Where's your Christmas Miracle?

Wow. A pregnant blogger can't help but feel guilty as she starts receiving the "Whoa. Is everything okay?" emails when she fails to post for a few days. Gulp. What happened is this - I forbade myself from posting until I had accomplished a few things hanging over my head. Tonight's post is a little reward for me.

The past few days have been okay. Sunday was pretty horrific - I puked so badly that I had to change my entire wardrobe - including my socks. Still not as bad as when I was pregnant with Arun and threw up all over myself while driving in my car at 70 MPH on a major interstate known as I-35. That was still so much worse. I will say, morning sickness this time around is still bearable because of Arun - he is so damned adorable these days, it serves as a constant reminder of all the goodness this sickness will hopefully lead to. In fact, on Sunday when I went upstairs to change out of my urp-spattered clothes, I turned around while undressing to find that Arun had followed me. He chose that very moment to demonstrate his newfound skill at stomping his feet with unadulterated glee - Happy Feet, if you will. The look of pride on his face was priceless and made me feel better with Renewed Perspective.

Anyway, Innernets, I have an announcement. A Christmas Miracle! A sweater! Knitted, BY ME.

Dear God Almighty, I never thought I would finish this. I had knitted the pieces WAY back in early 2005, then started suffering the ill effects from morning sickness with Arun. Then, I sewed the collar together. Then, I sewed one arm on - badly, crookedly and just wrong, wrong, WRONG. I cried hot tears as I pulled all the seaming out. Then, I didn't touch the sweater for a good 6 months - I was paralyzed with fear. Gradually, this year, I picked it up again and again - slowly figuring it out. Anyway - I finally finished it tonight. It still needs to be washed and re-blocked. And please, if you ever encounter me on the street wearing this thing, do yourself a favor and avoid eye contact with my left armpit. Holey! Moley!

Okay, it's that time of year when people ponder their charitable donations - Dec 31st is just around the corner. We've already given our bit to Doctors Without Borders (they are near and dear to me because my eye doctor goes to Guatemala every year to give exams to kids there as a part of the program). However, we've decided to extend our charitable donation this year to something I just came across on QIR's blog.

QIR writes:
One of my friends went to the Congo and discovered that last year 2/3 of the kids treated in the hospital where she worked had been diagnosed with malaria. Because their families don''t have mosquito nets, these poor little kidlets get re-infected. Her solution? Give the kid a mosquito net upon discharge from the hospital.

First, QIR is a Real Live Person and the charity she links to Bed Nets for Kids was started by her friend, another Real Live Person. What, you say? REAL LIVE people in the blogosphere? Say it isn't so! Seriously though, I just point out that I know QIR is a REAL person because if one is going to start throwing money around, it's nice to know that someone with actual blood flowing through their veins is involved. Anyway, the upshot is this, if you go to Bed Nets for Kids and donate $5 through PayPal, that will provide 5 mosquito nets. X and I are going to donate 50 nets and I thought I would like to share this link in case anyone else is interested. I like giving my money directly to a source, and this seems like a good one. Malaria is pretty simple to prevent, yet 3000 people a day die from it. I know this site struck a chord with X because he remembered as a kid sleeping under a net himself.


Bonus Simian Snap

Just because.