Il vient d'arriver!!!!!!!

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Pour vous annoncer la naissance de:

Hans Friedrich Keister

n
é
à 2:57 ce matin, le 18th juin

poids: 3005g

Tout le monde est en bonne santé; pour cela, on remercie Dieu de tout notre c
œur!

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Hey, it's me announcing it, so I had to do something a little different! Here's some info in English if you didn't quite get all that... ;-)

Announcing the birth of:

Hans Friedrich Keister

born at 2:57 this morning, June 18th

weight: 6lb10oz.

I just talked to the proud parents and everyone is doing very well. We are so thankful! Labor was 'only' about 5 hours long. (I laughed when Susan told me that. "ONLY?" 1 hour or 10, it still sounds horribly, painfully long!)

I wish I had a picture, but alas! You'll have to wait for that, after Grandma gets there later today, camera poised and ready. I hear he has a lot of hair, is pretty long (21in), and is adorable. :-)

Thank you so, so much for all your prayers.

From the happy aunt on behalf of Susan and her growing family,

Aunt Hannah :-D

EDIT: *Active* labor was only 5 hours :-).

Defiant Birth

Yay! Sherrin is back from South Africa and posting again :-). She just posted an excellent book review of Defiant Birth.

Here are two of my favorite excerpts from her post:

It is impossible to attempt to combat abortion for long without realising that our society presents to women a huge number of times when it is "wrong" to have a baby. You can be too young, too old, too busy, too ill, not educated enough, too poor, or have too many children already. If you have a baby at such times, many people deem you unwise or just plain stupid. Couldn't you have planning things better? With such thinking, the majority of time in a woman's reproductive life is defined as the "wrong time."

Read this book. It will make you aware of where our society is headed. It will challenge your eugenicist assumptions about who should reproduce and who should be born. It will inspire you to encourage and support pregnant women. It will empower you to believe that having babies is really OK. Giving birth is what women have been doing since Eve, and it is not a disability.

I encourage you to go read the entire post.

Population Problems

I know, I know, as a confessed conservative one would think I would not freely admit that our globe is facing population problems. I've always tried to admit problems on both sides of the aisle, though. Besides, we are facing population problems, so there's no use in denying it. However, the population problems that I am talking about are not what you may be thinking :).

Mother Dear and Ashley always keep me well-supplied with interesting news articles from online sources :). Not 2-3 days go by that I don't get an e-mailed link from one or both of them. And many of the articles they send me have motivated some of my favorite blog posts.

This morning's article was send to me by Mother Dear and can be found here. The article discusses China's growing gender gap. It is estimated that in 15 years, 30,000,000 Chinese men will be unable to find marriage partners, due to the use of gender selection in pregnancies. The truly ironic part of the article comes at the end:

China Daily said one way to solve the problem would be to create a proper social security system so rural couples would not feel they needed a son to depend on when they get old.

Hmm. I can think of better long-term solutions to this problem. More government control is not the solution!!! Aaaaah!!!!! (Breathe, Susan.) Less government control would actually work better. Sheesh. The Chinese government's one-child policy created this problem, so why would they think more control would also provide the solution?

Here are a few of my past posts on population growth/decline:

Interesting Article on Population Growth and Decline

Mixed Concerns of Population

Exciting News!

I'm so happy for Crystal (and Jesse and Kathrynne)! It took me about three times reading her (very short) post, but then it finally sunk in. I'm slow ;). Anyway, go read the exciting news!