Bede liked the snow. This was his first time in it, really.

My friend Christy is a SUPER MAMA. She’s gone thru pituitary surgery and is still recovering, and she has six kids (who are all amazing people too!) and she deserves the best of everything this world has to offer. Anyway, her baby Ash loves Steve, so I made him this hat.

Now C, if the weather cooperates you can come get this whenever you want, or I can mail it to ya! Call me!

Natural Variation, an autism blog.

This is Gilbert, asleep on my most treasured posession.

My grandmother crocheted this afghan about 25 years ago, give or take a year. She worked on it for a long time, in free moments. I remember her hands, long and slender fingers. She was a smoker, and one of those people just born to have a cigarette in their hands. Whatever she did with her hands looked elegant.

It’s a riot of color, that afghan. Not a single square the same. Grandma was all about the bling; if something could be adorned, it was. (I didn’t get that genetic tendency, but have definitely passed it down to my elder daughters!) I remember her bracelets and rings when I was a little girl, her gold lame cigarette case, her china white complexion and her bright red lipstick.

This was her favorite time of year, especially late in her life. She had a job as the pie server at a local cafeteria, and spent far too much of her no doubt meager paycheck on her grandchildren. I remember her wrapping paper was the shiniest, her ribbons and bows the most elaborate you’d ever see.

She died when I was 8 or 9. She had been ill for a long time, and declining, and hadn’t spoken for a day or so, but her last words were from a dream, “Oh! Look at all the beautiful presents!” and she was gone a few minutes later.

Merry Christmas, Belva. We miss you.

I’m so thankful for my family.

and for my early Christmas present, from Sean to me and the girls, our new Gilbert-don’t-touch-that. Squee!

Woman kicked off plane for breastfeeding one year old baby

Gillette said she was seated in the second-to-last row, next to the window, when she began to breast-feed her daughter. Breast-feeding helps babies with the altitude changes through takeoff and landings, Gillette said. She said she was being discreet — her husband was seated between her and the aisle — and no part of her breast was showing.

Gillette said that’s when a flight attendant approached her, trying to hand her a blanket and directing her to cover up. Gillette said she told the attendant she was exercising her legal right to breast-feed, declining the blanket. That’s when Gillette alleges the attendant told her, “You are offending me,” and told her to cover up her daughter’s head with the blanket.

“I declined,” Gillette said in her complaint.

Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached the Gillettes and said that the flight attendant was having the family removed from the flight.

Words fail me. So angry.

I went to the dentist this morning, to have that tooth I was telling you about a few months back taken care of. I wanted it extracted, not repaired, and expected to have to squabble with the dentist about it (”But we can give you a root canal, and a crown, and it will only cost you some insanelyhigh amount of money!”) and I wasn’t disappointed. He looked so crestfallen when I wouldn’t sway, but the tooth has had two fillings already, and had cracked in half as well, so putting more money into it was very nearly flogging a dead horse, in my opinion. Anyway.

Sean came with me, bearing Trixie so she could nurse right before I went back and hopefully make it through the procedure without needing me again. It was not to be. They had just gotten me prepped for the first numbing injection when she started to wail. I said “Ah ee o ur i aher” and stood up, taking off my little bibby thing. They were nonplussed, but what did I care? I went out to the waiting room, nursed her for about five minutes, and came back in. I asked the hygeinist hygeineist assistant if she’d ever had to stop so the client could nurse a baby, and she said she wasn’t sure. Later, the dentist said no, he hadn’t. I told him he had something interesting to talk about at dinner tonight then.

As I lay there, I thought about how removed from the concept of mother/baby oneness the typical western mentality is. I tend to think of my nursling as an extension of myself, not as her own person. No, that’s not it. I think of both of us as a unit, not her as part of me. I’m just as much a part of her as she is a part of me. She has never been separated from me, at all, and I wasn’t about to start today.

As for the extraction itself, it went as well as those things go. Lots of pressure, disgusting cracking noises, a wad of gauze and it was all over. I spect it’ll hurt a bit tomorrow but really after the toothache itself it will be nothin. My mom stayed with the older four and all had fun. And she paid for the whole shebang, because she’s awesome like that. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Bede’s video ended, so he’ll be wanting the computer back. I’m off.

She’s hard to photograph. She’s so lovely!

4 second AVI of Bede in motion, no audio

Your humble narrator (Faith took this!)

Trixie in my lap.

Sean finished his project! He is so handsome and we love him so much!

Gilbert is irked that I won’t let him take a picture.

Faith on the sofa, looking a lot like Bede in this picture I think.

Abby and Bede escaped capture this time.