The first stand

Yesterday morning I had quite a shock. I heard Jack waking up from his nap (an hour and a half morning nap--longer than the total he slept all day any day last week!), so I went in to pick him up. I didn't have to reach far; Jack had pulled himself to standing in his crib! He looked about as surprised as I did. So all my handiwork last week lowering the crib one level had to be repeated again last night, since Jack's head was at the same level as the top of his crib when he stood up. I once again became Joanne Liebler and conquered the beast that is Jack's crib, this time with much easier success. That's why there wasn't a post last night.

This weekend was much more social than our recent ones. Ben's finally getting enough weekend time off that we're willing to do a little more than just sit around in our pajamas all day on the weekends. Friday night, I can joyfully report that after a long, hard week, Jack and I were able to walk Ben home from work a 6 in the evening! Saturday we went to a lovely housewarming for Jess King, a Virginia Law alum and one of the new associates at Ben's office. Then we came home and had a brief family cuddle time--the pictures are from that.

Sunday morning we left for church just after noon and saw that the bizarre Halloween rave at the freaky club around the corner was still going on! That was a little weird. We've been going to the Italian church just down the street recently. They speak only in Italian, including the sermons, which can be a bit hard to follow but is good for our language immersion. We're actually starting to pick up quite a bit. It's such a happy community. Much more spirit-filled than the Latin mass at St. Etheldreda's, the 13th century church we had been going to--that one's gorgeous, but they just don't seem to like babies there. Sunday afternoon, Ben's officemate Aseet and his girlfriend Cristina (pictured), who are both Canadian lawyers, came over. Cristina's here for a few months awaiting her NY Bar Exam results, so Jack and I are going to spend some time with her, probably going on a London Walks walk tomorrow and maybe starting a regular jogging date in Hyde Park with her.

Yesterday Jack and I went to see Sicko at the Electric Scream, the baby movie viewing held at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill with my friend Jolene and her son Wesley, who is exactly 7 weeks younger than Jack. Interesting movie. Not my favorite, but thought-provoking. More interesting was the fact that we got stuck in the middle of a film crew taping a new movie called Hippy Hippy Shake about some counterculture icon in 1960s London. No interesting American-known celebrities are in it. And no chance that we'll inadvertently end up in the movie, as they were controlling the filming area pretty well and I'm pretty sure they would edit a Bugaboo out of a 1960's movie. We also ran into Siobhan, a former labor and delivery nurse from Philadelphia, whom I met at prenatal yoga class. I hadn't seen her at all since about a month before Jack was born, but we tentatively made plans to get together with her and her son Finn sometime next week.

Today, we had a brief doctor's appointment, at which it was recommended that I hire a night nanny. Night nannies are women who take care of babies for new parents at night. It's a great idea, but an expensive one. A week of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. care will run you $2000. Not cheap. So I think we might hire Stacy's phone in nanny instead. For only 150 quid, you get six weeks in which you call/email her daily, describe your baby's habits and behavior for the previous day, and she gives you advice about how to solve eating and sleeping problems. It's worked wonders for Kaia's sleeping patterns. Hopefully it will do the same for Jack's.

We spent the rest of the day with Stacy and Kaia, first on Oxford Street, then back at their flat for dinner and (gasp) talk about things other than babies. Rich is off visiting his brother, and Ben never gets to come home for dinner, so we figured it would be good to eat together. They're only briefly home in the middle of their month-long vacation--Berlin was last week, then in the country last weekend, York this weekend, and finally a 2 1/2 week vacation in Boston ending on Thanksgiving. So exciting for them, but so lonely for us.

Exciting purchases of the day included Jack's first shoes (for Dad's benefit--I'll have pictures tomorrow hopefully) and an exersaucer, which I'm going to put together tomorrow. Can't wait for you to see Jack's costume tomorrow. I'm pretty proud of it...