Here are some pictures Tia took of him at 4 weeks. One of these is a diaper cake her sister made. I took the ones with Tia. Click the thumbnails for larger pictures.
Pictures gallery 2
//Category: Mago Elf Liam
//Baby’s aesthetics (NINTENDO)
//Mom takes him into the room, saying that he wants to listen to the nintendo music I’m playing (while I organize a thousand disparate image files from one computer folder to many). She leaves him in the boppy on the floor to go eat. Behind from the floor, he cooes, and I turn around and he’s looking at me. I pick him up and we dance to Ninja Gaiden track 13; the music relating Ryu compelled to battle his father who is possessed by a demon and transformed into a monster. I exlaim to him of the music: “Oh, the pathos! Father, you’re dying!” He wiggles his arms to the music. Typing this now with him in the boppy in my lap, he offers another greeting, exlaiming: “NYAAAI!”
.. superstitious of the effects of nintendo music (people at lease *act* as if it’s somehow vulgar or tasteless..) I play him instead a mass (Messe La Bataille). After a while he starts fussing. I play Beethoven’s overtures to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 and Coriolan, Op. 62 (I have no idea what these are – these are just the titles). He likes these much better.
My deafness
//Something happened that I forgot. I should never, never, never do this again. Was it a call to me? Who will hear every cry? Who is there when a call finds absence? Yah is merciful.
First greeting (I think.. ?)
//I say to Baby three times: “Hiii! Hiii! Hiii!” He utters a few fidgeting sounds, draws in, and lets out: “YNNGAAAAAI!”
Pictures gallery 1
//Here are pictures by Tia of him at 12 days old (alot of them with me). Click the thumbnails for larger pictures.
A smile
//I come to him in his mother’s arms and stroke his face and head. He smiles.
At birth and 5 days (video)
//Here is a video of him right at birth. This also has him in the nursery and at five days. I’m in it briefly and Tia a bit more.
Early life trials
//Stuff happened I didn’t write down. Baby’s circumusion was a horror; Tia grew faint and couldn’t stand at the table to comfort him with me. I’m convinced the anesthetic didn’t work. He’s changed since; the exhuberance tempered, a prior nonexistent uneasiness emerged. It breaks my heart. Also baby was jaundiced and fought his way out of it with special blue lights. Ooooh. He hated the confinement of the suitcase/blue light booth and ultimately would not use it.
He is a Lullaby
//The day after his birth a lullaby came to me from the clear bright blue, in an invented folksy melody. At times this sounds like Home on the Range – also I used a line from it.
Oh my wee baby blue
I’d lay down for you
Just to give you the sun for a day
For without you my blue
It sometimes is true
That the skies are all cloudy and gray
So together we’ll hie
Through the sky love, and fly
To the sunny bright places we’ll see
With the Irish we’d die
For our mothers would cry
For the days to be sunny and green
Oh hoodilay-Holiday-Billy, la-Lili, da-day
Ba-hoodiba-Billy-da-day!
With the Irish we’d die
For our mothers would cry
For the days to be sunny and green
Our first baby, a boy
//
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..
Born! – Mago Elf Liam
//On the day, hour and minute of this back-posted entry, Mago Elf Liam arrived in this world.