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Our little baby girl is one month old today. I can’t believe how quickly this month has gone by. Many a folks have said that time goes even faster when the second one is born but it’s still mind blowing.

Jessie is eating well. Which right now is about every 90 minutes or so. Awww, her first big growth spurt. She didn’t quite get the hang of breast feeding, which is a disappointment for Trish but she feels a bit better as time goes on. The flipside of that is Jessie has no interest in a binkee. That could change of course. And the bigger the smile the bigger the poop/burp/gas passage/spit up is fixin’ to be. She’s made a couple of smiles seemingly on her own but we’re not quite saying, “Jessie is smiling,” yet.

She is outrageously cuddleable and we do so as much as we can. I happily say the same thing about Trish, who is just about done healing and is doing fantastic.

Right now her days and nights are kind of mixed up, which is no big deal. We had forgotten that Porter was the same way. Jessie’s a real mellow kid. When she’s awake, a bit more and more, she likes to look around with her big googly eyes and is very attentive when you talk to her. Singing mellows her a bit, a couple of times she’s fallen asleep. She’s kind of the way Porter was as a baby; doesn’t cry unless she needs food, sleep, or a diaper change. But when Jessie is hungry…holy crap it’s loud. The only comparison I could make would be to my old alarm clock, but that would only be relevant to my old roommates Mike and Don and the therapist that got them through it. She’s pretty strong and her right hand is liable to slug you because she likes to swing it around.

Jessie got her first bath Sunday night, here is a during and an after pic. Porter asked to take a bath with his sister so we filled up the small inflatable tub that (of course) used to be his and let her set in that while it floated in Porter’s regular bath. He had a blast but maybe he had a flashback. He got to help wash her a little bit and talked to her. He’s been looking forward to taking a bath with her the first time it was mentioned. Which speaking of her belly button, I think she’ll have an outie because when she screams her hungry death screach of death it just about pops out on it’s own. If that happens I’ll let you know. I’m sure it’s going to happen. But I digress.

There’s much going on with Porter. He’s moved into his Big Boy Room, and he loves all of the St. Louis Cardinals stuff in there. Some details need to be completed but we’re getting it done a bit at a time. He’s been sleeping comfortably there a week and a half or so. He fell out of bed twice the first night but hasn’t since.

It’s completely changed the dymanic of bedtime and has put more responsibility on him which is really great. Now that most of his toys and books are in his room he has to clean them up every night. He’s made the choice not to a couple of times and didn’t get his nightly back rub, story, and song. That seems to be happening a bit more. Perhaps his Terrible Two’s are just now getting under way. It’s kind of a drag when he doesn’t put his stuff away because we like the whole routine. 

Which reminds me – Porter is a very compliant, laid back kid. If you’ve spent time with him you’ve probably noted that. We don’t have too many problems with him at all but we’re thinking that has a liability aspect to it. Typically you can tell a kid that if they don’t put this or that toy away they won’t get to play with it for however long. With Porter, you tell him he can’t play with a certain toy and his response is, “Ok.” Huh. That worked out really well.  Not!  Threatening to put-this-away-for-a-couple-of-days doesn’t work because he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. Disciplining that behaviour is kind of new territory for us. Not too worried though.

Potty training for Porter has taking huge leaps forward in the past 2 weeks. Last Sunday he pooped and peed on the potty all day. He told us when he had to go and started to pull down his diaper while doing so. He got to go to Chuck E Cheese as a reward. This past Sunday (is there a pattern developing?) he asked to wear big boy underwear and we’d say it worked out quite spankily. He wore them all afternoon, didn’t have a single accident, and went potty 3 times! He told us each time. Last night Porter was in bed for an hour when we heard him calling to us that he had to potty. We walked to the bathroom, he sat down, made wee-wee, and justifiably looked proud. It was awesome.

I’m rambling now so let me end with this goofy shot of the kiddo’s together (taken tonight). If we haven’t responded to an e-mail or letter we will, we haven’t forgotten. Thanks again for all the happy wishes and good vibes.

Here is the second (and last) of the podcast I had set aside.  These 3 tunes originate from a couple of different remix cd’s that have come out in the past couple of years.  Typically the words ‘remix cd’ bode very poorly but in small doses they can be really cool.  Like in this case.

Enjoy!

I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing a fresh and spanky one this week sometime featuring songs about Bea Arthur.

Well, I knew it would happen eventually.

With deepest regrets I’m sorry to announce formally that, after almost 2 decades of appreciation and humour, I’ve outgrown Weird Al Yankovic.

From the early 80’s Weird Al through about 2000 he served as the perfect foil to everything top 40. His parodies were always topically funny and his band probably doesn’t get the credit they deserve as they weaved their way around the hits of the day. His original songs were done with the same wit and fanfare that he honored/haranged Billboards top 10.

I first remember hearing Eat It, from In 3-D, and then hearing stuff like ‘I Love Rocky Road’ and cracking up. It was on a small cassette radio that I got for Christmas of 1983. Al had a presence on MTV and since I very much wanted my MTV I got to see and hear him even more. KHTR, now KLOU 103.3 played him generously. His music was tasty like candy. There isn’t much to think about, it was familiar and it was fun. I already knew the rhythm of the words. He could weave his way through just about any popular genre with ease and cleverness. Each album had a couple of original songs and in them he didn’t try to be Lennon or Joni Mitchell because he knew that there isn’t much humour in ‘Imagine’ or ‘A Case Of You’. My friends and I weren’t looking to Weird Al for lofty inspiration, we all just wanted to laugh and have fun. I’m glad he never got on the obligatory worthy cause, protest song bandwagon though I’m sure he could tastefully find the lighter side of a bad situation.

Weird Al is down (yo!) with this whole Internet thing and posted a new track on his website (scroll halfway down to find the one I’m talking about). This Weird Al site should have a familiar interface.

It’s a parody of a song by James Blunt called ‘Your Beautiful’. Weird Al’s take on it, respectively, is ‘Your Pitiful’.

Here’s where I fall off.

I’ve never heard of this James Blunt guy.

He was apparently was the Best New Artist of 2005 on half a dozen different TV and magazine polls, had what was apparently a chart topping song adored by millions. It was #1 in 7 countries and the album sold almost 5 million copies just between the U.s. and the U.K. It was top 5 in a dozen or so more.

My once vast pop culture knowledge has been decisively trumped by Weird Al Yankovic. Isn’t there a quote about the comedians being the best critics of society?

Here’s a quick song to honor my man Don.  The song doesn’t really fit lyrically, no one called my parents house looking for his inner child after me, him, and Mike moved out but find me another song with Shaniqua in the title.

Here’s a quick update, and a few new pics of the crew.

Jessie is doing really well. When she’s awake she’s alert and likes to look around the room and reacts to sounds in the room. She’s got a lot of really great expressions including those gassy baby smiles and some goofy ones like this. Her cute and cuddliness is getting better by the day. This shot is one of my favourites so far, and here’s one of her sleeping.  And if you think that it isn’t genetics that makes girls talk on the phone look at this unposed picture taken Sunday night.

Trish is feeling good and is healing very well. She’s tired of course and I’m still lucky that I can live off a few hours of sleep. She’s kind enough to let me sleep the night (since I’ve been taking care of Porter for the past 2 weeks) but when I wake up I try to help my main girl. I’m back to work full time as of a couple days ago and it’s kind of weird but good. We were both anxious to get a routine going.

Porter is still doing really well. He’s very proud. I do think he’s starting to wear a little bit though. This picture and this picture don’t really show it .

Ok, so they’re were a lot of pictures, but it’s late and I’m considering checking e-mail or dozing on the couch until duty cries or whimpers.

Anticipating a short term lack of time, energy, and concern for podcasting I did a couple to keep in my hip pocket for when the urge to do one hit.

This edition of Cover To Cover spotlights the britpop, common man anthem Common People by the band Pulp with an interesting version of it done by no one other than Captain James T Kirk, T.J Hooker, pop star extraordinaire…William Shatner.

Dig.

It’s just random that I remembered to put the set list from the inaugural Piano Men tour.  Jake had prepped me for Elton’s set (homey has the first issue of the …To Be Continued box set) and who doesn’t own Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits?  It was a good show and I really wanted to hear Funeral For A Friend because my friend Decker’s funeral had been earlier that day. Levon was great, Simple Life was dull, New York State Of Mind was great as was Prelude/Angry Young Man.  Elton said , “Quick with a smoke, or to light up your smoke” when they did Piano Man and exchanged knowing smirks. The late great Ray Cooper played percussion and he was awesome. Cooper brings this version of Levon to life (from an Elton show from the Disney Channel which I happened to have laying around the hard drive).
I digress.

Perhaps one day I’ll write a longer review but for now here’s the juice by itself.

Elton & Billy, 8-9-94

1. Your Song
2. Honesty
3. Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me

Elton
4. Philadelphia Freedom
5. Take Me To The Pilot
6. Levon
7. Rocket Man
8. Simple Life
9. The One
10. New York State Of Mind
11. Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding

Elton & Billy
12. I Guess That’s Why The call It The Blues

Elton

13. Can You Feel The Love Tonight
14. Saturday Night’s Alright
15. Percussion Solo
16. Pinball Wizard

Billy
17. I Go To Extremes
18. Pressure
19. Prelude/Angry Young Man
20. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
21. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

Elton & Billy
22. My Life

Billy
23. Lullaby
24. Middle Of The Night
25. We Didn’t Start The Fire
26. Still Rock N Roll
27. Only The Good Die Young
28. Big Shot

Elton & Billy
29. Bitch Is Back
30. You May Be Right
31. Bennie & The Jets
32. Hard Day’s Night
33. Lucille Great Balls Of Fire
34. Candle In The Wind
25. Piano Man

While Trish is doing stuff, Jessie is sleeping, and Porter is with Nana Hotze I thought I’d post this quick mp3. Alex posted some music stuff on his site and mentioned the Raconteurs. This is a 20 minute or so deal the band did on BBC1 back in March. It’s what made me interested in the band and the band must have liked there performance too because you can now buy the songs by themselves from I-Tunes, though I like listening to the interview segments also.

Before I start a short ramble, Trish and I want to thank all for the phone calls and well wishes the past week. If one of us hasn’t gotten back to you yet we will. We appreciate you.

Our baby daughter being born has made us very elated. The other side of the coin was the loss of my cousin Scott, which many of you read in a posting below. Inadvertently directing you to it wasn’t intentional, I typically keep my own counsel, but I like this forum.

I believe I mentioned in the announcement e-mail that we took Jessie back to the doctor for a little jaundince check up on Thursday and found out that she gained a a couple of ounces between check out Tuesday and the appointment. That’s apparently not that common and a good sign. Feeding (I really should find a less livestock sounding term) has been going well, though cumbersome at times. Jessie doesn’t have a strong reflex yet so she latches onto Trish periodically. Baby Girl will figure it out though, just takes a little time.

I have to admit for selfish reasons that I’m anxious for it to. I was telling Trish the other day that one of my defining moments happened very early on when Porter was still nursing. We had a nice routine where whoever heard Porter would go get him and bring him to bed. As I get better listeneing for him I would get him from his crib and bring him to bed so Trish could nurse him, quite often while she slept. We had done that a couple of times I realized what a beautiful thing I had. It was a clear demonstration of how my role as a husband and my role as a father were not seperate. I would watch over them and when Porter fell back to sleep I would put him back in his crib and then curl up next to my sweetie.

Trish is healing up pretty well this time around. Very quickly compared to Porter’s delivery which was considerably rougher. This time was a nice 22 minutes of pushing and out came our beautiful baby girly girl. Her spirits are good too. She’s showing Jessie the same love, patience, and understanding that she showed Porter and he’s doing pretty spanky.

Honestly, Porter has been pretty dang amazing. He’s adjusting well enough that we keep expecting a meltdown of some sort but he isn’t feeling threatened at all. He’s had a 2 lucid moments where he said, “Why we have Jessie” and seems satisfied with my answer. Maybe he’s checking me to make sure I’m consistent. Little man is just plugging away and taking the arrival of this screaming mass with gusto. I was drying him off after his bath tonight and he heard Jessie crying and said, “Jessie crying. Have to help her. Wait Jessie, I coming.” Sure enough, after the superdryingsuperhug* he darted off to the living room to tell Jessie, “Don’t cry, everything going be alright.”

We couldn’t have told your sister better ourselves Little Man.

We haven’t taken a lot of pics this week, but we did take this one today, and here’s another nice shot from the hospital. Jessie already looks different.

*A Superdrysuperhug is a proceess by which Porter is wrapped neck to toe in a towel after bath and vigorously dried while making silly sounds. It is followed by an equally vigorous drying of the hair while trying to kiss him through the moving folds of the towel (which makes him laugh like crazy).

These are far overdue and I wanted to get a bunch of these posted while all my babies are asleep… for now (it’s 2:10 am).

As I sort thru the pics we’ve taken I’ll post regularly. I’m off through the end of next week so I’ve got lots of family time. Or as Porter says, “fammy time”.

Alll of the pictures open in a seperate window, click on the bold underlined words (if you happen to be new to this whole thing).

Here goes!

Jessie about 45 minutes old. I love that I’m the only person looking at the camera.

Jessie and I dozing on the couch, we slept a lot in the hospital.

Be warned, she’s only about 10 minutes old in this one.

I forgot how small a baby’s feet are.

This is a great shot of Porter kissing Jessie. He’s very happy to dispense the lovin’.

Here we are getting our baby girl ready to go home.  Porter just looking on.

As I write this, though not when I post it, the funeral service for my cousin Scott Cowan is going on. I paid my respects earlier today. I hadn’t really processed his death until today. He died Saturday July 29th when the small Twin Otter plane he was piloting crashed into a tree in Sullivan, MO. If you’re in St. Louis you probably saw the (surprisingly positive) coverage of Quantum Leap Skydiving, which Scott opened with his brother Jim. Jim is also a good man with every bit of the heart his brother. Between them, they’ve made about 13,000 jumps, won world championships with their team, and broke some world records with that team along the way. Here is some more info on Quantum Leap. He was taking freshly trained skydivers (and their instructors) out for their inaugural tandem jump. Indications are that there was an engine failure the plane went down.

Here is my testimonial to my cousin.

I didn’t know Scott very well. That is to say I don’t know his favourite color or where he likes to eat, or stuff like that. What I do know is that he was a positive thinking, honorable man who was loved and respected by all and that I’ll miss him a lot. I have specific memories.

We only saw each other once, maybe twice per year, usually Christmas, but I was always happy to hear that he was going to be there. The conversation was always interesting. It’s not because he was was doing something cool (which he usually was) but because he didn’t seem to mind telling me what he had probably told 10 other people that night. What’s more, he had a genuine interest and curiosity in what everyone else was doing. Conversating with him was always cool because he had a broad knowledge of stuff (much like his father, aka Uncle Jim) and didn’t dwell on bigger picture things. Maybe I didn’t say that right. We would talk about the radio station but we’d typically talk about the transmitter, or why we can’t play songs with bad words in them, or stuff like that instead of what bands were to be checked out. Every now and again I had to pause so I could answer a complex question with an accurate answer because I knew he’d remember it.

Though we didn’t see each other that often, I always felt a commonality with him and Jim that goes past being family, though we are a tightly knit crew. It’s hard to elaborate, but I know you can relate to that.

Today I couldn’t stop thinking about the last moments in the cockpit. Not a doubt in my mind that if Scott knew a way to try and get out of their jam he was doing it. I don’t know anything about flying planes but I bet he was trying to steer away from the house next to the tree where they crashed. Try to imagine their reaction to what was happening, that it was going to happen, and the only thing they could do was lessen the damage. I don’t think I’m romanticizing by saying it was without regard for themselves. KMOV had a story that talks about how one of the instructors clipped his tandem harness to his student so that he would be between her and the ground. His name was Rob Cook and he didn’t survive the crash. I defy you, I defy you, to find a better definition for heroism.

I’ve been really happy that the press in town hasn’t turned this into a scandalous sort of thing. That was my honest fear after what Trish endured the tragedy of one of her friends. The first interview I saw was with a guy who used to pack parachutes for them. All he said was Scott and the others were all great people and that safety was their number one concern. The coverage overall has echoed that and I’m thankful. Finally some responsible journalism. I know that safety was their concern for 2 reasons. First, you don’t make 13,000 jumps (some of which were in China, Indonesia, Australia, and probably other countries I don’t know about) without being careful and trusting your people. I saw today that you can probably liken the bond skydivers have to a military unit. The time they spend training with someone seems to develop a deep trust. Makes sense doesn’t it? You have to trust the guy packing your chute, the guy checking the gear, your pilot, and everyone else with your life. Not a feeling I know firsthand but can’t imagine how that bond is too different from what I feel for my brother. The second reason safety was on their mind is that skydiving sure as heck is thrill seeking but not kind that kicks off a movie with the action star flavor of the moment. It’s a crazy rush and sensation but if you aren’t eductated about the risks and how to overcome them you are more likely to get hurt.

In November of 2000 I made my first jump. It’s in my blood as everyone in my family except for my Mom and Grandma Iona have lept from a moving plane. We had family in town that we hadn’t seen for many years (Uncle George, Erin and Mielle) and Jim and Scott brought us all down to jump. The day was cloudy and it was starting to look like we weren’t going to be able to jump. Before the sun set Jimmy saw a break in the clouds. We suited up, the instructors strapped themselves to each of us (even before we got on the plane if I remember right, how’s that for safety) and I got to make my first leap. Who was my instructor? Scott Cowan. Every time I write his name I have to remember that it’s ‘Scott’ and not ‘Scotty’ anymore. Here’s pictures of me coming in for a landing (squarely on my arse).

It hurts too because he is the first of my generation to pass on. That just occurred to me and I don’t have any other thoughts on that yet. I don’t really want to think about losing any more of my family right now.

Here’s a song that I love. Only fragments of the lyrics outside the chorus matter but the rhythm, the passionate performance, and the thought that “we can be heroes, just for one day” gave me some comfort while I drove away from the funeral home. So load this on your I-Pod, burn it to disc, do what you have to do to get it in a car with the windows down and then crank it loud.
Last:

Scotty,

I’ll miss seeing you, miss knowing you’ll be at a get together. Our family is at a loss with you gone. I won’t forget the rush of a jump through the clouds.

With Love,
Your Cousin Nick.