Colors of the palate...

The beard bespeaks the wisdom of age... and the pediatrician has officially confirmed it: Shalvah is six months old! And 27 inches tall, 18 pounds and change, displaying sophisticated fine motor coordination and an expanding repertoire of sounds. She alternates between growling like a wild dog, singing like a canary, and saying "mamamamama," "bababababa" and "blablablablabla," all the while showing off her first pair of pearly choppers:

She sinks those pearly whites with abandon into a diversifying menu that now features carrots, squash, applesauce, peas...

popular media...

groundbreaking documentary films...

and innocent children...



And like anybody else, she likes to kick back and wash it all down with a cold one...

(speaking of innocent children, isn't that guy a teacher? Does the school board know about his underage drinking buddy?)
Facing this sudden array of culinary choices can be overwhelming, so Shalvah does occassionally turn to the self-help section for guidance:

but any such dilemmas don't seem to weigh heavily on this omnivore. We've got ourselves a six-month-old who's living life to the fullest!

Pronunciation Guide

"SH" as in quiet please!
+
"AL" as in all, y'all, enthrall...
(not as in gal, pal, shall)
+
"VAH" as in va-va-voom,
or alternatively as in "pAHk the cAH in hAHvud yAHd"

and if you can manage, accent on the second syllable--shalVAH
(she's sweet as halVah)

New Year's Wishes

To all Shalvah fans who have been celebrating Rosh Hashanah, best wishes for a sweet and happy new year from our new family! (We also wish meaningful fasts--and especially meaningful break-fasts--to everybody who will be observing Ramadan and/or Yom Kippur in the coming days, and beautiful autumn weather universally to everyone...) We tried to get Shalvah involved even before the holiday started, New England-style:

We haven't seen a tooth yet, but that hasn't stopped her from chomping down on everything she can get her hands on (which includes more and more things every day), and the holiday apples were no exception:

...nor were her grandma's fingers.

(don't worry, those concerned with infant safety regulations--no infants were fed honey in the making of this holiday)
Apples aside, Shalvah showed she has her grandfather's genes by sleeping peacefully through much of the synagogue service, and she rang in the New Year with amazing new tricks, such as sitting up straight as if she'd been doing it since the day she was born, blowing rasperries, and even doing both simultaneously:

In fact, she sat up straight to consult in the preparation of this blog entry.

So as for her parents, we have one fervent New Year's wish, and we hope she shares this aspiration with us. It actually works as a pun in Hebrew: with a slight change in vowel intonation, the New Year's greeting--Shanah Tovah--becomes "Sheynah Tovah," or in English, "Good sleep." Insh'allah...

poems for daughters

A few days after Shalvah was born, our friend Leora asked if we had named her after a book of poetry by (one of our favorite poets) Yehuda Amichai. We didn't know which book she meant. She told us it's called "Shalvah Gedolah: She'elot v'Teshuvot," which translates as "Great Calm: Questions and Answers," or for us, just "Great Shalvah." When we opened the book, we found poems Amichai wrote for the birth of his daughter, and we read them to celebrate the birth of ours (see the "Rites of Spring" post below):

On the day my daughter was born not a single person died...
The longest day of the year.
Overjoyed,
I drove with my friend to the hills of Sha'ar Ha-Gai.

We saw a pine tree sick and bare, covered with countless pine cones. Tzvi said that trees about to die grow more cones than the living ones. And I told him: that was a poem and you didn't know it. Even though you are a man of the exact sciences, you made a poem. And he replied: and even though you are a dreamer, you made an exact little girl, with all the exact instruments for her life.



In the mountains of Jerusalem

Here where a ruin wants to be
A new house again, its wish joins ours.
Even the thorns are weary of stinging, want to console.
A tombstone, torn from a desecrated grave,
Was set in the new wall with its name and dates,
Happy not to be forgotten.
And the children (only they could change it all)
Play between the rocks and the ruins.
They don't want to change a thing.



(we were living between the mountains of Jerusalem and the hills of Sha'ar Ha-Gai when Shalvah's nine-month countdown began)

Rites of Spring

So on Shalvah's New Hampshire campaign tour, her Northern kinfolks welcomed her with a "Simchat Bat," or "Daughter Celebration" ceremony. If you haven't heard of this, no worries; it's a recent addition to Jewish tradition. The scriptures are explicit, so to speak, regarding the initiation rites that accompany the birth of a son, but provide no such detailed instructions for initiating a daughter into the community. Maybe it's better this way; not only were we relieved from performing any anatomical/surgical commandments, we got to invent our own traditions for celebrating a baby, who is, after all, one of a kind. We did start out like proper monotheists, with a melodious incantation of Shalvah's name by Great Uncle Dan, followed by blessings from the tribal elders...

But when her grandma broke out the Navajo chants, things got out of hand and we ended up dancing in the forest like a bunch of pagans...

I did hear that it's Jewish tradition to plant a tree when a child is born; for Shalvah, we found a sapling growing by the water of the Great Bay at the edge of her grandparents' land...

...And her grandfather carved her initial in the tree...

...so Shalvah can sit by her tree, and watch the tides go in and out, and watch her tree grow and change with her every year.

Primary Season Tour: Kissing Babies from DC to New Hampshire

At the tender age of five weeks, Shalvah's as-yet-undeclared candidacy is creating a sensation across generations of family and friends, up and down the Northeast corridor. In addition to greeting adoring crowds at her DC headquarters, Shalvah has hit the road and taken to the skies, canvassing door-to-door from DC to New Hampshire. She is a unprecedented crossover hit whose approval ratings are steady across every demographic, from great-grandmas...


to great aunts and uncles...



...great cousins...




She's been seen talking up the issues with parents' friends who will hereafter perform the important role of being the people who "knew you when you were this small"...


...and their children, for whom Shalvah's parents will be performing the same important service (she's already working the next generation of voters)...



Combining popular appeal with political savvy, Shalvah has already secured the support of notorious Beltway insiders...



...and key New Hampshire power brokers...

...hugging trees with the environmental lobby...

...while establishing her foreign policy credentials by meeting leading trade partners from Latin America...

...courting both sides of the Middle East divide...


...and emphasizing "values" with important faith constituencies...



This touring schedule is enough to make a newborn almost as sleepy as her parents, which may be why sleeping on people is Shalvah's second favorite activity (guess what the first is). See next update for details...