Of Angels and Wings

You'd think by the title this would be an entry about something heavenly... but come to think of it, if heaven = extreme happiness, then I guess heavenly it is! :)

"Miniature perfection" are the only words I can come up with to describe what I see every time I gaze upon the littlest Miss Gaston... born just before midnight of February 9, Baby Sofie is the tiniest baby in the Gaston family so far at 5.8 pounds... and yet if she'd been the 'normal' Gaston-sized baby Mai would probably have had a C-section!   BTW, Mai is my brother's wife, at 5'1" (I think) -- she is dwarfed by my brother's 5'11" frame. 

Even as we waited for her birth, we already knew Sofia would be a beauty -- It's not hard to figure that out if you have two attractive parents like she does. :-) As of this writing I already have more than a dozen pictures of my little niece in my digicam, but the one i post here, taken just minutes after she was born, is, for me, a keeper (forcep marks and all!)

So for a little while we will have an angel among us... she may have no wings but while she sleeps and smiles and wakes up to feed we are enraptured by her little sighs, her gentle snoring, her dainty cries...and sooner or later, as I emerge from a mini time warp - 5, 10, 15 minutes - I realize I've simply run out of words to describe the wonder of a brand new life...

...And then there are wings of the different kind, the metallic kind, aloft and flying magically yet scientifically through clouds and - hopefully - clear, blue skies. This is the image I have in my head as my heart is all a-flutter, looking at something entirely different, but no less exciting:


I can just imagine the beeping sound the scanner makes as the red laser light sweeps across the barcode... BEEP!!!

Oh the wonder of technology! I just charged 452 ringgits to my credit card to buy these precious roundtrip tickets from Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap...I've never even seen a ringgit before! And in the space of 5 minutes, just sitting in front of my computer, I've gone from someone dreaming of visiting Cambodia, to one who, despite being a couple of ringgits down, is actually going to be there, God-willing! Joy, oh joy!