Big brother wisdom

Mordechai to Sari: So which seat are you in?

Sari: I'm the second to the last seat in the second row.

Mordechai: Good. If you're sitting in the back, that means you're good.

First Grade blues

Sari's reaction to her first day of First Grade:

"In first grade there's no standing up. You have to sit all day."

Ugh. School can be such boring torture.

Day 2: "We have to write every day!"

Where's the PAUSE button?!

Do you ever get the urge to put time on pause so you could get through a mountain of "to-dos" and, then, hit play when you're all caught up and ready for the world to keep turning? Ah, well. Maybe it's just me ;)

No one likes the pushy salesman.

Makes sense. Just be yourself - a good Jew. Torah sells itself.

Breaking news!

Dovid, after a grueling 7 hour oral exam, has passed and gotten his smicha. We're very proud to have a bona fide rabbi in the family!


These were given to me in lieu of a Yerushalayim shel zahav (Jerusalem of gold). Cheapo ;)

Ready or not....

...here it comes. The truck is due Wednesday or Thursday. I've been packing continually and it's just starting to look like I've made a dent. You can't imagine the amount of stuff we have managed to accumulate in this small 2-bedroom apartment! The playroom and living room/dining room have been one and the same for five years now. It'll certainly be a nice change to live in a house with a playroom that has a door that can be closed in case of need. Perhaps I'll even be able to successfully establish a no jumping or eating on the couch rule! And we'll even have a lawn and our very own palm tree. Check it out:



I am so serious when I say anyone is welcome to crash at our house. Think about it: free stay on Palm Beach island - home of the rich and famous, just one block from the beach in one direction and a block from the intracoastal waterway in the other. Just look up the Mays in Palm Beach.

Procrastination: trial

My moving truck is coming in a week and a half. I've been blog-browsing for over an hour. Procrastinating? Oh yeah. Guilty as charged - big time.

Kvelling

Mordechai (who's having trouble falling asleep so I let him come out to read) just handed me a little gift. It's a piece of paper folded first accordion-style and then folded in three. On the outside are printed the words USA MAP. When unfolded, you see a drawing of the U.S. with many (mostly rectangular) divisions indicating states. Texas and Florida are fairly true to shape. Actually, on second glance, Florida is very well drawn. He was beaming as he watched me unfold it and made sure to point out, "I even folded it like a real map!"

Calendar Calculations

It was a week or so after Shavuos and the kids and I were out when I met a friend who had recently had a baby. As I congratulated her, I asked her how old the baby was. She answered that she was just about seven weeks old. Barely a few seconds passed and Mordechai piped up, "Was she born on Pesach?"

So many boys, so little time

Sari is blessed with many eligible bachelors who are vying for her hand in marriage. The two front-runners at the moment are Yisrael and Ben. In truth, Ben, who is a good friend of Sari's, was not a consideration until recently when the match was suggested by Mordechai. Sari immediately dismissed the idea saying, "Oh, I can't marry him because he's younger than me." Mordechai pointed out that their aunt is a few months older than their uncle, her husband. Sari was skeptical at first and asked me for corroboration. When I informed her that, indeed, it was okay to marry someone a bit younger than her, her face brightened perceptibly and she started dancing around the house singing, "I'm going to marry Be-en! I'm going to marry Be-en!"

Some "alone time" for Mom and Dad

Mordechai and Sari wanted to go to Meema (their grandmom) for Shabbat. Discussing it, I cried out in mock horror, "Who's going to stay with us?"

Sari answered matter-of-factly, "Mommy will stay with Daddy and Daddy will stay with Mommy." Mordechai chimed in, "You'll get to spend time with each other."

Isn't that sweet?

Wrong foot

Ada (2 1/2) is all too familiar with the experience of trying to put her shoe on the wrong foot. She usually figures it out when she realizes she is having way too much trouble than would normally be expected from a harmless velcro shoe. The other day she was trying to put on her sock by herself and the sock just didn't seem to want to cooperate. She turned to me in frustration and asked, "It's the wrong foot?"

Ugh. No words.

As Seraphic Secret suggests, you must see this: an adorable play put on by adorable children in Gaza.

Brilliant.

You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back.

--William D. Tammeus

Ada-isms

Ada's into the stage where she loves to reminisce as in, "'Member when we went on the train and we went 'round and 'round and I had a buckle...?"

"Dreh-fis" = breakfast in Adaspeak.

p.s. I packed my first box of dishes! This move is really going to happen.

p.p.s. Anyone want to donate a high riser or twin beds to the Cuties?

p.p.p.s. I was just remembering how we used to think it was the epitome of cleverness to add numerous post scripts to letters. (How 'bout the kids that did it wrong by writing p.s.s.s.?)

Sibling dynamics

It's so not fair for Sari. She's at an age when hearing "I won't be your friend if you won't let me have your (insert toy/candy/article of interest)" from Mordechai leaves her with no be'chira (choice). Meanwhile, she could say the same thing and Mordechai responds with a shrug and a smirk. It irks me so. And I hate when Mordechai devises a "trade" agreement to swindle her out of her property. I've instituted a no-trades-allowed-without-maternal-approval rule which also includes an all-trades-can-be-reversed-if-regretted clause. Is that silly of me? I'm just trying to level the playing field.

Speaking of little parenting questions, let me run this one by you. Say, for example, Mordechai wants to lie down in Daddy's bed. If he gets permission, then everyone wants to lie in Daddy's bed. (Yes, this does get ridiculously out of hand too many a time. I told Dovid this was going to happen years ago.) So sometimes he asks if he can go to Dad's bed after the girls fall asleep. Since this is really not a problem for Dad, it seems like the perfect solution. Obviously, though, there is that element of deceit. So, good or no good? Or how 'bout the simple, "You can have another cookie but don't let Ada see it."? (Ack! What is up with that punctuation? I'll research it some other time when I get a round tuit.)

Just a sampling

Mordechai's rebbe talks the yeshiva talk with the kids which they love. They feel like they're in really serious shiur. Mordechai tries to insert these "learning" phrases into his vocabulary whenever appropriate and it's adorable. At one se'udah on Shavuot, we had the whole Queens branch of the May Fam over. There was some lively conversation going on and I was agreeing with my bro-in-law, Yoni, about something or other, and said, "That's exactly what I always say!" Mordechai made a mock show of being very impressed and said, "Ooooh. Yoni was m'chaven to Mommy!"

For the last se'udah we ate out (after three meals hosting numerous guests, baruch Hashem). After the meal, the kids were all enjoying way too much candy while I was lounging in the other room flipping through books. I called out to the kids that that was enough junk food for the day. Just a few minutes later, Dovid found Sari and her friend Shayna, sitting hidden away at the bottom of the backyard stairs. He asked her why she was hiding there and she replied with a twinkle in her eye and her irrepressible smile, "I'm hiding from Mommy because I got another taffy!"

Ada has a wonderful method of self praise. As she's cleaning up a game, she sings, "I like the way Ada's cleaning..." Today she requested some participation from me. She turned to me and said, "You say 'Nice job Ada'."

Who is rich?

The conversations during carpool are so amusing - when the kids are not arguing at the top of their lungs, that is. A snippet of today's discussion:

Mordechai: My father is so rich. He's probably the richest in the class!

Friend: Oh yeah? How much money does he have? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

M: I don't know exactly but I know it's a lot.

F: My father is so rich. I know because every week, when he pays the babysitter, he gives her a hundred dollars.

M: Yeah. Well my father pays my babysitter two hundred and fifty dollars!

Well that settles it then, doesn't it?

Oh, brother!

Mordechai was wondering about Mothers' Day and about how the whole thing got started. I explained to him the whole Hallmark thing. He then asked, "Why don't they have Brothers' Day?"

"Well, um, I don't really know," I replied.

Mordechai shrugged and said, "It doesn't matter anyway because one day I'll be a father."

UPDATE: I was telling the story over to Dovid when Sari piped up to say, quite matter-of-factly, "On Mothers' Day all the non-Jewish fathers take the mothers to a fancy restaurant."

Got that Dovid?

Israel warms our hearts