Merry Christmas

A blessed celebration of our Lord's holy nativity to you and all you love.

And He is coming again, you know. Keep your heads up.

Yawn

Well, America, as I'm sure you've surmised, the force of blog just hasn't been with us lately.

Please accept this TMBG ensemble as your something to do until the CSPP get jiggy with it once again. Don't watch all the videos at once. No, really.

5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Happy New Year!

Our hope and expectation, O Jesus, now appear!

Arise, O Sun so longed for, over this benighted sphere!
With hearts and hands uplifted, we plead, O Lord, to see
The day of earth's redemption that sets your people free!*

*LSB 515:4

Humph day

The nursling is eight months old this week, which means in about eight months I could (DV) be pregnant again!

It's good to have a system.

The commissariat is growing less stubborn, perhaps.

Though it still enjoys a good spit.

One, two, three, five

Wise reader Moore Mama observed that the paths of pregnancy following miscarriage are not clearly marked. And how.

Exhibit A: “How many children do you have?”

I list off our three children and say, “And another baby is due in May,” not, “We’re expecting our fourth child.” I haven’t corrected anyone for referring to this baby as our fourth child, though I never hear that without a moment of painful inner confusion. I just don’t like making people feel sad and awkward, especially since it’s not their fault that the numbers are all screwed up.

Truthfully, I don’t really know how to count, especially publicly, from here on out. Maybe this gets less weird over time, but maybe not (?). There will always be a gap, a silent skip, in the numbers. Since this baby will be but 26 months younger than his toddling brother, there’s not even a dramatic pause to mark the lost one. Miscarriage can be a silent sorrow, indeed.

For now, if I feel like it, I mention the lost one in my baby list. If I don’t, I don’t. But I always, always think of him when I name off my children.

‘Tis an unmarked path indeed. I’m grateful for the guard rails (and fellow travelers) that keep my wandering missteps from tumbling me over a cliff on the dark nights: Ultimately, it matters not how the world, or even I, number my children. No matter how I count them, they count for nothing, unless they’re numbered with the saints. Thank you, Jesus, for choosing, excruciatingly, to etch your love for my children on your very flesh, indelibly.

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands
( Isaiah 49:15-16)

It's a tossup

as to whether I expend more effort undoing what they do, or doing what they undo.

Sure, it was a big rock, and a bit repetitious and discouraging and whatnot, but Sisyphus had only the one task. Mothers find multiple rockslides every time they turn around.

Bulimics and hyperemetic pregnant women can’t both be wrong

Ice cream is the ideal food: Easy down . . . and . . . easy up.

Ew. Sorry.

I know way too many women, including myself in my last full-term pregnancy, who’ve been on anti-emetics—not for comfort or convenience, but because the safety of Mom and/or Baby was at stake. Which got me to wondering: Was it ever thus? What did they do before anti-emetics? Is there some great homeopathic remedy for the inaptly named “morning sickness” that we’ve lost over the years? Or have women undergone a serious devolution from our stronger foremothers?

We hear lots about the sobering infant and maternal mortality statistics of yesteryear, but those usually deal with childbirth and the first year of infancy. The only historical reference to morning sickness that comes to my mind is a brief mention in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The First Four Years. (NB: My mind is like a steel sieve nowadays, and I didn’t actually research this. Please feel hereby invited to do my homework for me.)

Did pregnant pilgrims and pioneers puke to the point of dangerous dehydration? And if so, how did they survive, to say nothing of carrying on with the myriad daily tasks that had to be done? (And I mean really had to be done, not geez-this-place-looks-like-a-wreck done.) Even when the nausea and vomiting knock me down hard, I can summon heat, light, and water with the minimal exertion of a finger. When I can’t make it into the kitchen, the people in the house who are inclined to eat can usually still find something edible in the pantry or freezer—and if not, Dad can make a quick grocery store run. There may be an overwhelming pile in the quadrant formerly known as the hamper, but I’m pretty sure that if I had to hie me down to the crick and scrub the duds on the rocks, the laundry would for real never get done.

Probably women have been cursed with hyperemesis gravidarum ever since being booted out of the Garden, and, like so much of mother-related history, the story hasn’t been told because the matrons of yore were too busy industriously living their lives to waste time blogging about it. :P

I just gotta know

Help me out, America. Amazon's Kindle: Yeah? or Meh?

It's the "read to me" feature that's got me wondering. There are a lot of spaghetti sauce book fatalities in my kitchen; Kindle might save the day, there.

But then again, screens = phhlbbbt. kwim?

And then again further,
that inevitable coffee Kindle fatality would be baaaaaaaaaad.
These things aren't Cylon basestar cool,
whatever they might cost.

Smell ya later

Big. Tired. Hibernating. Or perhaps brumating, considering.

Posting responsibilities have been indefinitely pushed off on my beautiful associates to whatever extent they feel like assuming them.

True Marsh eyes

I mentioned awhile back how I feel about the girlie men of Hollywood. There are others who find the preponderance of girlie men to be problematic.

I've also mentioned, via my friend's post, how I feel about fish. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present to you suitable evidence that the real danger of Hollywood's girlie men is that they are not men, but fish:

I shall plan my cousin's escape from that Canton mad-house,
and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth.
We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and
dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean
and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones
we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.

The only notable difference: Mr. Pattinson is clearly wearing makeup. Beware, America. Beware.

HT on the Derbyshire bit: Mr. Jones.