Post #31: Cooper's First Christmas and Chanukah
- Nana Beryl Jupiter
- Oct 30, 2020
- 11 min read
Updated: Oct 31, 2020
So you may have noticed that it’s been a while since my last blog post, which was more than two months ago, and actually the longest I have gone between posts. I think it’s the pandemic. I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around a good idea, given we are so estranged physically from our nearest and dearest, with little expectation as to when this separation will end. Admittedly depressing. But now I’m on to something.
I don’t want to be continually downbeat, so who doesn’t love the holidays for a boost? It may only be late October, but I bet lots of you are already anticipating your December celebrations, despite their likely being unfavorably altered in this highly unusual year. So I’m going back in time to Cooper’s first Christmas and Chanukah, and loading up with lots of happy photos.
Hardly a week after Cooper was born in mid-August, 2016, in Brisbane, Australia, where I spent four weeks with Stacy and Jason during the neo-natal period (about which you can read in prior blog posts 18, 19, 21 & 22), I already began working on arrangements for our next visit to our baby grandson for the year-end holidays. Booking our flights for the trip to Fiji where they live, I planned to go for about 2 weeks and Jesse would come after me, staying for about one week.
Having carted several extra duffels bags of baby goods and shower gifts to Brisbane (see blog post # 17), I certainly recognized there would be more baby necessities to portage for this next trip, and of course, holiday gifts. Within three weeks of my arrival home from Brisbane, I received this email from Stacy:
“Hi Mom,
FYI - Jason and I started using the Amazon gift cards that people bought us to send some things to your house for you and dad to bring across to Fiji in December. Here is a list of what we've ordered so far:
- Black & Decker Tool Combo kit with case (this is probably the heaviest thing - it weighs 13.8 lbs, but comes in a pelican case that dad could carry and check)
- Black & Decker matrix trim saw attachment (goes with the above, but was an additional attachment - it will fit in the bag that Jason ordered - see below)
- Black & Decker carry bag
- 3 pairs Haviana flip flops (1 mens, 2 womens)
- 2 Petzl headlamps
- Kinzi bathroom scale
- HoLife portable vacuum (weighs 4.8 lbs)
- 4 packs Bumkins diaper liners
- Bamboo absorbent inserts for cloth nappies
- The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
- Dr. Seuss beginner book set
- Reading Magic book by MEM Fox
- Motherlove nipple cream (x2)
(As you can see, we are focusing on practical items - plus some books for Cooper)
Love, Stacy”
Since the Amazon gift cards were given as baby shower gifts, I was somewhat disconcerted to see that the majority of their purchases were non-baby items, especially a large tool set and household items. But I got over it. I rationalized that gift cards had been given by friends and family who might have given them wedding gifts cards had there been a wedding. And all of Stacy’s baby registry had essentially been fulfilled through the virtual shower. There would definitely be more logistics for carting all these items to Fiji, but I had a couple months to work all that out.
By the end of September, I started focusing on how we would spend our holiday time with Stacy and family. Here’s how it developed. I would leave on December 18 for the long haul to Fiji, arriving (after losing a calendar day by crossing the international date line) on December 20, and stay at their house in Suva initially. Not to miss too many workdays, Jesse would depart on December 24, with arrival on the 26th (losing Christmas day entirely, but being Jewish, that was not a big deal for him). We all agreed to go to a resort for several days on Jesse’s arrival. I researched and chose the Outrigger Fiji Beach Resort on the Coral Coast for its family friendly appeal and relatively convenient location, a couple hours from Suva. We would spend the last several days back in Suva, where Jesse and I would stay near their home at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where we had stayed the prior April when we visited Stacy and Jason for the first time together in Suva. (Best not to overburden their house, and we would be glad to have a spacious air-conditioned room with our own bathroom and hotel amenities of breakfast and swimming pool).
After spending New Year’s Eve and the beginning of 2017 with our family, Jesse and I would depart for home together on January 4. I was very excited about my two-week return trip to Fiji to proceed on my Nana journey.
So in the interim, I began finding gifts for Cooper and his parents at home and while traveling. Locally, I found that my favorite places to buy clothes for Cooper for cute selection and economical prices continued to be Baby Gap and Target. So I periodically checked out the inventory for 6-months boys for the Fiji climate. I also found toys and books in Target. Meanwhile Stacy had been singing a silly song to Cooper about a duck and grapes and had shown me the video. So when I noticed a Jellycat brand soft stuffed duck in a gift shop that looked like the duck in the video, I naturally bought that.
When I accompanied Jesse in October to Argentina for his meetings, I was on a mission to buy a black leather handbag for Stacy, as Argentina is known for its leather goods. On a prior trip to Buenos Aires, I had bought her a brown leather handbag at an Argentinian fashion store called Prune. Having liked the brown handbag and used it often, Stacy had requested a black handbag similar to the brown one. And I thought that would certainly make a special holiday gift for Stacy. Although I searched several Prune locations, they were no longer carrying the handbag model I had purchased previously or anything like it in black leather. So I kept looking for a black handbag with similar characteristics in other bodegas (shops) of leather goods until I finally found and bought one in the mountain town of Bariloche in the northern Patagonia. Yay, checked that off my list!
In November I went to the annual Wellesley holiday crafts fair where I bought a cute fish-themed growth chart to tack on the wall to chronicle Cooper’s height (once he was standing) and an artistic sea-theme necklace for Stacy. (Admittedly, neither of these gifts were hits. The chart never got hung despite my occasionally reminding Stacy to use it, and I eventually took back the necklace which Stacy never wore).
Accompanying Jesse to Switzerland in early December for another meeting gave me more holiday “shopportunities.” I bought for Cooper an iconic St. Bernard stuffed puppy dog and a baby T-shirt with Swiss cow motif, and for Jason a multi-implement Swiss Army knife.
Stacy and Jason were both excited about their first holidays together with baby Cooper. As they planned to decorate a small live tree for Christmas, I noticed a meaningfully comic ornament for their tree at a CVS store. When Cooper cried outrageously and flailed about from the time he was born, his parents said he was like a kraken, an octopus-like sea monster. The ornament I purchased was a little octopus from the recently released animated film “Finding Dory.”
If they were going to celebrate Christmas, I thought they ought to give Channukah some attention too. And fortunately for my visit, Chanukah, whose dates vary every year based on the Hebrew calendar, began its first of eight nights in 2016 on Christmas eve. I went to a local Judaica store and chose a small, modern-style menorah and pretty candles for my daughter who had not been particularly interested in celebrating religious holidays of late. Although now as a new mother, Stacy was all ready to celebrate “Chrismakkah.” While at the shop, I was attracted to a colorful framed print of Noah’s Ark, and bought it for Cooper’s room, though realizing it would need some careful packing.
The gifts and packages were certainly mounting up. But I felt that I had developed excellent packing skills from the virtual shower, whose gifts I had managed to systematically encase in excess duffel bags for our carting to Brisbane. When I had asked Stacy if there was anything special she would like me to buy for them, Stacy suggested a “pack ‘n play,” essentially a portable crib and playpen combo. Admittedly, the size of that seemed rather daunting. But we still consulted on the optimal one to buy. And to solve the packing problem, I emptied an old hockey bag of its copious contents that had been gathering dust in our basement for years and machine washed the canvas duffel, managing to insert the pack ‘n play and the bubble-wrapped Noah’s ark print, with still more room for other goods to go.
When I started getting down to the nitty-gritty of sorting and packing up all Stacy’s purchases and our gifts as well, the item that seemed most worrisome was the tool set, both for the 13-pound weight and my discovery that it contained a 20-volt lithium battery. So I sent this email to Stacy:
"I finally opened up all your packages to start figuring out how to transport everything.
What I noticed right away is that the 8-tool combo kit has a 20-volt lithium battery.
Since we are always asked upon baggage check-in these days if we are carrying any lithium batteries, I tried to look up the rules about that.
What I found through the Amer Air website is below (I included the website)
Hopefully the 20-volt lithium battery is considered fine in its original packing material to be in checked luggage, but I did not see this exactly mentioned in the type of batteries listed.
Can you and Jason just review all this to make sure we are in compliance? And please let me know.
Thanks, xoxo mom"
Stacy replied:
"Our internet is not working very well at home and I don't have time to look this up at work. Can dad just put the batteries in question in his hand luggage? They only seem to ask about Lithium batteries in checked luggage.
FYI, Jason is really looking forward to getting the tools and has projects lined up, so I would say just put them in checked luggage anyway if too hard to carry on the battery only and it should be fine."
I wasn’t so sure about leaving this to chance, especially since I wanted Jesse to transport the heavy tool set. I knew he would not appreciate a controversy at the airport. So I wrote to Black & Decker online, and they replied with a detailed product data sheet for transporting lithium batteries, which seemed to indicate we were permitted to transport the type in this tool set on commercial airliners. So I sent the heavy duffel bag containing the tools with Jesse. But I removed the batteries from the set to pack with my belongings, to be transferred from checked to carry-on baggage if required at check-in. Fortunately, we managed to arrive with the tool set and its coordinating batteries without any crisis. (And well worth the heavy portaging as Jason's projects have included Cooper's fire truck bed, described in blog post #25, and refurbishing a motor boat)
I was greatly anticipating my December 18 departure, and could hardly wait to see four-month old grandson Cooper, when I received an email from Stacy on December 14:
"FYI - there is a large tropical depression sitting around Fiji. It's very windy and wet and predicted to stay so through the weekend. We are watching to see if it will develop into a cyclone. Currently the weather reports say clearing by Tuesday [arrival day], but just letting you know so you are prepared if this interrupts your flight."
Flying out of Boston to San Francisco to initiate my long journey, I couldn’t resist buying one more gift for Cooper that I noticed in an airport sundries shop, another very cute duck, this one wearing a sailor’s hat identified as Boston.
Fortunately, my Fiji Airways flight from San Francisco was not disrupted by the weather, but my always-long taxi ride (about three hours in the best of conditions) from the international airport to their home in Suva was delayed for at least another half hour due to flooding on the road from the recent storm. It could have been worse.
Nevertheless, we had a wonderful start to the holiday visit. Even though Stacy’s rental house, once relatively spacious for a single person and a couple cats, was filling up fast with Jason, his dog Ginger, Cooper and baby paraphernalia, I was glad to begin my stay in their house to have the most up-close-and-personal baby Cooper time.
Right away I gave Stacy the box with the ornament to add the octopus/kraken to their small decorated tree. But the box was empty! Apparently, I had picked up a box for the ornament at the CVS display without realizing that the ornament was not in the box. How disappointing! (And what an explanation I had to go through two weeks later at CVS to get a refund.)
Overall it was wonderful to watch my daughter as a mother, reading to her infant son, playing with him in a kiddie pool, and doing all the baby caretaking activities.
We ate delicious gourmet meals at Governors Restaurant where Jason was the head chef, and the Governors’ employees fawned over baby Cooper.
On the evening of December 24, we celebrated the first night of Chanukah. Stacy was happy to light the menorah that I brought to Fiji, and we opened a selection of the gifts.
And the next morning we celebrated Christmas with more gifts for all the family. Stacy gave me a hand-blown glass from a local studio, which I continue to use for my summer gin and tonics, made with Stacy’s recommended Bombay Sapphire.
I was very happy that Jason appreciated the Swiss army knife and Stacy liked the Argentine leather handbag (which is still being used to date and has held up well).
Because Jason would be working Governors for a busy Christmas dinner, Stacy arranged for the two of us and Cooper to go for an afternoon Christmas buffet with her friends at The Pearl Resort, about an hour away in Pacific Harbor where we would overnight as well. (Of note, The Pearl was the future site of their August, 2017 wedding, see blog post # 23.) I enjoyed meeting Stacy’s friends and the buffet was a culinary extravaganza, with choices from every food group including fabulous seafood options and many typically Fijian foods.
Jason was able to join us that night, where they all kept celebrating. But I crashed early from the buffet’s free-flowing champagne in conjunction with residual jetlag.
The next day we moved on to the Outrigger Resort that I had booked for our four-night holiday stay. We caught up with Jesse who arrived there directly from the international airport with more excess baggage. It was a busy resort hotel for the holidays with most meals taken in a large, open-air buffet environment. The Fijian resort staff were particularly drawn to “Mr. Coopah” and often swung by to say hello or swoop him into their arms for a walk around. Cooper reciprocated the attention with big smiles. We certainly enjoyed the expansive pool area and beach, being in the midst of Fiji’s hot southern hemisphere summer.
Within walking distance to Outrigger was Kula Eco Park, where Stacy suggested we visit with baby Cooper. An excursion sounded fine to me although I didn’t know how much a four-month old baby would get out of it. I always enjoy seeing the local flora and fauna anyway, which was displayed in an educational setting. While I loved seeing the colorful birds and turtle habitats, I was not as excited as Stacy about the Fijian iguanas, which Stacy boldly allowed one to rest on Cooper and instructed me to photograph.
“Really ?!?” I exclaimed. So just check out the photo.
Stacy even bought Cooper a toy gecko in the gift shop to remember the occasion.
For the last segment of the holiday visit we returned to Suva for the New Year. Jason had to work on New Year’s Eve, so the rest of us started the evening with a New Year’s toast at the Grand Pacific Hotel.
The we proceeded to a Jason-inspired gourmet dinner at Governors.
And on New Year’s Day, Jason self-catered a wonderful feast at their house. We were exceedingly well feted. And throughout all our celebrations baby Cooper accompanied us, and we loved being constantly with our baby grandson.
For our family, it was a great ending to 2016 and a great beginning to 2017. A Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and a most Happy New Year.
Wishing all the same for everyone as we move toward the end of 2020, certainly a year of much discontent, distress and separation, which will hopefully be replaced with a year of renewal and return to reasonable normality in 2021. Let’s hear it for the vaccine developers!
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