Home with the Kiddies

Secundo has a playdate upstairs in progress: they are inventing some baroque version of Chutes and Ladders involving a plastic snake. Prima is up-upstairs in her room, I think, mating off her Bratz dolls. Sometimes she still marries off a random Brat to a dinosaur: I'll come into her room and find them bestially embracing. This month she has read seven books, which in my quantitative assessment of parenting means we are doing Really Well. Course, she has not had a playdate in two weeks, which is notsogood. But yesterday we took her to a Purim party at a rabbi's house,* and she made excellent small talk with the adults sitting near her (good? Or typical Asperger's? Yes?). One youngish thinning-haired and pleasant guy said, "She makes better conversation than some of my dates." Poor guy. She also told the rabbi and rebbitzin that she loved their home. Prima rules.

I had to take her aside and tell her she was not allowed to ask to take the goody bags. Secundo later asked me if he'd been bad. Remembrance of my own childhood, yes, bro?

*High-octane Orthodox, involving an in-home shtiebel with separate accommodations for men and women upstairs during the megillah reading. Prima primly read a children's megillah while I gamely attempted to following along in Hebrew. I am very sentimental about anything that reminds me of Vishniac's A Vanished World, and this did. The Rebbetzin, a well-spoken woman, commented to me that she didn't mind not saying prayers three times a day, though she considers herself a bit of a feminist. She had clearly read my resume and sized me up (accurately, at that), but I rather appreciated it anyway.