Cliffhanger poetry

Please note: we had good reason to believe that our baby boy would be eight days old today, and, well, you know how that worked out. And yet, I wrote this in advance and sonnets aren't the most spontaneous form and I'm running it anyway. You'll just have to accept that it's a little incomplete until the boy actually does agree to come be born. And then, probably two months or six years from now when he is actually eight days old, we will hold his bris, the Jewish ceremony at which he will be circumcised and have his name announced before our community and family. All of which, of course, is requisite prequel to his receiving of his all-important Internet Initial. So until then, a poetical tease:

It's Perfectly Poetical Tuesday, in which we are challenged this month to write some Shakespearean poetry. And so, because birthing a child reminds you that you can do absolutely anything, may I present my Shakespearean sonnet of lyrical iambic pentameter, with an octet introducing an quandary and a caesura and a sestet introducing a solution, and, as it turns out, a Spencerian rather than Shakespearean rhyming pattern. Oops. Should have looked these things up instead of relying on foggy college memories. Blame the sleep deprivation: I am, after all, a mom to a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and an eight-day-old. (Dude. That's crazy.)

But isn't he cute?
[pic]
Oh. I don't have one of those yet, do I...

And don't you want to know how to refer to him?

‘A rose by any other name
Would smell as sweet,’ we all are taught,
But what if Nature’s famous dame
Was left unnamed, as if forgot?
‘What’s in a name?’ but Man’s whole lot,
His reputation, his life’s zeal.
So whence a babe is born he ought
Be dubbed strong names with great appeal.
The term you’ve had was never real.
The ‘Groundhog’ tag was naught but air
Until the day we could reveal
Your given name’s initial, fair:
For all the online world to see
You’re henceforth known as little __.