Mariam Christmas and Happy New Year!

I am excited and proud to announce that on 2:55 am, December 21, I became a father for the first time! Mariam Evelyn Lee was born just 3 hours after her due date after 21 hours of labor and came in at 7 pounds, 10 ounces with a full head of dark brown hair that has become the stuff of urban legend in the local maternity ward.

Both mom and daughter are doing fine. Dad is starting to see and hear things due to sleep deprivation, but it can only help his comic writing efforts. (right?)

I know that everything that people tell you about having a kid changing your life is a cliche', but that is because it's pretty much true. It's not so much that the feedings and diaper changes take up all of your waking hours. Mom does half of them, after all and you can make up that time by simply not feeding yourself or foregoing the changing of your own underwear. It's the vast amount of time afterwards that you spend just holding your new baby and being totally mesmerized by them that makes the days zip by.

But there finally comes a time when you realize that poop isn't really that endearing, and that you need to let the kid have some privacy and you should really get back to the drawing board and the Blogger dashboard. So look for the strip to return Monday, January 7.

In the meantime, the Lee household will be ringing in 2008 by ordering in Indian food and falling asleep in front of the TV halfway through some kind of movie with our mouths agape, snoring rapturously. If the baby lets us, that is.

If you want to see what I've been up to in 2007, check out my redesign of John Lee Studio.com. Also, Ted Rall wrote a nice op-ed piece on the 26th that sums up my feelings about 99% of most "alt" comix.