Our new addition

I had it circled on my calendar for six months. As soon as I found out the date, January 10th, I was gleefully anticipating the impending addition that would irretrievably, irrevocably change my life and my family's life forever. I went in on January 9th on the off chance that it would happen a day early. I said, "So, I think I'm supposed to have it tomorrow, but could you just check?" He said, "Yep, you're good. You can have it today." I almost fainted with joy. I had been waiting so long. "There are two possibilities," he told me. I waited breathlessly for him to tell me what I was expecting. "You can have either the 32 gigabyte or 64 gigabyte." A huge smile spread over my face. And that's how I became the proud owner of my very own iPhone 4S with Siri! Bam!

Getting a new iPhone really is very much like adding a new baby to the family. Here is what I mean:

1. Sometimes you just sit and marvel at its beauty
2. You want to hold it all the time
3. You hold it very carefully so as not to drop it
4. Each day brings new surprises and growing capabilities
5. The kids in the house share the excitement but sometimes get jealous when Mommy pays too much attention to it

Here is how having a new iPhone is not like having a new baby:

1. It does not require diapers
2. One does not nurse it (unless one has serious problems)
3. It does tons of stuff for you instead of against you
4. You can insure it against loss, theft, or damage

And I have to say, it does give me a little extra happiness to see Big Shot Husband for once not have a cooler phone than I have. I mean, I know that he's the one who actually earns money and therefore needs/deserves the better phone. However, I have told him that since he is not eligible for an upgrade for another 6 months, by that time they may have the iPhone 12 and/or I can teach him how to use it. This information does not seem to reassure him.

This was especially true the other day when I shared the following with him. See, if I were one of those people who watched, say, really trashy TV like, say, Teen Mom 2, I might have noticed that Jenelle has an iPhone. This girl:

• had a baby at 16
• lost said baby to her mother as she was unable to care for him
• is constantly tangling with the law
• has no job
• smokes funny cigarettes
• is failing community college
• has a loser boyfriend she repeatedly bails out of jail

So I told him that if he really wants a new iPhone he can either pay $800 now, before his upgrade or get on a reality show. I firmly believe that the Cake family would be awesome as a reality show. Long-suffering BiSh lives with fun yet moody Honeycake and their four havoc-creating, maddening yet cute, hijinx prone children. 

I can see it now, "Next week on the Cake Family: The Honorable and Mrs. Cake go to another Torah Institution dinner while a Yeshiva girl comes to babysit. Perfect Eldest Son gets another 100% on his chumash test, Zsa Zsa goes to the orthodontist, Eva buys a new piece of clothing with sequins on it, and Gorby drives everyone crazy with his constant comedy routine that is not funny after a while. And Honeycake does carpool and makes Shabbos."  

I guess there would only really be one episode because, let's face it, it doesn't vary all the much from one week to the next. Although, there could be the "Yamim Noraim special," and "The Pesach Special," which would both involve more cooking yet less carpool. And the contrast between cooking a lot for three Yom Tovs in as many weeks and massive cleaning for many weeks coupled with cooking for just one week would make for fascinating TV.  Intriguing.  Meanwhile, Big Shot can sometimes borrow my iPhone if he has a pressing question for Siri or is dying to play Angry Birds. I am so generous that way.

Are you my mother?

Lately, my 10-year-old son, my eldest progeny in whom I have so much pride, has seemed to get a little too much pleasure from all the similarities he has noticed between him and his father. For example, he will say, "I got my eyesight from Abba." Big grin. This is nothing to be proud of. Or, "I got my supersonic hearing from Abba." Seems good, except Big Shot Husband is sure that the hearing thing is a direct result of the severe myopia (i.e., one sense gets sharpened when another fails).

There are other traits Perfect Eldest Son directly attributes to his father. Many of them are not good. Pes will tell you that he and his father's organizational skills are, "terrible." There is also the fact that Pes has an obsession with baseball that borders on the pathological, stores many varieties of reading material in his bed and simultaneously sleeps there, reads 1970s comic books (the same ones Big Shot Husband read in the 1970s, my in-laws never throw anything out), and, the thing that aggrieves me the most, is that he and BiSH are both MORNING PEOPLE. Ugh.

Now don't get me wrong, Big Shot Husband is wonderful (don't tell him I said that), and Pes is also. And certainly I get nachas from many of his wonderful qualities. Like just the other night he read a 150 pg book while in bed for 12 minutes and I said, "Did you just read that whole book?" And he said, "No, I read some of it during snack time." So I said, "Yeah, I'm still struggling to finish my 922 pg Murakami book." He said, "Mommy, you've had that for like 5 weeks already. I would have finished it 10 times already." Gloat gloat. No, that pretty much irritated me also. (Yeees, he gets his fast reading skills from BiSH too).

Even though he doesn't recognize it now, I think he will grow to appreciate the things I've contributed to his makeup: his blue eyes, his sensitivity, his weird sense of humor, his bad posture, his diminutive size (Ok maybe not this one, I'm still pulling for BiSh's genes to kick in at least a little). And I know he will come to appreciate me when I give him the talk about how girls REALLY work.

But for now, our evenings play out like the following (watching football):
Me: "I like the guys in the white tops and shiny blue pants, how about you?"
Pes: "Bwa Ha Ha Ha."
Me: "So what's going on now?"
Pes: "10 yards blah blah stuff blah sack blah blah."
Me: "That guy is really buff."
Pes: "Woa! Did you just see what happened? Blah blahty blah. Woo-hoo!!!"
Me: "I'm going to go read my 922 page Murakami book I've been working on for the past five weeks. I'm on page 793?" Hopeful glance around, looking for approval/encouragement. Nobody is paying attention. However, BiSh is kind and tries to explain football to me in the voice one uses for the mentally impaired. Same conversation over and over throughout the football season. And nothing ever penetrates because, apparently, I am mentally impaired in this regard.

I have to say that I have always believed that the rules and nuances of football are encrypted on the Y-chromosome. This is a small chromosome so there isn't much room, just enough to assign a gender and those ever-important football rules. And that's the thing that Big Shot and Pes share that I can never understand, that pesky little Y. It informs their outlook on everything and I can never begin to understand. And if I don't sell him to the zoo, 5-year-old Gorby will join in all their fun soon too.

But if I am ever feeling left out, I simply say, "Zsa Zsa, Eva, let's go shopping."  And then I remember: I have the Gabor sisters with whom to enjoy, relish, and revel in the shopping experience. They are already trained in shoes, accessorizing, party planning and gift buying. Internet shopping is the next advanced skill we will tackle. And I will teach them my trick: always memorize your credit card information before you begin. If you don't have it in your mind and type it in really quickly, you might actually think before you buy that thing you really need. I have so much to teach them. I am so happy I have girls.