A Whole Twelve Months with Our Marnie!

An entire year has flown by in just a couple of winks. 

Marnie still has just two teeth; still butt-scooches her way from place to place; has managed to get herself sitting up before I got to her in her crib a few times; and--breaking news!--last week she pulled herself to stand on the couch for the very first time. She's also started talking on the phone this month (hand-phone, calculator-phone, you name it.). She holds up her end of the conversation on a real phone with a real person on the other end quite respectably, too--a budding talent.

She gives the best hugs and kisses. She shares her food with pleased beneficence. She enjoys being the center of attention. She's been known to wave at strangers (unheard of in this family of introverts). She's quietly spunky (except when she's loud) and sneakily sassy (except when she's overt). She still loves books and singing and her family. 

She's getting more interesting all the time; more lively; more everything.

We are so very grateful for her dimply person, a tiny spark lit right in the middle of our family.

I Never Blog Anymore

 Except when I can't help myself, busyness notwithstanding. 

[T = Tadhg; M = Mama]

I was so looking forward to these days of motherhood, and here they are. 

Zoom.

Three Poems to Share

The Absence 

by R.S. Thomas

It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter

from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.
I modernise the anachronism

of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews

at their altars. My equations fail
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?

Advent Calendar

by Rowan Williams

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

The Glance

by George Herbert

When first thy sweet and gracious eye
Vouchsafed ev'n in the midst of youth and night
To look upon me, who before did lie
Welt'ring in sin;
I felt a sug'red strange delight,
Passing all cordials made by any art,
Bedew, embalm, and overrun my heart,
And take it in.

Since that time many a bitter storm
My soul hath felt, ev'n able to destroy,
Had the malicious and ill-meaning harm
His swing and sway:
But still thy sweet original joy
Sprung from thine eye, did work within my soul,
And surging griefs, when they grew bold, control,
And got the day.

If thy first glance so powerful be,
A mirth but opened and sealed up again;
What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see
Thy full-eyed love!
When thou shalt look us out of pain,
And one aspect of thine spend in delight
More than a thousand suns disburse in light,
In heav'n above.

Eleven Months with Our Marnie

This has been a month of leaps and bounds (or butt-scooches and belly-wriggles as the case may be). 

Sweet Marnie has learned how to move forward in her own wonderfully unorthodox way! She couldn't really be more pleased with herself. She claps to encourage us to applaud her. She grins big enough to show off her first two teeth. And she shrieks like the happiest sort of banshee. She's turning into a spunky little sassafrass in between her snuggles and soft coos, and I'm loving it.

My newest favorite thing she does is follow my lead when I'm scratching or rubbing one of her brother's backs. She looks at me and observes diligently, then starts scratching and rubbing right along with me. 

Every last ounce of her is a delight to all of us. 

          

 

 

    

                         

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Friendly Bedroom Jack-o'-lanterns

Are the very best kind. 

"It's my sweet little pumpkin," says Tadhg.

(Pip, on the other hand, was at first downright scared after the transformation. It's mellowed to distrust at this point, but he definitely wanted the PAINTED pumpkin by his bed.

First Family Photos Ever-- ATTENTION ALL GRANDMAS!!!

(Plus extra photos of Marnie because she looks like a little autumn gnome.)

Last Christmas I was very pregnant with Maranatha. I planned to give all the grandmas a framed family photo as a gift, but I thought it'd be kind of silly to take photos with Marnie in my belly instead of out. So I gave frames with a wedding photo of Rundy and I instead with the promise of family photos to come.

And look! 

I've finally delivered. Marnie. The photos. 

(Thanks for being photographer, Abigail! )

So, Grandmas one and all--I've put the cream of the family photo crop here in this blog post. A lot of them are very similar, just with slight variations in individual expressions. Above each family photo is its assigned number. Let me know which is your favorite and I'll print it out and deliver it. :) If you want the whole bunch so you have them at your disposal, let me know and I'll email you a link to a digital photo album.

First, though, Marnie gnomeling.

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