Christmas is over

As if looking at a calendar wouldn't tell you that already. But we have finally taken down our holiday decorations and denuded the tree, so we're done celebrating here. I still have a few xmas cards to mail out but I'm dubbing them New Year's cards so I'm golden.

This has been a weird Christmas.  Good, but weird.  As mentioned, oh, a half dozen times in the previous post, I gave birth to a little girl right before Thanksgiving. We were delighted to see her but a bit surprised, as she came two months early.  Eventually, I left the hospital but she stayed so she could continue baking to full-term.  Her official due date is in just under two weeks, and they've told us that preemies typically stay in the NICU until roughly around their due dates, plus or minus a few weeks. So we have spent the past nearly seven weeks going back and forth from the hospital visiting her. Never have I so fervently wished for warm weather, or at least, non-snowy, non-rainy weather, as we have been using our scooters for transport. And it cut into how much festivity we were able to put up with in the meantime. 

She's doing really well and, knock wood, is filling in nicely. She now has chubby baby legs!  And we are trying to look for silver linings: we can ask all the questions we want from the nurses about how to deal with a baby, she has very experienced (and expensive!) caregivers taking care of her, and all we have to do when we visit her is hold her.  We change diapers and all that too, but we don't have to if we don't want to.  I am sure that some day, the Texan and I will laugh about how there was a point where we were begging her to eat but that day hasn't come yet. The sooner she can take her milk regularly via bottle, the sooner she can come home.  Here's hoping that's sooner rather than later!