Things I've Noticed about Russell

1. He is very interested in where Jesus is at all times. "If Jesus goes to school with me, then will a little Jesus go to school with you and Daddy?"

2. His tennis shoes have holes in the toes.

3. He knows the names of his classmates.

4. He loves bus rides (and often falls asleep).

5. He has started taking the same group of things and seeing how many different ways he can categorize them: color, shape, size, function...

6. He asks for forgiveness on his own initiative (as in just now when I meant to save a draft of this post and he pushed random buttons on my computers that resulted in it being published).

7. His control over a computer mouse is getting REALLY good.

8. When he is mad at you he growls.

9. He will correct our Hebrew pronunciation, even though he won't actually say the words he knows to anyone.

10. He learned to disguise the taste of green beans by mixing it with the food he does like.

1 Little Monkey Jumping on the Bed

We learned that the word for monkey is the same name as a letter in the Hebrew alphabet, kof. So today we’ve been calling Russell a kof. Little did we expect to reenact the story of the little monkeys jumping on the bed. We were all on the bed playing cars while the chicken cooked in the oven and Russell took a dive over Marshall. Unfortunately, Marshall was next to the wall. Also unfortunately, the wall is not made of drywall, but concrete. It sounded like he hit his against drywall, and I remember being surprised about that. The wailing came about five seconds later. As he turned around to face us, the goose egg on his forehead made me jump out of bed. Yikes!!! He laid really still for Marshall as ice was immediately put on that bump. Let’s just say dinner was a little dry, but Russell doesn’t seem to be suffering any sustained consequences from the lump. In honor of my sister, though, I shall name the lump “Cohen” in relation to my former lump, Sasha, and because of the pun of ice being involved, and the irony of our experience in Israel (refer to our trouble with the phone company in late August).

Nighty night Russell. Nighty night Cohen.

On other notes, we figured out today that the bus that runs by our apartment also takes us to THE mall in Jerusalem. Yippee!!

The start of September

So this morning Russell went to school for the first time. He's the youngest in the class - everyone else is at least 4. They call it "kindergarten". I can't wait to learn some Hebrew so I can find out if that means "pre-school" or if it really is kindergarten as we understand it. He got a name tag and a folder for his classwork. It's in Hebrew. Ha ha ha. The Hebrew letters are reish, vav, samech, lamed (they are all consonants). What a different world!!! Anyway, we were told class started at 7 a.m. only to realize it started at 7:30. Kinda. Kids slowly arrived with their parents until 9 a.m. We were told to stay, but we didn't know why. Eventually they gave us a schedule, but it was all in Hebrew. After an hour and a half of occupying time, the teacher finally found an English speaker who could explain things to us. Apparently on the first day the parents stay until 9 a.m. and then pick their kids up at 10 a.m. On the second day we drop the kids off at 7:15 a.m. without staying, but we are to pick them up at 11 a.m. Finally on the third day we drop them off and don't pick them up until 1:30 a.m. This will be their regular schedule. Talk about weaning them!

We also started meeting with Warren and Linda Graham today. They worked in the Hebrew branch for 40+ years and just so happen to be spending three months in Jerusalem visiting their daughter, who married into the Israeli culture. What a gold mine for us! Not only will they serve as our mentors for this initial period, but they are also our alphabet tutors, since another tutor hasn’t been secured yet. They took us through the Jewish calendar and summarized what the holidays would look like here before beginning our work on the Hebrew alphabet. When asked what we knew so far, I brought forth the book we’ve been working through. Linda took one look at it and said, “Don’t use this silly book any longer.” Ok. So we started from scratch again. Wednesday morning we meet them for an Israeli breakfast (which I assume will include fish) and we are to know all the letters by then.

Russell has been singing more and more these days. He learned the song, “Our God is an Awesome God” at the field retreat in Jordan. You’re all probably familiar with the lyrics:
Our God is an awesome God.
He reigns from heaven above,
With wisdom, power, and love,
Our God is an awesome God!
Here are Russell’s lyrics to the same song:
Our God is an awesome God.
He rains from having a bedtime,
With wisdom, power, and loving yourself,
Our God is an awesome God!

Russell has also been very theologically inquisitive. “Mommy, can I ask Jesus to keep the bad dreams away? I can? Hey, Jesus! Keep the bad dreams away from me.” Earlier he prayed with Marshall, “Dear Lord, please shoot the bad monsters with guns. Bam! Bam!” Yesterday we were talking about our friend, Teeny, who is going to be induced this week and have her baby. Russell wanted to know where our baby was and if we could buy one. I answered that babies come from God. “Can I ask God for a real baby?” he said. Yes. So he went out on the balcony and turned his face to the sky and asked God to give us a real baby. “He said, ‘Yes’!” was the report. Marshall and I just looked at each other with raised eyebrows. For the record, I AM NOT PREGNANT.