Keal Family Letter, June 2004

Hello All. Solomon here. I am happy to announce, for all of you
that don't know yet, that we had a baby boy on Sunday June 13th! We
had him here at home. His name is Cirdan Ewan Keal. (Cirdan is
pronounced "Keer-dan," and Ewan is pronounced "You-an." Cirdan is
the name of an elf from J.R.R. Tolkien's books. It means "Ship
builder." Ewan is a form of the name John. In a sense he is
named after both of his grandfathers: John Clark Echols and Ian Keal
(Ian also being a form of John). He was born at 8:22 pm, and he was
8 lbs 8 oz, and 20 and 1/2 inches long. He is doing very well; he's
nursing very well. He still thinks that day is for sleeping and night
is for waking, but hopefully (yawn) that will change soon. Tirah is
doing very well. Over all it was about a 10 hour labor, but only
hard labor for about 4 hours. She only pushed for 5 minutes!
Recovery is going very well... much better than with Thea. Thea is
having a hard time adjusting to Mama not being around very much and not
being able to pick her up. She's throwing a lot of tantrums. But
when she comes in to see Cirdan she's very gentle and fascinated. She
understands that this is a little tiny person... even littler that she
is. Thea has taken her first steps. She walks... when she feels
like it. Right now she still prefers to hold on to Papa's fingers.
Well, gotta go. We'll be sending out photos of Cirdan soon.
See ya! - Solomon