Christina and I are at the point where we just hand Pumpkin back and forth between ourselves, taking turns taking care of basic necessities. We can use this morning as an illustrative example:

• 0345: Pumpkin wakes. Christina spends the next few hours feeding and changing him.
• 0545: Christina wakes me to take over. Pumpkin was still hungry, but she was exhausted, so I got to calm him for a while.
• 0700: the alarms sound; I hand him back. I steal 20 minutes of nap, then take Olive to daycare.
• 0830: I get Pumpkin again so Christina gets a chance to prepare herself for the day.
• 0915: Christina gets Pumpkin again so I can use the toilet, eat something.

It's currently 0945, and in less than an hour the three of us are all going to be immersed in bureaucracy, navigating the process of getting Pumpkin's German passport. The American passport requires more work and a separate appointment.¹

So what's it like, living life with a baby again? I'd forgotten quite a lot. In particular, I'd forgotten how needy babies are. This isn't any indictment of Pumpkin; I'm sure Olive was the same. It's just that somehow, I'd suppressed the set of memories which involved sleeplessness and crying; despite expecting it, it was kind of a shock to experience these things again.

Pumpkin coos and chirps quite often. This is in interesting contrast to Olive; we spent most² of her first year hearing only cries from her. He, on the other hand, has all kinds of vocalizaitons, the most amusing of which is an exasperated sigh which he deploys with unexpected precision, particularly just after a sneeze. The strong impression is that he's not at all impressed by the experience of corporeality so far.

He also has the normal suite of triumphs and disasters, which like everything else, are infant-sized. For example, the other day, I carried him into the shower. He hasn't even seen a rainfall yet, so he was understandably shocked when suddenly there was warm water cascading from above. After just a moment of surprise, he decided that he quite liked it. On the other hand, just a few minutes prior to that, there was a diaper-changing incident. While there was almost certainly no malicious intent, the fact remains that he waited until we had his diaper off, then peed like a fountain onto everything.

Olive is absolutely enchanted by her little brother, and it's heartwarming to see her attending to him. She, of course, has her own successes as well; the arrival of an infant has spurred her on to trying more things that big kids do and babies can't. She's taking showers on her own now³, properly setting her own temperature and cleaning herself with soap. The only assistance she needs there is for someone to lower the showerhead sufficiently that she can reach it. Her nightly migration from her bed into ours has stopped almost entirely, and instead of needing to coax her from her bed, she's waking up to the signal from the visual alarm clock in her room.

Still, for now, she's not the star of the household show. Even if he's just a wiggly blob, Pumpkin is our wiggly blob, and he's still at the center of the family's attention. It's inevitable that he'll progress past this stage, and in retrospect it will seem quick. For right now, all I can say is that he occasionally seems almost less uncoordinated than usual. It's going to be great when we can report progress more concrete than that!