the 90th minute

Until September 2007, when my oldest daughter was born, this blog covered daily life and politics in Israel, as well as Hebrew-English linguistic issues, from the perspective of an American-raised journalist and translator living in Israel. Now it mostly serves as the SmunchMonk&Bear news agency, a portal into the bizarre universe of the little people. Read more at: www.shoshanakordova.com.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Uvoo too!

Moriya's vocab is increasing faster than I can keep track, but she surprised me today by taking on "I love you," which sounds like "Uvoo!" when she says it. I only recognized it (at a bit of a delay) because she has repeated it before when someone else says it -- much as she has occasionally repeated after me, in the exact same tone of voice, "Girls!" when I'm trying to get R&K to come hither -- but today it took me a minute to figure out why she was looking up at me expectantly, waiting for a response, after she suddenly said "Uvoo!"

Yesterday she initiated a more physical show of affection with Kinneret. While M is often the recipient of hugs and regularly sneaks onto my lap to squeeze herself securely into perfect hugging position, yesterday she just reached over and hugged Kinneret on her own. At first Kinneret was kinda like "get offa me!" but as soon as I said "Moriya's giving you a hug, because she loves you!" K got all into it and they started a whole hugfest that, miraculously, didn't even end in tears. For some reason Kinneret decided that they couldn't actually hug each other simultaneously, so M would hug K and then K would hug M and be like "Okay, give me a hug now," which M would do, and they just sat there taking turns hugging each other. Funny girls!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Eleventeen

This is how Kinneret has consistently been counting lately: One, two, three, four, five, six, eleventeen.

Yet when I suggest that perhaps seven might be next, she counts nicely to ten.

In other news, Moriya has very much picked up on Kinneret's tiger obsession and the two of them love watching the National Geographic tiger DVD that Warren (somewhat oddly) got. Every time a tiger appears on-screen (which, as one would expect, is pretty often), Moriya says "TI-ger!" and then gives a very guttural "ROAR!" Also, every animal other than cats and dogs are TI-ger! according to Moriya.