One week old

Today, you smiled in your sleep.

Yesterday, you went in your stroller for the first time to the pediatrician, where we learned you are perfect. Which, of course, we already knew. On our walk home we got tired and stopped at a wine bar and you napped in your stroller bassinet while we had glasses of wine by an open window on 34th street. When you fussed I fed you under a light wrap patterned in bright blue anchors. A motorcycle went by and backfired and you startled under your wrap but weren't fazed.

Yesterday you met your first friend - Amanda, whose son's pajamas you are presently sleeping in, in the arms of your Oma. You slept in her arms. Amanda and I went to high school together, and she updated me on the Astros attempts to return to the World Series, and she brought you a Baby Bjorn bouncer, and happily told me that you will be the fifth baby to use it. When you are done with it we will give it to Kett for her son, tentatively to be named Peter, who is due in 15 weeks, and who you will undoubtedly come to know very well.

Yesterday you also learned how to suck your thumb.

Your Oma and I are spending a lot of quiet time in the den, trading off holding you and watching "Turn" on Netflix, a show about spies during the American revolution. As I watch I keep wishing whoever designed that show's interiors would come and redecorate our house in Marblehead. You don't know about our house in Marblehead, and won't for several months. But I hope you will love it as much as we do. I like thinking about the fact that I can leave you that house now. I bought it after my first book sold, when the housing market collapsed and it was owned by a bank, empty, unloved, with frozen pipes. It intimidated me, owning a house. It was too much space, and though it has morphed and changed over the years, it was first built in 1750, with the oak bones and pine plank floors to show for it. I love it because I know we are only its custodians for now, as a 300 year old house feels all the souls that travel through it, but continues being itself as we pass by. I am excited to bring your soul into our house, for it to feel your presence as you grow and change and breathe within it.

Your Oma gave me a push present yesterday - a cocktail ring from her mother, in a flower shape studded with diamonds. It's not my style, but it makes me happy, and makes me feel loved, and so I am wearing it. It snags your muslin wrap while I change your diaper. You pretty much only scream like you mean it when your diaper is being changed. I wonder if it's the cold air on your tender skin, or being on your back on the changing pad, or having your little baby feet free and naked in the air that does it. I love your feet. I love cupping them in my hand while you nurse, or running my fingertip down the soles of them. They are as soft as every other part of you, just as delicate and new. But I know those feet so well. They were a conduit to your moods, sometimes pressing, sometimes kicking, sometimes asleep. I like checking in with them now.

And that where things stand on this day, one week after your birth.