Well.  Thanksgiving has come and gone, and we are full of turkey and treats and I’m eager for a lull in the activity…but as I write I realize that the big boys have their birthdays coming up (Lee & Horus), and then there’s Hallowe’en, and that seems to run on a little bit to Christmas…So I allow myself to lull, and relinquish.  So hard for me to do sometimes.

I have been dealing with yet another medical issue which I promise not to go on about too much, involving some long and arduous (but not life-threatening) surgery, which I will have to go through again tomorrow, in Halifax, and perhaps a few more times still.  I have felt not quite myself lately.  This has been a lesson in letting-go of certain things–ideas of who I am.  No, you are not really your face, Yolande.  Strange.

Felix is exactly two months old today, and it struck me that there are many fewer photographs of him than the older siblings, who run ahead, and stand in front, and make faces, while the little one is carried along for the ride, literally.  But I do want to formally express, for the record, just how delightful Felix Alexander Clark really is.  Every age has its charms, but there is something quite magical about these earnest smiles, and the effort that goes into Felix’s squeaks and squawks of recognition and his bright-eyed reckoning of the world.  This boy, like his brothers and sister, is so smart and sweet.  And you know? I *love* that we all know this about our own children.  I don’t begrudge anyone going on about the perfection of their kids.

It did cross my mind when Felix was born that maybe this one would resemble me…but no, the spitting image of lovely Lee.  Lucky! Lee is very beautiful underneath the shaggy scruffiness and the inexplicably ubiquitous bandanna.

Anyway.  Things are fine and joyful and challenging and satisfying, and at times, irritating, but mostly good.  Lee and I did have an argument today, and when the temperature started to rise, Horus popped his head around the corner and said You two are being completely ludicrous. This bullseye observation, needless to say, broke the tension.  The wisdom of our almost-four year old.

I am thankful for my children, and my family, my mother and father.  I am thankful for the woods, and the sun, for food and water, for all of my senses, for forgiveness, for the keep-on-goingness of life.