Lev Lafayette's journal

The wife of the hummus-seller at the market told us that Laila was so cute after Laila said "bye bye" to her yesterday, and as we walked away she said, "May G-d protect her from the evils of the world."

You're right, madame. I pray for that too.

Laila has been a bit of a terror lately. Bringing back behavior that's been totally gone for a while, like putting random things in her mouth, deliberately not listening, that kind of thing. On the one hand, it's a hopeful sign of her normal childhood development that she'll wait until I say "last warning, Laila" before she gets her feet off the dining room table or whatever I'm asking her to do, but on the other hand it's a lot. It's driving sashagee kind of bananas lately, partially because she's also sick (again). Laila spent a big chunk of time yesterday in her room and got her new dolls taken away, because she would do the little kid thing of "Now that I am released from punishment, I'm going to immediately do the thing you told me not to do, because you're not the boss of me!" Except, of course, we are the boss of her and back to her room she would go. She's been better today but still pushing boundaries. The dolls she just got are put up until she stops putting things in her mouth after she put one of the definitely-small-enough-to-choke-on doll-sized cups in her mouth, and she's not getting them back today.

Laila is enjoying school a lot, at least as far as we can tell. There's only been one day where she hasn't been happy to go to school, and it have just been because she didn't want to leave the house. Once we actually got the schoolbag on and got out and on the road, she wanted to run over the school just like she always does. We did have a brief chat with the teachers during the open-house they held recently, where her teachers said that Laila has a hard time answering the questions that they ask her. She's more talkative, but still has some trouble.

A few days ago I suddenly came down with some kind of stomach bug. It's mostly gone away now but I occasionally get stomach pangs out of nowhere, and when I asked sashagee about it, her opinion was that maybe I shouldn't be eating so many uncooked vegetables. Since we get a CSA box, a lot of my lunches are just cheese, raw vegetables with hummus, and bread with labneh or something like that. I supposed I am getting old enough that my digestive system maybe can't handle literally everything I throw at it anymore. On the other hand, I had more raw vegetables for lunch today, so we'll see if it happens again. I'm not looking forward to the extra time I would need to cook all the vegetables I eat.