My grandson Dorian was born at 9:08 PM yesterday, June 17, 2008 (New York time). He weighed 9 lb 0.9 oz (4110 g) at birth, and was 22 inches (56 cm) long. And he is the Best Baby In The World.
(Well, when I say that, I make a mental reservation in favor of Irene, Dorian's mommy, who is now almost 21 but was certainly the Best Baby in her day.)
Baby and mother are doing wonderfully well -- Dorian is starting to breastfeed very nicely, and already knows a great many Proto-Indo-European roots. Irene's Caesarean incision is still very sore, and the IV is in her hand, not her arm, which makes handling him a little awkward for her. Her best friends have been hovering around the two of them, and so have Gale and I as far as we have been able. They will be coming home Friday morning.
Anyhow, I sang him a lullaby the night he was born, not that he needed it -- he was pretty well drifting off anyhow. But even though my voice was cracking, I needed to sing it to him. It's by Fred Small, and is called "Everything Possible". This is the slightly altered version of the chorus that Dorian actually got:
You can be anybody you want to be,
You can love whomever you will.
You can travel any country where your heart leads,
And know I will love you still.
You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,
Or find one special one,
And the only measure of your words and your deeds
Is the love you leave behind you when you're gone.
And this is the second song he heard from me, this morning when I stopped by to see him:
Rockabye Dorian, on the tree-top
When you are fed, your poop will go plop
When you have plopped, your diaper we'll change
And then you'll be cleaned up and happy again.
Okay, it doesn't quite rhyme, but it's his.
Dorian, if you are reading this, you already know your grandfather is a crazy old man who embarrasses the hell out of people. You'll live this one down too.
