Thanksgiving, snow, december, and the like...

I can't believe it's December already! I've been away from work for 5 days and busy with family and Thanksgiving and such. Now I have a small amount of time to reflect on the week and write an update of sorts.

We had a good Thanksgiving. We visited Brandon's family in Guilford for a bit and then traveled to Kansas City to eat good food with my family. I adore my family and none of them had seen Lillian since her surgery except for my grandparents who housed us while we were down there. They were all surprised and impressed with her progress and how big she looks, to them. I realized this is the first time since late September that I went down there for something other than cardiology.

We woke up to our first snow Saturday morning. I was bummed because I hate snow, and I had planned on doing the kids Christmas pics on Saturday and had wanted to use natural light, and all the clouds were killing that. So I ended up just using black and white backgrounds and artificial light, which is not my forte, and photoshopping them until the white looked White enough.

It takes everything I have sometimes not to obsess about Lily anymore and sometimes I want to just scoop her up and run to the nearest baby scale to make sure she is still gaining weight, still looks good, etc... you know us obsessive moms. Sometimes she looks so big to me but then I remembered, as I put her in 3-6 month size sleep pants the other night, that she is still quite small. Baby clothes are sized so weird - depending on the brand she can and does wear clothes anywhere from 3-6 months in pants to 18 months in shirts. Most of her clothes are 6-9 or 12 months.

I was able to get her a "baby's first christmas" onesie and I was rather excited about that, as Collin was too big to wear any of those things when it was his first Christmas. He was born in March and despite being only 9 months old at Christmas, he was a normal size child and was wearing 12 month clothes. I guess clothing designers assume that any child in size 12 month clothes is at least 12 months old and don't make "first christmas" things that size, because I have never seen one bigger than 6-9 months. I snapped up the last one that size at Walmart last night and put her in it, and she promptly got chicken dinner all over it so it needs washed. It fits, and will probably fit her all through the end of the year unless it shrinks bad in the wash. Gosh, sometimes I forget she will be one next month!

She is getting closer to crawling, she almost gets up on all fours now, she spends much more time on her tummy without crying. I think we are making progress on the teeth, this morning I saw two very distinct bumps. Maybe my child will cut teeth, after all!

I will be calling Children's Mercy again today, as my doctor's office up here still has not gotten her report from the October visit. Is there a wall nearby I can bang my head into? I do think I will be asking the doctor's office about her sweaty hands and feet, just to put my mind at ease. I was going to let it go but it's 20 degrees outside and her feet and hands are still sweating. It's really crazy sometimes - the girl can barely wear shoes because they really make her feet awful.

We definitely have plenty to be thankful for! There were times earlier this year when I wondered if this day would ever come! Our house is festive looking now and we are looking forward to Christmas. Prayers go out to Connor Dickson's family, as Connor (HLHS) earned his angel wings Saturday. Thank you all who continue to read this and check in on us and pray for us - you mean a lot to us!!