Hello again!

Hi all,

My apologies for the long hiatus. We had an excellent Thanksgiving vacation, and I have a lot of photos I’d like to share, but we seem to be having some difficulty with the computer that has the memory card reader built in. There is a backup card reader somewhere, but I haven’t the foggiest where, so until we get the issue resolved, I’m going to hold off telling you about the trip, other than to say that Ada is a lucky little bee indeed to have the family she has.

In other news, shortly after coming home, Littlebee caught her first cold. It was heartbreaking. You’d think that after all the time we spent in NICU with her as a little one, we could handle the sniffles, but we know her better now, and we’ve gotten accustomed to being able to fix whatever is upsetting her.  It’s tough to watch your little one gurgle and sniffle and choke and not be able to make it all better. We used that sucker-bulb thing, and it made her furious. We propped her crib mattress up at an angle, which worked beautifully until she woke up and wiggled until she was trapped at one end. We ran the vaporizer constantly, went through a whole box of tissues, and did our best to comfort her when she was so congested she couldn’t eat (it’s pretty tough to get a decent milk meal when you can’t breathe through your nose). We worried and fretted and she just smiled and giggled through it all! It’s funny how much more miserable we were than she was.

Now she’s better, has mastered sitting up, has a clearly visible tooth (though I haven’t had any success taking a picture of it yet), and is back to tearing through the living room at breakneck speeds. Today, she stood up.

That’s right.

She was sitting up by the coffee table, bouncing up and down while holding on to the table’s lower shelf. This caused her to bump her head over and over on the underside of the table, so I figured I’d do her a favor and move her before she got hurt. I sat her over by the sofa, and showed her it was just as easy to hold onto the sofa, but less likely to cause brain injury. She happily bounced up and down there for a few minutes, then slowly pulled herself up to a stand. I would have taken pictures, but a) was afraid to leave her unattended with her sweet little head that far off the ground, and b) would not have been able to share said pictures with you anyway, dear reader (please see aforementioned computer woes). She stood for a few seconds, then sat back down and did laps around the living room.

Aside from chasing Speedybee, we’re working very hard on a handmade Christmas. The stores out here started playing holiday music on November 1st, and we decided that was the last straw. We’re not participating in shopping madness this year. Instead, we’re trying to make everything by hand.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the details of these projects with you, as their recipients read this blog. Suffice to say that after the holidays, there will be a lot of tutorials up. I’ve drafted up some pretty awesome gift patterns, and D’s working on a couple of cool electronic gifts for our nephews.

We put up our tree on Saturday. We have a cozy little house, and every year, we fret about where to put the tree/how large it should be. This year, D was doing a bit more fretting than I was, so I handed complete control over tree selection. He came back with perhaps the loveliest 7-foot tall tree I’ve seen (again, pictures to come; it’s disheartening to type that over and over).

Well, I’m having a hard time feeling motivated to continue this any further without any visual aids, so I’m going to stop right here and say that I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you here tomorrow night.  Hopefully with photographs.