Oww. My nose hurts....

I went to my primary care dr. b/c I had a spot on my nose that reminded me waaay too much of the first skin cancer way back when.....She referred me to a derm doctor for an appt. this morning. Good news: he didn't think that any of the freckles/moles on my arms, etc. were necessary of biopsy. Also good, although he wanted to biopsy two sites on my nose (bad), he thought that, if they were anything, it would be basal cell (the kind they can just remove and you're done).

So he took the two biopsies and, although he told me they would be very tiny when they're healed, at the moment I have stiches in and band-aids over, and am not having too happy a day....I have to go back in a week to get the stitches out. No sparring at karate until then.

And here's the real worst part: he was 45 minutes late to see me, after I was 10 minutes early for the appt and.........I didn't have......ANYTHING..........to read. I hadn't thought to bring anything, and his waiting room had nothing but ads and info brochures for Botox and other junk. It was horrible!!!!!!!!

The WORST Park

Blech! Only had time to take Ilana to the park right near PB's camp before going to karate this morning. I hate this park (and I try not to use that word much. As I tell the kids, there's enough hate in the world already....).

There is always a lot of broken glass and beer bottles strewn around. The small, "made for little kids" slide ENDS about three feet off the ground! And the spray fountains, which at most parks stay on for five or so minutes, stay on for about 40 seconds. And then the button to turn them on again is so hard to push that kids can't do it themselves, so it meant I had to hover over Ilana and keep pressing one of the two fountain buttons.

It's been about four years since I've been there (i.e. since I used to go w. PB after dropping off Batsheva at the camp around the corner!) and the return was none too soon!

Onward and upward :)

No nibbles?!

Sigh. Not even the teensiest of nibbles on the house and it's been on the market since after Pesach. Now I'm thinking that we should leave it on the market longer, and, if we move mid-year, so what?! I'll homeschool Batsheva and probably sign her (and maybe Chana) up for K-12.com so she'll do most of her schoolwork online through them. If we move, no biggie--K12 is covered by NJ so we could homeschool mostly for free.

The flip side of this is that I think we'd all like to know for sure that we will be here or not so that I can put a big non-refundable deposit down for the homeschool coop we got into (which, after being on their waiting list for months I had to turn down b/c I wasn't about to blow $300 if we moved). And PB has outgrown the toddler bed she sleeps in and is like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, with her feet literally sticking out the end. I told her months ago that we would either be moving over the summer and she would get a big bed, or she and Ilana would start to share the guest room (the guest room switching over to PB's teeny nook) and we'd buy her a big bed then. But I can't start moving furniture around and messing with the guest room NOW b/c, oy vey, we might have a house showing.

I really don't know what to do. I had no idea that, when all the experts said that real estate had tanked, it meant MY HOUSE too!

psst....hey you....

wanna buy a house? www.19Vista.com. You'll love it!

We've decided it would be a nice thing to all live in the same state again (Sam has been working in NJ and commuting from M-Th).

We'll see what happens. The market has totally tanked here. Boo! (It's supposed to stay nice where we sell and tank where we want to buy!)

May....

Yeah, nothing very much happened in May anyway! Let's just forget that month ever happened.....

I should have taken a picture....

I attained my goal! I donated 10 large trash bags of stuff to the Vietnam Veterans of America. Also, three boxes of books went to the MA homeschooling association's upcoming book sale. My porch looked fabulously full of tzedaka!

And, FINALLY, there is (some) hope for my school room. Tune is soon for "before/after" photos. THOSE I did take!

Ilana is 2!!!!!!

WOW! I can't believe two years has gone by since her birth! She has learned such an amazing amount in two years.

Today she was in her car seat singing parts of "Baby You Can Drive My Car" (the fun parts--"Beep, beep, beep-beep YEAH!"). She worked on "schoolwork" (a Hebrew coloring book that she swiped from PB's stash of stuff). Took a nice 1.5 hour nap (who knows how much longer that will happen for. Better record for posterity)....

Happy Birthday, Ilana. Ad Me'ah V'esrim (until 120) in good health and with much happiness in your life ;)

From Batsheva:
It's been 2 years since Ilana was born and she's been working hard! Working hard at singing, talking, walking, screaming(how can anyone hold their breath for that long?!), "reading" Calvin and Hobbes...But most of all, working hard at being the cutest little Ilana in the world! Happy Birthday!

Making Challah

So Chana has a few things that none of the rest of us eat around here b/c it's just too hard for her. Challah is one of those things. So for Shabbat during most of the year we eat matza. Except now that it is the Hebrew month of Nissan and we are not allowed to eat matza until Pesach begins in a few weeks.

So now, two weeks before Pesach, I had to go out to buy flour and yeast. But not just any flour. I had to get 100% whole wheat so that, although we non-SCD'ers would be eating challah, it wouldn't be "too good".

I've evidently totally forgotten how to cook challah in two years being an SCD family, so the dough came out terribly. It's 4 pm and it's not done yet. I am cranky!

Ilana wins!

Scene: our schoolroom

Personae: Ilana and me

Dialogue:
Me: "Ilana, do you need to make?"
Ilana: "Yeeeees"

She takes off and runs to the bathroom doing a loping, side-to-side Snoopy-Dance kind of thing. She enters the bathroom with her arms held high, triumphantly yelling, "I win! I win!"

PB's View of Politics

Last month, we were (like everyone else!) talking a lot about political primaries. PB age 5) got into it, too, asking about the primaries in Florida (where we had just come back from) and Massachusetts (where we live).

PB: "Wow. You mean they're running in Florida *and* Massachusetts?"

Me: "Yes, and there are several other states also having primaries on the same day"

PB: "But they're going to RUN from Florida to Massachusetts?!?!?!"

(I evidently did a decent job explaining how far it was from FL to MA!)

Batsheva, the famous writer!

http://tinyurl.com/2o6o7s

I'm so proud of her!

A few weeks ago, when I was emailing lots of Jewish newspapers about Purim soaps, the Jewish Woman website at Chabad came up as their "newspaper". The editor was excited to get a Purim soap sample and asked about us writing a piece for the site. Then she suggested that it would be very interesting if *Batsheva* wrote it from her perspective. Amazing! She didn't even know that we have a budding journalist at home!

Kids Say the Durndest Things

Ilana (20 months old) was in bed w. me yesterday. She put her hand on my face and lovingly asked, "I pick you' nose, mama?". I cracked up as I told her, "thanks, but no thanks".

Tonight, PB and I were reading "Grover Sleeps Over" and I told her about how that book had inspired Batsheva to throw a big fit when she was about 3 y/o. In the book, Grover has "spaghetti and meatballs and salad and milk" for dinner. So she, of course, wanted me to put milk on top of her salad. (With succeeding kids, we read that line as "salad with salad dressing and milk in a glass" :)

Back from FL

The first thing one notices after a week in Florida: how grossly dirty all the cars are here in Boston!

Anyway, the weather was nice and I thoroughly enjoyed taking long walks at night. --Batsheva introduced me to playing Dungeons & Dragons (I'm such a nerd, I don't know how I missed that in High School [actually, I do: back then, at least in "my crowd", only the guys played D&D]).
--Chana, my father and I spent over an hour doing a 100 piece puzzle on Shabbat (ages 5 and up. Isn't that embarrassing?!])
--PB loved playing shuffle board and Ilana grooved out in her new bright orange carriage (navy was $20 more, so bright orange it is!)

Getting home was difficult. We left my parents' house at 9:30 a.m. for an 11:20 flight, did pre-boarding, then sat on the plane for a looong time while a "small switch" tried to get fixed ("well, folks, we're just expecting this to take about 15 minutes"). So we "15 minutes'ed" our way until they pulled back to the gate and told us to deplane but hang around, as they were sure it would be fixed soon.

Much later, they canceled the flight and offered us the next one out: at 9 PM! NOOOOOO! I explained that the whole reason I had earned my kids' wrath by choosing an 11 a.m. flight in the first place and having them miss a whole day of vacation was b/c I was still traumatized by taking a 7 pm flight a few years ago. The flight had been very delayed, and we got in after midnight. I had three sleeping kids I had to get off the plane myself and take into the freezing Boston weather. Very unpleasant. And did I mention the huge tantrum PB threw as we were about to board? Like lying on the floor, kicking and screaming. Baaaad time for me.

So they offered the flight after that (i.e. the 11:20 the next day) and my poor father was so stressed from having us visit that, when I called him to say what was going on, he said, "tell them you need a hotel room"! I was laughing so hard (he called back about five minutes later and said he'd come pick us up).

We're back. It was lovely to be away. It's lovely to be home.

Yay, Uberima, Yay!

It's another boy for Uberima and Uberaba! That makes three. I heartily approve of many children of the same gender :)

You should have much nachas from him....

Ilana's first joke!

Today, Ilana looked into her bowl of cereal, smiled up at me and said, "O's 'timming'!" (swimming).

Comic genius!

Go, Uberimma, go!

B'sha'ah tova. Can't wait to hear good news....

I'm obsessively checking email and your blog to hear what's going on!

We're off!

I know, we're really always "off" around here, but, seriously! We....are...outta...here! I'm taking the girls to FL to visit my parents tomorrow. G-d bless them, I don't know why them invite us time and again because, frankly, with 7 of us in their (lovely and very large but still) 2-bedroom condo, it sure ain't much of a vacation for them.

Now, if only my darling, sweet, fabulous daughters will get along reasonably well and speak politely to each other, me and their grandparents. We....can....do.....this.....

I hope so, at least. I already told them (truthfully) that it was extremely unlikely that we were going back next year, that this sort of trip will require at least two years for me to recharge my batteries for. Since I said that two years ago after a rawther difficult trip to StoryLand ("Hey, look at those kids fist-fighting over there!" "Ah, that's just those Boston girls we saw fighting by the LAST ride"), they know I mean it.

It....will....be....great.......



to.....sleep......without.....socks.......on!

Homeschoolin' PB

We had a really fun homeschooling day recently! We've been working on Hebrew reading in a new kriya book (she's at the very beginning stages. Like identifying the letters and reading them with patach or kamatz under them).

Science: On her own, she found some big magnets and then started investigating what they stuck to. So together, we made a list with pictures and words of what the magnets stuck to.

She came with Chana and me to karate in the morning and played with Ilana, then went back to the kids' class in the afternoon.

And we made this super giant "Penina Batya". She was wearing a striped dress that day, so it was fun to find some old fabric and use that!

We're using a new Kindergarten curriculum book that I bought for Batsheva but never opened for either her or Chana, and it said to have your child glue gems to letter outlines on paper. This reminded me of why I never used it for the other kids (dumbing down), but I figured she might like it (and the giant PB was from that book too, and I *never* would have done that without outside encouragement of some type). So I outlined "PB" on paper, and even found flat jewels. Gave her a bottle of glue and told her to "go for it" while I cooked dinner. She got bored quickly and left her project half done on the floor. Where Ilana fell into it and got groovy glue dreadlocks in her hair. Oh, well, not everything works out perfectly in homeschooling!

SCD Birthday Cake Photo

Thought I had lost that photo forever. Boy, was I bummed out. I don't think I have ever been as proud culinarily as after making that cake!

The Joys of Freecycling

On Sunday I posted on Craig's List two items for free: a DVD player that, though only a year old, skips sometimes, and a vacuum cleaner that doesn't much like to do rugs, but works okay on hardwood. I listed their faults as above.

Almost immediately, "Bob" writes that he'd love the DVD player. Please call or email him with the address. I email him back right away telling him it's on the porch. It stays on the porch all day. At night it starts to rain. Still on the porch (now in a bag). I call Bob. Oh yeah, he didn't bother to go back online after telling me to email him....He starts asking me about the size of the player and if it has a DVD burner on it. Turns out he's not too interested if it doesn't have a DVD burner.

Fine. On to the next person. "Wind" has emailed me about both the vacuum and the DVD, but, by the next morning, still hasn't responded whether he'll take them or not. I email the next person who responded. Later, Windy writes back and says that he's at work until 11, and could I please save them until the next morning. Morning, of course, comes and goes and he's still not here.

Then he writes an email saying "if i will not find them there by that time i will get hurt in my mind so please save them up to that time". I tell him that, while I will not save it especially for him, only he and one other person knows the address where the DVD player is. He lives in the same city as me, and if was so important to him, perhaps he could find some time between Sunday and Tuesday to pop over and pick the thing up. No response.

Late Tuesday morning, the DVD player is gone. I email Wind and tell him. He shows up at 5:30 Tuesday afternoon and asks where the DVD player is. He gets very mopey when I tell him it's gone and that I emailed him this morning to tell him.

Then he looks at the vacuum and asks if I have a bag for it! I've had it. I shut the door as I tell him I don't. And, after the door is closed, I say "and I don't gift wrap either."

Sometimes, I have such nice experiences giving stuff away. It's kind of weird and obnoxious that only once has anyone bothered to email and say "thank you" after picking something up, but, other than that, it's nice to give things away to people I know want them. But this one was really a doozy!