A couple of weeks ago, there was a parent’s night at the ma’on (daycare center for babies) in preparation of the beginning of the school year. I was busy with something that night, so Adina went alone. With Moshe’s bedtime at around 6-7pm, he obvisously wouldn’t be coming, but we thought that we might try asking one of the kids that lives on our street. One of the families has (bli ayin hara) something around 10 children, ranging in age from less than one year to late teens. Adina asked if it would be ok, and five minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting, the oldest daughter showed up holding the youngest daughter (around a year old). Adina gave them instructions that if Moshe woke up, she should try to give him the pacifier as quickly as possible (so that hopefully he would fall back to sleep), and otherwise, if he woke up and didn’t want to be soother, she should call Adina. We had been having some sleeping problems (probably related to the remnants of jet-lag from our trip to the States) – sleeping problems = Moshe waking up 5+ times in the middle of the night and ending up in our bed – so we really wanted to make sure that he had as uninterrupted sleep as possible.

So Adina went to the meeting, stayed for about an hour and a half, and then came home. As she walked down our street, approaching the house, she heard a horn sounding from the vicinity of our door. This horn had a very identical sound to the horn on the little push-tricycle that we got Moshe for his first birthday (it is a very annoying horn, hard to mistake). “That’s strange…why is someone playing with our horn?”. So walking a little faster, Adina went up the steps.

When she walked in the door she found, in addition to the oldest daughter and the youngest daughter, there were most of the other (like five or six) children from the family as well. Spread out through our living room. With all the toys out. And Moshe sitting on the lap of one of the older girls. Not crying, not sad, but not very active either (this is about 3 hours after his bedtime).

They explained that he had woken up and didn’t want to go back to bed. So they took him out and started playing with him. And invited the rest of their siblings over. By American standards we do not have so many toys, but by Israeli standards we are the equivalent of FAO Schwartz. They had so much fun playing with the toys that the oldest daughter (after dragging the younger siblings away) refused payment, saying that they had had a good time at our apartment. And Moshe did (eventually) go back to sleep. It was nice of them to come over, but I don’t know if we will be asking them back for nighttime babysitting anytime soon. (Adina – apologies if I got any details wrong, but it is too good a story not to post).