Abe is one week old today! And, in another milestone, we all survived Dave’s first day back at work. At work, Dave received cake and gifts. At home, there was fussing and lots of milk. Really, it was all fine. Mostly it just seemed to go very fast and I couldn’t get anything done. Which is pretty much how I remember life with infants. Good to know things haven’t changed much in the seven years I’ve been out of the game.

Fun facts about Abe and his first week on the outside:

1. My tiny baby has a huge name. I don’t think there are many names we did not consider at one point or another in our FOUR forays into naming boys. So I really can’t remember anymore when we first considered Abraham. At first I was thinking of Bram as a nickname instead of Abe, but the more I sat with it, the more I preferred Abe. Also, the Abe Lincoln thing was a big plus in my book with Abraham, so I didn’t want to get too far away from that. I was sort of in a state of despair toward the end of my pregnancy, convinced that all baby names were pretty much awful. When I heard what other people had named their babies, I would shake my head and think, “they tried, poor things, but there just aren’t any good baby names” Which is sort of odd, because usually I LOVE naming babies. It’s one of my favorite parts. But, anyway, now that it’s done, I think it’s awesome and that we could not possibly have picked a better name. So that’s a good thing.

Barry was my grandmother’s maiden name. Also, the middle name had to have five letters. Maybe I should explain. We realized at some point that the first three kids’ names, through no planning on our parts, fall into a neat pattern. Ari Daniel has 9 letters, Milo Joseph has 10, and August David has 11 (yes, we use the normal names as middle names and stick the wacky ones right out in front). So, since I am married to a mathlete, we had to keep this going and have 12 letters for this baby. So there you go. Story of a baby name.

2. Things Abe likes: snuggling, being warm, being sung to, his swing, brothers, nursing for hours at a time, sleeping

3. Things Abe doesn’t like: being cold (especially his feet), diaper changes…hmm, that’s about all I can think of. He’s mostly pretty easy to please so far.

Okay, so you have to do a big “photo project” for your baby these days, right? It is the thing to do? Really, it seems like a pretty good idea, too, particularly for people like me who are already feeling weepy that their last baby is a whole WEEK OLD already. Well. The kids and I excitedly set up a big one week photo shoot for Abe today. And the results are…umm, a little goofy. I took pictures with our big stuffed seal from Ikea, you know…so you can see how much bigger he’s getting in relation to the seal every week (well, I’m not going to do every week for long; I’m thinking for the first month or two and then I’ll switch to monthly). I was afraid this might look silly, so I also took some pictures of just him hanging out and some of him in front of the big antique trunk I have in my room, thinking it would make a nice backdrop. Only none of those turned out very well, so I guess we’re going with the seal. (Incidentally, it did not escape my notice even back when we were hanging up the room divider what a nice photo backdrop it would make). Anyway, here are the best ones I could come up with:

I think this one is my favorite. You can’t really tell it’s a seal from this angle. But maybe that’s just as well, since Abe is really supposed to be more the main attraction. Really shows off his scrawny legs.

This one is either really silly or a little bit terrifying; I can’t decide which.

I took this one last night, so it doesn’t qualify. I just like to sneak in extra pictures:

Back tomorrow with a post about a HOUSE thing! (a small house thing)