In spite of all having head/chest colds, we are contriving to make merry around here. Since it's unlikely I'll post again until after the New Year:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all friends, family, lurkers, and drop-ins! Make the most of this, because it's the closest thing to a Christmas card I've done this year.


May your days be merry and bright.

This should help:

Blessings and Peace for the New Year.

~Sunrise

I am so loving this video and everything it stands for.



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Planning on making and decorating Christmas cookies today, and was reminded once more how I haven't seen those little silver ball sprinkles in stores in a long, long time. I don't even know why or when it first occurred to me to look for them, but over the last couple of years a cursory peek through the cake-decorating sections of local craft stores has been unfruitful. So today I looked 'em up.

Whattaya know. They have a name. Silver dragees - it's french; there should be a little accent mark over the "e", but whatever.

And what else do you know. The reason I can't find them is because some (surprise!) environmental lawyer in (surprise!) California sued the companies making and selling them, citing the toxicity of silver. He made a bundle, of course, since the companies gave up and settled rather than deal with the hassle and court fees. This in spite of the fact that we consume minute amounts of silver in our diet daily, people have been eating these sprinkles (and silver leaf, as well) in fancy desserts for like a century without ill effect, and you would have to consume probably all the dragees in France to risk poisoning yourself with it.

They're actually banned in California. Poor, poor California. You can supposedly still buy them in the rest of the 49, but the FDA has ordered that manufacturers label them as "not a food item - remove before consuming" or some such nonsense that nobody follows. Still, they are all but impossible to find.

So thank you, Napa attorney Mark Pollock, you greedy, joy-snatching, fearmongering Scrooge. Thank you for making sure the poor idiotic Americans don't poison themselves on a product that nobody was poisoning themselves on to begin with. I'm sure it makes you sleep better.

Friggin' grinch.

Our town does a neat little event in which Santa in his sleigh is pulled on a giant trailer through the neighborhoods, with a police escort giving ample warning of his approach, sirens ablaze. Last night was our neighborhood's turn, of which I was unfortunately unaware until I heard the sirens. Peanut was back in his bedroom with MRB, reading bedtime stories, and what with my having to run back to the room (since MRB couldn't hear me shouting) to get them, by the time we got to the front door all Peanut saw were the sides and back of the brightly lit sleigh as it went by. Impressive to him, particularly with the sirens going and all, but still, he kind of missed Santa.

I figured it was good enough, and he seemed to think no more of it, but twenty minutes later as we were having our bedtime ritual, he interrupted my lullaby with a heartbroken sob.

"Mama," he gasped, "I can't...I can't..." (sob) "Mama, I can't say hi to Santa."

After I gathered myself up from the melted puddle of maternal compassion to which this reduced me, I cuddled him and told him we'd go visit Santa soon so he could say "hi" up close.

Which is why today I am searching online for the nearest Santa meet-and-greet, and feeling suddenly like a real...parent. I know, I've been one for three years now, but it's somehow strange to start doing things I can remember doing with my own mother. Up to this point, it's been new territory, and now, suddenly, it has this nostalgic familiarity that makes me feel very young and very old at the same time. Funny.

Creeping has begun.

Deuce moves rather like the minute hand on a clock - watching him carefully reveals no appreciable motion, but take your eyes away for a minute and when you look again, he's covered ground. He's most motivated by pursuit of the small and filthy, which is in plentiful supply on my floors these days; if I get down on the ground to coax him along he gets excited and throws his limbs uselessly into the air, rocking and bouncing on the pink cushion of his belly like a little beached whale.

He is extremely interested in solid food but not in any traditional "baby foods" - makes hideous faces at cereal and gags on strained prunes but will suck down chunks of avocado, sweet potato, or banana from his mesh teether with great gusto. Yesterday he nibbled eagerly at a Ritz cracker I was eating, dribbling the sodden crumbs into my lap and lifting up his voice in angry protest when it was gone. I appear to have a Lover of Food on my hands.

We spent Thanksgiving with MRB's family, I enjoying having willing relatives take over the care and entertainment of Peanut, except for Black Friday when they went shopping. As I would rather eat my own eyeballs than shop on Black Friday, the kids and I had a nice quiet day at the house.

We returned with a new (to us) van - a gift from my in-laws, one which I am really sort of ashamed of accepting, but if MRB will not gainsay them I certainly cannot. At any rate it should last us many years - along with the orange tree purchased as a birthday present for me, that I hope to get into the ground in the back yard tonight.

My autumn decor is packed away, and Christmas fills the house.

Life is good.