Shifra had her 1 month check up. She has gained 2 pounds and grown 2 inches. I am pretty proud of us both. Yay breast feeding!

Some other interesting news:

Hillel calls his youngest sister by her full title, “Baby Shifra Tova Dimbert.” We are not sure why he does this, but it gives us a giggle every time.

I caught Shoshana feeding her baby doll with her shirt pulled up and her baby doll’s head attached to her chest. Who needs baby bottles?

…but I decided to.

Yes, I’m going to talk about politics.

In his [State of the Union](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109032,00.html) tonight, President Bush said quite a few things, but one of them stuck out in my mind because I’ve been saying it myself for a while. He said:

>Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq.

If you count along with him, that’s 35 nations (including the USA) who fought side by side in Iraq. That’s only 7 fewer than joined the original [League of Nations](http://worldatwar.net/timeline/other/league18-46.html) and 16 fewer than the original [United Nations](http://www.un.org/Overview/growth.htm).

People have been saying for a long time that the war was “unilateral.” That’s one of those words that the press uses and people pick up without understanding. That ticks me off.

Unilateral means, “done or undertaken by one person or party.” How can a group of 35 different countries do something unilaterally?

It’s just silly.

*Start thinking.*

Everyone has babies, right?

Or, if not *everyone*, a lot of people do. Know what I mean? I mean, everywhere you look, there are babies. And, most of those babies have parents.

So it’s not like I’m in totally unchartered territory here… I mean, even if I was wrong and my family contained the only babies on the planet, this current baby is my third, so you gotta figure that I’ve been down this road before.

If so, how come I never noticed how unbelieviably stupid the whole Insurance game is?

You see, the HR lady at my company started bugging me to complete the forms that tell the Insurance company (I won’t name names, but it rhymes with “Boonited Pelthcare”) that Shifra was born. I say, “No problem, I will complete the form.”

But – of course – there is a problem: the form wants to know what my kid’s Social Security number is. Never mind the fact that Social Security numbers were never meant to be used as Identification tools in the first place, this is stupid all on it’s own because Shifra does not yet have a Social Security card.

Why? *Because it takes 6 blankety-blank weeks for the Social Security Turtles to type it up!* So, I’m stuck, becuase the Insurance company needs the form before the kid is 30 days old, but I can’t complete it until she’s at least 6 weeks old!

So, I call the Social Security Morons and discuss, at length, whether or not it’s possible to fast-track Shifra’s application (which we sent in the day she was born) since I like to follow the rules and I need the number for Insurance purposes. Their answer? “Absolutely not.”

So, I contact the wonderful people at Saint Luke’s Hospital, where Shifra was born, and they supply me with something called a Certification of Birth (or something similar). I give that to the HR lady and she admits that it will probably be good enough for the Insurance Morons.

Later this afternoon she tells me that she called and asked and the Insurance Idiots told her that they don’t really need the Social in the first place? Why then do they ask for it? Good question! (Of course, there is no good answer.)

And, to top it all off, what do you suppose was waiting in today’s mail when I got home tonight? Shifra’s Social Security card, processed over three weeks early!!!

It’s enough to make you crazy.

Yesterday was Shifra’s official naming bash. We had a bunch of people get together for brunch and a good time was had by all.

My father, Judi and I all spoke – I won’t bore you with the details – suffice it to say that we explained that Shifra Tova is named after Judi’s mother and Aunt, both of blessed memory. It was a nice celebration of her birth and we got to see some out-of-town family, which is always a treat.