Checking in

All is delightful in my little world.  Miss Jessie and Sam danced off to Hebrew School happily enough.  There's a famous quote by some rabbi that Marc quotes all the time, something about if you want a child to love Torah, give them candy.  Which is a good theory - and I'm happy to report that it works wonderfully well.  The Education Director dispenses Israeli bubble gum - and you'd think it was solid gold from the way my children react.  Sam literally didn't hesitate, he got dressed and bopped out the door, throwing a kiss back at me.

School is going so much better for him - he's MUCH better in the mornings, getting out of the van on his own.  He never seems delighted to go, but he doesn't panic anymore either.  I've even gone into his classroom and been able to leave without him crying.  He still won't sit on the carpet with the class, strangely enough, but his teacher has a little chair set up right next to the carpet and he's happy as can be to sit there.

Jessie took Rebecca Rubin to Hebrew today.  She actually brought her to school yesterday too - I'm REALLY glad that we bought the doll for her.  She wanted it so desperately a couple of years ago, but they're SO expensive.  We made her earn money, farming her out to grandparents and other family members to polish furniture or rake leaves, so that she'd pay for at least part of it.   It was partly that it was so expensive, but I'd like think even if we were independently wealthy, we still would have do it this way.  I wanted to make sure that she'd really appreciate her, and it definitely worked - she loves that doll.  But I was shocked the other day when I went into her classroom for lunch, because almost all of the little girls had brought in their American Girl dolls and many of them had more than one.  One kid had SIX.  And there were several girls that had four of them.  These dolls literally cost close to one hundred dollars.  That's so much money - on a doll.  Granted, Jessica does truly cherish the doll, and she's well made and pretty - but still.  I can't imagine a parent actually spending that much money on dolls.  Six American Girl dolls, plus all the clothing, furniture, books, hair care accessories (because if you're paying in excess of six hundred dollars on just the dolls, why not get all the other crap that goes along with it?).  We're talking easily a month's rent on just toys for one child.  Baffling... but also - really glad that my daughter has at least one doll so she can play with the other kids - and also glad that we were smart enough about it to make her really value the thing.

Speaking of valuing dolls - Julianna also adores Rebecca.  To be fair, she also adores the six other baby dolls that she has managed to steal from her older sister.  Jessie, at this point, can really only claim to have our beloved Poopado (her baby doll that she loved to death) and Rebecca as "her" dolls.  Because Julianna has taken over the rest of them, and screams unmercifully if Jess has the audacity to try and play with one.