Welcome Baby Yoda!

He's almost a month old, so I'd better get a move-on and introduce you to our latest model, Baby Yoda (BY)! Husbinator bestowed the nickname upon him for reasons made obvious by the below nearly-actual photo of our child:

I gave birth in the Rehovot hospital, which was incredibly convenient. Husbinator could drive ten minutes to the hospital, I read to the kids and said shema for them, and then he drove them ten minutes back home. Totally awesome.

Thank G-d, the existing models were and continue to be quite pleased with the newest edition. BSM is as happy as a normal, well-adjusted first-grader should be: says he likes the baby, wants to hold him occasionally, offers BY a pacifier when he cries, gets excited when he smiles. Very sweet. FF, on the other hand, is over the moon and totally obsessed. Which is awesome. Constantly wants to hold BY, gets really distressed when he cries, tells everyone he sees that this is our baby, and in the past few days even figured out how to include BY in his games (namely, by playing a question game and answering for BY where appropriate).

I am also incredibly pleased that we got a birth certificate for BY! Since Piano Toes is getting married in January (mazel tov!), on the day after BY's bris, I went to the Ministry of the Interior to register his name and get his birth certificate. This way, we'd be able to get the ball rolling for Israeli and American passports. Luckily, one does not need an appointment to register the given name of a newborn, and one can even be seen in the "express lane", which has an average wait-time of under 20 minutes.

The clerk was rather surprised to be visited by such a very new person, and he was very kind, and he looked wisely at the carbon-copy of a form given to me at the hospital by a lady who insisted she didn't work for the ministry of the interior, even though she was giving me a pre-birth certificate and everyone calls her "the ministry of the interior lady", and the clerk even called his manager over for advice, but the result was disappointing: BY was not yet "in the system".

Yes, BY had already been assigned a national ID number (by "the ministry of the interior lady" who does not work for the ministry of the interior, even though she has the high and mighty power of dispensing national ID numbers), and yes, all of the necessary information for a birth certificate was right there, but no, the clerk informed me with what seemed to genuine apology, he could not issue a birth certificate until BY was "in the system", and that usually takes 2 - 4 weeks from birth.

I explained that we kind of need a birth certificate ASAP, and clerk apologetically apologetically repeated what he just told me, and then helpfully told me that rather than schlepping out to the office every day with a brand-new baby, I could call this number and ask if BY was in the system yet. But there was really nothing more he could do. (Which I wonder about, because I have an American-Israeli friend who flew from Israel to the US with a documented, 12-day-old baby. One day, I should ask her how she managed that.)

So I called the number a few times, and at 15 days from birth, BY was in the system at last. This was lucky, since I had optimistically (desperately?) scheduled an American CRBA and passport appointment for BY in mid-December (I'd like earlier, but we told them our flight date and that's when they scheduled us for) and an Israeli passport appointment at 9:12 am on the day that BY finally made it into the system (because it was either that or wait another whole week).

So we hustled over to Misrad Hapnim, and got a birth certificate from the same helpful clerk in the express lane, who continued in his helpfulness by double-checking that all of the English spellings he entered matched my requested English spellings, even going so far as to check the spelling of my maiden name, which I hadn't thought would appear on the form in English.

(Israeli bureaucrats in general don't seem to understand why I get so uptight about specific English spellings, which is annoying on the one hand, but also useful; while they will issue documents with weirdly erratic, theoretically phonetic spellings of our names, they will also change English spellings with no fuss at all to match my random little requests even if previously issued government-documents use different English letters. Among my other prejudices, I don't care if the letter ק is rendered as a Q in academic circles, I want a K.)

I am almost as proud of BY's birth certificate as I am of my high school diploma. (Which is another piece of paper I wasn't sure I would get, issued by a government official upon the appropriate filling-out of forms.)

After receiving BY's birth certificate at 8:58 am, we proceeded to wait another hour-and-a-half to be called for our 9:12 passport appointment. Why I thought that making an appointment would be correlated with a minimal wait time is a mystery. The passport clerk was also very nice, which was cool, but it still kind of freaks me out that she didn't ask Husbinator for any form of ID at all. While it's annoying to make both parents show up to a passport appointment, I like the concept of needing consent from all legal guardians before giving someone the ability to transport children out of the country. Just saying.

So now we have his Israeli birth certificate, most of the forms for his American birth certificate and passport application, and his Israeli passport is in the mail. It's the "his Israeli passport is in the mail" part that's freaking me out. Our mailman seems to deliver the mail whenever he feels like it, which seems to be about bi-monthly... probably. I do not trust that person to get me this document.

At least the passport was sent by registered mail, and I'm getting text messages about its progress, but it's been stuck at the Rehovot mail-person pickup room for a week now, and and and... Deep breaths. It will be fine. We have a month left before we actually need BY's passport (though the US Department of State would like a copy of any foreign passports that have been issued), and I just realized that worst comes to worst, I can physically go to the main post-office branch with the registered mail number and our plane tickets and explain what's going on and have lots of frustrating conversations, but actually get this bit of mail without our stoopit mailperson's help, if that's what if comes to.

So yeah, it's been a whirlwind of appointments (I didn't even tell you about the figuring out which tipat chalav office to bring him to for his myriad of well-visits and how great his pediatrician is), but things are chugging along.

Welcome, Baby Yoda!

At Last!

For years, I've been failing to get a good answer to why kohanim (or their wives) take challah. After all, we take off a piece of dough when we bake as a gift for kohanim... So what gives? Both Husbinator and I have asked various rabbis, kohanim, and wives of kohanim in the U.S., but we've never gotten a solid answer.

Yesterday, Husbinator asked our shul rabbi, who immediately responded that the challah that must be separated from the dough is not just a gift for a kohen, it's also a requirement for the dough: unlike pidyon haben, there are two distinct requirements that are met when challah is taken. "Wait..." said Husbinator making the obvious analogy, "So kohanim also separate trumos and ma'asros from their produce?" To which the rabbi answered, "Of course!"

So I'm very glad to have a satisfying answer, but now I'm left with a new question. Did our rabbi know the answer due to his intense torah learning, or is this common knowledge among the religious Israeli population? After all, this is a mitzva that is closely tied to the land of Israel.

I mean, I never thought twice about Shavuos being chag habikkurim (the holiday at which we historically took the first fruits of our orchards to the Temple) until I moved to Israel and looked at my pomegranate trees one Shavuos and realized that something just didn't add up. Completely taken aback, I asked the ladies at shul how on earth people brought their first pomegranates to the Temple in late spring if pomegranates only ripen in the middle of the autumn.

My neighbor's teenage daughter told me that Shavuos marks the first date at which people can bring their first fruits, but bikkurim can be brought through Channukah. Now my former neighbor's daughter does happen to be a very well-educated young lady, but it turns out that isn't why she knew that piece of information. Eventually I got to the relevant Torah Portion in my pre-schooler's Hebrew parsha book. There, between the colorful illustrations on the tear-resistant pages, the book informs the little Israeli children that Jews took their first fruits to the Temple at some point between Shavuos and Channuka. Common knowledge around here.

Rocket Day

On Tuesday, schools were closed in Rehovot, due to nearby rockets. We could hear the reports, but thank G-d we didn't have any sirens. (Edit: actually, we got a rocket siren late Wednesday night, but it was intercepted without a problem.)

The kids weren't upset: we've discussed rockets with BSM frequently and calmly enough that he knows it's really not a big deal, and FF listened to our review of rocket protocol with BSM without really understanding, but he now knows that sirens tell us to do things and go places, and that's that.

Like all parents, however, Husbinator and I were rather flummoxed by the unexpected vacation day, not having made plans beforehand and not being able to just let the kids run around in the park all day. Between art projects, cookie baking, and Sabba and Savta, things worked out. Unfortunately, I couldn't take the kids for flu shots as long as they were missing school anyway, since our local clinics are out of the vaccine. Boo.

Rocket day also included very busy WhatsApp groups, very little of which was useful information. The highlights were a tip about a park next to a communal bomb shelter (on my radar for next time!), and this little gem of Israeli humor:

"If there's already no school, and it's a Tuesday, maybe we should just have elections?"

I also clarified that while people are playing fast and loose with the word "war" neither side actually formally declared war, which is an important distinction. Granted, it's a little silly what with nearly 1000 rockets fired from Gaza over 2 days, and significant aerial and artillery response by Israel, but it's still true. It does make for an interesting situation in which a cease-fire is negotiated for a non-war, but that's how it is!

Figuring it Out

I believe it was Husbinator who first referred to our kids as unreliable narrators. It's not that they lie; it's just not a good idea to take what they say at face value, certainly not before investigating further.

Take a conversation I had with FF the other night. He was doing something mildly unsafe, and I told him to be careful not to fall. He told me that someone fell, and it seemed to me that he was discussing something that happened at school. I asked if that child got hurt. He clarified that he himself fell down. I asked if he himself got hurt. FF said yes. I asked who had kissed him. FF said no one. This surprised me, since his teachers seem to be warm, caring and attentive. I asked if he had cried. FF said yes. I asked him to clarify that he had really fallen and gotten hurt and cried and no one kissed him. FF said that was right: he learned we don't climb on friends.

Ah. That makes more sense.

Party, Israeli-Style

About 6 weeks into the school year, BSM's class celebrated finishing Parshat Bereshit. (That's difference #1 right there: 6 weeks for the little Hebrew-speakers vs. a year (?) for typical American kiddos.) Accordingly, parents were asked to send in food for the requisite class party. I remember these parties from growing up mainly for the food: chips, pretzels (lame!), chocolate, fruit-by-the-foot (yum!), soda...

So I could only laugh and shake my head at the list sent out for the Israeli party:

2 cans corn
2 cans pickles
4 cans tuna
30 pitas
3 plates of cut vegetables
20 hard-boiled eggs
1 package of spoons
2 sleeves of plastic cubs
1 package of plates
1 roll of plastic tablecloths
1 sweet dessert

The kids loved it, though, and I appreciate it as a parent, too.

Concerning Loopholes and Vowels

The scene: The dining room, where a cake is cooling. FF, having helped bake the cake, has recently discovered that it is no longer hot, and is inspecting it closely. I am focused on removing the seeds from a pomegranate.

FF: What's that?
Me: A pecan, like you ate before.
FF: No, that.
Me (not looking up): Oh, a chocolate chip?
FF: Yeah, chocolate.
(silence)
Me (with sudden realization): FF, do not bite the cake, do not touch the cake, do not eat the cake. Do you understand?
FF (with righteous indignation): I just licking!
Me (alarmed, but still not looking up): Just looking??? With your eyes?
FF (scornfully) : No, licking!

Context

A few years ago, I went through a period wherein I Just. Couldn't. Hear. It drove me crazy, and I was half-convinced that everyone was just mumbling. Long story short, I ended up with a diagnosis of stress. That was helpful, because I knew my hearing would improve, but also less than helpful, because... seriously? How could stress force me to constantly ask people to repeat themselves, even when hearing test results showed that I had near-perfect hearing (even super-hearing at some frequencies)?

Yesterday, I finally got my answer. I skimmed an article in The Guardian, (I tried but failed to read it thoroughly before linking to it), and all is explained:

When we feel safe, the muscles in the middle ear contract, with an effect like tightening the skin of a drum. This shuts out deep background sounds, and allows us to tune into the frequencies used in ordinary human speech.

  

But when we feel threatened, it is the deep background noises we need to hear. In evolutionary time, it was these sounds (roars, bellows, the padding of paws or rumble of hooves, thunder, a flood pulse in a river) that presaged danger. So the muscles of the middle ear relax, shutting out conversational frequencies. 

A Story of Long Ago

OK, not that long ago, but over 10 years ago.

I've been listening to/watching classical music lately, mainly inspired by the boys' comments on the classical music that Husbinator generally plays in the car. (BSM: guessing the correct family of instruments, even if he's a little off "Is this a flute? Is this a violin?" FF: always "Right this is piano and violin, Ema? Right this is piano and violin? RIGHT THIS IS PIANO AND VIOLIN, ABBA? RIGHT????")

The Sinfónica de Galicia has lovely recordings (Scheherazade op.35 conducted by Leif Segerstam is well worth its 50 minutes), and yesterday, I discovered a really fun conductor named Christian Vásquez (I highly recommend Tico Tico, which is three-and-a-half minutes plus applause). So now I'm trawling through other pieces that he has conducted, and seeing his tailcoat reminds me of the titular Story of Long Ago (which, as we have established, isn't all that ancient).

***

A little over ten years ago, while I was waiting at a bus stop in Jerusalem, a woman started chatting with me, and very quickly recommended that I go on a date with some guy she knew. There were many reasons to politely decline: I wasn't currently interested in dating, I certainly wasn't interested in dating a guy suggested by a stranger who knew nothing about me and whose trustworthiness I could not verify, and anyway, something she said about the guy (or was it just that she was pushing a stranger to date him?) seemed a bit off.

Not wanting to offend (or argue), however, I latched onto a pretense. The woman had mentioned that this man was a Gur Chassid, so I told her that I "didn't have a Chassidic heart", and so wouldn't consider dating within the Chassidish world. Which, granted, was true, but rather besides the point. The woman laughed a little and, gesturing to her hip, said, "Ah, you're looking for a half-suit (חצי חליפה)!" Picturing a standard suit jacket compared to a long Chassidish bekeshe, I laughed and agreed, and that was the end of it.

Which just goes to show you, eh?

(For the record, a few years later my roommate recommended that I date now-Husbinator, and she warned me that he dressed like a Chassid, bekeshe and all. I quickly established that he wasn't culturally Chassidish, and then rightly dismissed clothing choice as not a deal-breaker. After all, as I told her, I walk around Midtown Manhattan in a cloak, so who am I to judge? Speaking of which, it's a good thing I sewed myself a second cloak in my senior year of college, because the first winter after we were married, Husbinator completely appropriated my first cloak.)

Premature Analysis

Assuming this Israeli election cycle is similar to the previous one (and it certainly looks like it is), I expect the initial results published last night and this morning to differ substantially from the final results, which are due on September 25th.

That being said, there is one really important takeaway here: namely that "תיקו מקסיקני" is a valid Hebrew phrase.

I am disproportionately amused by the conflation of the American slang "Mexican standoff" with the Talmudic "תיקו".

In actual news, ynet currently has a very nice "build-your-own-coalition" interactive at https://z.ynet.co.il/short/content/electionchairs/. The goal is to select enough parties to form a coalition having at least 61 seats. As I said, in my oh-so-educated opinion, it's way too early to bank on specific numbers of parliamentary seats for each party, but the ynet interactive does have some informative built-in rules, such as "party A will not join a coalition that includes party B", which prevent you from building an impossible coalition.

Also note the interactive's clever title, "משחק הכסאות", which is a pun on "משחקי הכס", the Hebrew title for the popular Game of Thrones.

Unfortunately, the interactive doesn't include the rules which create the Mexican standoff. I assume those rules are missing because they all have workarounds, although all of the workarounds involve significant loss of face.

Name That City!

Granted, I was in the city itself when I first saw this logo, so I was primed to read it:

But still, I think it's a really fun graphic and surprisingly readable version of אַשְׁדּוֹד [ASHDOD].

All of the Updates

New school year, day 3:

BSM went to the bus stop without complaining.

FF did lots of complaining both last night and this morning; however, all but one of his complaints were "FF go different gan now" ('different gan' being what he calls his new preschool). If we're going to have complaints, that's a great one to have. 

Discerning readers will have noticed the phrase all but one in the previous paragraph: after his myriad complaints about wanting to go to preschool now now now now now, when we were finally in the car (after a few more renditions of "FF go different gan now"), FF suddenly said, "FF no want go different gan." I didn't scream, but I didn't soft-pedal my response, either. "Are you kidding me??? You've been complaining since last night that you want to go to your gan!!!!" To which FF smiled oh-so-smugly, "FF silly. Want go different gan." Yeah, yeah, you're very funny. Ha ha ha.

Point of Reference

BSM goes on a school bus this year!

I don't know if things have changed since I was a kid in the US, but here in Israel there are generally 2 adults per school bus: (1) the bus driver and (2) the מלווה, which thank-you-Google-Translate is not an escort, but may translate to a bus monitor. The מלווה is the adult who helps the kids get on and off the bus and makes sure everyone is buckled up and reasonably well-behaved.

Husbinator and I discussed this brilliant Israeli system, reminiscing about our own experiences, wherein both roles were carried out by a single adult. We were happily chatting away until BSM piped up, asking what a fire drill was. (Interestingly enough, Husbinator never had a school bus fire drill.)

I immediately backed up the conversation, clarifying that Husbinator and I had been talking about American school buses, which are completely and totally different from Israeli school buses. Then I gave thought to fire drills. A few words into an explanation of Fire Drill Theory, I realized there's a much simpler way to explain fire drills to BSM.

"You know how they sometimes test the sirens, and people practice going to their bomb shelters? It's like that, but for practicing leaving a building safely in case there's a fire. Oh, and it's a bell inside the building, instead of a siren outside."

I was quite pleased with my zero-drama, totally relatable analogy. BSM thought that made perfect sense, and was satisfied. Husbinator raised his eyebrows and pointed out that speaking of cultural differences, that one was kind of a doozy.

School has Begun!

Yesterday, BSM started 1st grade and FF started 3-year-old nursery. (I have given up on official preschool grade names, which seem to vary by social group. Instead, I insist on calling the various years of pre-school 3-year-old nursery, 4-year-old nursery and 5-year-old nursery, respectively. Ha.)

Yesterday, I was incredibly nervous and both boys were totally fine. Today, BSM was very emphatically "too tiiiiired" and FF "no want go" to his new school, but I was totally fine. As long as we take turns, right?

Speechless

Galgalatz is a very popular Israeli radio station, which is very difficult to pin down. It plays all sorts of music.

Right now, it is playing "What Does the Fox Say?"

Seriously.

I am speechless, and very, very happy.

(Update: Apparently, they played it because it won today's "soldiers' choice". This is still totally nuts.)

Good Morning

Ever since I've heard it years and years ago, I've really liked the standard Hebrew response to "Good morning" (בוקר טוב), which is "Light morning" (בוקר אור).

Midrashic allusions in everyday speech just make me happy.

The Time Had Come

For a while now, FF's teacher has been encouraging me to get FF on the potty-training wagon, but I keep saying that the kid is going through too many changes right now to deal with it. (Translation: the kid's mommy is going through too many changes right now to deal with it.)

However, knowing that his teacher is right, and having checked the calendar a month before 3-year-old nursery is scheduled to start, and having really pretty much settled in after moving, and having witnessed that the boy is totally physically ready to potty train (Husbinator: FF, sit on the toilet before getting into the bathtub. Do not pee in the bathtub; pee in the toilet. [FF sits on toilet with no result. Husbinator puts FF into bathtub. Less than 10 seconds go by.] FF: I HAVE A PEE-PEE!!! [Husbinator whisks FF onto toilet. FF pees therein, and only therein]), I  started psyching myself up to really get this into gear, already.

So almost two weeks ago, after the kids' (pre-dinner!) baths, I mentioned purely theoretically to FF that BSM gets to wear underpants because he makes in the toilet, and when FF will one day make in the toilet, we have underpants with trucks waiting for him. I was tired after a long day, but I figured this was a logical time to start laying some real groundwork. Maybe even keep it going daily and do a blitz-training over the weekend.

Presumably because I was tired, even given FF's reaction to finding said undies a month ago, I was blindsided when FF responded to my cautious theoretical-groundwork-laying by insisting that he wanted to wear underpants now. I didn't consider timelines and days of week and possible options and responses. I didn't even think to discuss this with FF's Father before wading deeper into dangerous waters. 

I just gave a half-hearted, "You have to make pee-pee in the toilet before you can wear underpants," and then, of course, FF proceeded to make pee-pee in the toilet and demand his promised underpants with trucks on it, and I, on auto-pilot, gave him said underpants in lieu of a diaper.

We had a rough first day or two, but the good news is that FF is officially going to 3-year-old nursery next year!

Groping for Words

Maybe I can't blame this on being bilingual per se, but I love it when BSM gets creative when he can't think of the right word in English. His latest gem? "Fighting mittens." (And no, I don't remember the context, though we were eating dinner when he said it.)

Correction

It wouldn't have made me happy, but it would have been helpful if one of the stories in the paper yesterday morning had been "Nurses Threaten to Strike Tomorrow."

I checked just now when I got back from not getting my bloodwork done, and it turns out that Yediot Aharonot ran that story at 8:30pm yesterday, and it is today's headline.

Well, it seems that I should get back in the habit of typing "שביתת" [strike] into Google every so often and seeing what Google thinks I'm most likely looking for.

The Headlines I Want to See

When I checked Yediot Aharonot this morning, one of the featured articles was "A Small Cappuccino at Ben Gurion Airport? Very Small." The blurb under the headline demanded to know why a small cappuccino at a franchise branch in Ben Gurion Airport was noticeably smaller that a small cappuccino at other franchise branches.

No news is good news, all right.

Oh. My. Gosh.

We moved on Monday, so there's all of that typical craziness.

The topic of today's blog post, however, is that, to my endless shock and amazement, BSM's school just emailed us a list of books and supplies for the coming school year.

Today. July 10, 2019. School doesn't start for over another seven weeks!

It appears that this school isn't kidding when they say that they value good communication; I wasn't expecting to receive this list until the first week of classes.

For the curious, here's the list:

Goofball

Last night, after I finished saying Shema etc. for the boys, BSM asked me, "What's עפעפי?" I told him that they're eyelids, and then ended up having to explain what eyelids are. "OK, you know your eyeballs? You know how you can open and close your eyes by covering them and uncovering them with a little piece of skin? That little piece of skin is an eyelid." And now BSM knows another useful thing.

FF, however, wanted to know what eyeballs are.

ME: "OK, you know your eyes?" [point to my eyeballs and do a little bit of eye-rubbing]
FF [rubbing his eyes]: "My eyeballs attack us!!!"
ME [totally confused, wondering if I misheard]: "Your... eyeballs? Are... attacking you?"
FF [full of goofy joy]: "Yes! My eyeballs attack us!"

It's hard to say that this exchange fits neatly into a category of behavior exhibited by FF since before he could talk, but this exchange definitely evokes a response from me that FF has been evoking since before he could talk. And this exchange nicely exemplifies FF's approach to life that has caused Husbinator and myself to consistently refer to the boy as "Goofball."

Toilet Training

Potty training BSM was gloriously easy. Starting around his second birthday, I just sat him on the toilet right before every bath, and as he was bound to, eventually he used the toilet successfully. I made a big deal over it, his pre-bath success rates rose, and when Dikla was out for a few days, I took a day or two off of work and potty-trained the boy over an extended weekend. Easy peesy.

So around FF's second birthday, I started sitting him on the toilet before every bath. He has to make a deposit, and I have yet to make a big deal over his amazing his performance, and 3-year-old nursery starts in two months. A few days ago, his teacher asked me if I've given any thought to potty-training the child (להיגמל in Hebrew, which is the same word as weaning).

I told her what I've done so far, and said that if he shows any interest in using the toilet in gan, please please encourage him, but I don't want to pressure the kid: he'll train when he's ready, and if that means pushing off pre-school for a year, so be it. (After all, he makes the 3-year-nursery cutoff by only two weeks.) Not to mention that we're moving in the second week of July (within Rehovot, but still moving), and training him too close to another life change really isn't the greatest idea.

Last night, FF was rooting around in his dresser for a "different one shirt!" to wear to bed, and he found a pair of underpants. With a bulldozer. I told him that it's not a shirt, it's underpants, and the undies are for him, but only after he uses the toilet instead of a diaper. He asked to sit on the toilet. I told him it's bedtime and we can try tomorrow. He yelled that he wanted to sit on the toilet. I told him it's bedtime and we can try tomorrow. He cried that he wanted to sit on the toilet and wear underpants. I told him it's bedtime and we can try tomorrow, but he's welcome to snuggle his underpants when he goes to sleep.

Which he did. (And happily called them "תחתונים", which is interesting, because I'm fairly certain that, in a rarity for me, I stuck to English for the "underpants" conversation.)

This morning, FF didn't want a diaper. He wanted underpants and to sit on the toilet. I let him wander around the house without a diaper for half-an-hour and sat him on the toilet multiple times with no result, but it was almost time to go, and I was seriously considering staying home with him, because he really can't go to daycare in undies without being at least mostly trained, but I want to encourage this whole "no diaper: underpants" movement. Five minutes before it was time to go, he asked for a diaper. So he went to daycare with a diaper on his bottom and underpants in his pocket, and I told his teacher what's up. Good luck to us all!

Thoughts A Year Later

Unlike last year, I did not go to a Memorial Day ceremony this year.

However, I'd like to take this opportunity to share some thoughts about the ceremony I attended last year.

Yes, "muted" is definitely the correct word to describe the IDF's official military ceremony for fallen soldiers and terror victims. And on further reflection, I absolutely think that the ceremony is muted by design. However, I do not think that the ceremony is muted for cynical reasons, but rather by necessity.

The official IDF ceremony is open to the public, but it is for the families of those who have died. Those families don't need a moving ceremony to remind them of their losses: those families need quiet acknowledgment that something terrible happened. And I'm sure there's a reason that President Rivlin chose to allocate a portion of his mere 15-minute speech to repeating what he told those families when he visited them the first time, that the dead would want their families to choose to continue.

Muted is the only option.

News Update

I don't like doing "news" updates: if you want to know the news, check the newspaper! This blog is for great stories that are all about ME. Right?

But I'm reasonably certain that some family member will notice that some news outlet posted that Rehovot had a rocket alert over Shabbos, and rather than combing the papers to confirm that there was no damage/injuries from the alleged Rehovot rocket, they'll ask me about it. Because you guys love me.

And I love you, too.

So.

No, there was no rocket alert in Rehovot over Shabbos. There were 381 rocket alerts for all of Israel from Shabbat through 11:10am on Sunday, but none of them were in Rehovot.

The reason that reasonably reliable news sources reported Rehovot rocket alerts is that there were rocket alerts in small towns/suburbs near Rehovot, so news outlets took the easy route and rather than precisely listing tons of dots on the map, they slightly less precisely listed one larger dot on the map.

To see what area of Israel heard a rocket siren when, I highly recommend checking Home Front Command: https://www.oref.org.il/11096-en/Pakar.aspx. 

Since this blog is all about ME, I hereby state that Rehovot's emergency code is "השפלה 182".

There. News update.

ABC's, Israeli-Style

ABC's has been on FF's Top Ten list for a while, which is nice. Non-irritating, short, educational songs are always welcome.

FF has liked ABC's long enough to have a few riffs on it, the previous of which was a version I sang once and immediately rocketed to the top of the charts:

"A B C D E F FROG / H I J K L M N O TURTLE"

Because FF is a goofball that way.

A few days ago, FF came up with a new riff, one that I'm reasonably sure he invented himself:

"A B C D E F G / AHP-CHEE / LIVRIYOOT / HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

In English, that would be:

"A B C D E F G / AH-CHOO / BLESS YOU / HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Why yes, child. The letters F-G do sound like the Hebrew word for the noise that a sneeze makes. I never noticed that before. 

Waiter, Taste the Soup!

In honor of my father-in-law making aliyah yesterday (mazel tov!), we went out to eat at Chummus Eliyahu, which serves all sorts of fresh (warm!) chummus and Israeli salad and yummy pita. (All of which sound like they should just be appetizers, but we leave that restaurant stuffed every time.)

I prefer dipping my pita into the various salads, but BSM decided (quite reasonably, really), to turn his pita into a sandwich. So he tore off the top, then asked us how he should get the chummus and salad into the pita. All I could think was, "Seriously???" especially when BSM repeated his question multiple times. Luckily, Husbinator had the patience to outline the steps of How To Insert Food Into A Perfectly-Opened Pita multiple times, and I did not have to get involved.

The final (successful!) round of instructuions went as follows:

Husbinator: Use your fork to scoop up your chummus and salad and put them into your pita.
BSM: Where's my fork?

No, we have never told him that joke.

Elections

Ema asked if I have anything to say about elections, so here's my response:

People sure do talk about them a lot!

What's interesting is that on the one hand, there's zero-expectation of voter privacy ("So who did you vote for?" is just as socially acceptable as, "So how much do you pay in rent?"), but on the other hand, no (media) polls are allowed to be published starting three days before the elections until the (actual voting) polls close on election day.

Backfired

BSM told me the other day that he knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a paramedic. (He called the job an "איש הצלה", but I know what he means.) We discussed oh-so-briefly (me: "that's nice, you have a bit of time to decide, if you change your mind that's fine, if you don't change your mind that's fine;" BSM: "actually, I have a lot of time to decide, because I'm only 5 1/2") and then he followed up with, "And I also know what I don't want to be."
"Oh? What?"
"A soldier or a policeman."
"Why not?"
"Because a soldier has to eat everything on the table, and I don't like techina or carrots, and that's what they give soldiers to eat."

Friends, I did not laugh.
Turns out his teacher told the kids something along those lines to encourage them to eat... Oops.

And if you're curious, the reason he doesn't want to be a policeman is, "They have to carry the gun, and the handcuffs, and the vest, and the radio... It's too much stuff. It's a balegan. It's just too much."

Progress

Go Fish is better than War. Much, much better. But you know what's better than Go Fish? Rummikub.

BSM and I both enjoyed our first game of Rummikub, and I even think he'll be able to play his own tiles without that much help soon.

FF enjoyed putting tiles on his rack and playing the role of Discretionary Dealer (a.k.a., thusting said tiles at either me or BSM whenever he felt like it). FF did not enjoy the tiles toppling off of his rack, but BSM enjoyed helping FF put them back up.

So all-in-all, a successful milestone acheived.

Ah, Technology

I took FF to a well-visit recently. I don't think I've explained properly about how well-visits work in this country, so here it is in a nutshell.

Children aged 0 - 6 do not go to their pediatricians for well-visits. Instead, they go to "Tipat Chalav" (lit. "drop of milk") where a nurse tracks their development and gives them their childhood vaccinations. (Yes, "vaccinations" and not just "shots": we get the oral live polio vaccine in this neck of the woods.)

Until now, we've been lived in places so small that Tipat Chalav was rolled into the medical clinic that we went to for all standard doctor appointments, so things were pretty straightforward. Now that we've moved to Rehovot, however, we've entered the standard system wherein Tipat Chalav has standalone clinics run by the municipality.

This meant we got the chance to transfer medical records. I'm not entirely sure what it entailed, other than many phone calls and follow-ups from both me and Tipat Chalav, but I'm reasonably certain that BSM and FF has their Tipat Chalav records printed out by the medical clinic they had been going to and mailed to the Tipat Chalav clinic in Rehovot. Or hand-transcribed and delivered by courier. Whatever happened, it took about two months to get the records transferred, but luckily our previous Tipat Chalav nurse had warned me before I moved that the process would be ridiculous, so I wasn't too concerned.

Anyway. So there I was with FF at his first Tipat Chalav appointment here in Rehovot, secure in the knowledge that records had been transferred, when the nurse asked me if I happened to know if FF had had his blood count tested last year, and what were the results? You see, she said with a smile and a sigh, the records came through all right... But the records sent don't include bloodwork. Naturally. Because just why.

Why no, I emphatically do not remember who had what blood test run when and what the results thereof may or may not have been. Luckily, I realized that whenever I get tests done at the doctor's office, instead of waiting for the doctor's office not to call (not entirely fair: I did get a phone call from my doctor once when the results said I needed antibiotics), I look up the results with the handy-dandy app on my phone, which I initially installed so I could easily schedule appointments for me and the kids.

So I logged in, and sure enough, within a minute I located the list of lab tests FF has had, found one called "hematology" from around the right time, and boom! The nurse found what she wanted.

Ah, technology.

No Fooling That Kid

Last night, I was super responsible. I made my lunch the night before leaving for work, instead of waiting until the morning. Well, technically, I didn't actually make my lunch; I just boiled some eggs. But the eggs were for my lunch, so let's leave the record as "I made my lunch the night before."

Okay, as evidenced by not making my entire lunch, it wasn't due to extenuating responsibility that I chose to boil eggs at 9:30 pm rather than 7 am. I made hard-boiled eggs at night because (a) I never remember to make eggs 30 minutes before I want to leave for work and (b) I didn't really want to spend my morning peeling egg after egg after egg for The Egg Fiend, a.k.a. FF. Since FF nearly always leaves for daycare before I leave for work, that meant I could safely take 5 minutes to throw together a salad while he was still home, and just grab an egg or two on my way out the door.

This morning, all was going according to plan: I took out a salad container and breezily opened the fridge to get vegetables, even though FF was standing right next to me. Fearless, that's me: not only were the eggs safely in an opaque container, but we haven't had hard-boiled eggs in the recent past, so FF doesn't currently associate the fridge with eggs.

So I open the fridge to get lettuce. Before I even bend down to open the produce drawer, FF says, "EGGIES! Want egg! Egg please!"

Taken completely off-guart, I shut the fridge and whirled to the excited FF. "How do you know???"

FF looks at me expectantly. I open the fridge skeptically. "FF, sweetie, show Ema the eggies."

Joyfully, FF points directly to the container, which--too late--I realize is indeed opaque but is also the container that I nearly always use for hard-boiled eggs and haven't used for anything else in years.

So FF got eggs this morning, and I learned something.