Welcome to the World, Jonah Baer

On Sunday, January 14, we gathered with family and friends to hold a baby naming ceremony and celebrate the Jewish tradition of Pidyon HaBen. Rabbi Jan Goldstein, a longtime friend of the Binder family, helped us put together a beautiful ceremony and presided over the occassion. Ruth Ann's mother Farla and Matt's father Doug spoke about the respective families into which Jonah has been born. Our friend Lauren sang a lullabye. Our goddaughter Louisa brought a picture of an elf (and her brother Benno drew Jonah a dragon for strong magic protection). Friends offered blessing and good wishes. Jonah Baer Rossiter, Tzvi Dov in Hebrew, was welcomed to this world.

Times like this also bring a carry an element of sadness for the passing of Ruth Ann's father Hershey. Even though he wasn't with us physically, Hershey's gentle and loving presence was there throughout. We began the ceremony under his tallit, held over us as a huppah (a wedding canopy) by our family. And as the ceremony ended, Jan heard Hershey's voice telling him to take the Torah out of the ark and bring it to Jonah. Jan brought the Torah to where the three of us sat, and Jonah reached out his hand. We cried. Tears of joy for our child, blessed with wonderful family and friends. Tears of sadness for the grandfather Jonah will never meet in person. Tears of joy for the knowledge that Hershey will be there throughout Jonah's life, in spirit, in memory and in the Jewish traditions that Hershey loved so well.

Ten Pounds of Trouble

Some days look like this, except we're not smiling as much...
We still love our little one, of course. And he's certainly very cute. He tracks things with his eyes quite well now, and occassionally blesses us with something resembling a smile. But he's also become a lot more fussy the last couple days, or so it seems. Perhaps it's the age: we're told that at around 5 weeks infants go through a big (and disorienting) developmental leap than can lead to fussiness (...then again, can't everything?). Perhaps it's just the accumulated effect of the last five weeks, which Ruth Ann sometimes describes as "one long day".

Matt's opinion: When Jonah was born, our pediatrician's office gave us a booklet (sort of like an owner's manual, although not quite so useful) that contains, among other things, a graph of the "parent satisfaction curve", a U-shaped curve that bottoms out sometime around six weeks. (Still not picturing it? Ok, try this technical explanation: time is on the x-axis and satisfaction is on the y-axis and there's a parabola with it's nadir sometime around the six week mark on the x-axis.). Sometime during the two hour crying fit that interupted our dinner last night, I hoped we'd hit the bottom. All that gloomy stuff said, the good news about hitting the bottom is from there on it, we're on the upslope!

More Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from the first month of Jonah's life.

Month One

8 Pounds, 8 Ounces, and Thriving

Well, we weighed Jonah a few days ago and he was 7 lbs., 14 oz. We weighted him again today, figuring maybe we'd be at that magic number of 8 lbs. (magic to us anyway, 'cause it's a nice round number and seems like a healthy weight); and lo and behold he's zipped right past that marker and is already up to 8 lbs., 8 oz.!

And yes, as you've observed, we're a little obsessed with Jonah's weight. We had good reason at the start: Jonah's relatively low birth weight (5 lbs., 9 oz.) seemed to cause a modest amount of anxiety among our various medical care-givers, and so like any good new parents we picked up on that anxiety and started worrying ourselves. Hence the scale at our house and the regular weigh-ins that Jonah has to suffer through. At this point, however, we have to admit that there's no longer much cause for anxiety. New babies are "supposed to" gain 1/2 lb. a week, so Jonah is well ahead of schedule and at 8.5 lbs. is up to what seems like a comfortable, healthy weight. We probably won't be able to resist plunking him on the scale a couple more times (sorry kid), but hopefully those weighings will be less about our anxiety and more about enjoying the fact that our son is thriving.

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Baby Calming 101

We're getting good at figuring out how to quiet the kid, although we admit some of our methods look pretty ridiculous.

Jonah's First Bath

And some video from Jonah's first bath. We've tried to edit the video down to a somewhat tolerable length. There is really cute footage from after the bath that is included in the full (longer) video and also posted as a separate shorter video file.

Jonah's First Bath!

Photos from First Days

Here are a few photos from the first couple days after we came home from the hospital.

First Days

More From the First Days

Baby Jonah Arrives

Jonah was born at 11:59am on December 14, 2006. Here are a few photos from the birth and right after.

Baby Jonah Arrives!