Our Christmas present came home today. He stayed an extra night in the hospital because his Bilirubin levels were slightly elevated. Today his bloodtest came back normal. He and his mom also seem to be figuring out the whole feeding thing. Now if only he could figure out the sleeping thing.
Early this morning, just before 3 o’clock, the long awaited addition to our family arrived. His name is Lyndon Avery Keith. He was 8 pounds and 21 inches long. Pam was a real trooper, laboring at home as long as she could. By the time we left for the hospital, she was ready to deliver. Lyndon was born less than an hour after we arrived. Lyndon inhaled some amniotic fluid on the way out. So for about 2 hours after he was delivered, he wasn’t taking up oxygen quite as well as he should. He’s now managed to sort himself out.
I came across this picture this last week and thought I should share it. I got a good laugh out of it; the expression on the sleigh-rider’s face is priceless. This picture is one of a bunch of pictures at Sports Illustrated. I’m not sure why this particular picture is a part of the collection. Perhaps this was part of some opening ceremony at a downhill skiing event. Anyway, the other pictures in the gallery where this one came from are all pretty cool (and sports related–as one would expect).
So today is the magic date: our due date. There hasn’t been much magic so far.
If you hear a twiddling sound, it’s the sound of the two of us twiddling our fingers while we wait for the magic. Come to think of it, I’m not sure what twiddling sounds like. It doesn’t make much of a sound even when you’re right nearby. Guess that means you probably won’t hear it. Oh well, you’ll just have to take our word for it.
In my previous post I said that sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Well apparently there are at least some people who have it harder than I do. Books and essays are often hard to understand just like delusional patients are–not that I’m speaking from first hand experience–but they don’t fight back with sharp, pointy objects tainted with nasty micro-organisms! (I direct your attention to a recent CBC report.) So today I’m glad I’m not a nurse; I’ll leave the nursing profession to those who are more stout of heart than I am.
P.S. After reading the CBC report, I wondered why they don’t make training in the martial arts a part of nursing school.
I was reminded again this week how much study can be like work. It can be difficult, frustrating, time consuming, and deflating.
At the outset of the semester, I set a personal goal of having all my term papers completed by next Friday, the day the exam period begins. My reason for this was that I didn’t want to be worrying about writing term papers while trying to adjust to being a new parent. (Of course, it’s also a good idea to have your work done in a timely fashion.) Well, I was on pace till about the middle of the week. I had spent the better part of two and a half weeks reading and thinking about my last term paper. Things were going well. Then, on Monday, when I was just getting down to the writing, I began to find problems with my arguments. By Wednesday, my paper was completely deflated. I’m now back at the beginning, having seen nearly three weeks of work go up in smoke.
Sometimes people think that those who devote their lives to study have it easy–I used to think the same thing myself–but study shares much in common with any other pursuit one might choose in life. It requires perserverance, diligence, and effort. It requires a thick skin. Having a professor point out the flaws in your work is no easier to bear than having your boss tell you that your work needs improvement. It also requires self-confidence; that is, you have to trust that you have what it takes to make a worthwhile contribution. Philosophy is hard. Arguments can be long and complicated, especially when they are constructed by some of the smartest people in the world. There are days when I begin to wonder whether I even understand English anymore. The words on the page look like English words; the sentences look like they are constructed in accordance with proper English grammar; but I can’t, for the life of me, comprehend what is being said. These are the days when the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence–surely planting trees wasn’t that bad.
In the blogger’s handbook it says that, if you want your readers to check your blog regularly, you should post regularly. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I want my readers to check my blog regularly, so I guess I need to post something.
Two things:
1) We got our first snowfall today. As snowfalls go, it was just a baby one (can you tell what’s on my mind these days?); the little bit of snow that was on the ground in the morning has now melted away.
2) The magic date is now exactly two weeks away. Of course, the magic date has very little value when trying to predict when junior will make his or her grand entrance, because junior doesn’t yet know anything about calendars and gestation periods.
Anyway, back to my paper. Does anyone have any unique insights about Descartes’ notion of mind-body interaction?
Those of you that have read the previous post will know that Pam and I finally made it into New York City. Here’s a brief synopsis of our trip.
We caught an early train out of New Haven, Connecticut and arrived at Grand Central Station just before 10 o’clock. After we got our bearings, we walked up Broadway to the Lincoln Center to buy tickets for the matinee show at The Met. (I’ve raved about the opera we saw at The Met in a previous post, so I’ll spare the details now.) While waiting for the opera to start we rambled around Central Park. After the opera, we had some supper and then walked down Broadway to see Times Square after dark. (Talk about sensory overload! If you’re prone to seizures, you should probably stay away from the place.) After milling around for a while and checking out Macy’s Christmas display, we headed for our hotel. We’d been on our feet for most of the day–kudos to Pam for being a good sport–and were liking the idea of catching some sleep.
We stayed in a Holiday Inn near Central Park. Our room was small, one of the smallest hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in, and cost us $275 for the night–that’s well over $300 if you’re counting in Canadian. It made us wonder how anyone could ever afford to stay in New York for an extended period of time.
The next day, we caught the subway to lower Manhattan. (Being prairie folk from Manitoba, this was a relatively novel experience for us. It was my third, and Pam’s second, time on a subway. Each time we’ve “taken the tube” it has been a bit of an adventure: Which line do you need to get on; Where can you buy tickets; Which direction are you facing when you get out of the tunnels and back onto street level? I’m sure New Yorkers would get a kick out of reading this. I don’t mind. I get a kick out of hearing native New Yorkers confess that they had never driven a vehicle till they moved away from New York as adults. Apparently, growing up in New York is somewhat different than growing up on a farm in Manitoba.) We walked around ground zero, saw the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, and then walked down Wall Street. At the waterfront we took some pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and then did some more walking. Around mid-afternoon we stopped by a Mexican Restaurant on the edge of NYU campus for something to eat, and then headed home. We didn’t get around to seeing any of the museums, but we plan to go back. Hopefully, junior likes to travel.
Here are some pictures. (There are more to come, but they haven’t been developed yet.)
This is a cool view of the Columbus Circle just outside of Central Park.
This is inside Central Park looking south.
This is Times Square at night.
So last weekend Pam and I finally made our first trip to New York City. (That’s Pam in the lower right corner sitting by the fountain. There will be more pictures in a later post.) We had a wonderful time. One of the things we decided to do, since it would be much more difficult to do after the baby arrives, was to take in an opera at The Met. (Those of you familiar with Saturday afternoon programming on CBC Radio 2 will know that the operas they air are usually operas that have been performed at the The Met in New York.) We saw the matinee performance of La Boheme by Puccini. Tickets can be anywhere from $50-$300+ at The Met. We arrived early Saturday so we could buy the cheap $20 standing room tickets. These tickets let you stand and watch the opera from the very back of the orchestra level. Standing for 3 hours was a little tiring–more so for Pam–but we managed.
It was an amazing experience. The music was superb and the sets were astounding. The second act takes place in downtown Paris at the turn of the century. There were about a hundred people on stage. There were jugglers, military marching bands, and clowns. At one point, a real, live horse pulled a cart across the stage! The next scene, set at the outskirts of the city, was replete with fog and falling snow. We were impressed. I even got to see Placido Domingo, one of the famous Three Tenors, through my binoculars; he was making his conducting debut at The Met.
This is a picture of the village at Plimoth Plantation. It is a re-creation of the village the pilgrims built after landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. (Don’t ask me why the two spellings ‘Plimoth’ and ‘Plymouth’.) Just down the trail from the pilgrim’s village, there is a re-creation of a Wampanoag village. There are people in costume on both sites doing activities as they would have been done around the time of the arrival of the pilgrims. In the Wampanoag village we could see a large water vessel–I’m not sure that it could be called a canoe–that the Wampanoag had built by selectively burning out a large tree trunk. The pilgrim village had a blacksmith, gardeners, and people looking after livestock.
This is a replica of the Mayflower.
Being a tourist has the tendency to wear you out.
