One Tired Ema

Seriously.

It was so beautiful earlier in the week. Whole afternoons were consumed by the park and its rather icky sandbox, followed up by a good scrubbing, a hearty dinner, and 12 hours of sleep. (Not me, of course. Miss M.)

But now it’s Friday. Second Friday in a row that brings a cold, nasty rain and a grey pall over everything. And two hours less of school.

Did I mention that my freelance assignment came in? I now have 60 minutes to complete something appallingly boring that’s an exercise in frustration to boot. Because after 12:30, I’m going to have some kids to entertain for many, many hours. Indoors. Eep.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard AM crying a particular cry. It means that Miss M is bothering him in some way. Because we were literally about to leave the apartment, I knew they were waiting at the door, so I guessed there was some physical altercation–along the lines of her pushing him down and essentially sitting on him. This makes him unhappy. I proceeded to screw up, as usual, and gave her an earful of negative attention.

But this morning, after his breakfast, he marched into her room, babbling, and climbed into her bed, which woke her. I peeked in and saw them snuggled together under her comforter, and she was reciting Curious George and the Firefighters to him. I don’t want to ruin it–I am not even going to remind her to pee. (Although I hope she gets out of bed if she has to go!)

I suppose it’s normal to see the two sides of sibling relationships, even at this age. Right? (Please say yes, because an hour later she was stepping on his hand.)

Is it just me?

I tried to find cute/funny cards for my mom and stepmom and found either schmaltz or sentiments that struck me as a little mean-spirited, to be honest. So I didn’t buy them, instead making phone calls and sending cute photos of the grandkids over email.

Anyway, I hope it was a lovely day for new mommies, newly christened moms, new grandmoms, moms-to-be, and everyone else who was celebrating with loved ones.

Special hugs and kisses to my (sadly blogless) friend 3daughters, who, as of yesterday, will have to change her name to 4daughters!

And I am not talking about the incessant whys. Things like “Why do I have a purple cup? Why is this cup purple? Why is that a toilet?”

At the airport on Sunday I watched over the kids as they watched a DVD; Taxman went to El Al ticketing to see if there were any alternatives to waiting around for 7 hours. At one point Miss M exclaimed, “My foot is cold!” This is a Miss M-ism, meaning that her foot is asleep. She used to get hysterical when this happened, but thankfully these days she seems to be taking it much better.

Anyway, a few minutes later, she got up and started shimmying around. “What are you doing?” I queried.

“I’m walking around,” she explained. “I have needles and threads.” *

* This is definitely a keeper. I have a feeling we’re going to be using this phrase when she’s 20.

The kids seems to be stuck on Atlantic time (Miss M sleeping 7-5:30 instead of 8ish to 7ish; AM sitting up at 5:30 this morning and signing for bread), so I may never be able to stay up until 10pm ever again. So instead of my thoughts on our trip, you get random stuff.

1. Should I get a gift for my speech therapy grad student? Last clinic session is Monday, and it’s not like she’s getting paid. I would like to, because I think it would nice. She and AM have a real rapport; I’m going to miss watching them. Anyway, assuming I do, what to I get? She’s single, mid-20s. I have no idea of her interests, since we only talk about AM. Help!

2. Speaking of speech therapy, AM had a great session on Monday. Came out with all kinds of things I did not know he knew (something akin to “ribbit” for a frog sound and “ruff” for a dog sound and “quack” for a duck sound). Maybe we’ll hear actual words soon.

3. Sprouty somehow survived two weeks without watering–I had left him for dead, really–and has the beginnings of another bean. He is now The Lima Who Would Not Die.

4. My book list for March-April

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger *

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Last Life by Claire Messud

The Midwife’s Tale by Gretchen Moran Laskas *

I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile

Plainsong by Kent Haruf *

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

* = book club selection

All of this at the expense of The New Yorker, but I just can’t give up my subscription because my fantasy is to plop myself down at a coffeehouse one rainy Sunday and read the growing pile of them in one go.

5. I have a freelance assignment (supposedly) coming. When it gets here I will fail to have any sort of outside life whatsoever. So it’s not you (or your blogs), it’s definitely me.

First glimpse of Israel.

Looking for turtles at Nachal Alexander. Deliberately defying instructions not to climb on the fence.

Watching horses from afar at Kfar Roeh.

Moonrise over Jordan. Thankfully only I was awake to see this.

Cousins and wallaby at Gan Garoo, an Australian-themed zoo.

AM feeding grey kangaroos. His first lesson in how to win friends and influence people others. (He also tried to hug and kiss one of them.)

Miss M figured out how to get the kangaroo feed for free. Then had her first experience as an enabler.

My personal inspiration. (They sleep a LOT.)

Our camera was on the fritz for part of the trip, so none of our pictures from the beach or from Gan Ha-shlosha (natural swimming pools) came out. Suffice to say the kids loved the water and had to be dragged out, teeth chattering.

It’s been a long time since I experienced such physical rage, so thank you for that.

It is a comfort to know that I have it in me to come to the defense of my mothering skills with shaking anger, to raise my voice in a plane full of sleeping people and scream “How dare you!?” when you tell me that my son’s tears of overtiredness and cranky desire for a bed when sleepy (he is his mother’s child) are suffering on the scale of which you have never seen. Did you actually think I was doing nothing except waiting for your precious sleep to be disturbed? That I hadn’t offered him every kind of snack we had, that I hadn’t nursed and rocked and offered every toy, tried every sitting and lying position possible, but just waited for his cries to escalate to such a level that I wanted to knock back a White Russian and wait for death?

Of course, maybe you didn’t know that it’s difficult to keep a two-year-old amused and comfortable and confined on an 11-hour flight, especially when followed by a seven-hour delay.* Or that there’s something that you are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of in this situation–EARPLUGS. And I hope the seatbelt doesn’t get twisted around your neck when you lie down across three seats and sleep for two-thirds of the flight across the Atlantic.

The trip was really fun, although exhausting. More details once I recover (from the flight and the mounds of dirty laundry).

* Thankfully in the airport, not on the tarmac. And with meal vouchers good for four kosher restaurants to boot.

My county apparently thinks (or the computer controlling such things thinks) that it’s peachy to call me and Taxman on the same day for jury duty. When our trusty grandparental babysitters are out of the country.

Nuh-uh. Can you say “postponement”? Figures this didn’t happen before we had kids, when it would have been nice to be able to hang with a pal while-u-wait.

Am off to the land of dialup, followed by the 3 day yom tov, followed by The!Plane!Flight! and 12 days abroad. Will be out of touch. See you in May! Happy Matzah (balls in my soup)!

Cake

Presents

Sweet dreams with a fuzzy friend

It hasn’t always been easy, but now he makes me laugh every day. That’s a pretty big gift.