January news and notes

As described to me last night by Noah:

If you could put a camera in Noah's nose, you would see nose hairs which catch the tiny germs and don't make him sick. But if you made the germs into beans, and the nose hairs into clay, then the clay would catch the beans and squash them. Just think of all those beans.

Aviva and I were talking about how our friend Dorian is going to get a kitten and I'm very excited. I said it was going to happen soon. Aviva asked when, more specifically, and I said "in a week or two." Then Aviva said, "But I thought you said 'soon!' " Different definitions...

Noah did something difficult, and he wanted a reward. I think the difficult thing was peeing in a new place. In any case, he thought he deserved a reward. He kept talking about it and asking what the reward would be. We went to an Asian supermarket that had lots of little vending machine toys (like rubber balls and stickers and gumballs) for a quarter or for a dollar. We had a very long and heated discussion about how much he was allowed to get and how much he deserved. It was so heated that it was a fit, basically. Tears and insisting - it was really important to him. He finally got a glittery tattoo, after a lot of back-and-forth. He got the tattoo, and later on the car ride home, he said, "You know, I think Elisabeth would like this tattoo. I'm going to give it to her." Sadness and desperation forgotten.

While the kids brush their teeth, they can watch a video. The other night was a video about the word "jealous." Two cartoon kids were talking about what it meant, and how it feels. As I was putting Noah to bed and we were snuggling in his bed, I wanted to ask him if he could articulate his jealousy of Aviva, or that he sometimes feels jealous (of the attention she gets, or the amount of dinner, etc.). As I was talking, I made a last minute decision to start the other way. I told Noah that sometimes Aviva feel jealous of him, because he's older and can do a lot of things. He understood and said he would try to be extra nice to her. I'm happy with how the conversation went, and we left it at that.