Baby naming ceremony, pre-Birthday celebration, and Rosh Hashanah in New York

At the end of September, we spent a long weekend in New York, where we celebrated Livia's baby naming, "almost" 1st Birthday, and Rosh Hashanah. It was a very busy weekend, as usual. On Saturday, we had 40 family members at my parents' house for the Baby naming/pre-birthday celebration. Livia received her hebrew name, Leah, in memory of my grandmother Lee. Rabbi Janet Liss performed the ceremony in my parents' house. She is the rabbi who married us 5 years ago, so it was very special to have her name our daughter.

Unfortunately, Livia spent much of that day looking like this. She screamed through the whole ceremony and much of the other festivities (even when Great Aunt Elyse wasn't holding her). She was cutting two teeth, coming down with a bad cold, and overwhelmed by all of the attention. But the rest of us had a great time and really enjoyed catching up with all of our family members who travelled to see us.

We sang Happy Birthday to Livia, and also to Lori, who had just celebrated a big birthday as well. Lori had her own cake but unfortunately we didn't get a picture of that one. Livia didn't get to eat cake at this pre-birthday celebration, but she will get to try a little this coming weekend.

Here are some highlights from the rest of the weekend. We took several walks to Morgan park, where Livia enjoyed seeing the water and playing on the swing (though for some reason she developed a fear of the swing during the end of this trip. She is still apprehensive about it now but she is gradually getting better).

Here is Livia in her spare carseat, which we did not take on the plane. Instead, we had it shipped to my parents' house. Dan said that he really enjoyed travelling without the carseat this time, but I think he secretly missed having a desk strapped to his back.

On Tuesday, we got to attend the annual Levine Rosh Hashanah lunch, before darting off to the airport.