Jessica and I put together a brief list of things that we either didn’t know or didn’t realize about having a newborn baby. It’s not exhaustive (though we are exhausted) and it’s probably not even 100% correct, but hopefully it could be of some use to those with a little one on the way.

1. Newborns eat anywhere from 1-3 ounces every two to three hours.

2. Sometimes newborns have their days and their nights mixed up.

3. You don’t get to see your baby very much the day he’s born (they keep him in the nursery for several hours for cleanup, measuring, and warmup).

4. Newborn babies usually fall asleep when eating, so you have to keep them awake by changing their diaper, shifting positions, etc.

5. Poop suddenly becomes a cause for celebration.

6. You can get eight hours of sleep and still be miserable because it’s broken up into tiny segments.

7. Sometimes you don’t just get up in the night, sometimes you actually stay up all night for several days at a time.

8. Figure the car seat out before it’s time to leave the hospital. Also, neck stabilizers are good for newborns and car seats.

9. Edible arrangements make great gifts in the hospital. (You can share it with visitors.)

10. Breast milk can take three or four days to come in. Until that, it’s just a little bit of a clear liquid called colostrum.

11. When all else fails, get them moving.

12. Quick cure for gas: lay him down across your legs and pat his back, wrap a warm towel around his belly and gently flex his legs.

13. The only housework that will get done in the first week is the stuff your visiting family does.

14. Babies aren’t supposed to sleep on their stomach but you can get foam wedges that let them sleep on their side.

15. Keep them awake as often as you can during the day so they’ll sleep at night.

Oh and the most important thing I’ve learned about parenting: you know nothing.

I’m pulling the plug on IHeartHuckabee.com.

It was a lot of fun to put together (as most pet projects are) but I figure since he’s no longer in the running it’s time for it to come down. Anyone interested in either browsing the source code or purchasing the domain name, let me know.

Well, in case you missed the announcement, we had a son! Ethan Scott Gardner came into the world on Friday, August 22, 2008 at 2:26pm weighing in at a whopping 9 pounds, three ounces! And now he’s almost two weeks old… how time flies.

Many thanks to all of our friends for your prayers, thoughts, visits, well-wishes and gifts for our little boy. The outpouring of love has been hard to even keep up with (especially with a newborn on our hands!) I’ve gotten more hits on his website in the last two weeks than Plasticmind.com got in the last three months! We’ll be sending out thank you notes in short order.

Today we visited Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for Ethan’s initial evaluation with the cleft palate team there and we were able to get a better picture of how the surgeries will play out. Most everything they told us today was what we were expecting; it was just good to set specific dates.

The doctor will perform the first surgery—a lip adhesion—in November just before Thanksgiving. This will essentially recreate Ethan’s right nostril which will in turn help shape the cartilage of the nose and begin to guide the cleft palate together. This is a short surgery that should only take an hour or so and keep him in overnight.

The second surgery will take place in February and will actually close the cleft lip. This surgery will probably have the most dramatic effect on his appearance as the cleft palate is far less noticeable, and it will also continue to help guide the two halves of the palate together. (Much like braces do for teeth.) It will take a bit longer than the previous surgery—2 or 3 hours—and will also keep him in the hospital overnight. Full recovery takes about a week or so, though he will be able to begin eating again the next day.

The third of these three essential surgeries will happen next July and will actually close up the palate. The top gum will not be closed, but by this point his eating should not be impacted. This is also a longer surgery, but it should only keep him in the hospital over night and recovery time should be brief.

After those three major surgeries, nothing else is planned until Ethan begins losing his baby teeth (around six or seven years old), at which point they will correct the gum by adding a bone graft into which permanent adult teeth can grow.

Thanks again to everyone for your support. I wish I could adequately express to each of you how much it truly means to Jessica and me.

In the meantime, I’d like to share with you some photos that my friend Matt Beckwith shared with me of his beautiful daughter Emily. Emily had very much the same type of cleft lip and palate as Ethan does. Matt put these pictures together as a journey through the life of a child with a cleft palate, and I’ve found it (as did my wife and family) helpful beyond words to be able to watch Emily’s progression from infancy through each surgery and up into her teenage years. Thanks so much, Matt!

Anyhow, I managed to find something to wear, as did Jessica, so it’s now off to the hospital with us to meet our son. I’m writing him a letter—some important things that I’ll share with him when he gets much older. The day is full of so much emotion: fear, excitement, anticipation, dreams. People have been experiencing this for ages past, but today—today I’m experiencing it for the first time.

I’ve been imagining trauma our newborn son has in store. He’s been listening to low, muffled tones, cradled in dark warmth and closeness; now suddenly he’ll be pulled from his cocoon beneath bright operating table lights into a world that’s cold and loud and unfamiliar. And then we’ll wrap him up as tight as we can, hold him close to us and try to bring back that warmth and closeness, this time outside the womb.

Follow things as they happen at http://ethanscottgardner.com.

This past Monday I sat down at work not having seen any of the Olympic games over the weekend, so I really wanted to show my national pride and catch up on the excitement.

“I’ll just find some Twitter account following the winners.” I found a few Twitterers tweeting Olympic news, but I couldn’t find anyone just updating medal winners.

“Well, I’ll just grab a RSS feed of the medal winners,” thought I. Searched around for a while. Nothing. Seems as though neither the NBC Olympics site nor the official Beijing 2008 site had medal feeds. It was just a lot of clutter to wade through to find out the relevant information.

I had an itch that needed scratching, so I put together a script that grabs the newest medal updates from the Beijing 2008 site and serves them up as they happen—via Twitter, RSS, email or just on the page itself. Of course, I needed some help getting the code all the way there, so I handed over to my good friend Arvind to knock it out of the park.

You can find out a little more about our little project over at our Olympic Medal update home base. If you find it useful, help us spread the news by digging it.

People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

One discipline he considered highly valuable was Order, the idea that all things should have their pace and each part of your business should have its time. In an attempt to gain Order, he devised a scheme for his day which set aside time for all parts of his life.

I’ve always struggled with Order, so as an experiment in betterment I’ll attempt to follow his order for the next two weeks:

Scheme

5am—8am Morning. The Question: What good shall I do this day? Rise, wash and address Powerful Goodness! Contrive day’s business, and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study, and breakfast.

8am—12pm Work.

12pm—2pm Noon. Read or look over my accounts, and dine.

2pm—6pm Work.

6pm—10pm Evening. The Question: What good have I done today? Put things in their places. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day.

10pm—5am Night. Sleep.

Caveat Emptor

I think it only fair to point out that Franklin himself struggled with his daily order:

My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble; and I found, that, though it might be practicable where a man’s business was such as to leave him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman printer, for instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a master, who must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours.

But he shared a humorously candid illustration about his struggle:

Like the man, who, in buying an axe of a smith, my neighbor desired to have the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him, if he would turn the wheel; he turned, while the smith pressed the broad face of the axe hard and heavily on the stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the wheel to see how the work went on; and at length would take his axe as it was, without further grinding. “No,” said the smith, “turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet it is only speckled.” “Yes,” said the man, “but I think I like a speckled axe best.”

I’ll report back on this in two weeks and let you know whether or not I like a speckled axe best.

The air is warm and the ash gray road feels like day old embers against my bare feet. The pale, slow-moving clouds slow time as I run.

Then come voices of old friends in the dark, talking to their children on front porches in the early morning hours before responsibility sets in. For a moment I stop and thank them for motivating me, trying I suppose to reforge old friendships or simply experience again acquaintances that once were. But the visits don’t last long. It becomes quickly apparent—photos on the wall, a note on the table, someone unexpected walks in the room—that their lives are different now. So I turn back to the road.

I’m looking down at that ash gray road when the sky explodes with sunrise. The golden honey sunlight pours slow and sticky down the charcoal twilight. My reflex grabs for a camera, but I’m without one, so I just laugh out loud. I guess this one’s for me alone.

“In honor of your 3rd year of wedded bliss, a LEATHER gift is in order. I have selected one of our goats for slaughter, just let me know whether your prefer a large doily or several soda can wrappers.”

I’ll take a mousepad, please.

(Full disclosure: my wife and I sang the second song on Mark’s album Here We Stand at our wedding.)

Six more weeks!

Here’s a brief update; keep in mind, a lot of the surgery scheduling will depend on the severity of cleft, and we won’t really know that until our little guy is born. This is just our “best guess”.

A week or two after he’s born we’ll go to CHOP so the doctors can make a full evaluation and schedule surgeries.

If he has a full cleft lip that runs up into the nostril (which, from the ultrasound, we think he does), they’ll do a two-step lip repair. At three or four months, they’ll perform the first surgery which will connect the cleft in the nostril, essentially creating a partial cleft. After about 3 more months, they’ll perform another surgery to repair the lip fully. During the first surgery, an ENT (ear, nose and throat) physician will also install tubes in his ears since children with cleft palates are prone to fluid buildup and ear infections.

The palate repair is a much more involved procedure and won’t happen until he’s a year old (they wait because a lot of facial growth happens that first year). Finally, they install a bone graft in the gum around five or six years old so that the adult teeth will have something to be anchored in. They occasionally perform more cosmetic surgery into the teen years, but that really just depends on the scope and severity of the facial deformity.

Feeding and speech are the two major concerns for a child with a cleft palate. Breastfeeding will probably not be an option; we’ll most likely be using a special bottle with something called a pigeon nipple that helps increase the flow since children with cleft palates have a much harder time creating suction. (Which means more gas and most likely more fussiness.)

The really reassuring part is that we’ll be meeting each year with the entire cleft palate team at CHOP for an annual evaluation of all areas of his development. They truly have been wonderful to deal with and have lived up to every ounce of their reputation.

So, probably the next bit of news you’ll read about our little guy will be a birth announcement… Stay tuned, August 22nd! (If Jess had her way, it would be tomorrow.)

For the last few years, my writing has been decidedly utilitarian. Most of my articles and entries were written to answer a question, fulfill a need, inform the reader.

Tonight, however, I write because I can’t seem to figure things. I have a broad, unfocused restlessness that’s keeping me awake because I can’t even seem to find it’s boundaries and therefore can’t process it. Blogging to the rescue!

It started with a general frustration with the way people abuse other people online with cruel anonymous comments: attacking religious beliefs, mocking illnesses, scorning race. There seems to be no taboos as disrespect and discourtesy proliferate.

Then I think I began to think critically of some things that I often take for granted: my faith, my job, my political views. Probably this came from some of the disparaging remarks I stumbled upon, but that’s really no matter. I think it’s very important for people to think critically and talk openly about the most sacred things in their lives.

Ultimately I ended up with a passage from Emerson’s Nature running through my head:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear I think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and a sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed,, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befal me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Those words have always been so full of essence for me because they best describe those days of childhood when I would lie beneath a hundred tall trees and stare heavenward through tears. There was so much feeling and emotion compressed into a moment that my fifteen-year-old frame couldn’t handle it.

But you’re probably thinking that I skipped a part, so I need to go back and explain the transition from my religion to transcendentalism. Trying to do so is like trying to recount yesterday’s dream: some parts are so vivid and some parts are vague but the transitions are the really difficult parts to recall. “I was standing high atop a cliff, and I was studying algebra; then I was in our old house, I can’t quite remember how I got there.”

The reasonable part of my brain is telling me that this is an aggrandized cop-out, a sneaky way to appear intellectual and to sound sincere while ignoring responsibility. He (reason) dutifully informs me that feeling strongly about something is not the same as taking responsibility for it. That’s the addiction, says he, of the movie theater: you come away having felt deeply and done nothing.

So my raging emotions must sit beneath the schoolmaster of reason yet again. I picture my emotion at a chalkboard, writing out one hundred times: “I will accept responsibility for my beliefs and my actions.”, writing this while reason peers over his horn-rimmed spectacles. But the eyes are not on the board, they are staring out the window, lost in imagination.

I came across a particular article today that brought these strong feelings to mind. It seems as though a random woman I do not know dropped her phone into the toilet. It’s a very good article arguing that technological tethers are nothing more than imaginary compulsions we place on ourselves.

But that’s not what I’m compelled to talk about right now.

I must, for the record, make it known that if you call me and you are using the toilet, I will hang up on you. If we’re in the middle of a conversation, and you begin to use the toilet, I will hang up on you. If you’re washing dishes or walking by a sprinkler or bending over to tie your shoe, I reserve the right to hang up on you.

I’m alright with you sending an instant message whilst on the can or even you participating in a hearty IRC chat while relieving yourself. Just not the phone. The “ambient noises”—grunts, gurgles, splashes, sprinkles and the like—are more than I can bear. It doesn’t matter how controlled you are, everyone grunts a little.

So don’t be offended if you flush and I disconnect. It’s nothing personal.

The following is a transcript of the speech I gave at the Northern Dutchess Christian School commencement exercises:

For those of you that know me and know what kind of person I am, what I’m about to say may surprise you:

You are about to head into a life that is filled with struggle and challenge.

I say this for two reasons.

First, I would be doing you a great disservice by sending you out into the world expecting ponies and rainbows. No doubt you’ll come across some ponies and some rainbows, but make no mistake about it, you will face some obstacles in your lives that will seem insurmountable and you will be tempted to quit.

The second reason is so very important, and it’s this: I want you to understand that struggles and challenges are the raw materials of change.

It’s been a busy week, which seems more common these days. Between getting Simply Recipes running on the new version of Movable Type, finishing/launching the new Oxford Valley Chapel website and several other sundry tasks, I didn’t get much sleep. I keep telling myself that I’m practicing for when our little guy is born, then something in the back of my head says, “Now is the time to sleep while you still can.”

I usually just ignore that voice.

I’m actually finding it hard to sleep tonight. I’ve been asked to give the commencement address tomorrow at the school I used to teach at, so I’m finding it a bit difficult to settle my mind. It doesn’t help that my wife and son are back in Pennsylvania. I drove up this evening to stay at my parents new house—which is beautiful, something I never thought I’d say about a house in Troy, NY. I left Jess behind because her baby shower at the church is tomorrow. Her family is down for the shower, so we’ll both get to spend the Father’s Day weekend with our Dads, just not with each other.

I had written out the entire speech, but couldn’t find the paper where I wrote it out before I had to leave. It doesn’t really matter all that much, because I remember nearly everything I wrote. It’s just those few carefully chosen words I spent a long time on that I’ll miss; they’ll likely escape me tomorrow when I really need them.

And speaking of not getting something when you really need it… my car is stuck in reverse! As I pulled into the local convenience store parking lot to get directions to my parents new house, I put the car in reverse to back into a space. I tried to put it in first to straighten the car, but the gear stick was limp as a biscuit! I couldn’t do a thing except: Run Away!

I had to call my parents to come pick me up and leave my poor Saturn at the mercy of downtown Troy. Tomorrow morning I’ll check if it’s simply a detached cable. (Here’s hoping.) Now off to write out my speech for the second time.