This picture is of our baby boy at 5 hours old. My wife gave birth to him on Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17th) 2005 at 2:03 AM. I won’t here disclose his name (and at the moment I’m still not totally settled on any name, only that my nickname for him is Mago Elf Liam.
Weights and measures are in next post.
Following are features of Baby.
He pines for the Irish
The day he decided to arrive underscores the Irish part of my family’s heritage. There are Irish ancestors on my father’s side. My sister’s second baby girl came on St. Patrick’s day just one year before our own St. Patrick’s day baby; so that Mago Elf Liam has a St. Patrick’s day cousin. There is a tradition among my mother’s forebearers of forebearer migrants from Ireland. Another sister was called to serve a mission in Ireland. Another sister picked an Irish name for her second daughter. Plus, the Irish are special, and I’ve always known that I’m special, so I and my baby must be Irish.
But with an alarm for ire
His little elf ears know good from evil. If I use irked tones (about hospital security thrice saying they don’t have my keys and then I finally found a nurse station that said someone turned them in four hours ago and then they called security and then security, apparently as opposed to before, actually looked and lo, they had my keys those many hours), baby fusses. If I apologize and lighten up, he calms right down. He knows better than me: A lot of things you don’t like in this world won’t change, or at the least you can’t make them, so accepting it and forgiving is better than fussing. But can I complain about a hospital you don’t know the name of? Help me, Mago Elf, you’re my only hope..
He coos and sometimes whimpers
At his birth he cooed at every exhale while sleeping: eeeeeeeeeeeh, eeeeeeeeeh, eeeeeeyeeeeeeh..