Wow.
Just read this post by Mullenweg on the Gravatar blog. I had no idea this was in the pipes, but man, am I glad!
BTW, all the premium Gravatar features are now free, and it’s being merged with WordPress.com’s avatar service. So be on the lookout for many more commenter icons on the way!
It’s funny… all it takes is a little thing like this to brighten my whole day. 
Guess what I got for Christmas?
Yup, that’s right: a 30GB iPod G5. It’s great—I’ve loaded all my podcasts onto it, finally consolidated my home and office iTunes libraries, dumped in Address Book contacts and played around with the photo gallery. I can now listen to sermons (or American Radio) while I walk during my lunch break, and with the iTrip add-on I picked up, I now have my own truly conservative talk radio to listen to in the car. 
The Downside: This means I’m now one of them. 
That’s right: it’s new baby time!
Joshua Felix Seitler was born at 4:59am on July 1st! He was 21¾ inches long, weighing 8 lbs. 11.3 oz (big boy!).
We went in on Friday morning for a checkup with Nicole’s midwives, and since she was almost at 41 weeks, they ran a non-stress test. First off, the great news: he was head-down! (This boy’s been breech twice in the past six weeks! We were starting to think a C-section was inevitable…) Anyway, during the test Nicole began having regular contractions… and Joshua wasn’t responding too well to them. Next thing we know, Nicole has a room in Labor and Delivery!
Pitocin was started around 4pm, and progress was a bit slow. I tried to be up to help Nicole however I could, but by 1am I was snoozing on the couch/bed in the windowsill any chance I got. 
Around that time, Joshua’s pulse started really dropping during contractions: he was pretty steady at 120-150 bpm, but the number began to drop to 60 after Nicole’s contractions. 
(The nurses rushed in a few times that night, trying not to look too alarmed but rather quick to stop that!) At this point, the pitocin was cut back to make things easier on Joshua. It worked. His pulse began to stabilize! Just after 4am, Nicole began pushing. Just before 5am, she was holding Joshua in her arms!
We just got back from the hospital today — with the Independence Day holiday coming up, the pediatrician wanted another day to be able to keep an eye on “Lil’ Shu Shu.” Nicole’s mom is in town this week to help out, too, so you might not hear much from us for a little while. Here’s a movie to hold you off with! 
Oh, this guy is so cute! I wanna go watch him sleep some more…
It just hit me the other day that Nicole and I are in a small-group Bible study (on steroids! it’s more like “cell-church lite”) with a Teacher of the Year, Miss Preakness 2006, and (I hope!) the future Harford County Sheriff:
On May 18th of this year, Jake Hollin was awarded Teacher of the Year at The John Carroll School. Jake is a devoted husband, father of four of the sweetest little girls I’ve ever seen, and he’s the leader of our little band of brothers and sisters. I think Jake sees blogs as a passing fad that only interests 13-year-old girls, 35-year-old perverts and political activists… but he’s also been John Carroll’s wrestling coach for a number of years, so I’m not going to mess with him!
That, my friends, is Josh Stratton: former student and current leader of Littlestown Chapel’s high school ministry (a.k.a. “youth group”).