All Our Ducks in a Row

On December 7th, the parents from the Spring 2008 Mindfulness Birthing Class got their ducks in a row.

From left to right: Kai, Nate, Morgan, PJ, Milo, Asher, Lucy and Myles

Originally uploaded by ben_temchine

Big ole Piglet Pile

Yesterday we had a gathering of the folks from the Mindfulness Birthing Class we took in the spring. I have some video I will be posting today (Or tomorrow more likely. Maybe even the day after, Asher willing.)

In the mean time, here are some pictures taken by Dave Wilmore. All rights reserved.



From left to right they are: Kai, Nate, Morgan, PJ, Milo, Asher, Lucy and Myles

And here they are in the Gymini

On Being Three Months Old

Three months is a vulnerable time.

Asher has been around long enough to have some control over his hands, but he can't grab anything, with them. Not reliably. They just flop around or -more frequently- are gripped tightly in a fist. White knuckle tight. For hours.

And he is still tiny, only now he can see well enough to know it. Things are very far away now, and they never used to be. They used to be closer.

Asher is sitting in a Bumbo, not on a potty. In case you wanted to know.

Papa Love

This is addressed to no one in particular and to the entire world as well:

I am super happy. I love being a dad. I love my wife. I love coming home to Asherfras and changing his diaper and watching him giggle and waggle his arms around. I love falling asleep while I rock his little bassinet. love waking up when i hear the sound of the binkie popping out of his mouth. I love giving him his bath each night and love when he sneezes -like me- always two times. I love watching my wife kiss him on his belly and love that i don't miss going places other than work or home.

I don't miss sleep, though I enjoy it when I get it. I don't miss bars, though a quiet snort is much appreciated. I don't miss surfing except when I think of it, which isn't often, because the blue, the remarkable blue of this boy's eyes give me my ocean fix.

I am deprived in sleep only. In every other way I am rich beyond measure.

So, this is motherhood. Everything takes just about, well, a completely unpredictable amount of time more than I expect. Lots of half-dones, or never starteds or not-even-noticeds. And, then, there is what I AM doing, being with this extraordinary little man as he grows into his long fingers and solid feet, minute by minute, nap by nap, cry by cry. Attempting not to get attached to any one way to soothe him because the next day he knows not from that. Trying, trying so hard to listen to him and give him just what he needs. Lots of falling down. Lots more getting up.

I wrote the entry below the morning after Obama’s great victory, the evening of our collective victory over our own perceptions of powerlessness, our own disbelief in a future that wouldn’t just be a facsimile of the present – or worse. I am just now coming back to post these words, a now familiar rhythm bouncing a tired Asher in his already vibrating bouncy chair, still in my pajamas at 1 pm, happy to just have a day at home with nothing scheduled and no transitions to effect from here to there. Weary and happy. Just here, with the little man who is calm and sweet and a tad less waggly today than yesterday. But, boy is he, fighting a nap with his last little twitch. (by the time I finished this and added to the blog, he was asleep…)

So, a little snapshot from life with newborn….and some thoughts from a new mom on a new era….

I didn’t go out onto the campaign trail. I didn’t canvas in Nevada or Virginia or Ohio. I wasn’t among those in Grant Field when Obama invited us all to share in healing our planet, to care for one another and to understand that these problems wouldn’t be solved in a day.

I was going to be there. I was planning to take leave to get Obama elected. An early adopter for a vision of a politics and a democracy I could believe in again.

That was B.A. – Before Asher.

Instead, this would be a year for a different sort of transformation. But not one - I now know - that happens apart from the bright, if pothole-filled, new landscape into which we have all driven our still fuel-inefficient vehicles. We definitely aren't "there" yet, but at least we are here, and "there" is in view. I know now exactly why our new President’s ascent is so important. No, more than know it. I feel it in my still fleshy belly, my aching Mama bones. I haven’t found all the words – yet. But as I looked down at Asher curled up in my lap asleep as his Papa, Papy (Grandpa Daly) and I watched the returns roll in and the crowds gather in Chicago and streets and parks across the nation on Election Eve, I felt a new churning inside to make this world work for all of us, for every new child born.

I also know that we will now get a different model of what it is to be a family. I watched Barack Obama and our new first lady Michelle so clearly in love, their girls, confident and joyful.
A first family who cares about what we do and who models love and compassion. A president who we will proudly call ours.

We were all there, whether in Chicago or at home with our sleeping newborns in Kansas City or Houston or Seattle or DC or San Francisco.

And, it no longer mattered where I WASN’T. I knew exactly where I was.

Not about Asher: about his future.

Of note about last night's election:

The presidential election provided empirical evidence countering fears of election fraud like rigged electronic voting machines and voter purging. Polling averages really didn't get any states wrong. In fact, fivethirtyeight.com projected Obama winning with 348 electoral votes and 52.3% of the popular vote. As of this morning's count, Obama has 349 electoral votes and 52% of the popular vote. Election day fraud would be a possible explanation for a results that diverged from polls. There wasn't any.

63% of voters said the economy was the most important issue for them, six times more than cited the war in Iraq (10%), health care (9 %), terrorism (9 %) or energy (7 %). Eight in 10 said they were worried the economic crisis would harm their family’s future, while about half said they were “very worried”

Why He Won

• Half of voters said they "strongly disapproved" of Bush and about eight in 10 of those voters backed Obama

• Latinos gave Obama a margin of more than 25 points, much better than Kerry's return. Among young Hispanics, he won by more than 50 points

• Obama won among every age group except for voters 65 and over

• Obama grew the African American vote by two percentage points in terms of the total electorate

• Obama won among new voters by more than 30 points

• Obama won among the poorest voters; he tied among voters whose total family income is more than $50,000

• Obama won union voters by 22 points; he won among those with members of unions in their households by 19 points.

• Obama won 84 % of Democrats who backed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton




Where he lost

• Obama performed slightly worse with white women (39% of the electorate) than Al Gore did in 2000. McCain won the votes of white women, 53 to 46 percent

• Obama won 43 % of white voters, equal to what Bill Clinton won in the three-man race of 1996 and only 4% points below Carter’s performance in 1976. He won 54% of young white voters

• Obama lost non-college-educated whites by 19 points. That said, this was a marked improvement over the 26 point lead Bush had in 2004

• Obama lost white college graduates (35 % of the electorate) 51 to 47 percent; but again, this was roughly a 3-point gain over Gore’s 44% in 2000

• Suburban voters, who were half of the electorate, split between Obama and McCain. Rural voters, who went for Bush by 19 points in 2004, leaned to McCain by 8 points

Request for Help

If any of you good people out there can tell me why the video I just uploaded looks so crap, please let me know. I am using Final Cut Express and exported the clips using their Quicktime converter.

Help?

Asher on the bed

Asher on the bed
Originally uploaded by ben_temchine

He was lying in our bed, staring up and out the window. He likes windows a great deal. He likes window panes even more. Edges. Babies dig edges. And contrast.

Asher in His Swing

Asher in His Swing

Originally uploaded by me

Asher's Spasmodic Kung Fu

Asher's Spasmodic Kung Fu
Originally uploaded by ben_temchine

These are the first videos I pulled off the HD video camera Papy bought for us. It took me a while to figure it all out, but here they are. More on their way as I find time...

He will waggle like this for several hours each morning.

Happy 2 month Birthday

Asher was born September 1st. Today is November 1st. Yay. On to the tape!



He has fattened up extremely well in the past week. The change has been kind of startling actually. This was taken this afternoon, in his car seat, on the way to San Leandro.



He is taking much longer to fall asleep these days. We jiggle him, burp him, nurse him, put him down, pick him up. Bathe him. Shower him. He just seems to be -like his old man- a night owl. When he fell asleep the other night (Friday?) he was doing his best Jack Benny.



This wasn't his costume, but it is Halloween themed. We have to wait for Mikaela's pictures to get uploaded to see his little LadyBug costume.



Man, babies are funny shaped. Huge heads, giant eyes, tiny shoulders, ginormous ears. He sure is cute, but I think he looks like the stubby guy from Sideways in this picture. The blond haired, blue-eyed, Cossack version.

That is all for now.

Asher & His Cousins

On November 1st, 2008 we visited Beth, Steve, Eli & Olive. I only got a few lousy pictures, but they're sweet.




The full set (such as it is) is here.

At 8 weeks

Asher is one happy little kid these days. In these past few days he has begun holding his head up on his own. He smiles, and -quietly- laughs. You can see more pictures here
All were taken within about 10 minutes of one another. The range of emotions that kids face cycles through is pretty astonishing. Enjoy!

Asher has range

Asher is a baby of many moods, many ages. Sometimes he is naught but a newborn, a wee pupkin. For example here:



And so tiny,



But other times, he looks so grown-up, a real little boy.



Or like an evil little Pope.



Here he is doing a 1970's art house rock and roll star

For Wendy

Here ya go!




And another





And this one

The Bris

For most Jews, the decision to have a brit milah and a circumcision is simplicity itself. You do.

Living in San Francisco complicates things.

I felt strongly about it, and I wanted to write out why.

First, in bold print, circumcision was the prerequisite act for Abram to become Abraham, father of multitudes, the very first Jew. To have that very first Jewish interaction with the transformative power of the universe, that which allows what is to become what should be, the Jewish people determined that circumcision was required. So every -or nearly every- jewish man since then has been circumcised.

We wanted Asher to be a part of that lineage, both the spiritual attribute and experience of Abraham, but the physical marking of the same.

But why did the Jews ascribe so much importance to this act that they recorded it as a command from God?

I have to backtrack a little here. I believe that there is a transcendent power in the universe that is not indifferent between compassion and sin and that this power is beyond the bonds that control the physical aspect of the universe. I am (highly) doubtful that this power speaks explicitly to people. Instead, the stories in the Torah read to me like a record of the interaction between the Jews and what we call god. When I read the Torah and see some law or prediction ascribed to God, I feel like its a literary trick. Instead of saying, "This is something we have discovered and believe to be true, but could never prove it." They say, "God said..."

I personally don't mind if this makes some judge me to be an ignorant jew, a bad jew or not a jew at all. Reading the Torah this way has been my gateway to explore and honor the wisdom in these crazy stories.

So why did we Abram hear god saying, " Go circumcise yourself?" The oldest image of circumcision is 4,000 years old and lies in Egypt.


But if I had to guess, the Egyptians didn't invent circumcision the moment that image was drawn. Circumcision is practiced around the world by wildly divergent cultures. ost of the semitic people, including Muslims, practice circumcision to this day. Many Pacific Islanders do too, as well as Native Americans and a wide variety of African cultures east, south and west.

There is something about this act of body mutilation that is felt to be a profound key to the world beyond the physical one we live in, touch and feel everyday.

There are those who believe that circumcision is a left-over from the early matriarchal culture that preceded the rise of Jewish patriarchy some several thousand years ago. There are many cultural hypotheses to buttress this claim, but they all come down -as I see it- to the idea that no society controlled by men would choose to self-inflict damage on their "manhood". I've read other explanations suggesting circumcision was a way of protecting oneself from trophy seeking Greek, Phonenician and Egyptian warriors.

What makes sense to me is that any attempt to out a cultural context around circumcision is likely to start far along in the story. Australian aboriginal cultures that have been recording their history on the same set of rocks for 15,000 years practice circumcision. Is this central ritual a Johnny come lately? Whether you start with the Jewish matriarchy that preceded our era's patriarchy, you are leaving out the patriarchy that receded that Matriarchy, and on back into the darkness before the first record that has reached us.

Human beings have been in nearly our present physical makeup for nearly 2 million years and fully Homo Sapiens for more than 200,000 years. We have surviving written records for only the barest sliver of that, less than 3% of that time. What bubbled up out of that time that is now hidden from view? How many permutations of wisdom and culture did circumcision traverse before the cuneiform tablets that survive to our time appeared on the scene?

It seems likely to me that trying to find cultural context for circumcision is like trying to see your own eye or eat your teeth. You'd as soon find a cultural explanation of a mother's love. Sure you can show how present day culture influences that relationship but mother-child bonds arose alongside culture itself.

I know but cannot prove that circumcision traveled the same dim path, side by side with the development of culture itself. So i say, "God says..."

And that is why after the 8th day -it took god 7 days/epochs to make the universe so the first 7 days of a child's life are about instantiating as a physical being. No transcendant ritual can happen before the child is finished becoming first a physical being- our boy had the skin cap on his JJ snipped off in front of a singing and clapping crowd of friend and family.

To welcome him to the community of people who struggle with god's cll to be good and compassionate. To welcome him to the community of the People Israel whose radical belief is that the universe is not indifferent between good and evil, that we are in charge of our own moral destiny and the fate of the universe is in our hands.

Welcome to the struggle for Tikkun Olam Asher Wolfson Temchine.

Wiring up

When Asher falls asleep, he seems to try on a series of facial expressions absent in waking days. Like smiling, smirking, flirting, pursing his lips.

Burping Asher

This would be the face you see when burping young Asherfras. Surprisingly, getting whacked repeatedly on the back soothes the boy.

Asher Dances!

Our little boy seems to be dancing his little onesie off. Said garment was made by Joel for his own boy and features the cover of the legendary punk compilation Son of Oi! (Syndicate, 1983)




Can you guess why we call this cricket legs?

Trip to the Museum

Our very first multi-stop excursion, Golden Gate Park and the De Young Museum. The theme of the day, judging by the pictures we got anyway, was hands, hands and more hands.

We also took our first real family portrait, but that picture will only be posted in our house, ina frame, and you'll just have to come over to see it's jaw-dropping awesomeness.

Asher Wolfson Temchine

This was the initial announcement and was written way late at night and doesn't exactly make a great deal of sense. But out of respect for that late night effort, I'll leave the original post at the top

Asher:
Hebrew for happiness, blessed and fortunate and the tribe of Asher was known for the richness of for their abundant homeland

Wolfson:
The family name of Ben's grandfather, Norman Wolfson. Pop Pop, who died this spring. Pop Pop had three sisters, and three daughters, inlcluging including Ben's mom, who died two years ago.

Picture Set Two

A Day Early. Not a Day too Soon.

My due date was September 2nd. Due dates, as I understand it now, are somewhat educated guesses, based on potentially inconsistent cycles, that may lead us to know the approximately four week window in which the baby is likely to join the world. Yes, not exactly a precise measurement. Babies choose to be born when they need to be, when it is their time. As pregnant Mama, I never held onto the due date as anything more than a pretty good estimate. I just wanted our baby to know s/he was welcome here.

In the end, now our most profound new beginning, all of these potentially faulty, pseudo-scientific, fully leading indicators would prove to be mostly right. I was “early,” – by one day.

Our beautiful 7 pound 13 ounce baby boy screamed his way into the world on Labor Day, September 1st at 4:38 pm.

So, why all the focus on the day anyway, when this story is about my birth and our baby boy? Well, I didn’t start labor on Labor Day. I started on Saturday night, around 11:30 pm. After some 44 hours in labor our son chose Labor Day, just as Ben and I chose one another three years before when we met at a dinner party that very evening. Of course, we believe this to be an early sign of his genius. This belief binds us to a chain, back through the generations, of parents sure that their child is the most brilliant, exceptional and thoughtful child ever born. Seeing fit to have me in labor for 44 hours and to wrap it all up on Labor Day, a holiday, also demonstrates a promising sense of humor.

My birth experience doesn’t live, though, in any of the dates or details or post-birth interpretations. It lingers the hazier spaces between words where I could unleash a deep growl and find a quiet that had its own sound. The two days of labor was the space granted for the two of us to invite the baby to arrive and with that, to move from pregnant to parent, from couple to family. By choosing to labor and birth at home, no one outside of us would name the stage of labor or urge an intervention to move it along when I despaired that surges would never cease. And, I did despair. And, Ben found the words and the touch to bring me back to present, to nothing wrong, to everything on course, just as it was meant to be.

We were nimble, with few, but powerful tools - each other; a big full tub in the center of the baby’s room; our presence and all the inner work we had done to get to this day; phone consultations and then the presence of our gifted midwife Maria Iorillo; my Mother’s supportive mien; and a whole lot of time. We used every one. We found a slow groove doing what Ben dubbed the middle school dance, swaying slowly together through the minute-long contractions that would come quick, then slow, then quick again. When my hope turned to deep doubt, I asked again and again when Maria (our midwife) would come, bringing with her the light at the end of this long tunnel. I was still looking for some outside indicator that birth was happening. And then I wasn’t, realizing that naming doesn’t always help, that saying I moved from this phase to that, knowing how open my cervix was, or even counting contractions, are at best reflections of the thing that is birth, not the birth itself. The exquisite pain and power of birth created more than the space for him to arrive. It created the space for us to arrive.

And, now, six days later, I sit on the very day bed turned sofa where our baby was born, as he and Ben sleep peacefully in the next room. I finished nursing only a few minutes ago and felt him drape his limp arms over my shoulder as I burped him and carried him back to bed. I watched his flickering eyes close and saw his face still. My heart melts once more.

Pictures from Uncle Mike

First Sightings of Asherfras

The First Rumblings

20 minutes apart.
They last 1 minute or so.

so, not too soon. But not someday either.

The First Rumblings

20 minutes apart.
They last 1 minute or so.

so, not too soon. But not someday either.

Ye Babu is Still Not Borned

He rumbles on uterinely.