My sister Rachel is notoriously fond of purple and plaid.  One day when she was visiting last year, Mairi Rose asked her, with an air of disapproval, “why do you always wear those squares shirts?” The following morning Rachel came down, sans plaid.  Mairi looked her up and down appraisingly and said, “your not wearing your squares today.”  When my sister explained that no, she had chosen to wear something else, a certain snot nosed little fashionista gave a curt nod of approval and said, “Good!”.  Ever since then, Rachel and her squares have been a long running family joke.  So much so that my other sister bought Seraphina a “squares” shirt of her own just so that she could take a picture of the two of them, wearing squares together.  I think she was too afraid to get one for Mairi.  

And I, being who I am, started knitting squares.  Oh, it was a tedious and excruciatingly slow project!  Sometimes I would just sit across the room from it, giving it the stink eye and muttering under my breath.  It seems I have a tendency to get a bit cranky when you take away my regularly scheduled baby knitting.  Maybe a bit overly dramatic as well.  And all so that I could hand her a gift and say with a giggle, “I made you squares!”  I’m only slightly mollified by the fact that it looks fabulous on her and she loves it.

Books!  I always forget to take pictures of the books.  I’m currently reading Super Nutrition for Babies: The Right Way to Feed Your Baby for Optimal Health.  Book or no book, I don’t know what to feed this girl or anyone else for that matter.  So many of the foods that I believe to be deeply nourishing are the same foods that cause various people in our family problems.  It’s incredibly frustrating.  One of our children when tested years ago was allergic to everything but sugar.  I kid you not.  And every single allergy was a delayed response, making it nearly impossible to figure out which foods caused what symptoms.

I just finished with Kitchen Table Wisdom, Stories that Heal.  Which was excellent and has absolutely nothing to do with food, in case you are wondering.  It’s a collection of interconnected essays written by a psychologist who works with terminal patients and those with life threatening illnesses, along with their families.  I started it before Christmas, but somewhere in the middle of everything being hectic and festive and full of life, regularly coming face to face with thoughts of my own mortality and that of those I love, was starting to feel like a smidgen too much.  I found myself thinking that I really should have stuck with the children’s fantasy novels!  One day out of desperation I started Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, which I found beside Steve’s side of the bed.  And as just about every word Sir Terry writes is tongue-in-cheek, that did the trick and got me through to a time when I could give Kitchen Table Wisdom the serious attention it deserved.