So many new things!

Lately, there have been a lot of new things going on in Coraland. She has discovered a fabulous new game: when she is in the saucer in the kitchen and someone walks near to her she can grab their legs! It is so cool to have long arms! Chris often wanders around saying, "Well, I can’t remember what I need out of this cupboard but I sure home the baby doesn’t get me!" And then gasping in surprise when she gets him. She likes playing this game with the gnome pajamas because there is enough fabric in the knees that she can grab it and actually pull it all the way to her mouth. Delicious gnomes!

She is also lucky enough to be the recipient of hand-me-down toys from several sources. One of my colleagues at school passed on to us this terrific dog-piano-xylophone on wheels. Now that Cora is trying mightily to sit, I dug it out of the toy box (a converted Pampers box) and plinked a few keys for her. She gave me a look that clearly said, "With marvels like this in the world, who the heck needs crack?" It’s her first rolling toy, and she finds that pretty engrossing. She plinks it, rolls it, looks up at me, and I say, "Cause and effect, baby, cause and effect."

The universe was extraordinarily kind to us this week. Last week as we were leaving church, a woman from choir stopped us and asked if we’d like a Christmas tree. She had been given one, but her family is going to Vietnam for the holidays, and she thought we might like to have it! On the drive over that morning we had just been discussing how to navigate that delicate balance between the weeks between paydays when all the trees are still fresh and the weeks with paydays when all the trees are dry and dropping needles as fast as they can.

To make room for the tree in the only space in the whole house where it can work we had to move the pack-n-play into the music room. We did this while Cora was sleeping (elsewhere!) and when she woke up and saw it was gone she was a little upset. We showed her it was still in the house - perhaps she thought that if it disappeared that would be the end of having her diaper changed? Later that night, Ann brought the tree over, a beautiful little balsam, almost as tall as me, a perfect shape, it smells heavenly and....oh boy! Much waving of hands and feet and noises of mystified delight. I can’t wait to see how she reacts once it is finally lit up and decorated!

It's nice to have someone around to remind you how many amazing things happen everyday, and how wonderful life can be if you just give it a taste. As long as you have somewhere to go to get a new diaper, someone to give you a pound of hot milk whenever you want it, toys that are new to you, and all the bananas and sweet potatoes you can eat in a sitting...what is there to complain about?