pages tagged finiasYareev's schmonz.comhttps://schmonz.com/tag/finias/Yareev's schmonz.comikiwiki2021-07-15T01:40:02ZWhat I'm Doing Nowhttps://schmonz.com/2020/09/17/now/Amitai Schleier2020-09-17T12:57:41Z2020-09-17T12:04:01Z
<p>Taavi got to experience four whole days of Montessori preschool before we decided to make a break for Germany.
This is his third week of preschool — or “kindergarten”, as the Germans call it, oblivious to its established English meaning.</p>
<p>That’s a joke, I hasten to clarify, because I’m not sure how well my humor is calibrated at the moment.
Having
<a href="https://schmonz.com/2020/09/15/back-to-work-remote-style/">returned to work this week</a>
is already helping me recalibrate (humor and otherwise) to a wider variety of grownups.</p>
<hr />
<h3>What’s this?</h3>
<p>It’s a
<a href="http://sivers.org/nowff"><code>/now</code> page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://nownownow.com">nownownow.com</a>
is a directory of people with <code>/now</code> pages.
<a href="http://nownownow.com/p/JtD5">I’m listed there</a>.</p>
What I'm Doing Nowhttps://schmonz.com/2020/07/18/now/Amitai Schleier2020-07-18T10:15:40Z2020-07-18T09:46:18Z
<p>Yesterday we day-tripped to Berlin and back (nearly 700km) for Finias’s followup.
Since everything looked good, the next followup will be September, and we got home in time to hear stories of the fun Taavi had with his uncles and grandparents before we administered his bedtime routine.
One story: when Bobi showed him a rock-hewn heart, he asked “Does a heart really look like that?”
No.
But kind of.
And when she explained that it signified her love for her children, he said “I will put it here [on my heart] so I have it when I need it.”
Did our hearts really melt?
No.
But kind of.</p>
<p>Back in New York, before we decided to escape to Germany, Taavi had finished nearly a week of Montessori preschool.
We’d all been really excited about it.
After several months with just us, he could really use being around other kids, iff there’s a safe enough way to do it.
In the States, I suspect sending him back to preschool would feel like an uncalculated risk; considering how precisely the pandemic is being managed here, sending him to “kindergarten” feels like a <em>calculated</em> one.
We’re tentatively planning to have him start next month.</p>
<p>Assuming that works out, I can return to my consulting work in mid-August or so.
Remote collaboration was very finicky here before Finias arrived, and it’ll be some months before our remodeling nets me a home office, but maybe the timing will work out for the internet connection in our little village to have been upgraded to fiber by the time I’m trying to video-chat and screen-share again.</p>
<p>Our remodeling in New York is still underway, too.
Someday, when conditions in the world have changed, we’ll be very happy to come back to it.</p>
<hr />
<h3>What’s this?</h3>
<p>It’s a
<a href="http://sivers.org/nowff"><code>/now</code> page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://nownownow.com">nownownow.com</a>
is a directory of people with <code>/now</code> pages.
<a href="http://nownownow.com/p/JtD5">I’m listed there</a>.</p>
What I'm Doing Nowhttps://schmonz.com/2020/06/28/now/Amitai Schleier2020-06-28T12:31:37Z2020-06-28T12:25:23Z
<p>It’s been Taavi and me (and some uncle Julian) since Tuesday.
In a few hours we’ll all be together again.
A certain big brother is very excited.
For me, I expect I’ll feel something more like relief.</p>
<hr />
<h3>What’s this?</h3>
<p>It’s a
<a href="http://sivers.org/nowff"><code>/now</code> page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://nownownow.com">nownownow.com</a>
is a directory of people with <code>/now</code> pages.
<a href="http://nownownow.com/p/JtD5">I’m listed there</a>.</p>
What I'm Doing Nowhttps://schmonz.com/2020/05/13/now/Amitai Schleier2020-06-28T12:31:37Z2020-05-13T13:09:28Z
<p>On Sunday we got in the car for only the second time since arriving in Germany in late March.
The first time had been to the local hospital for the
<a href="https://schmonz.com/2020/05/06/finias-tira-schleier/">birth of our son Finias</a>;
this time, to the regional hospital to scan his brain.
Only one parent could enter the building, for virus-precautionary reasons.
So Taavi has been home several days without his mother or brother.
I’ve been trying to savor the time alone with the big guy.
Things always change when a new baby arrives.
It sure would be a relief to know how much, though, and for how long.
Maybe it can be some relief that a great many parents have wondered this.</p>
<p>Taavi’s very into learning German and Hebrew (”Hebrew first and <em>then</em> German”, he emphasizes) with Duolingo on my phone.
He hadn’t been able to work the old iPhone SE with one hand, so he doesn’t seem to mind how much bigger the new one is.
He’s even more into numbers, so he definitely doesn’t mind how it has space for my music library, starting with
<a href="https://amzn.to/2WrzsMq">They Might Be Giants “Here Come The 123s”</a>.
We’ve been listening to it outside, at mealtimes, just because, and in between.
Last two naps, on his way down, I’ve easily overheard him singing
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v89wLpXmeMk">Nine Bowls of Soup</a>.
The new phone arrived just in time to set it up with two SIM cards — my usual American number, plus a German one — which was handy when I had to wait in the parking lot (virus-precautionary reasons, again) to be called in when it was time for labor.
And it arrived just in time to take more and better pictures of Finias and Taavi.
When the big guy wakes up from his nap, we’ll get in the car again.</p>
<hr />
<h3>What’s this?</h3>
<p>It’s a
<a href="http://sivers.org/nowff"><code>/now</code> page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://nownownow.com">nownownow.com</a>
is a directory of people with <code>/now</code> pages.
<a href="http://nownownow.com/p/JtD5">I’m listed there</a>.</p>
Finias Tira Schleierhttps://schmonz.com/2020/05/06/finias-tira-schleier/Amitai Schleier2021-07-15T01:40:02Z2020-05-06T14:05:43Z
<p>Our second child arrived a week ago, on April 27, at 3540 grams (7 pounds, 13 ounces).
Wanting to minimize our stay in any sort of public place, we chose to return home with our same-day delivery.
Perfectly packaged, here’s Finias Tira Schleier:</p>
<p><img src="https://schmonz.com/2020/05/06/finias-tira-schleier/IMG_2938.JPG" width="300" height="400" alt="Finias Tira Schleier with big eyes" title="Finias Tira Schleier with big eyes" class="img" /></p>
<p>It’s disconcerting not to know when everyone will get to hold and smell Finias.
His brother’s eagerness to do the job — always with a gentle kiss — has been a source of comfort to us all.</p>
<p><img src="https://schmonz.com/2020/05/06/finias-tira-schleier/IMG_6853.JPG" width="400" height="578" alt="Taavi holding Finias" title="Taavi holding Finias" class="img" /></p>
<p>About the name:</p>
<h2>Finias</h2>
<p>From Hebrew Pinchas, “bronze-skinned one”.</p>
<ul>
<li>We chose an “F” name to honor Amitai’s great-aunt Fannie, a loving and beloved influence on his mother Dianne, and to carry on a bit of Rebekka’s family tradition of naming a son “Ferdinand” (as well as her father Ferdinand’s wish not to take the tradition too literally)</li>
<li>It also honors Rebekka’s maternal grandfather Pinchas (Paul) Arnovitz</li>
<li>It also honors Paul, our sweet orange cat who taught Finias’s older brother — with care, dignity, and one well-earned swipe — to be loving and gentle with those smaller than him</li>
<li>We like the derivation from Hebrew, in which P and F are neighboring sounds, so that the name can also suggest Pesach, the season of his birth and an allegory for this plague we hope will pass us all over</li>
<li>We like how Germans and Israelis and Americans will be able to pronounce it</li>
<li>Incidentally, his complexion does look more like Mama’s than Dada’s</li>
<li>Finally, it calls to mind a famous case in the medical literature (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas%5FGage">Phineas Gage</a>) that advanced our understanding of brains as integrated parts of whole bodies and behaviors, and this understanding has been particularly important to us and Finias throughout his gestation and early life</li>
</ul>
<h2>Tira</h2>
<p>Hebrew, “castle” or “fortress”.</p>
<ul>
<li>Many villages in the Middle East have a name derived from this, and for a safe birth during this pandemic we sought refuge in the castle-like safety of Rebekka’s home village</li>
<li>We like its phonetic resemblance to “terra”, the Earth under our feet (more on this in a moment)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Finias Tira Schleier</h2>
<p>We chose the name “Finias Tira” as it evokes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finisterre">Finisterre</a> (”Land’s End”), the name of several outlying locations beyond which once stood the unknown.
In this pandemic we’ve all been conscripted for a long and arduous journey toward new advances that we hope will reshape how we live.
With a month to go before Finias’s arrival, seeking relative safety and calm, we dropped everything to travel to a place in the middle of nowhere — a place that feels a bit like Land’s End — precisely because of what we <em>did</em> know about it.
His name tells the story.
We wish for him safety, calm, and the courage and curiosity to discover the unknown.</p>
<h2>About the date</h2>
<ul>
<li>4/27 = 2<sup>2</sup>/3<sup>3</sup></li>
<li>4*27 is a multiple of his brother’s 6*6 (and the multiple is 3, and in a month Taavi will be three)</li>
</ul>
<h3>More nice properties observed after the fact</h3>
<p>Taavi and I discovered, while reading
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle%20%28book%29">David Macaulay’s Castle</a>,
that castles have
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finial">finials</a>.
Their purpose is no more and no less than “to emphasize the apex of a dome”.</p>
<p>If you think of another reason this is a nice name, please pass it along.</p>
<h2>More photos</h2>
<p><a href="http://photos.theschleiers.com/finias/">photos.theschleiers.com/finias</a></p>