Who's the fairest of them all?

This morning, Zachary discovered mirrors. Our hotel room had two giant door-mounted ones, and Meh was walking around with him soothing him after another alternately eating/fussing night, and he got really happy and smiley looking at the mirror. I don't know if he was socializing with the cute youngster in the reflection, looking at a more interesting version of mommy, or just liked the patterns of light and dark, but he was definitely enthralled. He also in general seemed much more intelligently looking around and interested throughout the morning in particular -- this seemed a pretty significant advance from while I was gone (didn't see this yesterday since it was a weird early morning getting to the airport).

After our mirror adventure, we headed over to grandma's for Zachary's pidyon ha-ben (the popular alternate pronunciation, true to Yiddish, is the seemingly randomly modified 'pidna ben'). The rabbi was very nice (and had even lived in Seattle for a time), and explained the service to those in attendance, with a nice drash connecting it to a need to redeem the Israelites after the Egyptians' first born sons were slain in the 10th plague from Passover. The silver dollars used were big honking things from the late 1800s, pretty cool actually - but not tempting as an exchange for our son!

Zachary was actually possibly the fussiest he's been in public, but still managed to weather the ceremony quite well. Afterwards, he quickly went off to find his own private lunch while the rest of the attendees enjoyed the arguably more important element to any major Jewish event -- another magnificant brunch. There was a lovely chocolate cake from Costco, bagels out of our ears, and trays full of pounds of veggies, cream cheese, and tuna salad. I'm putting down good money that grandma will be offering these to other guests throughout our stay (and likely helping us put together a little picnic for the plane ride back).

In the evening, Zachary's aunt and cousin (if I understand the kinship rules correctly, that's actually his aunt-twice-removed and cousin-twice-removed) came over to visit and we all had a lovely time. Zachary of course went through most every outfit we brought over, but besides that seemed happy and looking around with his big blue eyes. And that wraps up a nice day with family and friends!