Thursday, May 24, 2012

Translation please

I am usually pretty good at inferring what my little ones need, either by way of inference (pointing grunting smiling pulling, etc) or by osmosis - I just KNOW what they want....
But can someone please tell me what Ben's fascination with the word LIGHT is? And he points to the lights whether they are on or off or he wants to flip the switch or just to remind you that there are lights and who knows why else. Also he is fascinated with the word HOT. Can be used in the correct context as to the mug of coffee or the oven door, or when something once was hot when it came directly out of the oven, but he has yet to realize that it can cool down - I guess upon reflection that last one is a highly scientific concept to master, so I'll give him some credit for that I suppose.
And then there is Daniel's love for the Hebrew word Assur which literally means forbidden but can also mean dangerous. Once I caught him pulling on the light cord and reprimanded him with chesmal! which means electricity-implying that he could get a shock (which he did, once, I think - so it clearly made an impression) This was the word we used often at home to warn them away from things. So now he repeatedly points to the electrical outlets and shakes his finger and declares assur.  Why does he choose one word over the other and how did he get the cute finger wag to go along with it unless his beloved Ms Sari has told him that repeatedly in Hebrew at gan.
And why do my angels insist on poking their fingers into your eyes to identify them and into your mouth and ears and whatever. Do I poke my fingers in their eyes or do I just point to them? I don't think so - OK - so I get the nose thing, I do BEEP and Bonk their noses all the time and they have likely identified their nose as BEEP (but luckily not really, they do know it is a nose)

Ben continues to have his own language. Baby Dora was "Abey" today and Aya and Ama and Ando still stand as he identifies Yael, Mamma, and brotherYoni. Daniel is a little better with Mamma, Ayel, and Loni. Daniel will take a remote control and hold it to his ear and proclaim Hallo - just like an Israeli and Ben calls the remote Allat, because we call it a shalat in our house. I wonder what those munchkins call each other? I have yet to decipher that despite repeated attempts.

UPDATE:
I also realized that either I have a hearing problem, or my oldest mumbles. I had to ask him 3 times to moved his arm so I could see his mouth moving so I could understand what he was trying to tell me, That was of course at 9 o'clock at night (after his bedtime, when he is tired anyway) and he was facing the wall with his back to me. But on the other hand, if the TV is too loud it is also a problem for me - stimulation overload. Is that a real thing, cause I get it at large gatherings too.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Kindergarten

So we made the big kindergarten decision regarding our girlie. You know that these decisions are monumental at the time and weigh heavily on your heart as you ponder all the pros and cons of what essentially boils down to a prelude to the 12 or more years of school that your child will endure. Of course in all our choosiness, I know in the depths of our depths that it is really JUST kindergarten and she won't be scarred for life if we made a good or a bad decision. Yael, sadly, will not be finishing her tenure at her current school and will be missing the final year with the graduation ceremony and all that entails. However, she is Yael and the class we are moving her to has an experienced teacher who can deal with many levels of school preparedness and all the Yaelness that is our strong-willed girlie. She has repeatedly complained throughout the year that she is tired of her school (she's been there since she was 2 and I really thought THIS was her final year there and not that she had yet another one to go because of her late birthday) She is already reading nicely and progressing on her math skills as well. It is really amazing the differences between boys and girls, and first and second children, and the depth of knowledge we have gained over the years.

[As an aside, I learned another thing about Jonathan's hospital stay just this week - at one point after it was pretty much all over, I had a case worker call and check on things. Apparently the case workers are reserved for more serious cases, not just your average hospital stay....so glad to have been cloaked in innocence about seriousness of the whole thing at the time]

So I am crossing my fingers that the Kindergarten teachers that are in place at the prospective school will continue in their tenure there. That way we will have made an educated choice about moving her to a situation where I feel she will benefit the most. I am just not convinced that another year of making felt watches and painting rainbows is the best place to be for her. She is excited to move along and more than ready for the transition I think. I will miss the pictures I get weekly from her teacher as I am convinced in my heart that she is one of the teacher's pets [don't know how she did it, but she wiggled her way into their hearts almost as much as mine, they are always singing her praises]

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The C word

Hearing about someone's cancer that has returned with a vengeance and the proposed course of treatment is a lot different when it is not your own immediate family member, even if that person is so close that she might as well be. And I hate that I was so detached in my emotions when I heard the rundown. It was not shocking since we knew she was having serious problems and the initial symptoms have been so awful that the patient required an inpatient hospitalization for one of the procedures to handle those issues [more of a band-aid really for the real problem than an actual solution].
I really want to hear my sister in law's in-depth take on the situation, but I don't want that to be the only thing we discuss at length on our upcoming family trip to visit them - so I'm gonna have to carve out the time to hear it all with my mom, and out of earshot of big eared children who would need to have a million and one questions answered before they could comprehend the seriousness of it all. At this stage, the doctors are optimistic with several variations of new therapies they could try since the last round of chemo did not go so well on this person's nervous system, however, I kinda get the feeling (without having met with the dr or the patient all that recently) that it is only a matter of time before they exhaust their various options and I wonder if the patient will be strong enough to endure. In all truths, I know that we all eventually wear out this body that we are given, I just hope that she has enough courage to muster the strength to go throught the treatment and all it entails. I know that her yet unborn grandchild might be a good motivator as well as the fact that her family and her children and grandchildren still need her daily. Now in writing this piece I realize what a(nother) cancer diagnosis can do to a family, even though my mother went through hers not so long ago. Mothers truly are the glue that hold a family together. Even when their children are grown and living independently. Daughters depend on mothers and that is just the way it should be.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Favorite Faces

These are some of my favorite faces that I see daily, and they're not always smiling, or doing exactly what you would want or expect them to do. But that's the best part.






Monday, May 14, 2012

Things that make you go hmmm

So at the Lag B'Omer party that was held outdoors at the closest shul to our location with a full on loud DJ and 2 or 3 hair cuttings and an amazing BBQ (amazing because when do I ever get to eat kosher steak cooked outside by someone else???)
The party was ok, tons of Israelis, boisterous and noisy, just the way they like it...
So Yael is coaxing her little brother who is fearless to play on the wooden play-scape (which had undergone some obvious updating by the color of some of the newer boards (yeah safety)
This is before the party is even really in full swing, most of the men folk have been bidden by the Rabbi in charge (there were a multitude of rabbis on the premises) for mincha services.
So Benjamin is trudging up the bridge to get to the slide (as he passes the littler slide) that is obviously made for bigger kids with Yael encouraging him from behind. Before he found out he could get bounced along in the bouncy houses on site for the occasion. As he is going up, he trips on his shoe and falls on the wooden slats - on his face. And he gets a bloody nose for his efforts. Again, thanks to safety, I cannot reach into the wooden bridge thing to get my shocked but not yet weeping child because the wooden slats are placed just far enough apart that I can't get my hands in there. Thankfully, there were a few other children playing around the area, but none on the slide he was headed towards, so I sprang into action (after what seemed like an eternity of trying to coax him toward me) and climbed up the slide in 2 steps and scooped up my now bloodied and crying child (I think he was crying cause he tasted the blood more than anything). What made me go hmmm in this situation is that I had to carry my bloodied child down a hallway of classrooms and directly in front of the sanctuary to get to the ladies room to clean him up. It is really a matter of how you perceive things. Since I had swooped in and scooped him up so quickly and because I had my hand in front of his face so as to shield him a bit from onlookers, he was no longer crying or screaming. I was comforting him, but wasn't really alarmed and he was not really in pain. But I still had quite a few onlookers who didn't offer to help. That is what made me curious. Normally, someone would have gotten a cup of water ice or SOMETHING. Maybe because we were both so calm? I hurried along, but was not running, calming him but not freaking out myself.
Or maybe it was just because it was a bloody nose that obviously did not require stitches or what have you. I expected people to fawn over him to make sure he was ok. Nothing. Sure the place was pretty devoid of menfolk, and the party hadn't really begun yet, but there were plenty of people around. And it is just now that I am mulling it over, since it didn't impact his evening or mine more that the initial crying and cleanup in the ladies room, where I stuffed an extra few paper towels in my pocket in case the bleeding occurred later in the evening (which it didn't)

The other thing that made me go hmm was one of the other rabbis who is rather youngish, but has been here for a good 6 years or so with his family. He asked me how Benjamin's (he meant Jonathan's) lungs were. It reminded me that he visited us in the hospital when he was new to town and brought coloring books and bubbles (which we and he didn't know were verboten at the hospital at the time-a fall risk I am sure) And it reminded me too that I had been pregnant with Yael when Jonathan went through all of that. How our lives have changed. I can't even imaging having to go through something like that (G-d forbid) with one of my kids again at this stage of my life. He was young, we were younger than we are now (thank G-d) and it all turned out like it should; It amazes me to think of all that we went through. I did not really process it then (just in the 2nd week when I already "knew" we were going to have to have surgery -mother's instinct, psychic intuition, whatever- waiting that extra week and a half for the doctors to try and exhaust all their options was excruciating. And at that point, we didn't have or know about Skype so the calls from Israel were frantic and I couldn't even translate what the drs were saying for Eran who was in the room, much less for his frantic mother and father.
Just makes me realize how far we've come, and how much I really need therapy, if that's a part of our past that I can brush over so easily. Remember Brenda, most children don't need lung surgery for complications of pneumonia before their 2nd birthday. And Captain Oblivious, most kids don't spend the first year of their life throwing up nightly. That is not normal. Ignorance really is bliss...and pregnant-brain-fogged, first-time mommies can only deal with so much.