Good neighbors aren't everything

After wrestling with a jar of marinara sauce with no luck, I sent Mordechai with the jar to my neighbor's house so she could try her hand at getting it open. He came back a few minutes later with the opened jar.

Me: Oh, wow, great. How'd she get it open?

Mordechai: Oh, she had this can opener thing she used to twist it open.

Me: Well, isn't it great to have good neighbors?

Mordechai (shrugs, as if to say, "yeah, whatever."): It's even better to have a can opener.

Noodles

My parents blew into town last week and whisked off the whole family to a local restaurant. Rivka, 5, ordered noodles. The same thing she eats basically every meal.

Mrs. R: You like noodles? I had no idea you liked noodles.

Rivka (after studying her mom for a minute): You're being sarcastic.

Mrs. R: Where'd you learn that word?

Rivka (gesturing towards her sister, Chana, 7): Ask the Chanster.

Convert or Die!

Sorry to interrupt the flow of things around here, but I was forced to convert my Blogger profile over to The New Blogger (hmm...shades of New Coke here) and as a result this blog (which I own--HA!) has been converted as well.

So if you still want to post here, you must upgrade to New Blogger.

BTW the process was mostly benign, although I feel a little like Jeff Goldblum in Invasion of the Body Snatchers after he becomes a Pod Person. It was painless, yet part of me has been left behind.

Also, beware: If you have more than one Blogger account linked to the same Gmail address, they will be combined into one. This was a problem for me as I had one under Psychotoddler and one under my real name which I used for my Mother's Holocaust story blog, Rose's Story.

So all of the sudden, all of my posts and comments were being signed with my REAL NAME. If this is a problem for you, make a new google account first! I fixed the problem by changing the default name back to Psychotoddler, but now it has that name on my Mother's blog. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to fix that.

Foreign Visitors

I wanted to get this up quickly before Shabbat begins.

Comments from Oldest Son (6) when I picked him up from school today:

Oldest Son: Eema, guess what? We had visitors from lots of different countries at school today.

Me: Oh? What countries?

Oldest Son: They came from Israel and Africa and Mexico and New Jersey.

I Didn't Teach Him This

KJ (3, almost 4) likes to pretend to knock on the door and I have to say "Come in" He pretends to open the door going, "HI MOMMA!" and will run up to me and give me a hug. Yesterday I said, "HI sweetie, how are you? How's the wife and kids?" He looked at me then said, "I need new kids."

Time for a New Computer?

From my sister-in-law:

Last night I asked Ben a question and he didn't answer right away.

Then he said,

"I'm loading. I'll tell you in a minute."

Allergies

Sweetie, 7, asks the weirdest questions:

- Why I keep farting alla time?
- I dunno.
- Am I sick?
- No, farting doesn't mean you're sick.

<later, farting again>
- Do I have allergies with my butt?
- <laughing>
- Are you gonna write that down?

Why?

Part of a much longer Q&A overheard shortly before the kids' bedtime Saturday evening:

Oldest Son (6): Abba? Can you ask Eema if we can come downstairs?

Eema (me): [Thinking, I guess we know who's in charge in this house...]

Abba: Why?

Oldest Son: Because we want to come downstairs.

Abba: Why?

Oldest Son: Because we played everything and we're tired of playing everything.

Youngest Son (3-3/4): Yeah.

Abba: Why?

Oldest Son: Why do you keep asking why?

Abba: Because I'm trying to understand.

Oldest Son: Well, usually parents understand everything. So can we come downstairs?

Abba: Why?

Oldest Son: Arrggggh.

Youngest Son: Not again!

Oldest Son: [to Youngest Son] Let's just go downstairs.

Person of Color

In two separate incidents, my children question my ethnicity:

Incident 1:

Rivka (5, dancing around and singing): Martin Luther King, Jr! Martin Luther King, Jr!

Me: Who was Martin Luther King, Jr?

Rivka: He was a very important man. He brought peace between the white people and the brown people.

Me: Okaaaayyy....

Rivka (stares at me for a second): Daddy, are you a brown person?

Incident 2:

Chana (7): Mom, here's a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mrs. R: That's very nice. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?

Chana: He was a very smart man. He tried to help make peace between white people and brown people.

Mrs. R: Close enough.

Chana: Mom, is Daddy brown?

Keep in mind that I'm as white as anyone else in my family. Maybe I have a bit of olive in my complexion, but it's hardly noticeable. I don't really understand where any of this is coming from.

Life and Death

Almost every Sunday, the kids and I travel along the Jackie Robinson Parkway (a.k.a. the Interboro) en route to my mom and dad's house in Brooklyn. Sari (4) and Ada (2) have a habit of shouting "cemetery!" as soon as the headstones along the parkway come into view. Sari has been enjoying this ritual for quite some time and is thrilled to see that Ada has joined her. Last week, she seemed a bit more thoughtful:

Sari: Mommy, when I die, can you bury me next to you?

Me: Honey, that's not going to happen for a very, very long time so I don't think we have to plan about that yet.

Sari: I know, I know. But when I die, could you bury me next to you?

Me: Sure, okay.

Sari: And Daddy and Mordechai and Ada, too?

Me: Yeah, sure. But you know that's not going to happen for a very, very long time when we're very, very old.

Sari (clapping her hands, gleefully): Yay! We're going to be all together just like now! It's going to be so much fun!

Everyday Math

I was doing a puzzle a few weeks ago when Mordechai (almost 7) asked me if 15 times 20 is 300. I was totally shocked and then he explained how he knew that. He had counted the pieces along the width and length of the puzzle and realized that by multiplying those numbers he would get the amount of pieces in the puzzle. Then he just had to look at the puzzle box for the answer!

(His math homework tonight was simple word problems requiring subtraction or addition with single-digit numbers. Something tells me he's not exactly being challenged in math class.)

Hardened His Hearing

On Friday night, OD asked Ben (4), "Do you want chicken?" (I think that was the question, or something similar) and Ben didn't reply.

He asked him two more times and then said loudly,

"Ben! I'm asking you if you want more chicken."

Ben said,

"I didn't hear you the first 2... 3 times you said it."

That's Not Funny

From SIL...

Many of Henna Bayla's respones are so random, we don't what she's thinking. But yesterday, Ben and Hen had a great exchange.

HB: (something, I don't remember)
Ben: That wasn't funny.
HB: I wasn't going to laugh.

On a more serious note, HB was saying some silly things so I said to Ben, "your sister is so funny and silly." Ben responded, "No... she's kind and nice."

Memory

I'm setting up a DVD for Rivka, 5.

Rivka: I want "Pony friends at the Park."

Me: We haven't rented this video in months - you can remember the name of the specific episode you want to see?

Rivka: Of course, Daddy. I don't remember what you tell me to do, but I remember shows.

My Kids Speak

Fudge and The PT are reunited over Winter Break.

A Growing Hunger

Oldest Son turned six yesterday, a fact that he's quite proud of. All day today, he's asked for more food at each meal, claiming, "I'm six now so I can have more."

Tonight at dinner, I finally asked him about this reasoning.

Oldest Son: Can I have another piece of pizza please? I can have more now because I'm six.

Eema (me): How is it you can have more now because you're six?

Oldest Son: Because when I was five, my tummy was here (points to an area just to the side of his navel), and now that I'm six, it's here (points to an area about two inches to the other side of his navel).

Eema: Oh. So your tummy grew?

Oldest Son: Uh huh. And it's bigger now.

Eema: How could it have grown that much in two days?

Oldest Son: I guess because when it was my birthday, it was my tummy's birthday too!

Full length mirror

We finally get to the hotel and Rivka, 5, makes a beeline for the full-length mirror (we don't have any at home). She strikes a pose and announces, simply, "FASHION!"