Baby

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) – The Virginia Zoo in Norfolk is welcoming the birth of a baby giraffe.The six-foot tall giraffe was born Thursday at 4:20 p.m. after a two-hour labor and six-foot headfirst drop, a news release from the Virginia Zoo said.”The idea of a six-foot drop sounds scary to people, but it’s normal for a giraffe,” explained executive director Greg Bockheim. “It helps stimulate breathing    .. more …

Gloucester’s plan to sell naming rights to its high school football field has a sticking point I love but businesses may hate: The new name would have to keep the old.Whether it becomes the Dunkin’ Donuts Field or Facebook Field or Bernie Phyl’s Field, it would have to be the So-and-so Field at Newell Stadium.Which is how it should be.It will preserve the name of Edward Dolliver Newell, a    .. more …

The male giraffe, who was born on July 28, was found dead in his enclosure on Thursday morning when zoo keepers made their morning check.Necropsy results showed that the giraffe died from peritonitis, which is an inflammation of the stomach lining. The inflammation is caused by a bacterial or fungal infection.”The baby giraffe’s loss is a tragedy,” said Greg Bockheim, executive director of the    .. more …

The New York Times and NPR presented “brit shalom,” Hebrew for “covenant of peace,” as a small but growing phenomenon.Brit shalom is frequently promoted by opponents of circumcision as a way to welcome baby boys into the Jewish covenant without the traditional ritual cutting that Jews have practiced for millennia and trace back to a biblical commandment from God to Abraham.Never been to or even    .. more …

After two hours of labor and a 6-foot headfirst drop, giraffe parents, 10-year-old Billy and 9-year-old Imara, welcomed their new baby into the world yesterday at 4:20 p.m. Several visitors had the    .. more …

No sooner had we declared the death of such old-style middle names as Ann, John and Marie — mere connective tissue between the first name and the last — than we started seeing the rise of a whole new generation of undistinguished middle names.There are now officially enough little girls with the middle name Rose, thank you very much, and so, too, have we heard an awful lot of Grace, James,    .. more …

Rebecca Wald is “100% Jewish.” She celebrates the high holidays, her children attend Hebrew school, she lights candles on the sabbath and she was married to a “100% Jewish” man under a chuppah at a traditional Jewish wedding.But unlike most Jews, from the most secular to the ultra-orthodox, she did not circumcise her son. She has never attended ” will never attend ” a bris, the age-old ceremony    .. more …

London – We knew we were in trouble when my mother phoned to say that anything beginning with a “K” was out of the question. “Just awful, all those K names! Kevin and Keith and Ken and Kieran,” she said. “And not Louis! I can’t bear Louis. And you can’t have Charlie – far too many Charlies in our family already. And William and Matthew have gone. “In fact, what you should call him is Thomas David    .. more …

“Layla, you’ve got me on my knees.” When your name is crooned by Eric Clapton, it takes on a whole new level of cool. Undoubtedly chosen for its lyrical, laid-back, la la la sound, Layla also sports an intriguing meaning that suits the song’s bluesy quality: “night” in Arabic. Practically unknown before the song’s release, Layla first hit the U.S. Top 1,000 in 1972, when Clapton’s rock ballad    .. more …

Who’s taller? Hairier? Has more creative taste in baby naming? We see how the original “Barbarian,” Arnold Schwarzenegger, measures up to newbie Jason Momoa. In this film version, Scherfig (“An Education”) has orchestrated each short segment so the episodes flow smoothly together, making it feel of a whole rather than disjointed bits with costume changes. The classic three-act structure of most    .. more …