Listen to the Rain

Lit the first candle tonight, a bit after sundown. Laila is still sick, but when I asked her if she wanted to light candles, she came over, I picked her up, and I sang the blessings and held her while she stared at the lights as they burned and reflected on the window.

The Festival of Lights.

Work work again. Laila is handling it pretty well considering--we had thought she would be shocked and appalled that I wasn't done with all of that dumb "work" stuff and couldn't play with her all day, but she seems to have accepted it. We'll see if she accepts me going into the office tomorrow.

We spent most of Thanksgiving at my parents' house, because sashagee's parents are both having big health troubles right now. We went over there for a bit so they could see Laila, but didn't get to go as early as we wanted because we had to wait for a refill on one of Laila's medicines--she's on a Controlled Substance for her brain troubles and so they never want us to have more than a 30 days' supply at a time, which means that we sometimes end up with annoying situations like this one. I got the new supply at 6:00 p.m. at night and so we decided since we still had to eat dinner, we shouldn't head out that same night. We left in the morning, spent the day with sashagee's parents, and then went to my parents for a couple days. We've never had large Thanksgivings because I don't have a large family--for as long as I could remember, it was only four people, either us and my sister, or my parents nerdypsychlady and me, and now it's five only because Laila is there. We ate turkey and vegetables and rolls, Laila ate mostly rolls and fruit and didn't touch much of the rest of her food, and we had cherry bars with my father's homemade real vanilla ice cream for dessert. Another lovely dinner.

On the way home, sashagee's parents very kindly took us to Mitsuwa and we stocked up on tons of Japanese food. I was most excited about the momiji manjū--basically can't get those outside of Japan--and sashagee was excited about the mitarashi dango, but we also got some Hokkaidō manjū, more furikake, some onigiri, and other treats. We did not get a lot of staples, because most of the brand of miso or rice there I can get elsewhere, but I'd have to pay blood to get momiji manjū. 🍁

We did actually participate in Glorious American Consumerism this year as well--sashagee and I both got iPads. I got one to replace my seven-year-old iPad that still works pretty well but is showing its age, and I got one for sashagee when she mentioned wanting to use my iPad for writing and me explaining that iPads aren't meant for more than one person (they have no concept of multiple accounts, for one, so everything she wrote that had backup would get populated to my phone). I got the 11-inch one, since that's what I had before, and she got a 13-inch one because that's the one my mother had and sashagee said it was a good size. And then when it came she was surprised at how huge it was (it is huge). We both got bluetooth keyboard cases for them, me to game design and her to write with. I'll report back on how well it works.

Last year most of the Jewish holidays were on weekends, so I already had them off. That's not true this year, but the bonus is that many of the High Holy Days are on Thursdays and Fridays, so in October I only have one full work week and three four-day weekends. Not bad.

Wednesday night was Erev Rosh Hashanah and Mishkan did a livestream, but since Laila was awake I missed most of it and by the time she was asleep there were only thirty minutes left, so I skipped it. The next day, though, we woke up bright and early thanks to Laila, ate breakfast and got dressed, and took the bus out to the Copernicus Center for Rosh Hashanah services. While the last time we all went, we were able to go into actual services because Laila was small enough we could hold on to her and she could enjoy the singing, that was never going to work this time. We went for the Rise and Shine service (for kids 0-4), and then went over to the "Museum of Awe" where Laila immediately ran over to Toddler Town and started trying to grab all of the stamps. She was full of energy, so we didn't stay very long, but we did say yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 with their new baby! They were heading in to services with a very asleep baby, just like we had been a couple years ago, but we chattered with them a bit and then headed out to lunch at a drive-in diner that also had Korean food (I got a teriyaki chicken pita. It was delicious) before heading home.

The next day sashagee wasn't feeling well, so while we originally all planned to go to the second day picnic, it was just Laila and I who went. I packed up a lunch for her and we got on the bus to go to Welles Park. We arrived just in time for the Shema, and while she initially squirmed a bit she calmed down once the singing started. Once it ended and the rabbi started talking, though, she immediately lost all interest, so we left the main area and went over to the part of the park where the kids activities were. She really went in on the activity sand, and while she still doesn't quite know how to interact with other kids, she waited her turn until she could get close and played very nicely with them. She even took a turn at blowing the shofar! When we got back home, sashagee was asleep, and while Laila woke her up when we ate lunch, she went right back to sleep when Laila laid down for a nap. She was really wiped out, so I took Laila to the park for a bit and let her rest of the day, and when Laila went to bed so did she.

There is one other thing we did, though. We didn't get to stay long enough at Welles park for the ritual of Tashliḥ, the symbolic casting away of our sins, as it is written:

Who is a G-d like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
-Micah 7:18-19

So we went to the lake to do it. Laila loved the actual throwing of the bread on the water, but she wasn't interested in anything else. She didn't want to run around on the grass, she didn't want to look out over the water, she didn't do anything. She did smile briefly for a picture, but that was it:



And then we went home.

Saturday we had two things scheduled but neither of them was until later in the day, so we had a nice slow morning where we all got to eat breakfast and sit around watching Kiki's Delivery Service until closer to 11, where we walked to the bus and went to Lincoln Square for Applefest. I went to it back in 2019, and then in 2020 and 2021 there was no Applefest, and in 2022 and 2023 we were out in the suburbs on both weekends, but this time we could go and a bunch of our friends were there too! The festival was twice as big as the last I was there, from Lawrence all the way down to Sunnyside on Lincoln, and the weather was beautiful but that meant it was a sunny day and I was carrying Laila for blocks up and down while we looked at the shops and got a bit of apple pie, some breakfast sandwiches--sashagee wanted a smashburger, but we were warned that it was a thirty-minute wait time so she got a breakfast sandwich too--and ate them while Laila ate her apple waffles. We got apple cookies and looked at the artisans, and chatted with our friends--Laila was obsessed with spacedragon's dyed hair and kept asking her to hold her--until 2 p.m. came and we needed to get home to rest for a bit. It was already too late for Laila's nap, but we could still go home and rest.

Around 4:30 p.m. we left again for our second event, thosesocks's housewarming, with apple pie and Laila in tow. We went out to the bus and the tracker said "no scheduled arrival times," so we had to walk all the way there--it was only a mile or so but it was a long way after all our earlier walking and while carrying Laila. When we got there, sashagee talked to thosesocks while I chased after Laila, which proved to be the theme of the evening--at one point Laila went out on the balcony and ran up and down, since it was laid out lengthwise along the entire building. She did that a couple dozen times, full of way more energy than I expected, except for some brief interludes to dip a cookie in ranch dressing and eat it and trying to steal chocolate-covered pretzels. After an hour or so, right when thosesocks was concerned about Laila being so energetic, it was time for us to go (Laila needed an early bedtime since she skipped her name), so we said our goodbyes and went home. We didn't get a slice of that apple pie but the chocolate-covered pretzels were delicious.

Sunday morning was a fast day, Tzom Gedaliah, so I woke up before anyone else to eat breakfast before the sun came up. When I was done, I opened the door so Laila could escape her room, we all got ready, and I took Laila out to Hebrew school. This time went better than the first time, where she was overwhelmed by all the people. She still wasn't very interested in the songs, but she was much more focused on the crafts. There was a craft to make a "Bug Sukkah" and that was what Laila focused all her energy on:


Sadly, it did not survive the trip home on the bus. While Laila wasn't interested in the songs, she did stay at the craft tables for much longer than many of the other kids did, who got bored and wandered off to sit with their parents and read books or something. She really loved those bugs, and we stayed through the closing songs and then left to go home...except the bus wasn't coming for 35 minutes so I walked most of the way home, carrying Laila the entire way, and then spent much of the rest of the day sitting down because she's heavy. She's a big girl now!

This coming weekend is Yom Kippur, so even more holidays ahead.

And we all survived. Even Laila--somewhat to my surprise, she's still asking for matzah today after the holiday is over. By name, too! She just really loves matzah.

Last night I went to aaronhparker's combined post-Pesaḥ ḥametzathon and birthday part at Piece Brewery and Pizzeria in Wicker Park. I'm not usually much of a pizza person, but the pizza choices aaronhparker made--a standard red sauce and cheese one, sure, but also a mushroom white pizza and a margherita pizza. The white pizza went first with astonishing speed and the margherita pizza wasn't that far behind, and I even liked it! I told sashagee that she would have liked it, and that she should have come. It was just me since it took place at a brewery, but I guess the pizzeria part took precedence because there was a baby changing table in the men's bathroom. It could have been pizza for the whole family! As it was, I spent a lot of time talking to yoni-labow-5693413a, who was very interested in whether I was watching Tokyo Vice. I told him I had read the book but not seen the show, he encouraged me to watch it, we talked about kids (he and his wife are expecting a baby), we did vodka shots, it was a lovely time.

We went to two Seders as well. Last Monday we were at britshlez's place with just a few people for a small First Seder, and last Tuesday I went alone to aaronhparker's for another Seder. For the first one we didn't really do the after-meal portion of the Seder but we did for the second one, so I got at least one full-on Seder experience this year.

Laila spent most of the weekend at her papa and nana's while sashagee and I repainted the sun room, but the experience was somewhat marred by her having another seizure. This was much more worrying to us than to the doctors--it's been six months since her last seizure, and she's grown quite a bit since the last time her medicine was upped. By the time she was being checked out at the hospital, Laila had already gotten 100% back to her normal self--the doctors said that it can take up to 24 hours sometimes, so her recovering after only a few hours was a very good sign--and since she responded well to all the seizure tests they sent us home, with a prescription for a higher medicine amount. We even gave Laila back to her grandparents to finish out the weekend since it wasn't a serious problem, just scary in the moment. My mother said, "I'm too old for this" when we met them at the hospital.

Alright, Laila didn't take a nap today. Back to work.

Last week, yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 invited us to their Ḥanukah party. I asked if I could bring Laila, and they said yes, and we were prepared for that. Then sashagee suggested that Laila spend the weekend at the grandparents, so we could paint the kitchen cabinets, and since her parents hadn't had a Laila weekend in a while.

Well, long story short, we did not paint the cabinets because when we went to the paint store, they mentioned that cabinets with a veneer need special paint and prepping that's more expensive than just "buy paint, put on" and since we just bought a whole new set of kitchen appliances we decided not to go through with it just yet. What happened instead is that I spent most of the weekend playing Genshin Impact trying to catch up with the story to finish it in time to do the new event quest because it suggested that I do the story before doing the event, which was a lie and I should have just done the event and beaten Hollow Knight instead so I would have hours of my life back. Anyway, it was fine. The longer I play the game--which I still play because it's basically the only game sashagee plays these days--the more the parts that are specifically designed to be elaborate money-extraction machines make themselves obvious. Dailies, events that feature particular characters that just happen to be available to pull for, the inability to skip dialogue animations (in spent in-game directly correlates with money spent), etc. I'll keep playing it for the moment because like I said, it's basically the only game sashagee plays now. But I'm getting closer to flipping the table.

Once I did that, though, I got through the White Palace and the delicate flower delivery in Hollow Knight. I need to beat the Coliseum of Fools, finish up the Grimm Troupe quest, find a couple more ghosts to finish up the Dreamnail story, and then I'll beat the game. My review should be up before the end of the year.

The party was lovely! There was a "Dreidel Corner" with dreidels and markers and paper and yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45's nieces and nephews and we totally could have brought Laila, but we still had a nice time. I didn't really know anyone else other than the hosts, so we spent some time talking with each other until I ended up talking with yoni-labow-5693413a and sashagee talked with one of his bowling buddies. We ended it talking with whoolia45 about the true meaning of Ḥanukah--a civil war between religious and secular Jews that the secular Jews lost, the king who called himself "The God Manifest" (Ἐπιφανής) that the Jews punned into "The Madman" (Ἐπιμανής), conquering neighboring countries and forcibly converting the inhabitants--and how of course because of that we're like "THE OIL BURNED FOR EIGHT DAYS IT'S A MIRACLE." It's also about avoiding forced assimilation, and that's why we remember it. But I'll wait until Laila is older before we talk about the other parts.

Happy Halloween everyone! We got costumes appropriate to Laila's favorite movie (Ponyo), got them ready, and then we're not going to go trick or treating today because it's currently below freezing and snow is pouring down. Laila has just recently gotten an awareness of the cold--now if I take her out onto the balcony in her nightdress to say the morning Shema, she'll say "cold!"--and if we put her in a dress and tights she'll definitely not want to go for a walk even if there is candy at the end of it. And if we have to all bundle up in very warm and snug clothing, our costumes are going to be totally unrecognizable. We'll buy her candy and she'll be happy.

And I even took the afternoon off so I'd be able to prepare and get ready for trick or treating! We were going to go to Trader Joe's too and get some shopping done, but we don't want to wait for the bus with a small child in the freezing cold any longer than we have to. We can always go later.

And it's supposed to be 14°C on Friday! Now this is Chicago fall weather. We'll see if we can do that picnic in the park this weekend.

Is such the fast that I have chosen?
The day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush,
And to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Wilt thou call this a fast,
And an acceptable day to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
To loose the fetters of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke?
-Isaiah 58:5-6

Yesterday (and the night before) was Yom Kippur. For Kol Nidre I watched the stream, since Laila was coming home from the grandparents and sashagee could use some help. I feel like that was the best option, since while the Kol Nidre song is beautiful, it's usually a solo and there's not much additional effect from being in a crowd. It also meant I was at home for the traditional rabbinic exhortation to give money that happens every Yom Kippur, which is fine. I gave my $18 and went on my way, and it meant I didn't need to make the trip home from the center when the service was done (an hour by bus this year).

Yesterday I went to the center twice, for the main Yom Kippur service and the Torah service. While Mishkan has classes to keep people around, this year they weren't that interesting to me--when I was thinking of going to the meditation at 3:45 p.m. (an hour after Torah service ended and I stepped out before Yizkor), I realized that I could just go home and see my family, so I did. This turned out to be somewhat of a problem when I went to leave again and Laila made that sad warbling sound and then collapsed on the ground wailing when I didn't take her with me.

I missed three buses on the way back to the center because the bus stops are all being moved around and it took me an extra thirty minutes to get there, but I still arrived in time for El Nora Alilah, only sung once per year during Neilah (נעילה, "locking) and my favorite part of the service. At that point you've passed the afternoon tiredness and enervated hump--or at least I have--and it's all anticipation as we stand before the Torah, hundreds of people singing together as the Gates of Heaven are closing.

Maybe I just like it because, along with Unetanneh Tokef, it's the most goth of the Yom Kippur prayers.

Wikipedia has a lovely poetic translation of the lyrics for El Nora Alilah. Here's a part of them:

Chorus:
God of awe, God of might, God of awe, God of might,
Grant us pardon in this hour, As Thy gates are closed this night.

We who few have been from yore, Raise our eyes to heaven's height,
Trembling, fearful in our prayer, As Thy gates are closed this night.

[Chorus]

Pouring out our soul we pray That the sentence Thou wilt write
Shall be one of pardoned sin, As Thy gates are closed this night.

[Chorus]

God, our refuge strong and sure, Rescue us from dreadful plight;
Seal our destiny for joy, As Thy gates are closed this night.

[Chorus]

Grant us favor, show us grace; But of all who wrest the right
And oppress, be Thou the judge, As Thy gates are closed this night.

Last weekend was another grandparents' weekend, so on Friday I went down to sashagee on Friday night and stayed through Saturday. We didn't do much exciting that day other than eat food with Laila--and I walked like eight miles between towns and back along the river while Laila was asleep--but that night was the fireworks!

Batavia has award-winning fireworks that have been going for decades. The fourth was on a Tuesday this year, so I didn't go out to the suburbs, but sashagee and Laila did. They went to the fireworks, everyone got all excited...and then the system failed. And the backup system failed, and no fireworks went off, and everyone went home grumpy. They rescheduled the fireworks for August 5th and we planned to head back there. My parents' house is a ten minute walk from the fireworks, and sashagee wanted some funnel cake, so we went down early to scout out a spot. From what she said about last time, there were maybe a quarter as many people as there were on the 4th, so we got our funnel cake and found a spot literally right in front of the fireworks. Before too long, sashagee told me my parents had found a parking spot right by the barricades and suggested I help them carry the chairs, so I walked down the road until I saw them and some people sitting nearby got a cute view of Laila seeing me and starting to run to me, me running to her, and then grabbing her and swinging her around in the air.

The fireworks were extra nice! No major crowds and it was easy to get home afterwards. We put Laila to bed--she was exhausted by the end--and went to bed not too much longer ourselves. The fireworks were indeed super AMERICA themed and the music didn't really blend together very well, but the actual fireworks were beautiful.

The next day after breakfast, we got into cars and drove to Morton Arboretum for the Pan-Asia Festival. It really was Pan-Asian, with the sound of an erhu greeting us as we entered and later, people performing Indian dance. The part I found most interesting, though, was the sumō. I used to go see the Fukuoka Nihon Sumō Kyōkai every year and I didn't realize there was an amateur league--with amateur competitions, since they said they were going to Tokyō later in the year to compete! We stayed and watched two bouts between the performers before sashagee said she really needed to sit down, so I bought us boba while she found a seat--brown sugar for her, taro for me--and we sat and drank it and watched the people go by. When we were done, we met my parents and Laila, glad that Laila seemed totally unphased by the giant knot on her head she had earned from falling after running too fast down a ramp, and went home. Laila took a nap, we ate dinner when she woke up, and then came back into the city.

Certain less event variety than the old posts I used to write, but Laila running excited yelling "Ababababa!" when she saw me makes up for that.

Already accepting my punishment of כרת karet since Laila has tracked breadcrumbs through every square inch of our household.

sashagee is probably the most into Valentine's Day person I've ever dated, but for different reasons--cuteness. She loves everything cute, pink hearts and cute chocolates and stores done up with decorations and squishy things and so on. In America cute things are heavily devalued unless they're animals or babies and liking cuteness is considered a childish trait, so she doesn't get much expression for her preferences...except on holidays like Valentine's Day. It's not the flowers or the chocolates, it's the cuteness around them.

She had big plans for Valentine's Day that unfortunately didn't all work out, but we did get the day all to ourselves--my parents came and picked up Laila in the morning and took her out to the aquarium and then back to their house for a sleepover, leaving sashagee and me in a baby-free house for the whole day. We ate lunch together, then sashagee took a shower and got ready while I did some dishes, and then she rested to recover her strength. Around 3 p.m. we got on the train and went downtown for the first part of our day, buying her Valentine's Day present--an Apple Watch. sashagee always used to be an Android user, even as the rest of her family used iOS, because she preferred the widgets and the greater customizability of Android. But the multiple family albums with cute Laila photos that she was completely excluded from unless she asked me to send the photos to her finally won her over. She's had an iPhone for around a year now, and she's mentioned that she's ready to buy fully into the walled garden--watch, AirPods, the works. Having a baby means we do not have a lot of extra money so the full buy-in did not occur, but she got her watch in a cute rose-gold with a red band.

After that we walked over to the train, stopped briefly for donuts on the way, and took the train out to Oak Park and the restaurant where sashagee had gotten us reservations at:


Amerikas.

This is a salmon tlayuda, described by the internet as "Oaxacan pizza", and it was delicious. Salmon, avocado puree, radishes, greens, and a spicy sauce. We also got the pollo which Sasha ate since I was having a dairy meal--and this turned out to be fortuitous anyway because she hadn't noticed that it contained chorizo--and the calabaza, with roasted acorn squash, wild mushroom risotto, and Chile de arbol – truffle butter. Everything was delicious, and we ended up finishing the calabaza and taking only a couple tiny boxes home. We each had two cocktails, probably a mistake when we're trying to save money, but one was gin-based (my weakness) and the other was mezcal based (sashagee's weakness), so we each got our own preference at the beginning and then tried each other's drinks. Surprisingly, the gin drink was much sweeter than the mezcal one! Then, we got dessert--dragonfruit cheesecake and crème brûlée:


We had arrived an hour early at the restaurant, but they had a seat for us, so we left around the time when our reservation would have been. And then it took us much longer than we expected, because I had four Lyft drivers cancel on me and sashagee had two cancel on her. She initially thought it was because I had a bad rating until she had her first cancellation, but I think it was just because drivers didn't want to take someone from Oak Park through the city to the north side. We waited for half an hour, to the point where it would have probably been easier (and much cheaper) to just take the train home, and then finally got a ride. At this point sashagee was very tired so she went almost straight to bed. I followed pretty closely behind because I did not take work off today, so I had to get up at 6:30 a.m. But sashagee got to sleep in! I am looking forward to seeing Laila when I get home today, though--I'm sure it'll be different when she's older, but right now when she's small and cute and wants hugs all the time, I miss her so much when she's away.

Back at the office now after a week off (and working from home yesterday). It's honestly been very rough, since sashagee hurt her back on Monday and couldn't do much looking after Laila, or really much anything, at all, so she spent most of the week icing and heating her back and taking naps while I did the work of the home, cleaning up after Laila, taking her to the park during the sudden burst of warm weather--it had been below freezing but climbed back up to 12° during the day--until she was feeling better. On Wednesday my parents came over in the morning and we all went to the zoo on probably one of the last good weather days this year to go. Laila was more interested than the last time she went because the weather was warmer and so the animals were active, but she really got into watching the seals. One of them came right up to the glass and they were nose to nose for a bit, but the seal sadly swam away before my father could get a picture.

Thursday we woke up and took the train out for two days at the grandparents' houses, Thursday at sashagee's parents and Friday at mine. I'm used to a standard turkey dinner at my parents' house, so Thanksgiving dinner was exotic--veggie lasagna and...well, that's mostly it. They also made ham (which I don't eat) and scalloped potatoes (which I don't care for), but fortunately lunch was the real star of the day. Whereas dinner was a bit simple, lunch had a vegetable platter, a cheese platter, smoked salmon, olives and an olive tapenade, grapes, and some pork product I don't recognize. A lot of it was left over from lunch, so I took olive tapenade and veggies with my lasagna and filled out my dinner with that. The best part for Laila other than seeing her family, though, was when bubble wrap was taped to the floor:

Friday we went to my parents' house for a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, stuffing, and all the stuff I've eaten every year for literally forty years. Hey, if it works, why change it?

Saturday after Shabbat ended we met worldbshiny for frozen custard at Lickity Split, since it is the most wonderful time of the year--maple custard season. I got maple custard with crushed waffle cones and butterscotch and held Laila on my lap while worldbshiny and sashagee chatted, and this outing revealed that the time of us being able to just blithely bring Laila along to friends' events is slowly but inexorably marching toward its end--Laila used to be fine just hanging out on our laps, but now that's boring. When I was done with my custard Laila lost all the patience her little baby body could hold and started demanding to be let down, so I didn't really get to participate in most of the conversation because I was holding Laila's hands while she was marching around. I didn't mind because Laila is the cutest baby in the world, but also it would have been nice to talk to worldbshiny more!

Going back to the office this week made me understand why so many parents are happy that the school year starts up again. I loved spending all that time with Laila but by necessity, all my time was time spent with Laila. Later in the week when sashagee was feeling a little better I could redirect Laila if I had to do some dishes or clean a bit, but otherwise if I wanted to even go to the bathroom I had to put Laila in her crib because otherwise she'd wander off and get into things. This is, of course, why modern life for parents is so exhausting and alienating, because there's never a dull moment when there's a curious baby who wants to get into anything. sashagee spent some time volunteering at a hospital in Ghana and told me that the women in the nearby villages had rotating care systems, where all the children would be watched by one person while the others worked or did chores and they'd switch off who looked after the children. The only thing similar we have is that both sets of grandparents live nearby, and they're generously willing to drive into the city to watch Laila when we ask. But it's no substitute for a community, and we have a society that's specifically built around destroying social bonds.

We still had Thanksgiving together with both families, though, so some traditions survive.

There's a chill in the air and we've had to bring out the heavier coats. Right now it's 23°C and sunny outside but a couple nights ago it got down to 1°! This next week will be warmer but it's probably the last gasp of summer.

Last weekend we went out to visit my parents for dinner, since wanderluster_kp was going to be in town and then gone for months, probably until April or June. It was basically like Thanksgiving, with a turkey and mashed potatoes and pie for dessert. We learned that Laila is truly my daughter, because just like me she hates mashed potatoes. When some of her other food fell into the mashed potatoes, she whined and tried to pick it out instead of just grabbing handfuls like she does with other foods. I hated (and still hate) mashed potatoes too and my parents told me they had never heard of a baby who didn't like them. Well, now there's two. Maybe it's genetic.

The other thing we did was take a trip to the Morton Arboretum, since the year is waning and there's not going to be many good weekends left that aren't too cold and have good leaves. It looks like we went just before the peak fall colors but the weather was lovely and I got a lot of nice photos, especially of the Human + Nature exhibit that sashagee really wanted to see after missing the trolls. My favorite picture was taken by someone else for us, at the piece entitled "Basilica":



But I took quite a few more photos:

( Arboretum trip photos )

Definitely know I'm getting older when I look forward to family trips to go leaf-viewing!

Monday evening was the beginning of שמחת תורה (Simchat Torah, "Celebration of the Torah"), the day when we finish the very last part of דברים (Devarim, "Words", Eng: Deuteronomy), and roll right through into the first part of בראשית (Bereshit, "In the beginning," Eng: Genesis), in an endless circle as we've done for thousands of years. Before that, though, is the singing and dancing. Some people hold Torah scrolls and rest of us dance in rings around them, and we did that this year too with the addition of a baby! I was a little worried that Laila would be scared or irritable, what with several hundred people packed into a room and a klezmer band playing while we danced, but she loved it. She was smiling and looking around and very happy for the first five הקפות(hakafot, "encirclements") and then she got very tired, so we left and took the bus and the L back home and put a sleepy baby to bed.

Laila did get to meet another Laila there, who was a month younger than her! Our Laila really wanted to give her a hug but other Laila was much more bothered by all the noise and people and didn't want to be touched. We definitely don't have a shy baby.

This was also the last weekend of the farmer's market. I got some more apples, pickles, eggs, and vegetables, ran into aaronhparker and one of his friends, got more Sfera arancini for dinner and dealt with a mixup, and then went home.

Tonight, my parents are coming over to babysit and sashagee and I are going to see Wardruna! I went with her to see KPop, so she's coming with me to see folk metal. Hopefully she likes it. Tomorrow, meowtima is back in town for the first time after moving to Pittsburgh for work, so a few people are going to Indian food together. Then Sunday we'll be resting, because we'll probably need it.