Day’s Verse:
Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young,
Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes,
Before your vision dims and the world blurs
And the winter years keep you close to the fire.
Ecclesiastes 12:1-2

It’s been almost a week. That’s 9% of Benji’s life. We’ve done lots of things: Some bike rides, some banking, some home-improvement stuff, some spending time with family. Not much of doing non-essential chores, but then, I doubt anybody died saying, “I wish I’d done more chores.”

Here’s Benji showing, once again, that he’s his mother’s son:

He was doing tummy time and looking at the black-and-white book between bouts of fussing, when voila — he fell asleep. I cannot count how many times Ian has taken a book from my hands, bookmarked it, and put it away for me while I snoozed. Benji is just practicing this early. Handily enough, his book doesn’t close and lose his spot when he falls asleep and stops holding it open.

Falling asleep while “reading” is only one of the tricks we’ve begun practicing. Now that he’s 11 weeks old, it’s really noticeable how much more interactive Benji has become. He has started mimicking our motions more definitively: The other day I raised my arms over my head (a motion he does by instinct when put down in his crib) and held them — and, after a few minutes of intense concentration, he raised his arms over his head, too. We’re also working on teaching him to fist-bump. Right now, he just grins really big when we touch our fists to his. He smiles frequently in response to seeing us; he reaches to touch things (albeit with his hand still fisted), looks around eagerly, and babbles and coos, often in response to our conversation.

He’s also sleeping exceptionally well, most nights going six to eight hours without waking, which means that if we’re on the ball, we get a good chunk of sleep, too. A couple nights he’s gone almost nine hours, and I have to say, I’d almost forgotten what a real, solid, full night of sleep felt like. Now I remember: Heaven. He naps much less during the day most days, which means I get a little bit less done, but it’s so worth it to sleep during the night. I can see a future of tiring-but-rewarding hours playing with Benji.

In my head: I am seriously debating about whether to go back to work or not. I have the opportunity to do so, and under other, baby-free circumstances I’d jump on that chance without a second thought. But now I want to put Benji first, and I don’t know what’s best for him and for me. It’s a decision only Ian and I can make. I wish I knew.

One non-Benji vignette, and then I’m off: Ian and I are switching from Bank of America to Washington Federal. To begin this process, I went to Bank of America to obtain a cashier’s check for a substantial portion of our checking account. They had me swipe my card, then asked, “Checking or savings?” Checking. The teller verified the last three digits of the account I wanted to withdraw the money from. I said that was right because I figured it was, but frankly, I didn’t remember the last three digits. The teller filled out a form and gave it to me to sign. I signed, and then quickly scanned to make sure the information was accurate. Good thing I did this, because instead of my name and address, I saw my mom’s! That’s when I realized that I had swiped my mom’s credit card — the one that I’m on, but use only extremely rarely — and this had given me access to my parents’ accounts. I only momentarily considered letting it go through…. just kidding, of course. The teller shredded that paperwork, I swiped our debit card, and I obtained the cashier’s check from the correct account in the end.

What struck me was how easily I accessed that account. All I had to do was swipe a card and sign a form. No ID required. The teller didn’t even check my signature against that on the card. I could have said “clean the account out,” and while that might have triggered some alarms, it might not have. In any case, I could easily have withdrawn many thousands of dollars from somebody else’s account without raising an eyebrow. Yikes.