Sebastian's Quiver

We picked up our bag and went to the doctor today for Sebastian’s one month checkup (his birthday was yesterday).  His official weight is 11 lb 9 oz.  His official length/height is 22-1/2 inches.  That means in the past 6 days he’s gained 6 oz and in the past month he’s gained 2 lb 6 oz from his initial birth weight and he’s grown 1-1/2 inches.  Not too shabby.  Other interesting things:  he’s developed enough motor coordination to get his thumb and/or fingers into his mouth whenever he wants to.  He also has much better control of his head; he can also lift it up for short periods of time.  Twice in the past week he’s slept long enough for Juli and I to actually watch a TV show!  If that doesn’t sound impressive, you need to take a look at our TiVo – we have probably 40 hours of unwatched TV shows recorded in the past month, though we’ve been recording HBO’s In Treatment.  We’ve only watched one episode, but it’s on five nights a week for nine weeks.

Sebastian’s doctor said that the flu is really bad right now so it looks like we’re going to be keeping him out of public places as much as possible.  No more trips to Five Points MARTA Station to buy 10 pairs of socks for $1!

We’re also taking suggestions for storytime.  I was thinking of trying to dig out my book of Walt Whitman poetry and give that a shot. Please, no suggestions of War and Peace or Gravity’s Rainbow.

Sorry about the lack of new photos.  I’ll get some new ones up in the next day or two.

“Months and days are the wayfarers of a hundred generations, the years too, going and coming, are wanderers.”

So begins Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) by Matsuo Bashō. This is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, piece of prose poetry of all times (your opinion might vary). It is also what I finished reading to Sebastian this evening. I’ve been reading bits and pieces of it to him for the past month, usually one page at a time or so, but tonight he had an extra long active alert phase and I was able to get the rest of it in. Many of Bashō’s famous haikus came from this work. One of my favorites is:

stillness –
penetrating the rocks,
cicada’s cry

I know I talk about reading to Sebastian a lot; I’m not sure why. Maybe because there really isn’t that much other interesting interactions from day to day. Change his diaper? Check! Rock him to sleep? Check! I’m not sure how often you want to hear about the daily repetitive stuff. But with reading, there is some sort of connection. And there is the hope that somehow, something that I read him while he’s this young will make some sort of impact. Maybe a neuron somewhere will click on that will, some time in the far future, help him appreciate Bashō or Byron or Tennyson or Eliot just a little bit easier that he would otherwise. They say that it doesn’t matter what you read just as long as you read. The newspaper, the grocery list, the TV Guide. I refuse to believe that I read him the TV Guide it would have the same affect on him as if I read him Tennyson poetry.

We’ve been reading a lot of Shel Silverstein lately, but I’ve been hankering for something more than Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me, too.  I grabbed my book of Byron poetry, but decided against it.  I found Poe, so I read The Raven (sound familiar?), but that really isn’t the easiest poem to read aloud, believe it or not. I eventually stumbled upon my Collected Works of T.S. Eliot.  Success!  The first poem in the book?  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Perfect! Sebastian seemed to enjoy because as I came to the final line in the poem (”Till human voices wake us, and we drown”) he started to get antsy and cry.  I’ll chalk that up as a success.

Oh, and speaking of poetry…the February 2008 issue of National Geographic has an article on Matsuo Basho, my favorite poet (17th century haiku master).  Check it out on their website, or better yet, subscribe to the magazine.  Everyone should own a subscription to National Geographic.

Sebastian was a bit cranky last night while the three of us were getting ready to swing by our friends’ house on Saturday night, so I put him on his stomach on my lap and patted his back (a great calming position for him).  Lo and behold when I turned him over, his umbilical stump was gone!  Finally!  Juli and I have been waiting for that damn thing to fall off for 3 weeks so we can give him a real bath (Sebastian hates sponge baths, though he loves getting his hair washed and especially rinsed).  On a more disgusting note, I looked all over for that stump and I couldn’t find it.  Ick.

On a less disgusting note, some more photos (taken with my new 50mm f/1.4 lens):

Let’s start off with one of my beautiful, wonderful, fantastic wife:

And now some of Sebastian:

In order to not flood this blog with photos, I added some other new ones of Sebastian on my photoblog at http://www.literalshore.com/zenphoto

(Bonus points for knowing where I got the title.)

In case you didn’t know, I left Turner Entertainment in November and started working for Nau, an outdoor apparel company that designs, manufactures and sells our clothing in a socially responsible manner. I’ve been telecommuting since November and we’ll be moving to Portland (Nau’s home base) in March. The reason I bring this up is that I haven’t had much hands on experience with our actual product since the closest store (Web Front) is in Chicago, but the products have been given excellent reviews in all types of publications and Nau has received a lot of press for their environmentally friendly, sustainable goals (oh yeah, they also give 5% of every single purchase to a charity of the customer’s choosing). Luckily, all employees had access to a big pre-warehouse sale (there’s a huge warehouse sale in NYC starting soon), so Juli and I ordered a bunch of clothes from them/us. Well, we received the clothes today and DAMN their nice! Even nicer than I had expected, and I expected them to be really really nice. I ordered 3 long sleeve shirts, a cashmere sweater and a jacket. Juli ordered, well, a lot, including this jacket (and some cashmere and a great hiking jacket and a GREAT all-weather jacket). So the morale of the story is go to http://www.nau.com and order some fantastic, environmentally friendly, very stylish, very well designed clothes. (Yes, I know the site is entirely in Flash. That will change soon.)

OK, back to our regularly scheduled program: Sebastian!

Both of those are very low light photos and my 50mm f/1.4 hasn’t come yet, so I did the best I could with what I had. The second photo is the best shot I have of his cute little pucker face that he does.

Shameless plug #2: If you’re interested in more photos (of Sebastian and other things), I started a rudimentary photoblog (it’s a work in progress – it’ll change a bit in the near future). I’m going to try to post more photos there, some more artistic-y in nature, and some probably less so. Please check it out: http://www.literalshore.com/zenphoto

Is that dappled sunlight falling upon Sebastian’s head? Nope. Is it a bald spot? Nope. It’s a blonde streak in his otherwise brown head of hair. I guess he couldn’t decide whether he wanted his dad’s dark curls or his mom’s blonde silk. It will be interesting to see if that streak stays with him or if it changes along with his other hair as he grows older.

A number of people have asked how our feline member of the family is getting along with the newest human member. Well, here you go:

Just as long as Sebastian doesn’t steal Misha’s spot in the sun, they’ll get along just fine.

(Yes, I realize these photos are huge.  I might get around to shrinking them down to a more manageable size, but then again, I might not.)

I missed a day or two or posting.  Sorry about that.

Sebastian is doing very well.  He’s eating and pooping and sleeping, just like he ought to.  His awake stretches seem to be lasting a bit longer and he likes to stare at things with wide eyes.  He is responding to our voices when we talk to him.  He also prefers to be swaddled when getting ready for bed – he doesn’t like to have his arms and legs flailing all around.

That’s about it for now.  He’s sleeping next to me, so Juli and I need to take advantage of this quiet time while we have it.  Time to eat lunch and do some laundry.  I’ll try and post some more photos soon.

I just thought that I’d share some more photos of Sebastian.

My brand spankin’ new Nikon D80 came in the mail yesterday! WOOHOO!!! I’d like to thank Jim for all the camera talk over the past several weeks that led me to this purchase (I talked him into buying his new Canon, though he really didn’t need much talking into). I have a sweet 50mm f/1.4 lens coming in from northern northern northern Quebec, so expect lots and lots of top notch photos of my family. For now I’ll have to settle for the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II ED lens, which is a notch above the standard kit lens. I have to say, for an inexpensive lens, this thing rocks. Here are a couple photos that I’ve taken so far:

One of the things that I found had the most immediate impact on me after Sebastian was born occurred an hour or two after his birth. He weighed in at 9 lb 3 oz which means that by Crawford Long’s standards he was Big Baby and had to have his blood sugar tested. It didn’t matter that for Juli’s family, Sebastian was a small baby (her sister-in-law has had several 11 pound babies). Juli and I weren’t very happy that he had to be taken to the hospital nursery for tests, so I stayed with him while he there. He was getting a little cranky laying there under the heat lamp, so I tried to keep him calm. I was touching his hand when he grabbed one of my fingers with his little hand. As Bones would say, BOOYAH! What a wonderful feeling.

I don’t have any photos of that moment (other the ones in my head), but here is a photo of Sebastian holding Juli’s hand.