St. Mark the Ascetic

An Orthodox saint who is also known as a wonder-worker. Here's a short bio on him from orthodoxwiki.org:

St. Mark was an ascetic and miracle-worker, sometimes known as Mark the Faster. In his 40th year he was tonsured a monk by his teacher, St.John Chrysostom. Mark then spent 60 more years in the wilderness of Nitria (a desert in Lower Egypt) in fasting and prayer, and in writing many spiritual works concerning the salvation of souls. He knew all the Holy Scriptures by heart. He was very merciful and kind, and wept much for the misfortunes that had befallen all of God's creation.

On one occasion, when weeping over a hyena's blind whelp, he prayed to God and the whelp received its sight. In thanksgiving the mother hyena brought him a sheepskin. The saint forbade the hyena in the future to kill any more sheep belonging to poor people. He received Communion at the hands of angels. His homilies concerned such topics as the spiritual law, repentance, sobriety, and are ranked among the preeminent literature of the Church. These works were praised by the Patriarch Photius the Great himself.

A New Baby on the Way

My wife is pregnant with our second kid. With our first, it seemed pretty surreal. We were always struggling to figure out how to discipline, or how much TV to watch, or which time is the best to send her to bed, what should we feed her, and just normal, new-parent kind of stuff.  Now that we are having a new baby in the family, I feel like I am mourning something: a phase that has come to an end. Our daughter will no longer be our only child--she will no longer be an only child. There will soon be another baby in the family, and I feel like I am mourning the loss of a phase. But everything passes; everything will either change or develop into something new and wondrous, a new thing to be discovered. Anyway, to run the risk of becoming melancholic and sentimental, I must stop here, and just add this: it is very exciting to have children.