Happy Birthday, Fourthborn!

I’ve mentioned the best friend who came into my life shortly before Secondborn’s arrival. Her kids were the ones who gave Firstborn and Secondborn chickenpox, because that’s what friends are for. Her younger daughter is midway in age between my two oldest girls, and the three of them played well together. She was happy with her three kids, and I was happy with mine while open to having a fourth,when to her utter astonishment she found herself pregnant again. One of those situations where they had thought they were done, but Heaven had one last, extremely choice, spirit waiting to join their family. He has been a blessing and a joy to them.

I went to visit her in the hospital after his birth. She had had some complications that kept her in there longer than the baby’s out send her home time-frame of that hospital. And then I went to the nursery to say hi to her son, who was snoozing contentedly. As I turned to leave, I felt as if I had walked into an invisible wall, for I had the unmistakable impression that it was time to start asking for another baby to love. I was still nursing Middlest at the time; she would have been about eighteen months old.

But I was crazy about babies, and I rather enjoyed the “faith without works is dead” part of getting them to Earth, and their father was more than happy to cooperate [my girls are now going eww]. And with a little help from Jeff Bridges ~ that would be the boxcar scene from Starman, after which I went home and woke up my husband ~ I shortly found myself pregnant and nursing and exhausted and also delighted.

Fourthborn’s birthday is two days before my sister’s and nine days before Secondborn’s. She is my most private child, with a mordant wit and a vocabulary to rival my own. She is also, sadly, allergic to wool. Which I didn’t know when I made her this dress from my own handspun yarn, dyed at a workshop with the Dallas guild sometime in the late 80’s.



Neck detail, with a little discoloration either from the closet at La Casa Cucaracha, or from having been jammed into a cardboard box for 20 years.



I went to the LYS a couple of months ago and could find no non-wool yarn that was pretty enough for her, in the right shade of green, that I could afford. So I found her one perfect copper-enameled button suitable for a Renaissance cloak, which I gave to her on Tuesday night. I think I forgot to snap a picture of it before putting it into the gift bag, and I don’t have time to ransack my photo library. So you’ll just have to trust me that we both think it’s gorgeous.

Just like her, all maternal prejudice aside. Happy birthday, honey!