I just looked at my last entry... and the date of my last entry. You know that saying "a new baby every week?" There's at least some truth to that.

First off, Adam was baptized on Sunday, November 7th (All Saints Sunday) at University Lutheran Church in La Jolla, CA. I posted a few photos a while back, but I now have an "action shot" I'll put up in the next day or so. We had high hopes of some sort of magical transformation happening as a result of the water pouring. Perhaps it didn't work immediately; Adam had a huge scream fit at our after-baptism lunch. My father and Kristen's mother flew in for the baptism. It was nice to have a few extra hands around the house.

We've been wondering if Adam's "attitude problem" had something to do with his teeth coming in. Our few teething toys didn't seem to really do much good, so we sort of dismissed that idea. But now there is some definite white showing up on the edges of the gums. So far we haven't pinned the teeth to any particular screaming/crying episodes... so here's hoping.

My mom and her fiance' stopped in this past week for a visit on their way to SFO for a optometric conference. Bob flew up early in the week to attend the conference and my mom flew up yesterday to spend the weekend together in SFO (too bad it's supposed to be raining this weekend there). It was again nice to have another set of hands around. I often think when folks like that are here it's more of a break for me than for Kristen, since her biggest duty (feeding) never really goes away. Cleaning bottles, feeding from the bottle on occasion, and making meals, however are things I tend to do a little more, and I got a nice break. Even with the company was able to work full time and still have time to go purchase a car for my brother (and that's a whole other story - but a side note, if you have a Bank of America account, I'd highly recommend looking into other banking options - perhaps USAA - anybody can use them for general banking).

We gave Adam his first bottle of formula this past week; pretty amazing that we made it so long without. It's really quite a bit of a stress relief. Worrying about pumping and having a supply of milk for when Kristen can't breast feed was causing more stress than I realized (for both of us), and even if it wasn't a lot, it was something we really didn't need. Some trial and error helped us realize he wasn't eating enough before he went to sleep for the night for him to sleep for as long as we wanted, and he definitely wasn't eating enough in the middle of the night. So our new plan is to give him formula (it's supposed to keep him full slightly longer right?) right before bed and in the middle of the night if he wakes up... and to give him as much as he wants to eat. By feeding him cool milk from the bottle, he doesn't fall asleep while eating, so he can really get full and thus sleep longer. Using this approach the last two nights, he ate about 8oz after sleeping 5-6 hours. Before he would only eat about 4oz after 4-5 hours. He also has been sleeping an extra 30-60 minutes longer in total, and waking up ready to play instead of ready to eat. And when he does eat for the first time in the morning, he only eats half as much, which gives Kristen an opportunity to pump so we have a supply of breast milk for babysitters to give him during the day. Now we just need Adam to sleep for a 7-8 hours stretch!

I do have to say Adam is much more fun today than 2-3 weeks ago. He's actively grabbing for things and smiles a lot more. We just started putting him in the bouncy seat, which he's barely (questionably) big enough for, but he loves it. He loves interacting with and watching other babies when he goes to his classes at the community center. And he's still "talking" a lot.

There seems to be some expectations in our culture today on new parents, which has been exagerated by our "24-hour news" and fancy internet technologies, but also by the fact that people move around a lot more. I'm talking about things like baby blogs, photos, videos, and the like. If the Internet didn't enable those things to be "so easy", there wouldn't be an expectation for new parents to give up-to-the-minute status on how their baby is (or isn't) progressing. Families with a stay-at-home parent likely have no trouble meeting this "demand" and may even revel in the fact that they can tell "the world" about their most precious baby. Some of us have, however, slightly different takes on these things, and maybe even different ideas about how public to make this information. I, for one, am not a big fan of the "big social" or "big sharing" providers, be it blog sites, photo sites, or facebook. Take a read at what you sign when you create your account with those folks. Perhaps I'm paranoid, and I probably am. There's also the issue of time. We're both working full time, and we have part time child care. This means that much of the time when we aren't working, we're either watching Adam or taking care of other life necessities, like eating or cleaning diaper covers. I'm not saying it's unimportant to us to keep friends and family updated or to post photos, but it's certainly not the most important thing. I, for one, really like going through and posting photos, because those will be the photos that we'll remember of the time when Adam was a small little dude, and these entries are how we'll remember when he started to roll over or to teeth. But it's not going to be instant updates, largely because of reasons I listed above, and some because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I've retouched nearly every photo I've posted. If only there were a few extra hours each day! Oh, and I mentioned people moving around more. If we lived close to our friends and family, then they would just stop by and see Adam whenever they wanted to know how he was doing. As an aside, if anyone who is close ever wants to just stop by and play with Adam for a few hours, just let us know; I'm sure we can make that happen! :)

With the rainy weekend I'll hopefully post some new photos soon (and maybe a video - but no promises there!). I'll post another entry when they're up.