On AM’s potential speech therapy: Visit from the case worker was a big to-do about nothing. It was basically signing his life away. Ok, not really, just agreeing that All the Important Professionals can share information about him. The case worker looked like she was about 18,* but she’s been calling every couple of days with updates as events warrant, so I can’t complain. Although she seemed pretty flustered when I told him that we don’t call him “J” (his legal name, but the one that we use for things like health insurance, medical records, etc.) but rather a-cute-Hebrew-nickname-for-AM. I had to repeat myself twice. But she might have been making sure that we did not need to redo all the paperwork registering him under “J TiredFamily.” Why is the idea of a nickname so hard to understand? No idea. To be honest, though, I thought that the case worker was going to have some minimal evaluation of him, in which case it would have been important to know that he does not respond to the name “J”–this is why I brought it up in the first place.

On nightweaning: Still a dumbass. But the beginning of the end is December 21st. I mean it.

On hats: No progress. I went hat shopping in upscale-New-Jersey-hotbed-of-religious-Jews and could not bring myself to spend $130 on a hat. And that was cheap. I tried on a brown felt (felt! not, like, mink or something) for $351. I kid you not. Maybe Brooklyn is cheaper, but going there requires a great deal of planning. Maybe berets are truly the way to go, so we can continue to, you know, eat.

On division of labor: As I was driving, singing along to Laurie Berkner, a voice piped up from the back, “Ema, stop singing! That’s Laurie’s job!” Perhaps LB would like to trade…just for a little while.

On excellent big brother potential: When our nephew (who is almost four and a half) met his little sister, he kept remarking about how little she is. But then he said he’d love her even when she gets big. Seriously, is that not the cutest?

* She also didn’t seem to know all that much about babies. When I said that I was concerned about AM’s drooling, given his age, I also said, “But he doesn’t have all his teeth yet, so who knows.” And she looked kind of confused.