Cruisin' along and saying goodbye (is this a blues song or what?)

The main Smunch update is that she's been "cruising" the last coupla weeks, which is apparently the official term for coffee table-assisted walking.

She's also definitely begun dancing, which is the term I am generously using for waving her hands around when I turn on the music. I notice, though, that once it's on she doesn't seem to relate to it most of the time - she primarily responds in that first minute of its being on.

RP, who is almost 11 months old, has also become more proficient at waving goodbye. She started waving a while ago, but would practice her newfound skill quite indiscriminately, with no evident connection to whether there was anyone to wave to, and frequently with both hands at the same time. Now she often waves bye-bye, which is, of course, very smunchy. (I was surprised when the nurse at the tipat halav/well-baby clinic asked if R waves yet - I didn't realize it was a quasi-official action, like rolling over. Sure, it's a physical capability as well as a form of communication [though for RP it was the former before it became the latter], but my impression is that parents teach their kids to wave mainly because, well, it looks cute.)

When I pick her up from day care, she usually smiles and/or crawls over to me, but yesterday she not only smiled at me but waved hello to me, and then raised her arms for me to pick her up. And today she waved hello at a neighbor kid when he came by to play with her. I haven't explicitly taught her to wave hello as I have to wave goodbye (mainly on the way out of day care), but I do wave hello to her regularly in the house, kind of as a way of making contact if, say, she's playing on one side of the living room while I'm on the computer on the other side.

Oh, and here's a really big one (but I'm a bit restrained about it because I'm still awaiting confirmation): On Shabbat she accompanied a waved goodbye with what sounded very much like a spoken "bye-bye"! I admit she did do this twice in a row, so it's quite possible she really did utter her first word. (!) But being ever reluctant to announce a new development without being absolutely sure of it, I am withholding final judgment until I hear her do it again. (What can I do, I like to make sure I have my facts straight - not the worst trait in the world for a journalist.)

In general, over the last few months she has become a bit more choosy about who she will be friends with. She used to bestow a great big grin on anybody who crossed her path, but now she prefers to take a more considered approach, and often likes to have some warm-up time with the new person in my or W's presence. After a few minutes, though, she's usually fine (especially if she's not particularly tired or hungry). The flip side is that she has really started to recognize the people she does know, and now lights up when her babysitter walks in the door, which is nice to see. With the neighbor kid, she already showed signs of recognition the second time (in two days) that he stopped by.

It seems nuts that she's almost a year old! That's so, like, huge!

Vertical new world

I said in my last post that I could easily see Rimonit pulling herself up... in another couple of months. And I was right... but way off-base; she started pulling herself up the Shabbat before last.

Over the past week and a half, she has stood up by leaning over a couch cushion placed on the floor, by holding on to the coffee table and holding on to her high chair, and by leaning against the back or side of the couch.

A couple of days ago I thought I could sneak in a quick catnap by resting on the bed in the guestroom while she played on the floor of the most Rimonit-friendly (read: empty) room in the house, but the kid had other ideas. I had only just closed my eyes when I noticed that there was a little head peering over the top of the bed, the big blue eyes about even with mine. My incipient rest was disturbed by a mysterious sensation of having my hair tugged just before a little elf tried to steal my glasses right off my face. I looked down and for the first time was able to apply the concept of "height" to the suddenly vertical being next to me. It was a bit of a weird sensation. Wonder if I fell asleep after all and was only dreaming...

RP update: The dog we never had

The kid started doing some serious crawling last week. She now bears a great resemblance to the dog we never had: She crawls under the table and eats shoes (yum!). She also loves books and newspapers (rustle, rustle!), meaning that she is eating her words before she can even utter them.

She had started moving forward a couple of paces on all fours two weeks ago, and did that for a few days before really taking off on her hands and knees.

And although I said in a previous post that she was getting in some top teeth, they didn't start actually breaking through the gums until this week, in a not particularly fun experience. :( On the bright side, RP has also chosen this week to fall head over heels in love with her reflection, so any time she gets upset (say, once the teeth start hurting but before the Acamoli kicks in), all we have to do is bring her to a mirror, and behold: an instantaneous transformation from crying Rimonit to smiling, loquacious Rimonit, who immediately begins a conversation with herself that almost inevitably begins and ends with "da."

I can also see a marked increase in Smunch communication skills, commensurate with her newfound ambulatory abilities. Now instead of staying in place and crying if she's hungry, tired or wants to be picked up (usually because she's hungry, tired or both), she crawls over to me to hand-deliver the message and pulls on whatever article of my clothing she can reach to get my attention. A couple of weeks ago, she did this partway, crawling (well, scooting on her tummy at the time) to her stroller, which was midway between me and her, and giving me the most pitiable, hangdog look through the mesh of the stroller basket. So I caved in and gave her a doggie biscuit. (Just kidding, savtas!)

The kid, who just turned nine months old, has also shown signs of wanting to reach further still. The other day I was sitting on the couch-bed in the guest room, trying to do some work on the laptop while she played on the floor. When she had enough of this arrangement, she did not satisfy herself with crawling to the edge of the bed and making her appeal from there, but knelt on her knees to give herself the most height and reached up as high as she could to make sure I had heard her plea. It's not hard for me to imagine her pulling herself up in another couple of months.

The smunch has been getting herself to sitting position for a while now, I would say about a month or so. She isn't yet able to sit herself up if she is lying flat on her back, but she gets herself into sitting mode from the all-fours position. She started doing this when she was still in crawl training camp. But when she's tired she sometimes just can't hold herself up anymore and will fall over from a sitting position or repeatedly lay her head down for a few seconds in mid-play.

Two weeks ago Rimonit started clapping (applause!), but I have yet to work out if she does it for any specific reason. Sometimes she does it when she hears music, but other times there doesn't seem to be a particular cause. If she starts clapping and I clap in imitation, I sometimes merit a big smile. I've also been trying to teach her to wave in the appropriate situations (mostly when leaving day care), but that doesn't seem to have caught on yet. I have the feeling that now is a good time to start teaching her sign-language signs for certain key words (food, drink, more, enough), but I'm not comfortable enough with what the signs are myself. I know I could just make it up, but I'd like the signs to be recognizable by others as well so that she can communicate with them too and not just with me.

Over the last few weeks I have also really seen a difference in her understanding of the concept of object permanence. She now can really appreciate peekaboo (called "kookoo" in Hebrew), giving me a big grin when I pop out of hiding, and when her toy drops off the changing table she tries to dive off to get it back instead of just forgetting about its existence as soon as it disappears from view.

As for food, I have been giving her a mix of baby cereal (so far, rice cereal and kasha cereal) and actual pieces of food (white potato, sweet potato, carrots, corn, banana, rye bread, pear, skinless red and yellow pepper) that she can pick up and eat with her hands. Sometimes she is more willing to eat with a spoon and other times she prefers to use her hands, so I try to offer her both at every (attempted) meal. I have also just started trying to get her to drink from a cup. She drinks from it fine if she lets me hold it for her, but if she wants to hold it herself there is the small problem that she likes to hold it upside down just as much as rightside up. I am also trying a sippy cup, which she enjoys putting in her mouth the right way, but I'm not convinced she is actually getting anything out of it.

And that, folks, is RP in a nutshell at this moment in time. No doubt by the time you read this she will have changed in a dozen more ways.

Doing the crawl

[Photo: Rimonit appearing to be in need of a rescue from her cousin's embrace.]

RP is on the forward march. She has been consistently creeping/slithering/scooting forward, as well as practicing the crawl position, since Wednesday night - Erev Yom Ha'atzmaut which, if you'll permit me a moment of pretentious melodrama, was also the eve of Rimonit's burgeoning independence.

For those unfamiliar with the pre-crawl crawl, just think of a snake with arms and legs. She kind of propels herself forward with her legs and forearms, though she sometimes goes backwards when she appears to have intended to move forward. Actually, what she most looks like is a swimmer doing the crawl on dry land.

But although doing the crawl should not be confused with actually crawling, it's clear the next phase is imminent, as Rimonit has set herself a consistent training regimen to get her in gear for crawling. Not wanting to give too much away, she has refused to reveal the deadline by which she plans to reach her goal. However, observers note that regularly getting on all fours is a pretty sure sign of impending crawlingness, even if for the time being it is succeeded by a collapse to the floor and a blithe return to one's previous preoccupation (namely, getting to the TV cords).

It's pretty cool to see her sight an object of interest and then swim toward it ponderously, with conscious intent, effort visible in every movement. I know that it won't be long before she'll be moving around with even greater ease, but for now I'm having fun watching her steady progression, which somehow manages to be simultaneously incremental and lightning-fast.

Stop the presses!

While at work this evening, I received an urgent report from the husband manning the Home Front, to wit: Rimonit has crawled! Forward, no less!

I have not actually witnessed this exciting phenomenon yet, but I am told by sources familiar with the case that the incident in question was precipitated by the shrimp's inability to resist the lure of rustling paper being filed. Compelled to do some crinkling herself, she lifted her tummy off the floor and moved forward an inch, dropping down in exhaustion. As the "crumple crumple" sound continued (hey, is that an onomatopoeia, or merely an entrenched mental association? hmm, something to ponder...), she kept up her belly flops until reaching her clamorous goal. Can't wait to see for myself...

This is her third major milestone in the last two to three weeks alone:
- She just got her first tooth - and already she's sprouting what look like three more (one more on the bottom, next to the first one, two on the top)
- She can sit unsupported (which she did for about an hour and a half on Shabbat, quietly playing on her own!!)
- She has added the backwards slither to her repertoire of rolling all over the place (well, mostly toward the TV cords) and pivoting in a circle (a combo that enables her to get wherever she wants, even without the crawl).

She just turned eight months old yesterday.

A conversation I would never have had in J'lem

I'm still fielding calls from people who saw my signs looking for a babysitter, and I had a brief unexpected conversation today with a woman named Esther. After we discussed the kind of hours I'm looking for (since I can use as many backups as I can get) and I made it clear that I don't currently need someone for the regular gig, she added, in a kind of hesitatant tone: "Well, you should just know that I'm religious."

I was rather taken aback that she would feel the need to point this out and said, "Okay, so am I." She said that was good because some people were bothered by having a religious babysitter. What can I say but "??!!!" I am definitely going to interrogate her about this further - if she decides to keep our meeting, of course (see Tip #1).

Pretty wacked out, hey? I wonder if babysitters in Jerusalem feel the need to tell potential employers that they're not religious. I am saddened but intrigued...

Leave the lemon at the door

Recent experience (the direct result of my main babysitter being in the middle of exams) has led me to come up with a coupla hot tips for anyone looking to get paid to watch a kid (known in literary Hebrew as being a babyseeeeter [ בייביסיטר], though in a pinch an actual Hebrew word - metapelet [ מטפלת] - will do too.)

Tip #1. Show up.

This may be one of those things that seem kind of, well, obvious, but I have had no less than three women claiming to want to be paid to (in part) show up at a specific time, like for instance, when I need to leave for work. And yet they have proven this desire by... not showing up. And don't think they called to cancel, I might add.

Tip #2. It wouldn't kill you to smile.

So I admit it was a bit of an awkward situation. On Friday I agreed pretty much right away to take on the first babysitter I had spoken to who I really liked. She was at our apartment, where she had come so I could meet her and she could meet the kid. All was going well - and then the next interviewee showed up. I had thought I spaced them far enough apart, but the first one stayed longer than expected and the second came earlier than expected and, well, you know how it is (both of them apparently read Tip #1).

There are people who take a non-ideal situation well, but Applicant II was not one of them. In fact, I've never met anyone who fit the description "sourpuss" quite as precisely as she did.

She wasn't showing much of a happy face when I opened the door, and after I explained the situation in the most diplomatic way I could (including the fact that I had already picked the other girl to be my main alternate, but that I was always looking for other babysitters to keep in the pipeline), she went into serious bad sport mode, making these bitter comments the whole time. Like, "Well, I would have thought you'd want a mother." (The babysitter I chose is 20 and living with her parents.) And, after catching a glimpse of her: "She's obviously not very experienced, but whatever." And then, as she was about to walk out the door, "So do you think you made the right decision?" Well, if I hadn't been sure before you opened your mouth, boy was I sure as soon as you did.

Anyway, my new babysitter has only done her duty once as yet (tonight), but so far she's met both of my strict criteria. Not to mention, the kid didn't cry but did eat and sleep! Let's hear it for the first native Israeli (and an Iraqi yet) to be named Lynn! Eh, excuse me, Leeeeeeen. (No joke!)

Getting a head start

Just a bit of wisdom from Rimonit's day-care center:

When I went to drop her off the other day (she started last week and hangs out there for three to four hours a day), I noticed a laminated paper on the floor with all the other toys. It had a picture of a colorful parrot, beneath which were the words, in English: "How many color does it hold?"

Fortunately, all that Rimonit (now four and a half months old!) cares about right now is, "Will it fit into my mouth so I can drool all over it?" (Or, as the authors of the ostensibly educational game might have said, "How many drool can hold one little mouth?")

Ah, well, it's good to know Israelis are getting a head start on how to speak pidgin - or should that be parrot? - English...

Little Fat-face

Haven't posted in quite a while. In the interim, I've moved to Givatayim (part of the Tel Aviv area known as the Disgustingly Humid Belt) and had a baby girl (Rimonit Penina).


Bath time with RPKW.

Herewith, some FAQs:

Okay, so now we know her name. But what are you actually going to call her?

I don't really get this question, but it's a very common one, so I will attempt to answer it. Umm, we were kind of thinking we'd try calling her by her name. And no, not the whole double-barrelled thing, just Rimonit. What people seem to mean by this question is, 'How will you shorten her name so that it bears no semblance to the original but takes half a second less to say?' All I can tell you is that the only name-related nickname I've tried so far is Rimoniti. For those of you gasping in wonder at the thought that such a nickname is even longer than the original, let me point out that a three-syllable appellation (with an optional fourth syllable add-on) is really not that long! My name, for instance, has three syllables, and both Warren and I have four-syllabled sisters named Daniella - but despite such a terrible setback imposed so early in life, we've somehow all managed to pull through so far.

What do you mean by 'name-related nickname'? What other nicknames do you have?

The kid gets stuck with a new nickname almost as often as she goes out to her favorite 24-hour diner. Which leads me to a couple of eating-related nicknames for the squirt: Insatiable Munchkin (alternate form: Munching Munchkin) and Little Fat-face. Warren likes Thing-a-Ling, among others - a throwback to her fetal days, when she was just Thing (and particularly suited, in a bad haiku sort of way, to her being carried around in a sling). Warren's mother, who managed to time her arrival in Israel to coincide with the day of the birth, tends to go for Bubbaloo. (Don't ask me, she's South African.)

What are her vital stats?

She weighed 3.26 kilos at birth, which comes to somewhere around 7 pounds. (A month later, she is now more than 4 kilos. I don't remember how much more, but I did write it down somewhere.) She was born at 1:57 P.M. (that's 13:57 Israel time) on Monday, September 3, chaf Elul, via natural birth. There's probably other random bits of data I'm supposed to have memorized, but I'm not sure what that might be. And before you ask, I have no idea how many inches long she was - why exactly do you need to know??

Wait a second, is Rimonit actually a name?

Yeah, well, if it wasn't before, then it is now.

What does it mean?

It's a feminized form of 'rimon,' which means 'pomegranate.'

Okay, but why Rimonit?

Mostly because I was walking back from work one day several months ago and thinking that it was too bad we couldn't name the kid something Rosh Hashana-related, since we knew Thing would be born around then and that would at least narrow the sobriquet search. My inner dialogue went something like this: 'I mean, what are we gonna call it? Shofar? Or how about Tekia if it's a girl, Shevarim if it's a boy?' (Yes, I have sarcastic inner dialogue, and yes, we really didn't know what we were having until it popped out.) Then my mind kind of drifted to the Shivat Haminim (Seven Species), whereupon the sarcasm returned, in the form of: 'Yeah, Chita (Wheat), that would be a great name. It would go over really well in English too. Nothing like having a kid known to the world as Cheetah.' But then I went through the list and came upon Rimon and turned it into Rimonit and just kinda decided that that would be a really cool name. Bonus points for pomegranates being a fruit traditionally eaten on Rosh Hashana, to symbolize that we ask for our merits to be as numerous as the seeds of the pomegranate. I suggested the name to Warren shortly thereafter, making sure to intersperse it in unrelated conversations to get his mind used to the idea. The ploy worked: The name grew on Warren. And if you are not one of those with the good taste to love the name Rimonit at first hear, then it will surely grow on you too. (Anyway, it's better than Napoleon Alexander, which was Warren's father's first choice for the boy he was sure we would have.)

Well, since you clearly haven't named her after some relative called Rimonit, then who was Penina?

My great-grandmother Babi Penina, aka Babi Pepi - my mother's mother's mother.

Okay, now how about her last name. Er, what is her last name exactly?

Let's start at the beginning: Both Warren and I have the same names post-wedding as we did pre-wedding, meaning that I'm still a Kordova and he's still a Wienburg. We decided that for simplicity's sake, Rimonit would have only one last name, which would be Wienburg. However, I also wanted her to be a Kordova kid, so we decided to make Kordova her middle name, making the kid Rimonit Penina Kordova Wienburg (or as Warren occasionally refers to her in emails, RPKW). Unfortunately, Israeli birth certificates do not ask about middle names, so we were forced to list Kordova as her third first name and remain stalwart in our hope that she not grow up too confused.

UPDATE: We have since received her birth certificate in the mail and surprise, surprise, the Kordova is missing. A tangle with the bureaucratic powers that be awaits. (Yippee!)