Saturday, October 11, 2008

What We're Up To

Yesterday (Friday) morning we went to the local library's huge book sale, which was fun. I got a bunch of great books for Ezra: classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Robin Hood, Treasure Island, Paul Bunyan, and The Little Prince, as well as a few random other books. I got some fiction books for me (frivolous things, e.g. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which is a fun book) as well as How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and Listen So Your Kids Will Talk. I would have loved to stay longer, but Ezra needed a snack (I gave him an apple while he hung out on my back in the Ergo as I checked out, and he proceeded to eat the entire thing...including the core) and a nap, and it was difficult to really browse through the books while keeping track of Ezra playing with cars on the floor and trying to maneuver the double stroller around the tables. I was very pleasantly surprised, though, when after I finished nursing both babies in the lobby, a woman from the business office at the auditorium came out and made sure that nobody had said anything negative to me about nursing them in public. Apparently somebody in the office thought perhaps a passerby had made a comment, which had not happened. But I thought it was great that they were being proactive about protecting my rights! Very cool.

Anyway. Tonight Baruch is on call, so I'm home alone with the kids. It's raining quite a lot. It was raining all day, in fact, and we got stuck in shul because it was pouring. A nice family invited us for lunch, as they live closer to shul than we do. So that was nice. As is typical on Saturdays, Ezra did not nap. So I drove over to my parents' house to return a bunch of my mother's tupperware that I had, and Ezra fell asleep in the car at 6:40; getting him to sleep was, of course, my intention. When we got home I played with the babies for a while and then put them to bed and and them asleep by 7:45, and I thought I was home free for a few hours! I went to get started on straightening the playroom, which is more like a huge pile of jumbled toys than an actual room at the moment, and about 3 minutes later I heard Ezra on the monitor having a nightmare. It took forever and a glass of water to calm him down and get him back to sleep. All of this woke up Ari. So then Ari was up until almost 10. Of course I just got Ari to sleep and now I'm going to write this up and go to bed myself. So much for housekeeping. It would be nice to actually be able to walk in the playroom, and the dishes need doing, but whatever.

Here is a photo of my stitches without the covering bandage, but with a steri-strip over them (WARNING: this is not pretty, and also my skin and hair are gross so just ignore that):



Also, this is a very interesting article in this weekend's Sunday Magazine from The New York Times:
Kosher Wars

I find it particularly interesting because I didn't realize there was a whole movement of people who felt the same way I do about factory-farmed meat not being kosher due to the mistreatment of animals. I've been saying that for years. I know it's not technically true, but I feel like it ought to be. In any case we are vegetarians (leaning towards veganism, especially in what we buy for our home; I was a vegan for a while until I found out I was pregnant with twins, at which point I started eating eggs and dairy for extra fat and protein). But I would definitely consider eating humanely raised grass-fed beef and poultry. I would consider it, but I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I ate meat. Certainly I would prefer to eat eggs and dairy from sustainable, humane farms, if it were available. Not that we could afford to. Which is why we are ideally vegans. It takes more work to healthily feed a family as a vegan, and at the moment I often only have the energy to stick a piece of cheese on bread and toast it for Ezra.

With the financial crisis right now, I keep thinking about how money is really imaginary. It's a social construct. When Baruch hears that people are losing money with the stock market, he wonders where the money is going. I say nowhere, it's all make believe. What I really want is to own land. A nice chunk of land, with a house and enough area to plant a large garden with produce to feed our family. Land isn't imaginary. If you own it fair and square, it can't just disappear one day (barring catastrophes like war or natural disaster). That's me. I'm not one to invest in the stock market. I'm more likely to buy gold and hide it under my mattress. I just am very risk-averse. I want something tangible. I want stability.

Speaking of feeding our family, in another 6 months or so it's going to be a heck of a lot harder to do so. I so hope the babies are sleeping well by then so I will have the energy to actually cook for a family of 5.

In closing, a few random things Ezra has said lately:

-Pointing to a picture of a tractor in a book: "I ride that yesterday." Huh? News to me! He can spend a surprisingly long time pointing to vehicle after vehicle in a book repeating with each one, "Ezza drive that. Ezza drive that. Ezza drive that...."

-Ari started crying while I was nursing Toby. Ezra called out, "I coming Toby!" and goes over and smiles at him, and then turns to me and commands, "Nurse a him!"

-I was cutting grapes, and Ezra pointed to them one by one and said, "Cut him. Cut him." I asked, "Cut who?" just to see what he'd say. He thought for a second, and tried again: "Cut her. Cut her." I chuckled and explained that a grape is an it, and I said I would cut it, and cut it, and cut it.

Adding this later (after Ezra fell out of bed and woke up, and then right after he went to sleep Toby woke up...):

I forgot to write about a big thing! Today every time I put Toby down on his belly, he would hang out for a while looking around, and then very deliberately roll over to his back and give me a huge grin. I had seen both babies roll front to back at least once, but this was deliberate and he did it many, many times. Both guys are also now regularly going from their backs to their sides, although I've only seen Ari roll back to front, and that was only once. It won't be long for sure! Ari sat for about 5 minutes with the Boppy helping him balance, and Toby is starting to sit a bit as well. Go babies!

1 comment:

tranquility said...

we have the same issue with halal meat - it's just not good enough to have it slaughtered right; the animals must be cared for properly in their lifetime, they should be fed the right food, they should be 'pure' rather than full of anti biotics etc, but most ppl just focus on the actual slaughter. it's so, so sad. there is no blessing in mistreatment, kwim.

we also do mainly vege anyway. i maybe eat meat once or twice in a year.