Week Two (October 3)

After a full house for the week of the bris, only my mom was around during Week Two. She was fantastic -- cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping for us while we took care of LL (though we did make sure that she got to spend some quality time with the little one every day, as a reward for her hard work!).

This week was also when we experimented with on-demand feeding. During Week One, we had been told not to let LL go longer than 3 hours without eating, which meant that we kept having to wake him up from a deep sleep in order to force him to eat. We were still figuring out the whole breast feeding thing, and it was hard enough with an awake baby, much less an extremely sleepy one. When we saw the pediatrician, Dr. K., we begged her for permission to let him eat just when he showed us he was hungry. She agreed to let us try it for three days, then come back and weigh him. If he was still gaining weight at a good clip even with fewer feedings, we could make the switch permanently. That night, he slept for 5 hours straight (woo hoo!) and after three days he'd gained plenty, so he's been making his own schedule ever since. (Though it would be several more weeks before he slept like that again!)

This week was also Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Me, S, LL, and my mom skipped the long morning service, wanting to avoid the big crowds, and instead attended the afternoon children's service. The rabbi did a special blessing for all of the babies born during the past year, so S and I got to bring LL up to the bimah, where we were singled out for having the youngest baby in the congregation. (When you're only 10 days old, the odds are in your favor that you're the youngest in the crowd.) There were about 25 babies on the bimah, and the rabbi had everyone look around at each other as she remarked that these would be the children who would share Hebrew classes, Bar/Bat Mitzvah classes, and all of childhood's milestones together. ("You're 10 days old. Meet your high school graduation class.") It gave me the chills.

One more milestone for this week: LL was read to for the first time. Grandma read Brown Bear to him, among many many others, all of which he dutifully ignored, but Grandma persisted anyway. Did I mention that Grandma is a children's librarian? Did I mention that, 3 months later, I'm still reading books to LL, and he's still totally ignoring them?