I walked my Mom back to the hotel where she is staying tonight. She has been with us since the birth, an invisible Angel cleaning up endless dishes and doing countless loads of laundry and preparing meal after meal, only to vanish again when we nap, her only request and reward: a few minutes of holding her Beloved Grandson...

Anyways, I don't know how we can thank her.

Mark grows each day -- today the midwife who visited to check in on him weighed him at 9 pounds 2 ounces, significantly up from his birth weight, and at only six days old.

He is beginning to smile, he laughs in his sleep. His sneezes no longer scare him, but he is still irritated by the hiccups.

He is precious, amazing, beautiful.

His neck looks like a little turtle's, and, when hungry, he will open his mouth like a baby bird, and wait for food to land in it.

He likes being cuddled and held, and he prefers his arms out and loose, where he can flap them about and possibly chew on his fingers. Today he gestured toward the torchiere, trying to grasp it. He is fascinated by candles, and he turns his head toward voices.

He makes a snuffling, rooting noise, sounding for all the world like a little piglet when he is hungry, and especially when he is hungry and hears his mother's voice.