at All, and it takes so, so little to set him off and it is so, so hard to bring him back out. I told Michal on Friday what I'm most worried about--that he'd get into a regular class with a regular teacher like Barak had last year, act up somehow, and get publicly told off in the way that was standard in Barak's class--for example, being made to sit in the corner. That, I told Michal, would just be the end for Iyyar, and she agreed and said exactly what I was going to say next, "He'd never learn again in that room." Right.

I just want to fix things for him. I know it's not that easy. I just wish I had some better idea of what to do.

7. OK, can't end on that note. So how about a picture? Of some yarn? Because I now have... a wheel!

Idle curiosity

So, any readers who have had babies in Israel and want to tell me where they gave birth and what their experience was like?

See, here's the thing. My sister-in-law just had a baby (mazal tov!) last week. I went out to visit her a few times before she was discharged from Shaarei Tzedek. And the postpartum nurses? They were MEAN. Not just gruff or typical Israeli, but actually mean.

See, here's the other thing. If you haven't picked up on this, I have a really, really thin skin. It is very easy to hurt my feelings. It is very easy to make me feel bad. Call it a personality flaw or moral weakness or whatever you want, but I don't think I can change it at this point. And when I am about to have a baby, or am in the process of having a baby, or have just had a baby, I absolutely totally cannot deal with anyone being mean to me. At all.

So there's Hadassa. And there's the natural birthing center at Hadassa, which is pretty pricy. There are doulas. But there is no getting past that in Israel, the person who will deliver your baby is almost certainly going to be someone you have never ever seen before. And will absolutely positively not be the lovely midwives I love and trust who delivered my last 3 kids.

Anyone have any experience to share?

Just, you know, wondering. Idle curiosity. Of course.

Positive

Hey, guess what? This blog post is going to be entirely 100% positive and optimistic! (she says, determinedly).

I feel it's time.

1. School starts again tomorrow! Yay! Everyone is ready. Avtalyon and Iyyar have been asking when they are going back to gan. Every morning for at least the last week, Avtalyon has gotten up in the morning and immediately asked me, "Right we don't have gan today?" in a manner of resignation. Iyyar out-and-out said he wanted to go back to gan. And Marika, for the last few days, has been pulling her backpack off its hook, bringing it to me to put on her shoulders, and banging on the door yelling, "Dowdide! Dowdide!"

She's subtle, that one.

2. The kids are being really sweet lately. Not much fighting at all over break, and a lot of really nice helpful behavior. A couple of times I got them involved in all-family laundryfests; I sat on the couch folding and directing and it all got put away faster than it would have done if I'd done it myself. Friday everyone helped clean up for Shabbos (except for Marika, whose contribution was not getting in the way too terribly much). Barak is now old enough to be seriously helpful. He knows where things go, he knows (more or less) how to fold things, he enjoys helping.

3. My sister-in-law had a baby girl! She is gorgeous and perfect and so sweet. And she was born in the hospital that is walking distance to us (if you're feeling energetic--I admit I took the bus). I went out and visited her a couple of times and then went over to help her get home, so she wouldn't have to shlep her stuff downstairs/put in a carseat by herself. It was really nice to be able to do this, and even though she got discharged later than planned on an erev chag, it all worked out. I took her home by cab, went to the store with her daughter to get diapers (she got sent home with 4), and then hopped into the bus that was right there to go to the shuk. It was the fastest through trip imaginable: I hadn't had time to do much cooking so I just blew through there buying fruit, salad fixings, yerushalmi kugel (yum!), olives and so on. On the way out the exit was crowded so I turned right to go out through the open part of the shuk, passing, on the way, one of the candy stalls, where I saw--are you sitting down--Cadbury Dairy Milk with Caramel.

Bliss!

I only bought one, which was good because it disappeared pretty quickly. I did have help. But not too much. :)

4. One of the really nice things about living here is how much freedom I can give the kids to do things on their own. Within the campus for all three boys, and even outside it, to a certain degree, for Barak. On Wednesday morning as I was heading out to the hospital, my husband mentioned that he didn't have any drinks. He really likes those kind of gross (to me) Spring/Prigat drinks, the kind that are 5% juice and 95% sugar water with coloring. I can't stand them and won't go near them, but for him it's just not Shabbos/yom tov without a liter and a half of colored sugar water. The timing was going to be awkward: I was heading out at quarter to eleven, I'd spent the morning at home with the kids frantically cooking, and I was going to get home late. Mr. Bigfoot wasn't into the idea of taking all four of them to the store (understandable).

But! We had a helper! I got Barak to grab an empty backpack and we went down to the makolet (minimarket), which is right across from the bus stop, together; we got Abba his drink and we got challah for the chag and I got Twizzlers for the kids, because I'd promised them candy for the holiday (I NEVER buy candy ordinarily, with the occasional exception of chocolate, so this was a Big Deal). I put it in Barak's bag, saw him safely across the street, and waved goodbye; he walked home by himself. Because here, he CAN.

5. Avtalyon is being insanely cute lately. The facial expressions alone crack me up. Mr. Bigfoot took all the kids up to shul for the Simchat Torah festivities. Forty minutes later, Avtalyon was deposited home by Barak. "Avtalyon, why did you come back?"

With much regretful facial squinching, "I hadda come home. It was too much running around."

"Was everyone running around?"

Shrug shrug shrug. "The girls were not running around. They were just sitting in some chairs."

I guess you hadda be there. Trust me. It was very cute. He is also completely into Batman these days. Grandma E. sent three pieces of Batman fabric, conveniently cut and serged into cape size. Avtalyon has appropriated all three: one as bottom sheet, one as top sheet, one as pillow cover. He is especially pleased with the arrangement when he can get into bed in a Batman shirt and Batman underwear. "I gotta FREE Batmans!" Captain America and Iron Man are also big these days. If you ask him, he will tell you that they are friends.

6. The office is currently not a trashed wreck. I have been really vigilant about making the kids clean it up. Also, at Rosh Hashana they got back all the Playmobil/Lego that got "tooken away" over the course of the year when it was left out on the floor overnight. I impressed on them that next Rosh Hashana is a VERY LONG WAY AWAY and how sad would it be to lose your Clone Troopers or whatever they are for FIFTY-TWO WEEKS? Very sad, they agreed. I see no Lego at all on the floor right now.

7. The lice were gross but seem to have been dealt with. Also, perk of lice: ordinarily one does not do laundry during the intermediate days of Succot. However, due to lice we got a pass on this one, and merrily washed everything in the house on hot multiple times. Result: no mountain of laundry to deal with post-chag. As Avtalyon would say: yay.

8. Marika is as always immensely entertaining. She's also getting way more articulate. "Thank you," which until yesterday was "Di di Imma!" is suddenly, "Tityou Imma!" Or "Tityou Barak!" or "Tityou Abba!" as appropriate. The other day she said thank you to Mr. Bigfoot and said "Tityou Imma!" by mistake. Then she corrected herself. :)

9. Mr. Bigfoot is working now. He gives one shiur at a local yeshiva high school with an Anglo program; he is also doing a significant amount of tutoring and is up to about 9 hours a week. He's also been hired to do some art work, which is a nice change. It's not a lot of money, but hopefully it will all lead to something more; in the meantime, he's enjoying it and it's something.

10. We bought a couch cover from a departing family last spring, along with an old armchair and a cover for it. This has made the living room much more cozy. There is enough room for everyone to sit, if squishily; the couch is a lot more comfortable now than it was. It's surprisingly nice for napping purposes. :)

11. And! Last but certainly not least: Deb is coming and she is BRINGING MY WHEEL! It was mailed by the person I bought it from on Friday and should be there by next Thursday. Deb will be here the Thursday after that, so if all goes well, in less than two short weeks I will again have a spinning wheel in residence. And that, of course, will fix everything.

Blah

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.

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.

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.