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: 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.

 
 
 
 

Babysitter

Our very first non-family babysitter. Albina came today just for a trial run. Liya was with her for a while and then a short time after Liya left I showed up. She spent three hours with Mikael: watched him nap, fed him, took him for a walk (she didn't get along all that well with the Ergo), and generally seemed to think he was the best.

 

Lazy afternoon

Ola is spending the weekend with us and helped out with some babysitting. Later, we all went to Aikido and on the way home Liya and I did some errands. It was all a bit too much for Mikael who eventually fell asleep in the Ergo.

 

Ronit's car

I thought it would be nice to post a picture of Ronit's car, since she was so good as to lend it to us while she is in America. You also see Mikael in the new hip position for the Ergo.

 

Mevasseret

We didn't take many pictures this time. Basically, we all seem to know the drill. One difference is that we've started carrying Mikael on the hip in the Ergo carrier. You can see both me and Liya demonstrating the new technique.

 
 
 
 

Mikael at lab

Liya had morning and evening sessions yesterday, and I felt like I couldn't miss a whole day on a week that was short because of Sukkoth, so we agreed (eventually) that the best thing would be for me to take Mikael with me to the lab.  I picked up Ronit Mayo's car (she is in America and kindly agreed that we could use her car while she was gone) and loaded Mikael and lots and lots of milk and toys and blankets and mats and carriers and child seats into it, and headed south into the sun.  Mikael was reasonably quiet on the drive down except that he got hungry about 10 minutes before we arrived and spent the last 10 minutes screaming.  At the lab he was very happy.  There were lots of students to smile at and play with, and lots of new things to look at that he had never seen before.  We spent about 5 hours in the lab, meeting students and debuging programs and drinking coffee and doing the other things that scientists do, and then we headed back.  He slept the whole way back.

Yoav is a programmer in the lab who is currently an undergraduate.

Ofer is a Master's student

Liana takes care of the cats and she is also an undergraduate.

Here is some rare footage of me feeding Mikael

And, of course, the carrier.

Mikael at Aikido

We've been taking Mikael with us to Aikido. It's been a great opportunity for me and Liya to do something together, and Mikael doesn't seem to mind. Actually, for evening classes, it's pretty much past his bedtime and he falls asleep either before the class or at the very beginning. On Friday morning, I went without Liya because she was working. I set up a mat for him with toys and all stuff and he spent some of his time watching the practice, and some of the time with the toys. One thing is for sure, he's always a big hit when we bring him.

Second day

After such a long and exhausting first day, Mikael spent most of his second day in Switzerland asleep. In fact, he was totally uninterested in the bottle and refused to eat until Liya was free to feed him. I didn't push it too much, so we mostly spent the day in the hotel room where he went from green shit back to the healthy yellow/orange and mostly just slept and slept.

In the afternoon, I tried to take him outside in the carrier and it went ok, but I decided pretty quickly that I hadn't dressed him warmly enough so we went back home with our tails between our legs. We did better in the evening and on the third day, as you'll see shortly.

The ergo

Both Liya and I really like the Ergo baby carrier (featured so often and so prominently on this blog), but Mikael has, to put it gently, 'mixed feelings.' He can be gotten to be quiet and apparently comfortable in the Ergo, but he very often complains about it. Certainly, it doesn't live up to the promises of the internet hype. We generally don't get a baby who is so happy to be in the carrier that he's just always beaming. We're wondering if the problem is technique, or the specific carrier or the method of carrying. There's a lot of internet hype out htere against the 'facing ourward' style popularized by the Baby Bjorn, but we have a strong feeling that it will be quite comfortable for our baby. Ido Kallir has one that we can borrow and try out.

Travelling to Tete-de-Ran

Mikael's first day of international travel was a bruiser. It started with breakfast at 3:40, followed by a taxi ride to the train station in Tel Aviv at 4:05 AM. From there, we took the 4:29 train to Natbag, arriving 4:40. We met Liya's friend Smadar who works in security, and she got us past the security line, but we still had to wait in the check-in line. It went very slowly, and it was 5:30 before we got to customs, and 6:00 when we got to the main departures lounge. Mikael had second breakfast, and Opher and Liya had their first. After that, we bought a camera case and some batteries and Whisky for Hava and it was pretty much time to board the plane. We took off almost promptly at 7:45. Here is a picture of Mikael just after boarding.

Mikael was great, unbelievably great, during the flight. He sucked a pacifier during take off and he sucked a teat during landing (that's his third meal), and he generally was all smiles and light the rest of the time. The El Al crew were also great. Just to give you a sense, both Liya and I saw most of Spiderman III during the flight, and I even got some work down correcting some english for Yoel. Here's where I need to put a picture in of Mikael getting changed right after landing.



After we landed, at 11:15 Zurich time, we spent some time exploring Zurich international. They have very cool luggage carts in Switzerland that know how to ride on escalators. Of course, we didn't get a picture of that, but we did get a picture of Mikael on his first airport train ride.

We decided to take the train into Zurich because it was so close. That's a twenty minute train ride. We arrived Zurich at around 13:00 and put our luggage in a locker and headed out to explore. Unfortunately, we also put the camera in the locker, so you won't get to see any pictures of Mikael at the Biergarten (where Liya and I had coffee and a beer, respectively, and Mikael had his fourth meal) or on the bridge overlooking the river or meeting the strange but interesting Nina and her baby boy Noah in park or exploring the Kinderspielplatz. After thoroughly enjoying how picturesque the city is and how picturesque we were in it, we caught the 16:04 to Neuchatel with strict instructions to change at Biel at 17:13 to the Neuchatel train (leaving 17:17 across the platform) and then again at Neuchatel at 17:32 for the Le Hauts Geneveys train that leaves a few platforms over at 17:37.

A number of unfortunate things happened on the train ride. One was that Mikael suddenly realized he'd been travelling for around 12 hours, and wanted to let everyone on the train know that he was ready to go home and crawl into his nice warm familiar bed and get some sleep. The train was a little crowded, so we couldn't quite put him down. The cabin was treated to about 20 minutes or half an hour of Mikael's attempts to make them undertand just how unhappy he wa about the whole situation. Eventually, I took him to the bicycle and stroller storage area near the front of the train, and we found some free carpet space and spread out all of his favorite blankets on top of one another to make a bed. He didn't quite go to sleep, but he did calm down a little. After about 15 minutes of that, surprising all of us, he was all smiles again and ready to play.

The other unfortunate thing that happened was that the conductor on the train told us that we didn't really need to change at Biel because this train also went to Neuchatel. What we realized only after it was too late was that it was true that both trains got to Neuchatel, but the one that started from Biel got there at 17:32 while ours was three minutes behind. If you've been following our complicated plot, you'll quickly realize that this left us 2 minutes to get off the train at Neuchatel with all of our luggage and run to the Le Hauts Geneveys train a few platforms away. Luckily for us, a nice guy from Geneva (well, his parents are American, but he grew up in Canada and Switzerland and he lives in Geneva today) helped us get our luggage off the train as quickly as possible and we ran for our lives (Mikael bouncing along happily in the awesome Ergo carrier) and actually managed to make the train. Here are a couple of pictures of us happily on the Neuchatel train

We got to Le Hauts Geneveys at 18:04, as scheduled of course, and from there we were picked up by the hotel's driver and driven up to Tete de Ran. It's very near the French border, and if you're curious, this is a link to the driving directions from Zurich to Tete-de-Ran. The scenery is gorgeous and the hotel room is also very nice. More on that, of course, to follow.

Papagaio

Yael is honeymooning on the Kinneret and Netta is being a scout leader in Ya'ar Tzipori, so Yoel and Milka and Dror decided to come to Tel Aviv for dinner at a restaurant. We joined them at the Brazilian meat restaurant Papagaio. For a mere 130 NIS per person (cheap by London standards) you get all the meat you can eat from a choice of 12 different types of beef and chicken. I enjoyed it. Liya enjoyed it, too, but said that the meat wasn't all that tasty and that for that money you can get a truly excellent steak. She's right about that. Mikael slept through the whole meal.

Baby carriers on the web

I just wasted, er, spent a lot of time looking at information about wraps and other types of baby carriers on the web. There's a lot out there, but much of it is repetitive. I found out a few interesting things. One of the questions I had is how much baby wearing are people really talking about. Mikael seems quite happy, quite often to spend time in the university or in the crib. It always seems silly to put him on me when I'm around the house. Didn't find a good answer to that one except one site that said that even if a baby fusses when they go into the sling that doesn't mean they don't like it. How do they know?

Anyway, the site babywearer.com had an enormous amount of interesting information. I particularly liked the page "Using your baby carrier" which had links to tips for different types of slings. That page had a section for the Ergo, where I found the most useful link to be the one to ErgoLady's Tips and Tricks.

Another link there that I thought was very important reading was "Correct positioning for safety and comfort of your newborn". That would have helped me a lot early on and still had some important tips.

They also have a forum.

Putting on the Ergo

We're still pretty excited about the Ergo baby carrier that Doda Ayala bought for us. In fact, we're always looking for opportunities to play with it. I made a movie of Liya demonstrating how to load Mikael and use the infant insert (which also works great). Our other two carriers have been relegated to one of the drawers under the changing table.

New baby carrier

One of the main things in my sister's gift box was the Ergo baby carrier. It's REALLY comfortable. Here I am enjoying the great feeling of having Mikael on me in the new carrier.