Baby time, Big Girl time

I've been reading All Buttoned Up, a blog I came across while reading my sweet brother's blog, Endlessly Rocking (every time I try to type the name of his blog, my fingers choose to type "Englishly"---makes me wonder how many times a day I must type the word "English"--my job has become a physical part of my being!).

Two things in All Buttoned Up caught my eye, one profound, and one completely not profound. First, the profound: there's a beautiful baby in Melissa's house, which reminded me so much of the early baby days in our house (those were totally pre-blog days--I'm not sure I would have been awake, alert, or in any frame of mind to blog back when Elliot or Astrid were three months old). Reading about intense chocolate cravings, strange sleep patterns, and the seemingly small tasks that take on Herculean proportions during early baby days made me smile. Of course, as I was trying to read about the sweet challenges of life in Melissa's house, I had a slightly grimy, constantly hungry, veryveryvery busy five-year-old hovering over me. In the space of 20 minutes, I got to intervene in two arguments about which North American animals are biggest (Elliot and Astrid were watching a Spanish-language show called "Reino Animal"), explain why pastrami sandwiches and gum are not typical fare at 8:30 a.m., show Astrid how to draft a pattern for a fleece Pokemon creature, get a bagel and a cup of milk for her, facilitate critical interpretation of a Chuck E. Cheese commercial, prevent her from using a black Sharpie marker on her face, tell a story about how her maternal grandmother once stalked some bison in Oklahoma....There's probably stuff I'm forgetting.

How do I blog now, I'm wondering? All stages of parenting present sweet challenges, I suppose.

The unprofound thing I liked seeing in Melissa's blog was the same IKEA fabric I've been using to make Astrid's jumpers and potholders for various family members. I always feel cheerful when I see that fabric--it feels like a friend! I can imagine a tiny secret sisterhood of people around the world who have an item of clothing made out of that fabric. They'd be able to recognize each other from a mile away.