~’King Winter in his palace’ by Galen~

Fact:  My father still buys me pajamas for Christmas.  And not just me.  There are matching ones for my sisters and my mother as well.  Now my sisters are still young enough to be terribly embarrassed by this.  And I’m probably not scoring a whole lot of points here by broadcasting this all over the world wide web.  (oops)

It sometimes puts me in mind of a Sarah Ban Breathnach’s essay where she talks about moving to London in her 20′s and her mother sending her off with a pair of footed pajamas, which she of course immediately disdained and tossed, preferring to freeze in slinky little nighties.  A decision she came to regret in her middle years when she started thinking those cozy jammies might not be so bad after all.

But personally, I’m all for it, because let’s face it, when do I ever buy myself pajamas? (answer: almost never)  At least this way my backside is literally covered.  Plus, as a grown woman, with 4 children, the oldest of which is nearly a teen?  If there is someone out there that thinks I’m still adorable enough for matching pajamas, I’m surely not going to argue.  Besides, this year’s have tiny red birds on them and I like birds.  Then again, so far none of them have had feet.  That may be pushing things a mite too far.

This by the way, is how you are most likely to find me these days…in my pajamas.  I’ve kind of been recouping.  I’m still doing stuff.  I’m just doing it while in my pajamas.  For the last several days, since the last of our house guests have left, I’ve only grudgingly gotten dressed when life requires me to leave the house.*  I don’t think the outside world is ready for me and my flannel pants.  But it’s back to the usual this week, so the p.j.’s will have to wait for bedtime.  Preferably an early bedtime.  I refuse to forsake my new wooly slippers though.  Even if they cause me to bear a striking resemblance to an elf (of the strange looking Santa variety, not the potentially alluring forest kind).

I’m out of the habit of posting.  This happens to me every year around this time.  Too much has happened in too short a time and I don’t even know where to start.  And so you are getting a ramble, starting with my pajamas and winding it’s way down to???  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

Random tidbit: my aunt sent the kids 12 boxes of origami animal kits, with 8 animals per box.  If you can do the math then you probably have a pretty accurate picture of my house completely covered in little paper animals.

Màiri Rose went in for blood work, just after Christmas.  One of the things that has been worrying our minds is the partially engorged deer tick that I took off of her just before Thanksgiving.  It was November, for goodness sake, and I’ll admit that tick searches were far from my mind.  I found it tucked up under her arm, hidden by her wooly undershirt.  Had it been anywhere else on her body I would have spotted it almost right away, but I’d been leaving her undershirt on to keep her warm as I changed her in our chilly house and so it went unnoticed for who knows how long.  We sent it in for testing and it came back positive as a carrier for Lyme disease.  After all we had been through last summer with my illness, and considering how tiny she still is, Steve and I were very concerned.  The test for Lyme disease in humans if notoriously inaccurate.  But the statistics become better if you wait to test 6 weeks after the bite.  Of course that also gives it six weeks to build up in your body.  So we spent those 6 weeks, searching her body everyday for any signs of a rash and worrying.  Not just about the illness itself, but last year, she developed this phobia about doctors where she would start to panic if they tried to touch her and completely freak out if they so much as tried to say, look in her ear.  So, sitting still for a blood draw, at the hospital where she’s never even been before?  Not an encouraging scenario.  We worked it out so that it would be just the three of us, and I talked to her all about what would happen up front.  While Steve went through the laborious task of registering, we went to the gift shop.  She had little to no interest in the toys, but was smitten with the miniature Christmas village they had set up.  After the shop, she skipped down the hallway to the lab, where she sat on my lap, and never so much as twitched the entire time they were working on her.  At one point, long after the needle had been in her arm, while they were digging it around, still trying to locate a vein, she turned around and kissed me.  When it was done and they got through telling her that she was the best patient that they had ever had, of any age, they told her she could pick out a gift.  She hoped down off my lap and skipped on over and my Waldorf born and raised little daughter picked out her China-made bag of little plastic ‘Cowboys and Indians’, and skipped out to the hall, while Steve and I stared at each other slack-jawed for a moment at our fortune before it dawned on us that we probably ought to go follow her!  And as I slipped on her sweater she said to me, “Mama, is it ok if I share my new toys with Galen?”  I’m pretty sure that I managed to just say, “of course you can, sweetie.” while in my head I blubbered something more along the lines of, “of course you can do or have anything you want you amazing, perfect, incredible little thing”.  The closest thing we had to tears the entire time was me misting up as she skipped back down the hospital corridor and out the door.  A couple of days ago she told me that the next time a tick gets on her she thinks she’s going to pick out a football.

~With my mom on her visit~

The results came back, three days sooner then expected, and negative, much to our relief.

As a Christmas gift to us, my sister watched the kids so that Steve and I could go out for our anniversary for, uhm, the first time ever.  We went to my favorite yarn store (for supplies for Rosebud’s birthday gift), then to a movie, which was so-so, back to the yarn store (because I spotted something, but didn’t have time to investigate for fear of making us late to the movie!), followed by Indian food, which was also only so-so, but it was very nice to be out together!

The double birthday was good.  Somewhat quiet and yet full, with flurries swirling around snow globe style.

She wanted a tea party with “lemonade cookies”.  We used her new tea set (from here).  And I baked these.  There have been a lot of tea parties around here lately.  I think she likes the washing up after almost as much as the party itself.

This photo isn’t from her birthday, but from a random tea-party clean up.  Clearly this day was a pajama day for her too.

He wanted ice-cream sundaes and a movie. We did those the day after because there is only so much celebrating one can fit in a day.  We ate Coconut Bliss with various toppings and watched the 1960 version of Swiss Family Robinson, which was one of my favorites as a child.  We recently finished reading the book aloud, so…  But of course the movie really has nothing to do with the book!  It seriously irritated me that they took the two female characters, who are pretty tough gals in the book and turned them into these weepy-whiny things that shriek every time they spot a lizard.  bleh.  But Iain and Elijah loved it (the two others were in bed) and saw in it a magical land, with lots of laughs, where people ride on ostriches.  Which is just what I saw in it when I was little.

On their actual birthday, as I was baking with the Wee Girl, Elijah was off finishing up her gift and Galen was making more pictures (he’s opening a shop you know, with the ones he deems ‘good’ going for a full $.02, and the disappointing ones listed for a penny) I heard the door close behind me.  I looked out the window to find this:

Oh, sweet, silly, winter boy of mine!

*it should probably be noted that I’ve been writing this post for five or six days now, so time references may no longer be accurate.  In retrospect I probably should have published three or four posts instead of one really, really long one…