A Good Excuse for Lack of Blogging

Mitchell David Cornel Drout was born by Caesarian Section on April 9, 2004 at 2:05 a.m. He weighed 7 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20.25 inches long.

Mother and baby are home from the hospital now and doing fine. Big sister is very proud.

Onomastics: Since so many people have asked, Mitchell's middle names are in honor of his grandfathers, and he is now the fourth generation of Drouts to have "David" in his name.
"Mitchell" itself is a Germanic form of "Michael," but it is also a pun: in Anglo-Saxon, "micel" means big or strong. The Hebrew name "Michael" means "He who is like God," so when Anglo-Saxons read the biblical name "Michael" they saw a nice connection with "micel," a word which survives in dialect as "Mickle," i.e., "He was mickle strong." (This same process explains why there are so many Japanese-American girls named "Naomi" : that's a biblical name and a word in Japanese that means 'beautiful'). Mitchell's sister's name can also be read as a bi-lingual pun: Rhys Miranda is homophonic with Latin "Res Miranda," "Beautiful thing."

(See, everything can be made nerdy if you try hard enough)