Tfu Tfu Tfu!! Stop spitting on my Baby!!!

Ah the In-laws... Always a wonderful source of entertainment, and as it seems, also a great source of blog posts. As I learn more about the Russian culture, I am amazed at all of the fuss over babies. Not the usual "Aw so cute blah blah" fuss, the all consuming need to cluck and fret and worry over the tiniest thing. I come from the school of thought that babies somehow survived long before formula (gag), pacifiers, cribs etc and that the best thing for babies is to revert back to our natural instincts and let Baby tell us what he needs. My In-laws, and well every Russian Grandmother that we pass on the street, have a completely different take on things. I have literally been stopped on the street and scolded for carrying my baby in a sling (he needs to be flat on his back apparently at least until he decides to spontaneously jump up and walk one day), not having a pacifier in his mouth (as if having both of his fists shoved in there wasn't enough) or not having him completely covered in a blanket (cause he is going to get cold in the 100*+ Israeli summer). I also have been periodically stopped so that he can be properly fussed over by said Inquisitive Russian Grandmothers, questions about Baby asked and answered, and then an appropriate barrage of Tfu Tfu Tfu administered (more on that momentarily).

My son is most definitely his Father's boy, and in addition to inheriting his mouth, his barrel chest, and his strong legs, he also inherited my husbands inability to tolerate the heat. My husband literally melts in the Israeli summer and Baby melts right along with him. His little feet get sweaty (he also seems to have gotten my husbands stinky feet, so much for the myth that babies were supposed to smell good), his hair sticks to the back of his head, and he gets miserably cranky. We remedy this by dressing him in only a cloth diaper and sometimes a t-shirt during the day and a onesie at night and sitting near a fan as often as possible. Yet every time I send him to his Babushka's for an afternoon play-date he is returned to me, buried in blankets, dressed in footie pajamas with socks, and sweating like a madman! No matter how many times I tell them that he gets too hot, they insist that he is a "Catanchick (little little)" and that he gets cold and that I really need to put more clothes on him or he is going to get sick. The poor thing is going to die of heat stroke I tell you!

I have finally gotten to the point where I blame every parenting descision on the doctors (which they have GREAT faith in). Don't want them to put him in mittens? "The doctor said not to.." Sock free feet? "The doctor said he needs to exercise his nerve receptors" (try translating THAT one!!). We are making a small bit of progress but he still returns a good 6 times out of 10 swaddled up like we're living in Siberia and its the dead of winter.

There is a great fear amongst the Russian Babushka's (My MIL, Her Twin, as well as the 200 or so on the street every day) of the Evil Eye. There is a belief that any sort of celebration of good fortune can bring on the wrath of the Evil Eye and the only way to remedy this is to Spit three times, "Tfu Tfu Tfu". Yes, you read that correctly. Spit. Three times... I kid you not. Now mind you my husband doesn't warn me about any of this craziness before it happens, nooo that would take away all the fun!

Flashback to baby's first introduction to the family. Choruses of "Eze Hamud! (Cutie) Eze Yeled Tov (good boy) Manchick Malinky Crasiba(cute little boy) " etc could be heard around the room followed almost immediately by machine-gun like Tfu-ing. I of course am already paranoid at the fact that my baby is being submitted to a gajillion different germs from being passes around and touched and kisses by all these different people and on top of that your going to SPIT AT HIM?! I almost died. Every time my MIL speaks about him, her stories are punctuated nearly every sentence with the inevitable Tfu Tfu Tfu...

A conversation with my MIL goes something like this (I will spare you the translation, but in your mind picture a conversation in broken Hebrew punctuated by the odd phrase in English and Russian when we run out of words, and illustrated with wild hand movements):

MIL-"How is the baby??"

Me-"Oh he's good, growing, growing"

MIL (picking up baby) "Russian Russian Russian...Tfu Tfu Tfu (kiss) Tfu Tfu Tfu (kiss) Tfu Tfu Tfu (kiss)" (As if one set of Tfu-ing was not enough)

And so the conversation will continue with my stumbling through daily events in broken Hebrew, and my MIL punctuating said conversation with copious amounts of Tfu-age until the daily report is finished and she resumes fussing and cooing at the baby in Russian.

As if this wasn't enough, She will even go so far as to yell at us if we DARE say anything positive about the baby without spitting. My husband and I were sitting around discussing the last well baby checkup (tfu tfu tfu) and Hubby mentioned something about how the baby was gaining weight and that the doctor had said my milk was very good. He neglected to punctuate the discussion with the proper expulsion of spittle and my MIL immediately jumped in and demanded that Hubby spit. I of course was staring at her like she had three heads, and Hubby attempted to ignore silly superstitions and stubbornly refused. A heated argument in Russian followed and she did not relent until the proper noises had been made and the Evil Eye had been properly blinded by bodily fluids... Tfu. Tfu. Tfu.