A spring bounty

The children at the school where we practice Aikido brought Miles some apricots as a spring bounty gift right before the holiday of Shavuot. It was really sweet. Mikael thought so, too. He found them and joyfully took a bite or two out of each and every one and then wiped the mats with what was left. Definitely cute behavior when you are around 1 years old that may not be so cute later on. Also, probably cuter for the parents than everyone else, but I'm not sure. Which reminds me that Liya and I started taking a 'boundaries' workshop so we can learn how to better set 'boundaries' (what are those?) for our child when the time comes.

In any case, Adi memorialized the slaughter of the spring bounty with her cell phone camera. Those are great things to have, aren't they?

More from the Aikido Seminar

Miles just put up a blog about the Aikido seminar that the whole family went to. You can read about it here. He also links a Picasa web album that a nice woman named Olga put up. There's a bunch of pictures there, some of which are very very nice. A few even have Mikael in them. If you only want those, you can find them here and here and here and here and here and here. There may be others. There's a lot of nice pictures in the web album.

I also got some pictures from Efrat and one form Miles, so I'm posting them here.

 
 
 

On the mat in the dojo

I'm sorry about the graininess of these photos. I asked Remi to take them with his cell phone because there was little Mikael on this huge mat, kind of hanging out with his own self. He's started to spend a lot of time on the mat before and after class.

 
 
 

Roberto after Aikido

There are a lot of people at Aikido who give Mikael a lot of attention, and Roberto is one of them. Here he is hanging out with Mikael after Aikdio practice while Liya and I get our clothes changed and pick up all the toys and stuff.

Aikido seminar: nahal dragot

On the last day, I decided that it would be terrible to spend three days up in Metzukei Dragot and not see Nahal Dragot. We didn't have a lot of time between the morning and afternoon classes, but a bunch of people were interested so we decided to do it. We ate lunch really quickly and then ran around like chickens with our heads cut off for a little while, and finally got organized and out into the desert. The canyon was, of course, really spectacular. It made me want to go hiking every weekend.

 
 
 
 

Aikido seminar: Patrick Cassidy

We had lots of friends who helped out with the babysitting. They seemed to have fun with Mikael, and Mikael definitely enjoyed all the attention. Patrick sensei helped us out a couple of times by sitting with Mikael during class. They seemed to have a very nice time together. I wish we had pictures of more of the baby sitters, but this is nice already.

 
 
 

Aikido seminar: amusing the crowd

I'm sorry this picture is so blurry. I wanted to include it because one way of keeping Mikael calm was letting him run around the mat while we all sat and listened the senseis' explanations and watched their demonstrations. This only kept Mikael calm and amused, it had a positive effect on eveyrone else as well.

 

Aikido seminar: Mikael's eye view

After everyone was done waving their arms around outside, they came in. I was down on the mat with Mikael and the camera, so I took some pictures of the seminar from a 'Mikael's eye view' of things.

Aikido seminar: on the mat

Eventually, Mikael seemed to get tired of hanging around in the Ergo in the sun while people stretched, so we went inside and took advantage of the completely empty mat. Some things seem to give Mikael a sense of awe and quiet, and the broad space of the empty mat really worked for him. Eventually, though, he went back the normal things and chased me around and tried to eat the camera.

Aikido seminar: practice on the desert ledge

Patrick Cassidy of Aikido Montreux helped Miles teach the seminar. He did some of the warmups and exercises outside of the tent on the ledge overlooking the Dead Sea. On Saturday morning, Mikael was in no mood to just hang out while we did our exercises outside, so I carried him around on the ergo and shot some pictures. The scenery picture is what you see from the ledge.

 
 
 
 

Aikido seminar: young baby sitter

Zeev Ehrlich, who is the sensei at the Rehovot dojo, was at the seminar with his son Kazuki. Kazuki was really great with Mikael. He had some funny voices that Mikael thought were amazing. Also, during the contact improv class that Itay Yatuv taught on Friday night, Kazuki used a flashlight to play chase with Mikael (like you can do with a laser pointer and a cat). This kept them both very amused, and we are very grateful to Kazu who was also just generally very fun to have around.

 
 
 
 

Aikido seminar: during practice

This is one of the rare moments that Mikael was playing self-sufficiently in his enclosure. Seeing this picture, you might imagine that we basically got to practice the entire time and he pretty much took care of himself, but that would not be exactly accurate.

 
 
 

Aikido seminar: our room

We stayed in a very basic room with two single beds and a small flat couch (really just another bed but a little shorter). We pushed the couch against the wall, and then the two beds against the couch, and Mikael had his own little bed to sleep in which seemed to us quite safe. This is just pictures of me feeding an appled to Mikael. Liya says that it was late at night and that he had been sleepy and that I totally woke him up and that it then took hours to get him back to sleep, but I don't remember any of that.