5 months, The Help, and serious sleeves

Mason was 5 months old on Nov. 4. I grabbed a quick pic of him in his car seat as we were running out the door somewhere. Then I realized how fitting it was to get a car seat pic, as the poor child definitely spends more time in his car seat on a daily basis than any of my other kids.
Love him love him LOVE HIM! Love how he experiments with the range of his voice, how he is rolling more and more (except for the safety implications of this), how sweet he is, how much he loves to always be where the action is, how he pacifies himself with his thumb from time to again (again, this is cute, but if it becomes constant it will not be so cute), how he has been finding his toes, and those big blue eyes with ever lengthening and curling lashes. What I do NOT love is this:
that is one serious cowlick! People constantly comment about me combing his hair to look like this. Let me make this perfectly clear: I.DO.NOT.COMB.HIS.HAIR.LIKE.THIS. It does this no matter what I do. And sure, it may be cute now, but what is this going to look like down the road, I ask?

Mason has started on rice cereal. Those first few bites must confuse the heck out of a baby. And for a 100% breastfed baby, formula mixed into rice cereal can't be that scrumptious. Soon we'll add some fruit. That should help. Overall, though, he seems to grasp the concept fairly well.

Last evening, I hosted the book club discussion for The Help. I had read this a year ago with my other book club, and loved it even more on the re-read. What a book! In typical fashion, I got a bit carried away with my planning. But that book is just seeping with culture and food, and I got swept away. I spent a couple of days baking, and made: cornbread muffins; pralines; a caramel cake; and of course, a chocolate pie. The pie recipe was from the author herself; it was the recipe her grandmother's maid in Mississippi made all the time. Very cool! And no, I did not authenticate the pie in Minny fashion. ;) I made everything from scratch except for the pie crust, which I already had on hand.

I decorated the table in gold and lavender, colors from the book cover, as well as a can of Crisco, a Medgar Evers autobiography, Co-Cola, and a magnolia flower (the state flower of MS). Really, I had so much fun doing this!

We had a fabulous discussion. One of the questions was about Skeeter's crazy hair contraption, and what crazy things have we done in the name of beauty. I didn't have anything outrageous, but did talk about skipping school as a senior one day with a friend and lying in the sun next to a lake for the entire day to achieve some good color. If you know me, you already know this did nothing but give me 2nd-degree sunburns and an obvious giveaway that I had skipped school. The thing that made my mom the most mad was that my tomato-red skin was going to clash with my purple prom dress that she was hard at work making for me.

Well, the sunburn faded in time for prom. But even if I had been glowing red, no one would have noticed it, for the size of my sleeves overtook all else. My mom (who is an amazingly talented seamstress) got a bit carried away in making sleeves for my dress. When she finished them I was taken aback for their sheer volume, but felt bad not using them and hurting her feelings (she and I have since had some good laughs over these sleeves).

So, I was trying to describe these sleeves to the book club girls. Today, I decided that since a picture is worth a thousand words, I dug out the photos, and without further ado, I present you super sleeves:

It's OK, go ahead and laugh. I do! I mean, have you EVER? Isn't there some rule that says sleeves shouldn't be twice the size of one's head???