altarflame | No time, but...

My life is dominated right now by three points of balance:

-A surprising degree of depression and grief over my dead cat.
-A seemingly endless fountain of joy over Elise - her new teeth, her blowing raspberries all over me, her super fast crawling and creeping along things, her eating bananas and cereal, her generally growing and developing into a feisty and perfect thing.
-A deep, proud calm over how great my other four kids are turning out. It's reassuring in the wake of so much upheaval.

All this is set to the backdrop of cumulative sleeplessness.

We set up the Christmas tree, decorated it, hung stockings and set out other decorations, this evening. Love.

Right now Elise and Jake are asleep in my room, side by side, both with their faces tilted to the left and their arms thrown up on either side of their heads. Double love.

And because I like to be able to look back on this sort of thing; we're in a food phase wherein Grant tries out endless recipes for beef stroganoff and endless combinations of fillings and frostings for chocolate cupcakes. Music phase is coming off of Timbaland, all about the Starbucks cd "Stockings by the Fire" and more than anything captured by Radiohead's "All I Need". G listened to it sad while I was in the hospital, and then calm and perfect driving at dusk, holding my hand with the windows down. It's on while we sleep. Surreal from prolonged consciousness.
Reading phase is Dark Tower. Started #5 tonight, as Jake fell asleep on the boob.

Speaking of the hospital...as far as that goes I'm finally getting back to normal. I carry Jake. I wear Elise. I pick up Isaac. I took Ananda to dance and Elise, the boys and I went to the park while she was in class. Today I took the five of them and we walked up to the shopping plaza and bought a few groceries and our (boxed, fake this year so Elise isn't constantly eating pine needles) Christmas tree. *flexes Mommy muscles* I was...exuberant. Like, really. And I didn't even realize why at first, and then it occured to me that I was pushing the double stroller a few blocks and it was easy.