We arrived at the hospital late Saturday night after Melita’s contractions—which had started Friday—reached the point that the obstetrician on call recommended that we come to the hospital. We made it just in time to avoid this weekend’s nor’easter.

Melita’s labor was long, but she held up well and after the delivery bounced back with a big appetite. I have a lot to be thankful to God for: mom and baby’s health, epidural anesthesia, and friends who were able to watch Sam while we were in the hospital.

Here’s the Bean at nine weeks. We didn’t get as clear a picture as we did for brother Sam, but we did see a speedy heartbeat and some wiggling.

She’s definitely going to put to good use the prize, Adobe Creative Suite 3. And since Earth Day is also her birthday, this made for a nice birthday treat, icing on the cake for what’s been a wonderful weekend.

Today we visited the Museum of Fine Arts. I think my favorite part of such museums are the galleries with ancient art. It seems like there’s always a lion from the side of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace; an Assyrian bas relief of a warrior with a massive, braided beard; and Grecian urns.

What I hadn’t seen in person elsewhere are Etruscan sarcophagi like the one pictured below. I’m no expert in ancient Greek or Roman art, but it seems to me that in both, it’s rare to see depicted this kind of affection between a man and wife. I think it’s touching.

Jewett had an odd fascination with her initials; she would carve them on random items, including the window pane of her room, which you can see in the photograph. Jewett’s house is interesting as a representative of Georgian architecture, especially its colorful wallpaper and the hand-carved wood of its central, slightly sagging, staircase. Inside, overlooking downtown South Berwick, we were told plausibly that not much of the view had changed in the last 150 years.

Nearby is the Nubble Lighthouse. Although termed a “savage rock” by one mariner in 1602, it took almost three hundred years (and at least one local wreck) before the United States constructed a lighthouse on Nubble Island, literally a stone’s throw from the mainland. Though only slightly removed in space, the picturesque lighthouse seems to be in a different age from the masses of people teeming along the opposing shoreline or sipping lemonade and grilling among the hundreds of RVs lined up just down the road. It fascinates me how something built as a matter of life and death is now one of the most popular postcard images. (Turning the profound into the mundane is common in New England: the Revolutionary Battle Road is now a bike trail; “Patriot” is as likely to be the name of a dry cleaners as anything else).