“Hey, look – it’s pretend!”
Spotted: a blast from the past at Hadar mall in Jerusalem.
Reacted: my 4.5 year old son.
Aged by 342897562895436: me.
Category Archives: koala update
#Dinovember?! You bet your assaurus!
Are you waking up in the morning to find your kids’ toy dinosaurs have taken over the bathroom? Poured themselves breakfast? Set up a book club in the living room?
It seems your household is temporarily afflicted with Dinovember and that is freakin’ awesome!
Here’s a quick how-to on Dinovember:
Step 1: November. Is it November? Yes.
Step 2: Dinosaurs.
Step 3: After your kids go to bed, release their toy dinosaurs from their pent up state and arrange them in some scene around the house.
Step 3a: Have fun with it.
Step 4: Keep your ear out for when your kids wake up and discover what the dinosaurs did last night.
Step 5: Repeat.
When I heard that a mom and dad in Kansas City started this, I was immediately signed up. Since I was only introduced to Dinovember last week, I got a late start. But let’s waste no more time… Before and after dino pics – here we go!
Day 1: the dinosaurs make their escape. how far will they get? will they reach the stairs? stay tuned…
First morning. The kids don’t cop to what they saw. They jump right in.
‘Whatchya doin?’
‘It’s dinosaur gan! some of them are in gan and some are dead.’
‘Um.’
‘And this one is the mefaked.’
Day 2: they spot an alternate mode of transport, and a water source. suddenly travel becomes simpler.
Second morning. I come downstairs first.
‘WHOA!’
They follow. ‘We didn’t do that!!’
We check it out. I address the dinosaurs directly asking how they did that.
S says, ‘But… but… dinosaurs don’t have ears. Firetrucks don’t have ears.’
‘Is that so?’
‘And… toys don’t… move…?!’
We’re getting somewhere…
Day 3: With a roll of paper they found, the dinos make their way up a plateau offering a somewhat edible corn-based food substance. it’s more suitable for the herbivores but the carnivores manage a basic, temporary level of satisfaction.
Third morning. ”Now dinosaurs, you going to need to roll it back up, and put it back in the bathroom, and also go back into your jar.”
Third evening. After another day to consider what’s happening, and perhaps being asked by a few of momma’s friends, my son brings it up before bed.
‘Will they come out again?’
‘I don’t know… what do you think?’
“I hid them very deep…’
‘So maybe they won’t be able to get out.’
‘…I think they’ll be able to get out.’
Day 4. The dinosaurs have arrived for tea. the brontosaurus has fallen in love.
Fourth morning. First time he asked me to check what the dinosaurs did today. We came down and saw the open jar, but no dinos. Checked another room and found the giddy party.
‘But where is all the stuff?’
‘What stuff?’
‘The bag.’
‘You mean… teabags?’
Since he came down first before his sister woke up, we went back upstairs because he wanted to show her. She had just started climbing out of bed and immediately followed when he told her what waited.
‘But close your eyes…’ he instructed.
‘When you get to the bottom of the stairs,’ I responded.
Day 5. A collective feeling of remorse has begun to spread throughout the herd. Tonight, instead of wrecking, they choose to build.
Fifth morning. Note: There is a preexisting condition of Lego possessiveness in our household.
‘This is אסור! I מחליט that.’
‘Why can’t the dinosaurs play too?’
‘I’m going to clean it up.’
A few seconds later, upon sitting down next to it for closer examination…
‘Ok, I know. We can play with the Lego together.’
Day 6: They decide to kick off binational holiday season a week early. Everyone agrees, with pterodactyl and turkey arm-in-arm and a dinocopia present, world peace is truly possible.
Sixth morning. ”Woooooooow!”
Day 7.* The dinosaurs got a head-start in getting their Sabbath morning prayer on. Still compensating for not checking Noah’s voicemail message.
*Sabbath reenactment. I slept in so the kids set it up for me again so I could see it for myself.
Side note: I think it’s really cute that my kid tries to challenge the dinosaurs each night by making it harder for them to get out… usually by burying the jar deeper and deeper, and tonight it seems he closed the whole toy chest…
Day 8: It’s back to work tomorrow, and the dinos know it. They’re ready to click their way through this week’s electronic mails, TPS reports, CRM data and other forms of office jargon.
Eighth morning:
Me: ‘oh boy, maybe they did my work for me!’
Him: ‘I don’t think so, the screen is black.’
He came down and was all, ‘but I closed the chest!’
After, he said he understood how *she* got up on top of the monitor bec she can fly, but asked how *he*, the dino that can’t fly, got on top of the monitor. I asked how he knew dinosaur gender. ‘Dunno.’
Day 9: The dinosaurs are hungry, and work together to get into the fridge. Ten out of ten herbivores agree this was best for everyone involved.
Ninth morning:
After a confused search – the dinos’ jar was open but no dinos in sight – he pondered at how funny it would be if they were in the fridge.
‘Hahahaha, yes, maybe,’ I said.
After the initial laughter wore down, he switched to concern – ‘maybe they want breakfast. But they still need to brush their teeth.’
Day 10: While the world ponders, negotiates, disappoints… the dinos take matters of strategy into their own tiny hands. Well, the sore loser does, anyway.
Tenth morning. At the very least, I’m pleased the children have been exposed to the fundamentals of Battleship: peg patterns.
Day 11: The dinosaurs hit the road. where will a midnight joyride take them? Next stop: somewhere with a heatwave in November…
Eleventh morning. *THERE* they are!!!
Day 12: But they worked so hard… What do you mean it’s the wrong year for a Chanukah bush?
Day 13: It’s a… dinosaur! Welcome to the world tricerobebe. Now hold still…
Thirteenth morning. ‘No, Grandma didn’t do it. She went to bed and then they came out.’
Day 14: what if you walked into your mom’s room one morning, and she had *become* the dinosaur?
Dinomom’s note: there might be something ridic about you if the best reaction of the morning was your huz: “you can’t commit to a movie, you can’t commit to what kind of dinner you want, but you can commit to wearing that dino hat all night.”
Dinovember finale:
As the calendar strikes one,
The dinos end their fun.
While the rest of us venture…
What will come alive in December?
As the calendar strikes one,
The dinos end their fun.
While the rest of us venture…
What will come alive in December?
DIY! Homemade tutu and dinosaur feet… for the kids who want to be everything
Yesterday was crafty craft Friday! Two projects I’ve been wanting to try: DIY dinosaur feet and a homemade tutu. Both are relatively cheap thrills and the dinosaur feet are especially super simple. I’d probably have the kids do that one more often if I had easy access to proper tissue boxes (see below).
So here we go… the imperfectionist’s crafternoon:
DIY Project #1: Homemade tutu!
Ok, so this was totally more for me than for Bebe; she never asked and I never really told her we were doing it. But she was a patient enough mannequin for a 2-year-old.
I took about a meter of tulle, elastic for the waistband, and a ribbon to jazz it up a little with a bow in the back. The ribbon was totally unnecessary and more annoying than it was worth. The waistband doesn’t necessarily look professional but this was a total ‘I’m gonna think about this till I actually just do it’ project so I wasn’t going for perfection.
Clearly a project for a mama or papa and not the 2-year-old, though older kids can totally get the job done with some supervision.
- Measured the elastic for the waist, and measured out the tulle for skirt length; basically went a little below the knee, doubled that, and added an inch more. Cut the tulle into about 3 inch strips, give or take for variety (and because, you know, imperfection).
- Sewed the elastic for the waist band.
- Extra, unnecessary step: I midway became inspired to pretty up the waistband by loosely sewing a purple ribbon so there would be a bow at the back. I’m sure there’s a better way to do this after finishing the tulle part. I’d do that next time.
- Fun fact: if you lose the ribbon method I did, it’s a no-sew affair.
- Setup: I put the waistband around one of those kiddie play strollers so I could work off it at eye level, sitting on the floor.
- Now, the knots. I folded each tulle strip in half, and the loop end went a bit above the elastic; I looped the rest through it and tightened. Then tied again with an extra knot.
It’s a bit tedious but it’s cute and Bebe had a fun time running around pretending to be a bird. Glad I could make that happen!
Here’s the original idea I used.
DIY Project #2: Dinosaur feet!
After two weeks of sick I finally acquired the essential ingredients for the dinosaur feet project: cardboard tissue boxes. It’s a rare commodity here in Israel – our tissues usually come in bags.
(See why it’s so hard to get your craft itch scratched here?)
This is super simple for the kids, and a fun (but probably short term) game when it’s done.
- Get two tissue boxes, paint color of your choice, paintbrush, surface mat.
- Have the kid paint the boxes.
- Leave out to dry.
- In the meantime, cut out the ‘toes’ or ‘claws’ depending on what your kid’s dino style is.
- When the boxes are dry, attach the claws. I ended up folding them in the back, taping each piece together where you wouldn’t see, and gluing as a unit to the boxes.
Totally effortless on my part, except for green paint bath cleanup. Koala stomped around until he discovered it’s a bit slippery which is way more fun.
Here’s the original idea I used.
Happy crafting!
Something to tell you…
For months I wanted to tell them.
“Get into bed guys, and I’ll tell you a סוד.”
Especially Koala. I so enjoy sharing secrets with him… trivial whispers or major life developments.
They stood at the edge of Bebe’s bed; she was nearly collapsed from exhaustion.
“You know how some of our friends had babies recently?”
Bebe nodded her head as I spoke, her eyes half closed; she sat down and sprawled out. Koala hung on every word with his eyes.
I turned to Koala. ”What do you think?”
But he was already thinking – and speaking – at a mile a minute.
“Maybe more of our friends will also have babies soon. When will it come? How big is it? But where is it now?”
He looked suspiciously at my soft, mushy, everyday belly.
“It’s in there. It’s tiny tiny. It’ll get bigger and you’ll start to notice. Eventually you might feel it move.”
“But how will it get out?”
I guided him to his bed and told him just how. Before I turned out the light, he looked me up and down and said, “Oh.”
The next night Koala asked again. We chatted about it more extensively.
“See? That’s why girls have vaginas… and it’s why we have the babies.”
He looked a little sad as he thought it over, and then Bebe, the girl who sometimes tells me her penis hurts, pointed to hers and lit up. “I have a vagina!!”
Ever since, both Koala and Bebe have been proudly announcing you to their friends, their teachers, and again and again, to me. They look at my belly; Koala goes so far as to measure it with his hands every week. They ask questions. So many questions.
“What does it eat?”
“How does it eat?”
“Does it move?”
“Is it this big?”
“Where does it pee?”
“…wait, isn’t that איכסה?”
And they’ve taken sides on the gender war… later on you’ll easily guess who wanted what. Bebe seems fine to concede if you turn out a boy. Koala is more insistent he is correct.
Sometimes he looks me right in the eye and says, “Ima, the baby is a boy.”
“How do you know?”
“I know it, Ima.”
Most of all, ever since I told them, they’ve showered you with kisses, hugs and whispers. Sometimes shouts. Probably a lot of shouts.
Particularly Koala, before leaving to gan.
“I love you baby!”
Do you hear us yet?
Someone gets girls a lot better than I do
My son is drawing a picture for his cousin:
Him: “It’s a girl?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Him: “So I’m doing purple.”
Me: “Why?”
Him: “Girls love purple, don’t you know that?”
…
Me: “What is it?”
Him: “A rocket.”
Koala update: Four and a half years
At some point in the last six months, I stopped living with a little kid and started sharing a home with a boy. 
The first suspicion that our household had undergone some sort of transition was after a few sporadic mornings when I had the opportunity to creep into your room as the sun came up and gently wake you, watching your eyes grow from tiny slits to wide blue bulbs, soaking up the light, the time, my face, the day. Something about your fresh face on these mornings made me realize: this outstretched creature is a boy. 
My second clue was space. Not the talk of astronauts that had taken over (though firemen, Superman and police officers still reign supreme). The need for space, physical and mental, and more of it. That a room is not always enough to contain your energy. Sometimes it takes a speeding bike ride down the block. 
That we can’t gloss over answers to questions anymore. I stopped answering you with ‘I don’t know’. It won’t do. (So much so, that you think I know everything. You ask me why that is. For now I still have an answer to that.) 
Then there’s the more challenging stuff. The emotional theme of the last few months has been anger. The reactions to it have been a thing of ongoing process; both for us and for you. We’ve battled in some tough arenas, yelled and cried through some difficult matches, and I’ve absorbed quite a lot of heat from you.
And then in the last few weeks the equivalent of boy butterfly wings emerged. You can do your own personal brand of break dance, reason through a problem, wield a ‘sword’, play house, and look me in the eye and tell me you love me in what all seems like the same breath.
I believe that’s what being a boy is all about. I think this is a great start, Koala.
My kids are awesome sleepers
By awesome, I mean, creative. Not that they always sleep through their nightmares and don’t come in at 2:30 am and tell us about the monsters and lions and bears and I think once there was the ‘blue Spider-man’.
Exhibit A: They very often manage synchronized sleeping.
Exhibit B: In all fairness, the bed might actually be tilted.
Exhibit C: Not much of an internal sleeping compass. Or maybe he is a sleeping compass.
Exhibit D: Bed-sharing means bed-caring… an invitation to sleep even closer. But ‘in my bed there are some rules…’
