We have not been keeping up with the blog and a lot of stuff has piled up. I'm going to post a few things that are lying around, but it's a little haphazard.
In any case, although he doesn't realize it entirely, Mikael is now completely capable of riding a bike. It only took him about three days, I guess in part because of all the time he spent on the wooden bikes. In any case, here are the videos to prove it:
Underpants and paints
תמונות טריות מהיום.
הבוקר אחרי תהליך של פיפי קקי תחתונים, הגענו למצב שבו מיכאל ביקש לשים תחתונים בגן במקום חיתול. התייעצנו עם יעלי המטפלת והיא נתנה אישור למבצע. בסוף היום כשבאתי לקחת אותו הסתבר שהייתה הצלחה ומיכאל לא פיספס בכלל ולקח אחריות מלאה על כל עניין. אני מרוב שימחה שמתי לו את התחתוני ספייר על הראש ומיכאל בתמורה לבדיחה שלי לא רצה להוריד את התחתונים מהראש עד שהגענו הבייתה.
השכן מהקומה הראשונה, מעניק למיכאל מלא פיציפקס שיש לו במאגרים. כל פעם כשהוא שומע אותנו בחדר מדרגות הוא פותח את הדלת ונותן למיכאל מתנה. שילשום מיכאל קיבל ערכה של צביעה עם מכחול וצבעי גואש. הוא מאוד אהב את זה ומיד זה הפך לתחביב החדש. איכשהו עם התחתונים על הראש זה נראה מאוד מתאים.
מצאתי בבית עוד מכחול וציירנו ביחד.
Fresh pictures from today.
The morning after the usual pee poo and then underpants, we got to the point that MIkael asked to wear underpants to Day Care instead of a diaper. We consulted with Yaeli, the Day Care supervisor, and she gave her approval for the operation. At the end of the day, when I came to pick him up, it turned out that it was a resounding success and that Mikael hadn't missed even once and took full responsibility for the whole thing. I was so happy, I festooned his head with the spare underpants we had, and Mikael got into the spirit of the joke and didn't want to take them off until we got home.
Our downstairs neighbor (whose name we don't know) is always giving Mikael little presents from some secret stash that he has. Every time he hears us coming down the stairs, he opens the door and gives Mikael a small present. A couple of days ago, Mikael received a small paint-by-numbers set. Mikael really liked it and it has become his new hobby. With the multi-colored underpants on his head, the whole picture seemed very appropriate.
I found another paint brush somewhere in the house and we painted together.
We stayed until the party until quite late. Mikael had a blast. He ate tons of yummy food (it was totally out of control what they had) and then did a lot of dancing and then rode the elevator up and down and up and down and then danced some more and then hung out with Tal and then rode the elevator some more and then had chocolate for desert and so on and so forth. Here are a couple of videos we took during the party; I'm particularly pleased with the second one. Nadav is the kid dancing at the beginning of the first video. I'm sure eventually there will be official pictures and video, too.
Vimeo.
Vimeo.
Shiran took photos of our swim class a few weeks ago. For a mere 80 NIS, we are now able to share this miracle with you. We were surprised to see that Mikael's eyes are open under water. It helps us understand it when Moran, the teacher, tells us to have him grab things under water. That's Moran, by the way, holding him in all the pictures, and Liya reaching out to him.
Bike is one of Mikael's current favorite words. Here we are on the way home from the Hannukah party. Mikael really wanted to ride the bike, but we had no bike seat and no baby carrier, so we tried this sort of 'bike surfing' which seemed to keep him pretty happy.
On Friday night, while we were having a lovely dinner with Adi and Shiri, someone stole our bicycle seat. So, if anyone finds it or anything, we'd love to have it back. Of course, on Saturday you can't buy bicycle seats, so we were bike-free all of Saturday. Liya took the morning shift and she and Mikael walked up to Dubnov park where they met a 5 year old girl called Maya that Mikael was talking about for the rest of the day. Mikael had started playing with her toys without asking permission, and that caused some initial friction, but eventually (with just a tad of adult intervention) they got along quite nicely.
I took the afternoon shift and decided that Mikael and I would go down to the beach for yet another 'last day at the beach before summer is over' visit. We thought about using the Brompton and the Ergo to get down there (like in this post) but eventually decided to take the scooter (called a 'corquinet' in Hebrew) instead. We rode along for a while like you might imagine, with Mikael on my hip in the ergo and me on the scooter. Eventually, though, Mikael got bored of this and we tried different arrangements. My least favorite had Mikael lying with his belly on the foot plate and pushing the scooter along with his hands and knees. My favorite is the one pictured below. He balanced on the scooter like this for quite a while and I was so impressed that when a couple passed me and remarked on the situation, I asked them to take a picture with their cell phone camera.
After dinner, Mikael was a little restless, so he and the girls and I went to explore. We found a very cool clothing store with lots of very very cool people inside who were too cool to notice a scruffy parent and three rambunctious children turning the store into a playground. Mikael explored the entire store but finally focused on the anti-theft detector that was place quite close to the store front window. Here was an Interesting Challenge. It took him about 5 or 10 minutes of work to figure out how to get through, and then he kept practicing for another 15 minutes until he got really good at it. I was too stupid to take pictures of the first attempts, but here are five separate videos of the ultimate accomplishment. I could have taken 100, but I think that the five will be enough for you to get the idea. With a little work, I could have put them into one long loop, actually. That would have given a feel for the whole thing.
And here he shows he can go back the other direction.
Mikael's first official swim class was this morning. Smadar, the teacher, is seen helping him swim towards the ball in the video. We're only allowed to have one parent in the pool at a time, so I was in the pool mostly this time. I think it should be my turn all the time, but Liya (reasonably) thinks we should take turns.
We're very excited about swim class, actually.
We spent the night up at Givat Ada last week, and Mikael got lots of time with his grandparents up there. Here is Savta Hava playing with Mikael and a toy that he liked.
We can pull out the part of the couch that turns it into a bed, and Mikael practices climbing. He usually goes up onto the couch itself and then crows with satsifaction, but this time he didn't quite make it that far.
Saba Emi put on some of the old greats from Israelis nostalgic past (in Karaoke on the plasma DVD no less) and we all danced around.
While obviously the toothbrush is a little bit big for him and he is not using it the way 9 out of 10 dentists recommend, nevertheless, Mikael has indeed started brushing his teeth. He now has his own toothbrush and he even puts it into his mouth brush-end-mouthwards most of the time. He likes it so much, it has come to bed with us after the toothbrushing on more than one occasion. We'll have to get a picture up here soon.
Anyway, this picture is nice because it has Doda Ayala in it.
Mikael has been beginning to stand on his own for brief seconds here and there. He was practicing by the swimming pool and we caught it with the camera. What you see are 'before' and 'after' pictures where the key issue is the location of the right arm: using Liya's leg for support of standing and waving it in the air completely on his own two feet.
Now that Mikael has started walking around it's time for him to have something to help him keep his balance. Here in Israel, one version of this is called a 'bimba.' They're very popular. Liya and I got Mikael one made with a big tray full of nice wooden blocks. He likes playing with the blocks, but the wheels go too fast to use it as a walker. Savta Havva bought a really nice Fisher Price bimba that also makes noise and honks and is really very popular.
Actually, the fact that all but one of the pictures has him riding on the Bimba instead of walking with it is a fairly accurate reflection of what's going on, but he's still enjoying it so who cares.
Mikael sat at the table like a big boy this visit and also showed off his new ability to climb stairs. This scared Yoel and Liya silly, but I thought it was very cool.
The birthday party in Reut was Mikael's first time on a slide. A lot of other kids were playing on the slide, too, some a little more energetically than Mikael, and we have some nice pictures of them.
Mikael and I went together (first time for me) to Tippat Halav, a government organization that promotes breast feeding and infant health. They take care of immunization shots and all kinds of other stuff. Liya's written about them in the past because she's always been the one that's gone. Mikael, at 7 months and 18 days, is 8 kilo and 900 grams. He put on half a kilo since last time, and that puts him in the 55th percentile which is down quite a bit from last time. Last time, on Dec 6, he was 8.4 and in the 75th percentile. The time before that was already in October, when he was 7.8 kilo. By the way, last month in December was the first time he'd doubled his birth weight (4.015).
His length was 70.5, up from 69. Up is the right direction. Down would be weird for the length, and less weird but quite troubling for the weight. It's strange for me to think that he's actually a centimeter and a half longer than he was a month ago. I keep imagining to myself that he's getting longer (I judge by how easily he can peer over things that he uses to stand up on), but I never actually think it's true.
He also was checked by a doctor for amblyopia (lazy eye) and by a nurse for binaural hearing. He did reasonably well on both tests. It's almost funny how low tech they are. The amblyopia test involved hold a donald duck squeaker and flash light at different positions in front of Mikael's eyes. The hearing test involved ringing some bells, rustling some paper and throwing tongue depressors onto the floor in front of him.
Next weighing of the baby is on February 27.
While me and all of the Schooleys were hanging out and having a good time with Mikael, Savta Hava and Sabba Rami showed up to say hello. Savta Hava and Mikael managed to take some great pictures showing how Mikael stands up these days.
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