Autumn has come, what else is up?
Felix is now two months old and has grown a lot more mature. He can now occupy himself for 20-30 minutes under good circumstances (i.e., full stomach, no cramps, and neither bored nor exhausted) before demanding entertainment or other services. The past three nights, he only woke for about an hour of nursing between 4 and 5 am and then again between 7 and 8 am, so I got slightly more sleep. Tentatively hoping that we're on our way to a workable rhythm!
His evening nursing marathon (from 7 to 11 pm, he wanted to drink non-stop) is now interrupted by breaks in which he is cheerful and attentive (and demanding input!). And he smiles frequently now or tries to copy other mimics, although reaction is as yet rather delayed. His favourite sensory input appears to be light, though, so when there's a window or a lit lamp in view, none of our faces stand a chance - unless he is hungry (n.b.: light is pretty, but mommy's got the milk...).
Yesterday was the day of his baptism. Like our wedding, the ceremony and consecutive celebration went beautifully. The service was held for our family and the family of another little boy alone, so it was pretty personal -- on our side, anyway: We'd taken the chance to choose some of the songs and the psalm to be read, and one of our godparents read the intercessions. The other family couldn't be bothered to do anything of the sort, so their choices were made by the pastor, who of course took generic "children's service" songs and modelled the (very brief) shared sermon on the songs we had selected. On the whole the two ceremonies were as different as can be and I'm slightly delighted by the contrast and slightly guilty because of course it isn't nice to feel good because the others were so... unimpressive. Can't help it though. I mean, I am not all that involved in church stuff, but doing some preparation (which isn't much of an effort: two songs are quickly chosen, the psalm was a coincidental find because we chose the final paragraph as Felix' baptismal motto and when I looked up the context, I found that the entire psalm (121, in case anyone cares) was reasonably fitting) doesn't hurt; that way you can avoid potentially embarrassing content and, well, it's just more personal.
I got the impression that the pastor enjoyed our half more, too; he tried to be neutral, but with such a contrast he couldn't help putting more spirit into our part of the ceremony. The other family hadn't even managed to let their guests know that all children who had such a thing were invited bring their own baptismal candles. There were fewer children among our guests, but all of them had brought their candles to be lit again! And while the others had claimed that about 40 people would come to the service from their side, they were actually less than 20 - not that numbers matter, it's just the miscalculation that makes me raise my eyebrows. It all came across as if they really didn't give a damn either way and just wanted the baptism because it's what you do.
In short, awkward, overbearing and frustrating though my family may sometimes be (think My Big Fat Greek Wedding), we are still awesome.
As an aside, the other little boy was called Finn. Finn is a name that I like a lot, but when the time came to decide on a name for our child, I noted that right now you couldn't go to any place with children where there wasn't at least one Finn present, so we should choose something else. (Other popular boys' names in Germany right now: Paul, Luca, Leon or Noel, but Finn is possibly the most common one.) That was meant as a joke, but so far it has held true: The three boys born to the participants of my antenatal class ended up named Tom, Finn and Felix, and now there were two children at the baptism - (another) Finn and Felix...
To be fair, though, Felix is a rather common name as well. Just more on the "neither wildly fashionable nor ever entirely out of fashion" side.
Anyway!
Afterwards we went to my parents' for "Bergian Coffee", a somewhat complicated tradition probably invented by Hobbits, involving insane amounts of sweet and savoury bread, toppings, cakes and waffles with rice pudding and hot cherries. That was also hugely enjoyable and I had my hands free most of the afternoon because everybody else wanted to hold Felix. He was an absolute dear, protesting only a little during one of the generic childrens' church songs (but looking delighted during the first two songs), looking confused but not unhappy during the actual baptism, and falling asleep right after the blessing. He looked like an angel, too, wearing the old gown my mother and her siblings and I and my brother and our cousins were already beaptised in*. If he hadn't grown hungry twice during the afternoon, I probably wouldn't have seen him all afternoon because he was so much admired. Later, when many of the guests had gone and the remaining few sat in a circle and chatted, he stared in fascination from face to face to find out who was talking. -- After all the excitement, he was a bit wound up in the evening, but he nonetheless slept quite nicely at night.
So I'm quite proud of my little boy! Silly, but there it is.
*So, as my brother put it, Felix started his career in the church as a cross-dresser.
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In other news, today I found out that my bees can very well sting through gloves -- After the panic attack while harvesting honey, I started wearing lots of protection, of course, but I didn't want to wear proper beekeeping gloves as they're awkward and I'd probably squash more bees wearing them, or alternatively loose my grip while handling frames, etc., so instead I'm wearing our construction gloves, which are skin-tight and covered in a protective layer of latex on the front but are only (firm, flexible) fabric on the back of the hand. One bee seems to have found the line just between latex-covered fabric and fabric, and stung my right index finger. Fortunately I still don't appear to be allergic, and the finger didn't swell much, either - even though I didn't get a chance to remove the stinger so it might have made its way deep into the finger. (Or else it may have been caught in the glove, which would be preferable.)
At any rate, winter preparations are now on their way - a month late (you start preparing your bees for winter as early as August in our climate), but as the weather has turned warm and sunny as soon as Autumn came, that'll hopefully be all right...