Grandma got visitors on Friday: My cousin, two of the three kids (the oldest was in school), and my aunt brought her lunch and spent some time with her. My aunt took pictures that got sent to mom, including one of my cousin's son out on the balcony. Grandma has bright red hair and a couple of the trees in the outside picture were just as fiery. My ( Read more... )

My cousin's baby is a week old as of yesterday. My aunt and uncle have been sharing updates and pictures with mom. My cousin got released from the hospital after a couple days, but the baby had a blood sugar issue and stayed until Friday. She is now on a half breast milk, half formula diet to help with that--though over the weekend, she wasn't ( Read more... )

Monday was already a great day; I walked into band knowing I had a new little family member. She does now have a name, and while I won't share it publicly, I can say that her first name is her mother's middle name, and her middle name is my grandmother's middle name. It's very sweet and I love the meaning behind it, and truthfully I'd considered ( Read more... )

When I sat down for dinner after work last night, I discovered a couple texts from my mom: My cousin was dilated to 8 cm and had gone into labor. When I finally responded around 5:30, mom was like, about time!!! Hey, I'm workin' here. I think her first text was sent around 11 AM, so she was impatiently waiting for both me and the baby ( Read more... )

Back at my cousin's baby shower, I was pretty much the only person taking pictures. At the end, there were a couple taken of M with a few people, specifically MK, then mom, grandma, and me. But that's all I really saw. Meanwhile, here I was with my newly-broken camera, snapping away. The door to my camera's battery had a little part break off and I ( Read more... )

I forgot a few things from the shower, including the big one ( Read more... )

We were excited for my cousin's baby shower yesterday. We haven't seen them since J2's wedding three years ago, and we certainly haven't been to his house before. Our job was to pick up grandma, then travel to the house for the shower. Here I was, concerned about the trip from Chicago to Algonquin. Why would I be concerned about going to grandma's ( Read more... )

My aunt did end up having surgery on her wrist this past Friday. This has been quite the ordeal for her. One of the casts she'd had was too tight, leaving her in a lot of pain, and for her to end up having to have surgery anyway was very frustrating. My uncle was texting mom about everything and they sort of felt like she lost time where she could' ( Read more... )

My mom bought gifts for my cousin's baby shower, both for us to give as well as grandma. Grandma then sent along a check for her gift...and got mom's name wrong. Again ( Read more... )

One of the big stories today is that there was a special airlift of formula from Germany to Indiana, the kind of formula meant for babies who are allergic to cow's milk. The mere fact that there is currently a formula shortage and it's taken this long to get any help with it is really unbelievable ( Read more... )