Dr. Sour Puss

I promise not to turn this into yet another daddy-blog, but it's true that I have done very little in the last week outside of child care. Some observations: The level of exhaustion is nowhere near residency training. Newborn care is incessant, there is no time where you are free from responsibility, but I haven't had to do much thinking and there have been regular nap periods. I have lost my ability to do simple math problems such as figuring out the tip on take-out food. It's amazing how much laundry one tiny little six pound human being can generate. Breast feeding is difficult. Extremely difficult. The ergonomic design of baby gear is incredible. I'm consistently impressed at the attention to tiny details that make your life easier. The way the car seat clicks in and out of the base. The handles on the laundry hamper are exactly where you want them. The way the baby bjorn holds Ravi exactly where he wants to be, without any back strain whatsoever. The lithium batter...

As the dawn broke over a clear sunny spring day in Seattle, Ravi John Sourpuss was delivered on April 20, 2009 at 5:13 AM to his previously ambivalent parents who now understand the true meaning of love. Namesake Meaning

I am so friggin happy right now. I am totally, completely, blissfully in love. More later...

We are at Baby-Con 5...this is not a drill. Shireesha is resting comfortably, contemplating the wonder of epidural anesthesia.

Well, I'm at home still waiting for the Babu, but it gives me a moment to write about my latest musical obsession. With Konono No.1's Congotronics in 2004 and Jupiter's Dance in 2006 it seems like the most interesting music I've heard in recent years is being made in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. But far and away the most astonishing of the bunch is made by a group of polio-stricken paraplegics and abandoned street kids living on the grounds of the Kinshasa zoo who call themselves Staff Benda Bilili. This clip comes from Jupiter's Dance: In 2006, the United Nations Development Programme helped them produce a song called "Let's Go and Vote" which became wildly popular in the run up to the Congolese elections and was reportedly responsible for a 70% increase in voter turnout. The track became one of the most recognizably popular songs in the history of central Africa. For all this, the musicians were paid about $50 each. Well they finally hav...

The other day I had my first dream about the baby, due any day now. I never dream, or at least remember my dreams, but this one was so vivid, the kind of polysensory experience where you hear, touch, and smell what's happening and when you wake up and you aren't sure it wasn't real. In the dream, I was holding little Babu in my hands just after he'd been born. He was crying and squirming, still glistening with amniotic fluid, his rubbery white umbilical cord still hanging from his tummy with a steel surgical clamp attached to the end. I found myself completely overcome with emotion, sobbing uncontrollably. Looking down, I saw in this one brief moment the limitless potential, a clean empty canvas upon which I would paint the world. Pretty powerful stuff for someone whose attitude thus far in the pregnancy would best be described as "mixed ambivalence tempered by hesitant anxiety." Appearing elsewhere in the dream was a more sinister figure, a patient I had seen...