You are right. The kits say nothing about stirring. I read it somewhere online. The kit told me to throw everything in and 8 days later siphon it to a new carboy. Even on the kit maker’s website, they did not offer a great deal of solutions for if your wine takes a turn to the worst.

When my wine to a turn to stinkville (read: http://www.jefflouella.com/byte_this/2007/01/who_ever_smelt_.html), I then tried to add more oxygen to it again. The next batch, I will leave the lid off in the first 48 - 72 hours. I have a sneaky suspicion that my H2S issues were due to the lack of oxygen in the beginning.

I have done two things different than you, although only time can tell if it will make a positive difference. First is that I didn’t put an airlock on my lid during the first 48 hours. I did this because I read that oxygen is good for the yeast in its early phases (see link below).
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/extended.asp

The second thing I did was gently stir the entire mixture on the first few days because I read (at the same link above) that its good to stir it so that the yeast doesn’t just settle at the bottom while its in a stage of heavy fermentation. I thought it was interesting though that you said that yeast mostly spends the first few days reproducing. If this is correct then I probably didn’t need to stir it, and this would make sense of the fact that nowhere in my wine kit instructions did it say to stir during the first few days. The fact that some places say to stir it, leave it open to air, etc. during the first few days and that other sources don’t just tells me that its probably not that critical either way. Where did you read about the lifecycle of wine yeast? I’d love to read up on this.

Anyway, I’m sure both our wines are going to turn out excellent…at least I hope so!! I can’t wait to give wine to all my friends and be like “Yeah I made this shit!”