Hard Times

Not the song, but how things have been lately.

The end of February is always difficult. Lots of painful memories. Usually, the key is concentrating on the good memories, focusing on the positive. This year, with the baby involved, I can't help but wonder what my mom would have thought of him. It's not so much the remembered pain of the loss as the what-ifs and might-have-beens that get me. That, and being 5,000 miles away from the family and friends I grew up with make things a bit more difficult.

I've been doing quite a lot of thinking... thinking about what she would have said about Elijah's blond hair (man, she would be tickled at that. A first child, on our side of the family, having blond hair?), or what she would have thought of his name, or how she would have absolutely loved his cheerful personality and ready laughter.


I'm no good at voluntarily displaying public emotion. I mostly keep it bottled up, hidden away. But I thought it would be good to get how I feel about this anniversary out in the open, kinda remove the elephant in the room and make sure she's remembered properly. Especially since I know most of you out there have a lot of memories too.

Aaaand to lighten the mood somewhat:

Requests

Several folks have made some requests fairly recently, so this update is for you!

For Jean-A and Hannah Pearl:


I couldn't get one of him smiling, sorry! He's way too interested in the camera. But he loves that elephant!

For those random people asking about a video* update:



I got him doing his gobbledygook babbling. It's new, and it's awesome. He gets a bit frustrated at the end there, mostly because the things he's waving don't make any cool smashing or jingling sounds when he shakes them. The "kkh" sounds in the middle are because he's noticed the camera and wants to make friends with it. Seriously, he goes "kkh" or "kee" quite a bit when he's feeling curious and friendly. It's super cute.

For "Realma" in WA:



Elijah was a bit over 4 months when we took this. He looks poleaxed but was smiley the rest of the time, honestly.

He's such a cheerful kid that I'm actually getting a bit of a reputation around the area as the mother with the baby who always smiles. Seriously, I saw three women I know when I was out today and they all commented.

Speaking of which, we've all got this informal coffee chat thing going once a week. It's nice. Doubly nice because we actually talk about something other than our babies. Triply nice because nobody is hyperfocusing on the babies. It's like, wow, maybe I'm still human after all, with normal interests.

Also, just a quick note: Some emails are being auto-sent to my spam folder (again!). This is doubly annoying when I get an email that looks legit and turns out to be some sort of ad for purple dinosaur hooves or something, and it's NOT in my spam folder while something legit IS! So if I've not responded, send again, maybe with a crazy title or something.**

Right, off to bed! If I'm lucky I'll get four hours straight!

*I might remove the videos from YouTube at some point but I'll leave them up for awhile longer - just a bit concerned about privacy issues, but that's a whole other post - one I'll leave til later!

**Bruno and I both agree that the best spam email title we've ever seen is Collective Octopus.

First Time...

"What? What the-- it moves! I can't sit up yet. Hey! What's going on here--"


"--oh. You're smiling at me. Maybe it isn't so bad after all. But I'm still too dang small for this swing. In a minute, despite your presence, I will kick off and insist upon being lifted out."



"Yes, thank you. That's much better. To ensure that I'm not put back into that waggling thing with chains, I will now cling to you with both fists."

How to Wear your Meal

A tutorial in pictures.

Then and Now...

A few hours old...


A few weeks old...



Feeding himself toast at 6 months old...



Standing up (with my invisible hands hovering in the background) at 6 months old...


Why yes, time has flown.

"Banana"

Our local library has a automated check-in/out machine. We thought it was very advanced. You can slide a whole stack of books onto the sensor and it automatically detects all the barcodes at once.

Still, there was that niggling feeling of "not-rightness." I always chalked it up to my feeling of loyalty to the idea of an actual honest-to-God librarian being around. Having worked in libraries for about six years, the idea of a machine replacing a person never sat right with me.

A few days ago, I was... well, semi-vindicated.

Bruno placed his book onto the sensor, pressed the requisite buttons, and the machine obediently spat out the receipt.

Banana, said the receipt.

Bruno looked at the book, which was not only unpeelable and non-yellow, but also had nothing whatsoever to do with bananas.

Banana? He wound up going to the front desk... to the human librarian... to inquire about the oddity.

Three cheers for real librarians!

SNOW etc

Sorry for the lack of updates! Both Elijah and I came down with bad colds this week... perfect timing, because London got about 8 inches of snow on Monday! Proper, actual, fluffy, snowbally snow...


And guess who couldn't enjoy it?!

Well, I did venture out for about five minutes... enough to get a few snaps of our street and Bruno's car.


Since the trains were majorly affected by the weather, Bruno worked from home via laptop/Blackberry... leaving me pure untouched snow to make footprints in!

I guess the only downside to it all (apart from being sick and not feeling up to walking around a lot) was the grouchy attitude of some folks. Granted, we're in a credit crunch and work is important, but I saw a guy being interviewed on television who wouldn't stop going on about how he was losing money. In the background his children were pelting each other with snowballs and squealing with delight.

I couldn't help thinking that in twenty years' time that man would give anything for one more snow day with his young children. Priorities, eh?

Elijah has discovered that sitting atop his daddy's shoulders is one of the most wondrous things in the world. B is looking grouchy because a) it took me a long time to find the camera and b) well... there was a slight drool issue. (Really though, he smiled the first four times I took the picture, until I realized I was shooting in video mode... oops.)

A special thank-you goes out to Chris O in WA for poking me for an update... and everyone should congratulate her on her new grand-nephew born December 12th!

I'll update soon on Elijah's 6 month milestone (it was Thursday!)