"Better Than A Lava Lamp"

One of those things that I missed blogging during my November disappearance was Thanksgiving. One of Evelin's maternal uncles, J---, has a restaurant in Roxbury and each Thanksgiving he opens the place up for the family. People arrive early and use the facilities to cook up everything, and by afternoon everyone is there for the meal and fun.

This year, Evelin's father's brothers and their families also came along, so it was quite a large crowd — 50 or so people (including three babies) and three dogs. For the most part, Celeste was good, but a bit overwhelmed. She tended to deal with it by shutting down and sleeping a lot. She also didn't like being passed around too much; she could stand being held by someone for about 5 minutes and then she wanted her mumma again.

Anyway, two of Evelin's college-aged cousins were watching Celeste sleep in her carseat (they're the oldest two of five, so they have a bit of familiarity with babies), and one of them made the comment "She's better than a lava lamp."

We certainly agree.

The other funny thing on the trip happened before I got there. (Evelin drove up early to spend some time with her family and I flew in on Thanksgiving morning — Celeste had no problems with the D.C.–New England drive, she slept most of the time with one or two stops for a feeding.)

Celeste's cousin, K---, who's about six months older than she is, was staring at Celeste in fascination one evening. They were both sucking on pacifiers and being calm when K--- started motioning like she wanted to pet Celeste. Evelin moved Celeste a little closer to K---, but instead of a loving caress, K--- grabbed Celeste's pacifier, yanked it out of her mouth, and threw it across the room. Celeste was a bit stunned and everyone else just laughed ... until Celeste started to cry ...