Eitan is in transition. At school, we’re told he sleeps during rest time. At home? Not so much. Here’s an exchange following a recent rest time at home.
Eitan: Are Nana and Papa here?
Me: Not yet. It’s still still early. You didn’t sleep.
Eitan. I slept. I sleep with my eyes open.
Eitan proceeds to shove his face, eyes wide open, into my own.
Eitan: And I talk when I sleep.
We went for a hike yesterday at the Building Department. First we looked at the trucks, of course, but it was very windy and uncomfortable. I said “once we get in the trees it will be less windy”.
Eitan replied, “the trees aren’t open, mama.” So true!
“Sorry, I meant the forest.”
Dada added, “that’s open for business!”
Eitan invented a game where you roll a ball, run to get it, and run back to the starting point. While running back you have to yell “Run for your life!” So many things to learn at school, and probably not everything from the teachers!
“That don’t look like challah, mama. You gotta do more to that”
Eitan really hates water on his sippy cup. The problem is that most of the time it is his spit. So every time he takes a drink, there’s more water! We recently had this conversation:
Mama: “Eitan, what do you do at school about water on your cup?”
Eitan: “My best”
This might be difficult to parse, but this is my guess. When Eitan complains about water on his cup at school, his teachers say “Just do your best.” Apparently, he does!
Eitan insisted we count to one hundred together today. I was all in and started counting with him. His participation was variable, but meaningful. When we got to 88 he took a deep breath and said, “you count to one hundred. I out of me breath.” And I did!
We were reading a Chanukah story recently (Hanukkah Hamster) which describes the lovely beaches of Tel Aviv. In an aside I said to Eitan, “You know, it never snows in Tel Aviv.” He answered with a very yiddishkeit accent, “What?!”
The other good part of this story is that Rich argued that it does sometimes snow in Tel Aviv. I looked it up later, and Rich was correct. In 1950, it snowed in Tel Aviv for “several minutes”.
Source: https://www.israel21c.org/snow-in-tel-aviv-1950/
We’ve started to do more things with Eitan now that he can mask well. It’s been a harder transition for him than we anticipated. Recently, we planned a trip into Boston to visit Mrs. Mallard and a chocolate store. He really wasn’t into it. There was a good 30 minutes of screaming before we wrestled him into the car.
Fortunately, eventually, we enjoyed our trip. When we got home, Eitan found the coasters he had thrown during one of his tantrums and quietly put them away. Then he said, “sorry I didn’t want to go to the farm, mama”. It might have been the wrong story, but it was the right sentiment!
Since he was pretty small, Eitan called juice ‘jupe’. It is definitely his favorite drink, and he continues to call it jupe even though he can now pronounce the sound ‘s’. The other day he was helping me peel an orange and his finger punctured it. “Hmmmm, jupey!” was his reaction. It was great.
Eitan is playing with Dada’s wallet.
“What’s this?”
“That’s the bank card. It has our money in it.”
“I don’t see any money…”, as he flips it around to see it from all angles.