4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 2

Epilogue to Day 1

Last night, in the afterhours, I did a few chores around the house - baked the bread dough that Avigail and the bread machine had prepared, loaded the dishwasher.  And then, intimidated by the empty bed that awaited me, zoned out to Youtube videos for about an hour before actually climbing into bed.  I set my alarm for 6:40 just like the day before.

Day 2

I was awoken in the morning by Elisheva, who was standing by my bed and asking me to help her to get ready so she go early to gan.  I glanced at my phone, which was still ringing from the alarm I'd set.  It read 7:13.  The gan opens its gates at 7:30, so I figured by the time I get up and get both kids ready, we'll be able to leave the house right away. 

This morning, the kids demonstrated just how responsible they can when there is no one looking over their shoulder, nagging them to get things done.  Chanania asked me if today is the right day to feed Amiel's fish, over which he'd been placed in charge of in Amiel's absence.  Elisheva, excited about her year-end party in gan (yesterday Noam's gan had their party), dressed herself in a holiday outfit.  Afterwards, Avigail reminded her that the party is not now, but in the afternoon, so she wear regular clothes, and Elisheva changed again.  Avigail, who had been selected by Elisheva to be her parent figure at the party, asked me which phone she can use to take pictures at the party, since her phone has a real crappy camera on it.  

At a quarter to eight I left the house with the two preschoolers, by which time the two older children had already gotten themselves ready and left for their respective schools.  After I dropped them off in gan (today I was allowed to accompany them into the building, since we were early), I continued another two blocks down the street to find a minyan that started at 8 o'clock, which was exactly the time I arrived there.  

I returned home after minyan was over and decided to commit the first half of this blog post to audio, as a means of quickly jotting down my thoughts, before leaving for work.  I packed my bag, mounted my bike, and left for work.  At work, just before lunch, I got frustrated with my only other team member for not wanting to put in the effort to properly learn methodologies for working with componentized code packages in a development environment.  Over lunch we kind of made up.  At the end of the day we encountered a confounding issue wherein our processed data suffered from a sub-pixel shift in comparison to the original satellite imagery.  Just before going home I made a minor breakthrough when I discovered that they seem to have different approaches to applying geographic coordinates to each pixel - one relates to the center of the pixel, while the other draws the pixel with its top left corner anchored at the coordinate.  Filling in for Michal, I reminded Binyamin to make an optometrist appointment so he doesn't get in trouble when he shows up for his first interview at the draft office in two weeks.

I rode home and arrived at 6 o'clock sharp.  The house was devoid of life, the windows all closed and shuttered.  It seemed like nobody had been home since I left the house in the morning.  I sat down and relaxed after peeling off a layer of clothing, then notified my parents that I was home.  They said they'd send Noam home on his own.  Elisheva was still at the party in gan with Avigail.  They all arrived a few minutes later, pretty much at the same time.  Elisheva showed me the special siddur (prayerbook) she'd received in gan, and the fancy hair styling that Avigail had made her for the party.  

The party in gan.  Elisheva is wearing a pink dress

 It was 6:30, and I slowly, quietly, began to encourage them to come shower so they could put on pajamas and get into bed, aiming to be done with the whole process around 7:30.  Noam asked if we could play on the tumbling mat a game he dubbed chalukat hechalal, which is a nonsense combination literally meaning "the divvying up of outer space".  In the game, the kids bounce on the mat (which is actually just an old spring mattress) and I pull their feet from underneath them, flip them over onto the mat, and other assorted Abba-assisted stunts.  Don't ask me how he came up with that name - he has a knack for labeling even mundane objects with bizarre names.  For instance, there was a stretch when he called the little slide in our living room "The Luberman".  Funny kid. 

The Luberman

I told him we could play, but only after they're both ready for bed.  20 minutes later he still hadn't come to the shower, spending most of that time lolling upside down on the back of the couch.  Then he remembered he was hungry.  After some haggling over what he could eat, I offered him toast with guacamole (prepared by my mother for last Shabbat), and his eyes lit up.  In the meanwhile, Elisheva was refusing to take off the outfit she wore to the party, and not only that, but she was refusing to answer any questions about moving towards bed.

Thus we continued on until I realized that I need to leave the house.  Usually I would catch a minyan for mincha, the afternoon prayer, at an office building near mine, at 1:15.  Today I was unable to attend, so now, at 7: 35, was my last chance at mincha.  I asked Avigail to continue the going to bed process with them, and skedaddled.

I returned to the house at 8 o'clock.  Much progress had been made.  Elisheva was in pajamas, and Noam had finished eating.  I brushed his teeth and deposited them in their beds.  Elisheva, still being terse, wanted to be covered with a sheet, or maybe not actually, but then again... I gave up trying to interpret her murmurs and left her calling after me as I left their bedroom.  I sat down at my computer to try to get some things done, and the phone rang.  It was a Skype call from the missing family members.

After some small talk, we got down to business.  Amiel, who has playing violin for less than a year, has a recital in three weeks.  In order to continue practicing he brought the violin with him on the trip, but when flying with string instruments, it's recommended to loosen the strings, lest the pressure differences cause damage to them or the instrument body.  Now he, and his mother, were having a lot of trouble tuning the darned thing.  I was reminded of Humpty-Dumpty (who, BTW, was actually the name of a cannon that the rebels knocked off the castle walls in an uprising against the monarchy in England, sometime in the 13th or 14th century).

For the better part of an hour Michal, I, and the tuning app she had on her phone all worked together to try to tune the violin.  The problem was, even when a string would sound right, since her fingers weren't accustomed to applying the kind of force needed to keep the pegs stuck firmly in place, by the time she tuned the rest of the them the first one would go flaccid again.  In the end we said "good enough for a 9 year old who can barely squeak out a tune".

A while later she called back again, after even the older kids were in bed.  This time Moriah (age 2y) was up from her nap, smiling and giggling, but sad that she hadn't yet seen a single squirrel (while she was asleep they went for a walk and saw a bunch, but when they took her out for a stroll all the squirrels were apparently hiding - or napping themselves).  We talked and updated each other on things.  Michal had to struggle to keep the kids from succumbing to the jetlag and sleeping in the middle of the day.  We hung up shortly after midnight.

I retreated to the tumbling mat with a game on my mobile phone, planning to play for a little while and then go to bed.  Instead, I ended up falling asleep right there.  I set no alarm.  I didn't even brush my teeth.