Accommodatingly

peace-out-brother

Originally uploaded by Jessie and Steve.

Nathan, throwing the peace signage and keepin’ it real.

The Poetry Foundation has a new website with tons of new prose about poetry past and present– it’s worth a glimpse whatever you think of the current magazine, especially if you are interested in how to make poetry public, available, appreciated outside the classroom’s doors and walls.

In one of its more obscure features, I promote John Donne.

In more pressing news, Nathan is still really, really, really, really cute.

Many of you have sent charms, congratulations and appreciations after having seen announcements and/or photos of Nathan.

We thank you deeply, and wish to add only that you have no idea how adorable he is until you have seen him in (slow) motion.

For example: he opens one eye, while keeping the other closed, as if peering deliberately into your soul. (Not to be confused with peeing into your soul.)

Once he has seen into your soul, the first eye will close, if he wishes to get back to sleep, or the second eye will open, if there’s something of interest (read: milk) that might come his way. It’s really the cutest behavior on Earth, and it will be until he acquires more behaviors.

Last night he slept almost straight through the night. Thanks, Doctor Karp!

When one’s infant son begins peeing on one’s tummy in the middle of a diaper change, one’s instinct might be to jump aside, out of the line of fire. However, one should take into consideration what is behind one before doing so, for instance, all of Jonathan Lethem’s works on the bookshelf across from the changing table.

I suppose I should be grateful that we went this long without a fountain incident.

I also discovered today that while pumping one breast, the other one may begin to let down on its own, causing milk leakage all over my pants. In the future, I will keep the unpumped breast under wraps, inside a bra with a good, absorbent breast pad.

We interrupt this Festival of Nathan for a brief moment of critical befuddlement: are there any good books about contemporary (post-1968, say) Canadian poetry? Any good articles, even?

(Single-author books and articles about Carson, Atwood, or Ondaatje do not count for these purposes, though good articles about George Bowering, Mary Dalton, or Lisa Robertson, in a pinch, would.)

geno meets nathan

Originally uploaded by Jessie and Steve.

we’re home. the cats are happy to see me and steve, but skeptical of their new human.

We couldn’t be more pleased, nor more excited, to announce the arrival of Nathan Miles Bennett Burt, who turned up almost on schedule (though not without considerable effort and assistance) at 4:17am on Saturday, January 14, 2006. First set of photos here.

Nathan is, in our unbiased opinions, the cutest entity on this or any other planet, and has so far displayed great talents including but not limited to breastfeeding, sucking really hard on Steve’s little finger, smiling, winking, dreaming, wiggling, waving his hand in the air like he just don’t care, waving one arm in the air in order to attract attention (it works!), waving both arms in the air confusingly (we think he may be practicing on-ball defense), and touching his little toe with the same foot’s big toe.

Nathan at birth weighed 8lbs 6oz and measured 21″ in length. He shares his birthday with Zach and Jenn, who will just have to move over and make room.

We expect to list further accomplishments here very soon, especially once we get ourselves home from the hospital and Jessie (once time is found) can blog the long version of the events of the last two days. (I can go back and forth between house and hospital, but Jessie and Nathan can’t– not quite yet– and St. Joseph’s has nearly everything you could want in a maternity ward, but not, alas, wi-fi.)

Both Jessie and Nathan are absolutely beautiful, and they are both doing fine.

We saw the midwife today, and she seems eager to get this show on the road. Tomorrow we go in for an ultrasound to check things out. Tomorrow night we’ll return to the hospital for Cervidil to get things going, unless my midwife takes the asthma contraindications warning seriously when I talk to her again tomorrow (it always pays to look up drugs you’re taking or going to take).

This means that we MAY have the baby on Friday. Of course, I’m still rooting for things to just get going on their own tonight, but I’m not holding my breath (unless, of course, someone tells me that breath-holding induces labor naturally).

Anyway, we’ll keep you all posted.

Belief-O-Matic — A personality quiz about your religious beliefs and spiritual beliefs - a quiz answering What Religion Am I — Beliefnet.com

I am:
100% Secular Humanist
99% Unitarian Universalist
86% Liberal Quakers
80% Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestant

I am slightly more Mormon than Christian Scientist or reform Jew, and only have a 15% correlation with Eastern Orthodox, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, or Roman Catholicism.

TerraPass

This for-profit venture brilliantly plays on our car-culture guilt–give money based on what kind of car you drive and they’ll put that money towards projects that reduce CO2 emissions. Pretty cool.

(oh, and at 19 minutes into our due date, we’re still pregnant)

EDIT-posting that made me realize that the blog was on daylight savings time. hrm. i wonder if there’s a way to get that to change automatically…