9.5 Months – The Newest Year

Six weeks–oh my, the changes are huge and so is this post (nonetheless, we are sure there are omissions).  We apologize for the huge gap and thank you for keeping the faith.  Enjoy.

Nanny Kimberly and Rio (Not yet pictured)
This month, Cruv started a four-day-a-week commute to Kimberly, his nanny, and Rio, Kimberly’s son and Cruv’s buddy-to-be.  At noon of each weekday but Wednesday, Yaron walks, bikes, or runs Cruv to Kimberly’s apartment at the base of Bernal Heights where Cruv explores, eats, naps, and learns (or listens to) Spanish.  Each day, Kimberly brings the little-ones to Precita Park or the Mission Library and, at five, Yaron (and sometimes Miriam) excitedly waits for the buzzer.  Upon return, Cruv is all smiles (for us and Kimberly) and happy to be home.  And we know he had a good time, because, as we walk upstairs, he peers down to the door, looking for his nanny.

The Crawl to a Cruise (Not yet pictured)
Cruv graduated from the commando-crawl and now rocks a full-crawl.  Belly off the ground, Cruv is swift and deliberate.  And the raised approach allows for easier transitions to his standing position.  The only downside: The kitchen floor is dirtier  (though his onesies are cleaner).
If it’s near three-feet tall with a gripable edge, Cruv can climb it: second shelf of his wall unit, couch, open dishwasher, dining room chair, pot for jade plant.  Once up, he’ll grab whatever is in reach and put in his mouth (even the soil).  More recently, Cruv will cruise (side-step as he holds-on to a couch or wall).  When he’s done, he can safely and gently find his ways to knees or his well-padded bum.  More than the physical feat, this development is a new stage in Cruv’s curiosity:  Places and spaces in another realm are suddenly his to see, touch and taste.  His Abu installed child (and earthquake) guards just in time.

He approaches the new world with equal parts intensity and wonder.

Three Teeth to Tooth Tasty Treats
Encouraged by the sight of chewable food, Cruv willed a third tooth.  His food rectangle has morphed to a pyramid.  Beyond the delicious fruits (most recently, fig) and vegetables (most recently, Abu’s green beans and local avocados), he’s added yogurt, cottage cheese, fregola, tofu, black beans, oats, and, salmon sashimi at Sushi Ran (the Bay Area’s best sushi restaurant).

While before he ate food irregularly, he now eats three meals a day (sometimes with three courses each).  Of course, with food diversity (especially delicious fruit) comes dental hygiene.  Every morning, Yaron and Cruv give their teeth and gums an electric tooth brush cleaning (Cruv without toothpaste).

Un- and Re-Snuggled
On Day 3, Cruv chilled and snuggled in the spacious luxury of his Snuggle Nest Deluxe.

On Day 252, it was neither spacious nor functional.  On Day 253, Cruv woke and rolled to unsnuggled freedom.  The Snuggle Nest was retired.

With two weeks on the road, all the bad sleep habits without bad results began to have bad results.  After nearly thirty weeks of full-night sleeps, we had two weeks with too few.  Upon return to The Mission, the Snuggle Nest was back and we added a little more discipline on our part.  To bed before nine, with double diapers, and eyes still open, the transition was hard but mercifully fast.  On night one, Cruv, unable to rest and roused to his feet, cried for an unending-thirty minutes.  On night two, Cruv cried for a very-long-fifteen minutes.   On night three, he cried for a barely audible three minutes.  On night four, he released a sigh and whimper.  On night five, he cried for way-too-long.  But since then, after Miriam feeds Cruv and Yaron and he listen to BIll Evans and relax, Cruv snuggles-up with his orange bunny (thanks Uncle Noam and Aunt-to-be Julie) and eases himself to sleep.

Fall and Fall-Fever
For eight months, Cruv was healthy with barely a scratch or dent.  Within two weeks, Cruv had his first (only?) scary tumble and a low-grade fever.  Though neither demanded a hospital visit (though Miriam made house-calls), the first inspired a sustained wail, bump, and abrasion, the second caused a sad lethargy.  Both hit us in a fearful place.

Local Family, Friendly Visits, Family Vacations
In the last weeks, visitors slept on our guest bed and couch and we crashed on others’ beds and couches.  With Ari and Tamar on the Murphy bed, Doda Li camped in the dining room, below her succulents.  Together, we played, toured, and ate burritos.  Cruv sat for a Tamar photo shoot.

Not all family visited for just a few days.
For four weeks, Talia and Aaron were neighbors (While we’re in El Metate territory, they were in El Faro land).  We met for dinners and walks up Bernal Hill Park.  Cruv and Oren bonded.

It was a wonderful stretch and we’re open to more (wink, wink).
Not all family live her temporarily
Cruv’s Great-Great-Uncle Sam and his partner Karen are new additions to our life, as we are new addition to their city.  At Sam’s beachhouse, a few weeks back, we spotted sand pipers, seals, jellyfish, and pelicans.  Cruv stood where the ocean meets the shore, which he never had before.  New, mellow, and glorious, it seems as if Cruv inherited Miriam’s seaside glow.

Aunt Rachel loves her SF nephew, her “sweet pea,” so much, she comes to see him in The Mission whenever she can–last-minute dinners, drop-bys after meetings.  But sometimes we even make plans, like a day trip to Half Moon Bay.

From the quotidian to the fantastic, Rachel (and Jonathan) are woven into Cruv’s life.
And we cannot rely only on family to visit or follow us here.
For Miriam’s first of two vacations, we flew to PHX and JFK, though Cruv and Miriam made a bonus stop at BWI.  With Cruv’s and Phoenix’s temperature at one-hundred degrees, familial arms (Savta Sandra’s and Great-Uncle Irwins’s pictured), the pool, and Le Grande Orange provided respite.  Happier held and cuddled, Cruv barely touched the ground.  All who could (Uncle Phil, Aunt Ora, Uncle David, Aunt Amy, Great-Aunt Tina, Cousin Jen, Cousin Anthony, and more) came to hold our feverish baby.

Though he could not hold him, Nathan sweetly attended to his baby cousin.

By the end of our stay, his eyes were big, smile wide, and momentum uncontainable.

From there, Miriam and Cruv headed to Bubbie, Cruv’s great-grandmother.  The tumultuous world sighs in relief when these happy forces unite:  All-love is Bubbie’s way and it’s the only way Cruv knows.  As Cruv and Miriam said goodbye, Bubbie said, “He’ll never know how happy he made me.”  Now he will.

At JFK, the family reunited.  We were at Earlwoode with Cruv’s Imama, Abu (aka Professor Elcott), Aunt Talia, Uncle Aaron, and Cousin Oren.  Cruv went on tiyyulim to Abu’s garden and hanging lamps, bright prints, and painted plates.  With his Imama by his side, Cruv toppled towers and scrounged for blocks.

For bits a time, we got to play tourist in the city of Cruv’s birth.  Miriam and Yaron ate Lou and Sal’s cheese and Claude’s croissant.  Cruv ate Otto’s farro with corn.  More important than his Batali introduction, Cruv met Professor Wolfson, Yaron’s teacher, a long-anticipated meeting.  Though they exchanged only a few sounds, Professor Wolfson’s voice, we are sure, was familiar to Cruv:  Since the day of Cruv’s birth, Yaron has whispered-in-his-ear Professor Wolfson’s teachings.

For Shabbat Abby and Izzy unfolded the red couch and we unleashed the Pack-and-Play (thank you Aunt Talia and Uncle Aaron).  We toured Columbia University with Uncle Noam (aka Professor Elcott) and Aunt-to-be Julie.
Surrounded by his East Coast family, with an apple and honey bib (thank you Savta Sandra) and a bite of apple, Cruv brought-in the New Year.

New Year
For us, nearly nothing is the same from last year to now.  This time last year, we started MuffinInTheOven.com:  Cruv was a possibility, a beautiful and hopeful thing.

We knew neither his hair color nor cry, though we heard both first.  Miriam had never breastfed.  We had not held his tiny body and huge head.  He had not yet wrapped his fingers around our hand.    We had never changed a diaper.   We had never spoken his name.

We could not have imagined his life-changing smile.  He had not yet taught us of his patience and generosity.  The never, could-nots, and not-yets are countless.  Of all the new identities of this year–M.D., A.B.D, San Franciscans, among them–nothing is more new nor more thrilling than parenthood.

For us, nearly everything is new from last year to now.  An awesome new year.