Miss Libbie

Libbie has probably changed the most since we left the USA. She has become a full-blown toddler, with lots of words and opinions.

Some things that Libbie says lately: "Hereago" as in, "Here you go" when handing you something. "Beep beep" to mean "Move out of the way!" or, when direct toward an inanimate object, "Move that thing out of the way!" Another of my favorites is the fact that whenever Ben is not the same room as her, she insists that he is sleeping. We often have the following conversation: 

Me: Where's Tato?

Libbie: Shhhhhh.

Me: Is Tato sleeping?

Libbie: *nod*

Me: Actually, Tato is at school.

Libbie: Uh-Oh.

Not sure why Ben being at school is an uh-oh, but she says it every time. When Ben was in Sweden and Germany for a week, Libbie insisted the whole time that he was sleeping. In her defense though, she was sleeping when he left, and then, to confuse her even more, when she finally did see him for the first time, he was actually sleeping. 

Whenever anyone in the house is sad, Libbie runs over to hug and kiss that person. One time when Aaron was having a tantrum, Libbie just calmly walked over, found an entrance through his flailing body, and just rested her arm around his neck, where he allowed her to gently pat him until he calmed down. It almost instantly soothes Aaron every time he is upset.

Sometimes she knows exactly what she wants, and figures out how to communicate it through few words and gestures. She loves to go for walks, but usually has some very specific ideas about how that walk should take place.

She loves her red hat. If I forget to put it on her before we leave, she says, "hah, hah!" and taps her head until I figure out what she means then go find her hat. If I can't find it, she is usually very understanding.

Here, she insisted on wearing this bag like a backpack for a walk around the block. She loves to walk down to the bus stop and get up and down from the bench. She likes to assign people seats, patting the place where the person is supposed to sit.

She loves to ride on these horses at the playground. She likes to get on, point to the other one for me to sit on, then rocks back and forth and somehow communicates to me that she wants me to say "giddy-up." I think she says something like, "dya, dya, dya" while rocking back and forth, then smiles and nods when I get the cue.

Sometimes she revels in excess...

Emerging from her nap with four stuffed toys to snuggle

Finishing off five cantaloupe slices

She brightens our life with her contagious smile, and rarely fails to charm the passersby with her blonde curly hair and brown eyes.

Birthday Party

A collage from Elliot's recent birthday party. It was, if we may say, a smashing success, although so far as the knight theme goes... well, let's just say we didn't consider how it'd look to have a bunch of Christians dressed up as knights running around in Jerusalem until after the fact! Our neighbors, bless them, have yet to stage a counter-crusade to our birthday party.

The night of his birthday, showing off his new age. Self-explanatory grins.

Unwrapping a portion of his knight gear

Elliot's castle birthday cake, seven layers tall with ice cream cones for towers, gothic wafer windows, almond drawbridge, and icing filled with crushed oreos for brick and mortar.

Aaron used leftovers to fashion a second, smaller cake for Elliot, pictured below.

Entirely of Aaron's own doing. He gave it to Elliot and we ate it the night of his birthday, which was the day before the party.

And now onto the party, which started at the playground near our building and ended in our apartment with cake and ice cream.

Elliot's show-stopping cardboard castle, with two free-standing towers, functional drawbridge, a dozen windows, balloons, two backdoors (one side-flap and one top-flap, which opened here into the tunnel end of a piece of playground equipment). Made from 100% sidewalk-salvaged box. The best feature: Elliot hand drew no less than 30 knights all over the castle.

The best, however still mediocre, close-up of a few of Elliot's many knight decorations adorning the inside of the castle.

Birthday party melee in full action on the playground, featuring four handheld catapults, three swords, one shield, one suit of armor (see birthday boy in back), 14 balloons, and maybe 40 plastic balls for catapulting and throwing.

The birthday boy, triumphant slayer of the Nakhman-dragon (family friend and father of boys).

In his excitement, Elliot tripped and skinned his knee. Libbie, as she usually does when either brother is hurt or upset for any reason, rushed to his side and threw her arms around him.

Checking out the damage

A round of duck-duck-moose, in which the pursuer has to act like the final animal named: e.g., moose, goose, golden retriever, turtle, and Aaron's ever-popular petrified sloth.

Elliot, after naming a duck-duck-moose pursuer, in this case Aaron, preferred to take the wide detours around the circle, er, playground.

Aaron enjoying centrifugal force with friends from the branch.

One moment Elliot glowed more than the cake.

Here, N+1 birthday candles are lit,

where N is the number of years old with an extra candle to grow on.

Indoors, after cake, Aaron sat guard while the girls played within.

Gift opening--another blessed moment that Elliot was deservedly the focus of attention.

Ben reading Elliot the blog post, below, in his honor. Elliot smiled non-stop.

Elliot

Today is our Elliot's fourth birthday. He is such a wonderful kid. We wanted to take some time to talk about just him. It's been a fantastic four years. He's at once independent and compliant, loving and perceptive, calm and exacting.

He loves to page through books--even very long anthologies--looking at each page carefully, constructing the story in his mind. He doesn't like to be interrupted when he does this. If I try to sit down and read him the story, he gets upset and says that he has to finish first. When he is done, we can finally sit together where he remains content to be read to for as long as possible. 

He likes Calvin and Hobbes a lot--perhaps a little too much. Most of the time we enjoy the comic strip together, but sometimes--like when he walks into the kitchen and asks "what's that awful smell?"--well, sometimes we have to wonder.... 

Once while watching a wolf chase a baby antelope in the movie Planet Earth, Elliot grew concerned about the antelope and yelled out, "Wolf, if you get that antelope, you are going to have a time out!"

Along those lines, Elliot lives life physically, exuberantly. When he's not sitting stone still wrapped up in the next pursuit, he is jumping and flying and crashing about. He is just a physical kid, so full of energy and spunk, strength and sheer size for his age that sometimes the rest of us don't know quite what to make of it all. He is as equally likely to turn a snuggle into a surprise WWF move as he is to ask to snuggle in the first place. Libbie puts up with a lot; Aaron matches move for move. Elliot can walk over a mile without complaint; and he often carries himself with a sort of a swinging gait, a bit like a cowboy sure of his quick draw and skills in a scuffle. The other day Kourtney took Elliot on a "special outing" the other week to go swimming at the university. He was smiling from ear to ear the whole time, sometimes bent over in laughter. The week after, Ben took Elliot on a walk to the store where we ate an ice cream, watched a football match on TV, then repeatedly raced down a hill, built stone towers, threw rocks around an empty field, and pestered an ant colony. No doubt we didn't burn off the ice cream, but Elliot probably came close on his fourth time around the hill. He exudes pure joy on these outings.

Elliot has been into drawing lately. The other day he drew a picture of two knights fighting:

and the Cornflakes box:

Check out the rooster!

Elliot loves to sing and to be sung to. He can usually sing back a song that he has heard a few times, sometimes slurring the words together if they don't make sense to him, but the tune and the basic words are usually right on. Sometimes when we can't think of how a song goes, we ask him and he sings it to us. 

On that theme, Elliot has a thing for memorizing: he lives for the next new thing--anything really, a ditty, a song, a story, a book, a movie--for him to repeat and to recite. Once he's memorized it, he is done with it. No longer interested. End of story. But share with him something new, and his eyes light up, he bursts into a smile, and he freezes in order to absorb every word. He is still excited to spell his and others' names in the family. Elliot, he will be glad to tell you, is spelled "E-l-l-i-o-t," Aaron usually gets "A-a-r-o-n," Libbie gets some variation of "L-l-i-o-t-i-n-n," and Mama and Tato are often rendered unrecognizable. 

Noting that each family member is demanding in their own way, Elliot expresses some of his stubbornness by requiring that his interlocutor verbally confirm whatever he has just said, with either the word "OK" or "right," corresponding to whatever he ended his statement with. The following might be a typical conversation, with Elliot leading: 

"Tato, I'm going to swing my bat and hit the couch, OK?" 

"Well, if you don't hit it too hard, that sounds fine." 

"OK?" 

"OK, what?"

"OK?" 

"Elliot, I already agreed. 'That sounds fine' means 'OK.'" 

"OK?"

"Well, actually I can't say it's just OK. It's only OK if you don't hit it too hard. I'm very glad you are asking, but I can't just say it's OK, because it's not just OK to hit the couch with your bat." 

"OK?" (eyebrows raised, big smile on face) 

Not exactly sustainable, right? (Right?) The root of the problem is, of course, that the middle child rightly demands attention.  There has been some progress this last week, since we started giving him five "OK/right" coupons every morning, with which he can demand that we repeat him exactly. Once the coupons are gone, we are free to confirm however we wish.

Spelunking in Bethlehem, OK?  

Here are a few telling quotes. 

Once when invited to provide his own bedtime story, he said: "Once upon a time... *pause* I don't want to tell you that part..., or that part either. And that's the end." 

Elliot asks thoughtful questions. After he got interested in coloring things accurately, he has occasionally asked, while looking around the room, "Everything is already colored, right?" 

Playing with colors at school

The fact that yesterday's tomorrow is today is confusing. When we say we are going to do something tomorrow, Elliot often asks on the next day, "Is today tomorrow?" and we usually respond, "Today is yesterday's tomorrow, yes." A few days ago, he woke up and announced, "All the days are tomorrow. Right?"

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An Interview with Elliot in early October
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What's your name? E-L-L-I-O-T

What's your last name? Peters

What's your middle name? (no reply)

Favorite Color: Green (editor's note: Green has been his favorite color from the time he could say what his favorite color is.)

Favorite Food: pita with dipping sauce (olive oil), bread, fish, juice, milk

What do you like to do? Not get shot by a hunter. That's all, OK?

What are your teachers' names? Joni, Nomi

What is your favorite thing about living in Jerusalem? Trying to open the door and call the telephone (Editor's Note: The doors to our apartment are pretty easy to open, so he gets to do it quite a bit. Also, when he says "call on the telephone," he means that he likes to pick up the telephone that connects to the lobby speakers for when people are buzzing up. He likes to pick it up and reenact a scene from a Bert and Ernie skit. I don't remember how it goes but the punch line is something like, "Sorry, no, you can't talk to Bert. He's talking on the banana." After Elliot says that he laughs just like Ernie.)

What is your favorite song? Book of Mormon Stories.

What is your favorite movie? Monsters vs. Aliens

What do you want to be when you grow up? A skeleton.

Favorite book: Book of Mormon stories (Editor's note: He means the Book of Mormon. I think he calls it "Book of Mormon Stories" because of the song.)

What does Tato do? He helps me get dragon milk for me. (Editor's note: dragon milk is warm milk with cinnamon and sugar. Ben made it up and it stuck. Elliot loves to make it.)

What does Mommy do? She reads books and uses Tato's knife, not touching the sharp part.

What do you like to do with Libbie? Get Libbie a banana, I mean nana. Libbie says, "nana" for a banana, right?

Tender moments (for all but the cat)

We love our Elli so much. He fills our life with smiles, laughs, and music. It takes a trooper to travel the world with us--and he is it. Our four-year old knight, our music box, artist, recorder, reminderer, and delight. Four cheers for Elliot, our son! Happy Birthday! 

Synagogue

Elliot and Ben got all dressed up to go to the synagogue one Friday evening. No, we are not converting (even though part of me often wishes I had Jewish heritage...). We were told that it was okay to attend synagogue but that the men should wear kippot. So Ben and Elli took a turn to try and go. 

Libbie really wanted to wear a kippa too, but was satisfied by helping dad to put it on

Elliot especially liked trying to put the clip on

All ready to go!

New Jammies!

We got our first package in the mail last week, and were so excited to find new spider jammies from Grandma Marsha!

The kids were all excited to put them on, but not so excited to get their pictures taken. Here are some sneaky shots we managed to get.

Reading stories at bedtime

(Aaron is cutting his toenails.)

Libbie in the kitchen

The classic shot of Aaron trying to run away from being photographed

Thanks for the new jammies, Grandma!

Chores

We started having the kids do chores regularly. They all love to wash the windows the best. Aaron also likes to wash dishes.

A group effort to wash the main window

St. Peter's Fish

The first week we were here, we went to the main outdoor market in the city center. The market is filled with all kinds of delicious food. I was thrilled to find buckets of grains and dried beans, tons of fresh produce, and warm pita. Of course, Aaron went straight for the fresh fish stands and we went home with a whole fish for him to cook up for dinner. We decided to try the local "St. Peter's fish."

(Notice the potato in its mouth)

Aaron fixed it completely by himself

Super enthusiastic about spicing the fish

(It was really good, by the way, and everybody chowed down.)

Mango Season

Mango season just ended in Jerusalem, but we certainly enjoyed it while it lasted. I think Aaron gets the prize for the most mangoes eaten, as well as the prize for most-likely-to-have-a-face-covered-in-mango.

He usually starts by just biting into it like an apple, but usually ends up eating under the skin all the way around.


This mango is a particularly stringy one. I prefer, though, the ones that aren't so stringy. Man, they are so good.

Tel Aviv, take two

We decided to test our luck and go to Tel Aviv again. The kids had a long vacation off school for Sukkot, so we found a day that worked to meet up with our friends and then headed off. Elliot was breaking down even before we left the apartment, so we had our doubts. We got on our first bus (from our neighborhood to the central bus station) and missed our station, which meant we had to walk back a long way (over a very cool bridge though), with Elliot still breaking down. I carried him most of the way. We got very close to turning around and just going home, but Elliot calmed down because he really wanted to go to the beach, so we went forward. We got on the long bus to Tel Aviv and realized there was only one seat left for all five of us. I sat down with Elliot and Libbie on my lap, while meanwhile everyone around us offered to hold kids on their laps. Of course my kids wouldn't sit with anyone else, but still the offer was nice. The lady next to me squeezed over a far as she could and kept encouraging me to squeeze closer. Somebody across the aisle put their nine year old on her lap so that Ben and Aaron could have a seat. It was quite an adventure. My seat was a little crowded with Elliot and Libbie both on my lap, but it turned out fine. They were pretty good to sing songs quietly at our seat.

We made it to Tel Aviv (after sitting in traffic for about an hour for the last 20 km of the trip) and got on a local bus and headed to the beach. A nice lady showed us which stop to get off at, and, voila, three hours after leaving our apartment, we arrived!


It wasn't long before everybody jumped into the water. We couldn't get over how warm the water was. Aaron kept saying, "It's warmer than a swimming pool!"



We had a lot of fun splashing around. Aaron and I even went out to a rock where some boys were fishing. They weren't particularly interested in having company, so we went over to a man who was fishing with a net. It looked like his method was to wait until he saw a fish, then throw a weighted net onto it. He had actually caught quite a few fish, but none while we were watching him. He must have been out there for a long time.

The kids were all just ecstatic the whole time. Any trauma that we might have incurred from the way over immediately disappeared and it was all worth it. As it turns out, by the way, the beach we ended up on was "Jerusalem Beach," which I thought was funny since we had just traveled three hours away from Jerusalem to get there.

The boys did lots of wave-jumping. The water was shallow as far out as we ventured (all the way out to those rocks you can see in the background on the left), but we still had some nice little waves to play in.

Libbie, meanwhile, enjoyed eating sandy pretzels

Speaking of sand, we were amazed at how fine and clean the sand was here. Considering that the majority of our experience in beaches the last few years take place in New York City, we were quite pleased with the quality of the beach here.

Of course Ben dug some rivers and castles
(Elliot's non-stop smile was great medicine to help forget how sad he was on the way over.)

After a couple hours on the beach, our dear friend Zohar from NYC (who has since moved to Tel Aviv) picked us up and took us back to her house. They have a beautiful home not far from the beach, where we got cleaned up and relaxed with them for a few hours.

Zohar has three kids, of similar ages to our kids. She started the same program in the same year as Ben at Columbia, so we have been friends for over five years now. Last year they moved back to Tel Aviv.

Alona got out her cello to show us, and of course Elliot was ecstatic to be able to try it out. (Couldn't even wait to finish changing out of his bathing suit!) Elliot loves music and really wants to take violin or cello or piano lessons. (It changes according to what people are talking about and what is in front of him.) We had hoped to be able to find something for him here in Jerusalem but I don't think it's realistic to find an affordable English-speaking teacher and instrument rental. Maybe next year we'll have a normal life and can do music lessons.

We ended the evening with having dinner on their amazing roof. It feels like you are on top of the world up there. Dan grilled some meat (much to Aaron's delight) and we just sat and ate and watched the stars come out.

Zohar took us to the bus station, so on the way home we had only two buses to take. Elliot fell asleep on the first bus, and stayed asleep the whole rest of the way home.

He slept even while we waited 15 minutes for the local Jerusalem bus to take us back to our home

And continued to sleep on the final bus home

It was a great trip. Some of us wanted to go back the next day, but we decided to wait a little longer. We are excited that beach season is still here, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.