Birthdays and babyshowers

Today my Bitty Girl turned two years old.



This is the sweetest, smartest baby you'd ever hope to meet. I know you're saying: "Hey, I've never heard Blue really brag on her children before!", well it's true. I always go by the old Scots belief that if you sing your child's praises too loudly that the elves will come and take the child and leave a changeling:

The elves once took a child away from its mother, and left in its place a changeling with a big head and staring eyes, who did nothing but eat and drink.

(ok, ok, this kinda sounds like all of my babies ...)

Anyway, all my children have their good attributes, but my Bitty? She's going to be my research physicist or the celebrated doctor. Not that the others aren't smart enough but that she has that combination of good nature and canny cleverness. She's the polar opposite of her sister. 10 months and 180 degrees of personality separate the two. The Human Crash Test Dummy is sensitive, eager to please, emotional. Every tiny slight or setback provokes tears.

Bitty? No way. She falls? She gets up, laughs and goes on. Her sibs refuse to share? She vocalizes about it then moves on to another toy. I demand that she does something? She smiles in the face of my displeasure.

My first two are very competitive and vie for attention. Bitty cares not. My first two want my approval. Bitty loves me, but pleasing me? ... eh ... whatever.

She does love her daddy though:

I have to confess that I adore her spunk. I love that I see so much of me in her. That who-gives-a-rip attitude.

*sigh* I'm gonna regret this later, aren't I?

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OK, so I've been invited to a babyshower.

What is it about not being able to get pregnant that causes you to be a magnet for baby showers?

The shower is for my SIL, M. She's a lovely, smart, taciturn (like her brother) person and I'm absolutely thrilled to bits that she'll be the proud mom of baby 'I' here soon.

I'm really glad that the only - and I mean only - good thing about my NOT being preggers is that I won't be upstaging her.

See, Evil Genius Husband is the semi-slacker youngest child; the one who was expected to, well, slack his way for a bit. Instead he met me, unleashed his Power Sperm, and the rest is history. His oldest sister, H, followed with her daughter, E, in between my Boy and my Human Crash Test Dummy.

Now is M's time.

So, I won't be able to attend the shower but I want to get her a gift. I want to get her a good gift. Something that she needs. She'll be inundated with cute, expensive, and useless. I want something that she really finds uselfull. Something she'll appreciate. But what?

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How cool is this? It's a wet-suit-like thingy that can save the life of a woman who has hemorrhaged in childbirth.

My only question is this: It's these very poor women in underdeveloped countries who are the ones who are dying and who can be most helped by the suit, right? So how is a very poor woman in an underdeveloped country who's giving birth in a hut in the middle of nowhere going to get access to his thing if she hemorrhages?