It’s a Boy!!!!!!!!

Son Adam and Daughter-in-Law Carly presented us with Grandson Graham Louis Steinhoff on Valentine’s Day 2011 at 8:13 p.m. He weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 19 inches long. He was born with more hair than his father and grandfather combined.

Louis was my Dad’s first name and carried on a semi-tradition of having a middle name starting with “L”; Graham “just sounded good,” they said.

Mother Carly is doing well

Adam called at 6:44 Sunday night to say, “something’s happening.” That was followed by an email 12:48 a.m., with the subject, “Not looking like tonight,” with the message “She’s laboring, but not ready to go to the hospital yet.”

Lila’s brother, John, (of termite, plumbing, missing wall fame) was set to fly back to Missouri this afternoon. He kept telling her to PUSH! PUSH! PUSH! because he wanted to hold HER (he was sure it was going to be a girl) before he got on the plane.

Father Adam looks pretty good, too

The baby was born at 8:13; Adam emailed me a photo with the subject line, “Baby boy!” at 8:17, and John’s plane landed in St. Louis at 8:19 our time. Lila, who was out running an errand, got a call from me at 8:18 with the good news. Adam posted a bulletin on Facebook at about 9:00. Electrons were flying in every which direction.

Old-time birth announcements

Adam and Matt’s arrivals were announced with mockups of newspaper pages. This was back in the days before folks had computers at home and could knock off stuff like this with their eyes closed. I had to call in some favors from my friends in the art department to throw these together, then run to a print shop with the paste-ups.

Matt’s announcement

You can tell from the headlines how competitive the boys were going to be. Adam’s reads, “7 Lb. 8 Oz. Weight Only 1/2 Ounce Less Than Weight of Firstborn.”

We didn’t have time to write creative stories to go under the headlines, so the artists pulled real stories out of the paper to fill the space. That’s why there are stories about the Space Shuttle, how we’ve been misled by history, unethical conduct by a politician, and a 60 per cent increase in accidents by county employees on the pages.