19

Nineteen days, nineteen pictures. I only put a few of them in as thumbnails, out of sympathy for people with slow connections and uncertainty about how many pictures anyone besides my mother would really want to see. My camera is making me a little crazy lately and so the picture quality is not outstanding. But the baby cuteness is, so I'm posting them anyway.

This one is from a few hours before my labor started. I am standing on the toilet, cleaning the blind slats with my trusty toothbrush. (I haven't touched that toothbrush since.)

The next morning I washed the meconium out of her soft, soft hair. I don't know if it will be red, but I think it will be curly.

Dad needed a little help with the Times crossword and she was happy to oblige. 

Before I crashed on Christmas afternoon, the grandparents took the first picture of all seven of us. (I do not really expect pictures of all seven of us to get much better from here.)

Here she is a week old, helping me bake a clementine cake for her oldest brother's birthday. The birthday boy pronounced it good.

The next day was New Year's Eve, and we celebrated with a batch of chocolate fondue.

She is so new-looking in this one on the right: you can still see the broken blood vessel in her left eye from the birth squeeze, and the peeling new baby skin on her neck.

In this one I am multitasking: nursing the baby, knitting her a hat, and reading St. George and the Dragon to the two younger boys (Pete is wearing part of Joe's old dragon costume).

Here I needed to see if the hat fit. (It didn't. Ripped it back to before the decreases and added more length.) This is not a good picture, but I get a cozy feeling from it even though the top of my head is missing -- the Gladly females in their handknit sweaters. It makes me feel all Proverbs-thirty-one-ly. (That is totally a word.)

The boys want to make sure she doesn't get lonely. Sometimes Pete leaves her a friend to keep her company. Joe thought maybe she'd like to try out his sword. Marty was busy reading, but he made sure she had a hand to hold. She doesn't have to worry much about being lonely, though.

Grandma came to visit for Epiphany and was treated to a big baby smile. It's very blurry, because those early smiles are hard to catch, but it warms my heart anyway.

One of my college roommates, who used to lend me her clothes back then, sent me a big fun box of baby things. I love the stripes.

And one more: here's my mom's eye view.