Gambling...

Above is the result of Maya's self feeding attempt. Although her gross motor skills are better than average, her fine motor skills could use some work. She is supposed to be working on her pincer grasp i.e. picking up food with two fingers. She has trouble with this but she definitely wants her freeze-dried yogurt treats so she dives head first into them. A few actually land on her lips but the rest end up on her face.

Last week on one of those morning shows, they had a set of biracial twins: one was blonde, blue-eyed and pale; the other appeared to be totally African-American. Some medical expert said the chances of this happening was just one in a million. Hmmm, a set of siblings in which one looks like the mom and one looks just like the dad I believe is more common than that. Apparently these twins attract plenty of stares and comments though I think most twins do, certainly my identical  twin nieces did. Some of the comments though are quite racist.
I am hoping that Ms. Maya won't be exposed to these comments but I know that she will. My ex-friend once said something about Naomi's brillo pad headed baby though for the record, Maya's hair, however scant, is quite silky. The new hairs are definitely blond, the old dark hairs are slowly falling out.

Still cold here with the dreaded north winds..maybe in April spring will come.The vultures have returned. I saw several (circling closely overhead..do I smell like carrion?)on my run this morning. I spent one day shopping with Steve, mainly for books. Yesterday we went out for lunch with Josh in between his trips. Last weekend he was with one group of friends in Chicago, next weekend he will be with another group in
Austin  TX. Julia meanwhile spent the weekend in FL with her sportscaster friend covering the Tigers, 90 degrees there yesterday. We went to the restaurant with the cheddar ale soup though I didn't have it given its fat content.  Our waitress said No problem on cue when asked to fetch stuff. Josh regaled us with stories of his gambling friends. I hate gambling. It is definitely a disease and worse, it runs in families, Steve's specifically although thankfully he for the most part does not engage. Josh presumably does not either though he certainly is present while his friends do it. What Steve and Josh do though, is play the stock market. This is better because at least there is no house that has the edge. And I guess I do too, though passively. I am hoping against hope that what we have a large portion of our 401K in will rise. Finally it has begun to. Do we bail out now or keep holding? Clairvoyance would indeed be useful.

When I first received my dire cancer prognosis, the silver lining I found was at least I wouldn't need to be fretting about this. I refused to meet with financial advisors and told Steve, it's his future, not mine. But chances are increasing that this will matter.

When I had Josh, I kept trying to extend my unpaid leave as the boy just would not sleep through the night. During this time, I joined another mom's group that met during the day. All of them had two kids, one Shanna's age and one Josh's age. I lost contact with them after I went back to work. The other day though I noticed that one of the babies Josh's age just died in an accident. He was only 29.