Dofletta! and Three Freaking Weeks!!!!!

Firstly, must announce that Julianna's sister is FINALLY having her baby tonight -- in fact it may already be here -- she was three cm dilated and fully effaced two weeks ago, nobody thought that darn baby could hang in there this long, but she did. We got the call about a half hour ago so Julianna hotfooted it over there to Shanny's house to watch Tommy (their 4 1/2 year old son) while Shannon and Jeff go to the hospital. Considering that Julianna's sisters drop babies like cattle (Moooooooooooo!), I wonder if they even made it into the hospital, let alone to the birthing suite...

We are all very excited. Shannon had a lot of trouble conceiving this baby, miscarried at five months, then miscarried at nine weeks right after I almost miscarried at 15 weeks last Thanksgiving (2003). Monday of that week I bled like mad and ended up in an ambulance, then sat alone and crying in the ER til Julianna could find me -- no thanks to 911, who wouldn't tell her where I was even though I gave them express permission and they called her themselves -- but I digress, don't get me started... Anyway after a week of bedrest I was okay and Delia turned out just fine, but two days after that Shannon miscarried, on the day before Thanksgiving. Since I had just been through that experience I knew something of what she must be feeling. Poor Shannon and Jeff. So we've all been holding our collective breath, uttering little prayers here and there along the way, just hoping, and now it's the day!

I can hardly wait to hold the new baby and remember what Delia was like as a newborn. She's so big now, at seven months, so capable, that I can barely recall what a little helpless thing she must have been. Okay, now I must post a photo. Look for one soon. :)


In other news:

GAAAAAAAAAH!

We get our new house in three weeks! Then we have til almost the end of January to complete moving.

I have a connection at the local Safeway so we are accumulating boxes of all types, and have begun packing already. We are hiring the piano moving done to spare the vertebrae and connective tissues of our loved ones... It's worth a hundred and fifty bucks. We will remodel Delia's room before we move so that we won't have to disrupt her any further once we move her into it. Then we will do our room probably this summer, paint and molding. Right now the entire house is white, white, white, like this one was, and the carpet is cream colored. Why do they even make cream colored carpet?! So rich people with no kids or pets can feel effete? Sheez!

Let's see, what else?

Oh, Christmas. It was nice. Bit of a new perspective on it what with being all religious lately, though it seems to be a subject that my mind can only peek at through its fingers thus far. Cautious, ever cautious. But none of that stops us from the traditional celebration of the commercialism that made this country what it is today, i.e. the gifting, cutting down perfectly good tree for temporary living room decor, gorging on rich foods etc. It was a fairly modest Christmas for us and we spent it with our families and aside from some minor Drama and some Tension, supplied mainly by J's eldest sister and mother respectively, we all had a pretty smashing time overall.

New Year's is our anniversary -- we got together around Easter time, moved in by mid July, and had our first commitment ceremony on New Year's Eve 1999. (We got married last March 5th when Multnomah County was issuing licenses to same sex couples but that is held up in court indefinitely, so it would appear.)

Okay, must post photo now, maybe more later? Am too hyper to sleep what with waiting to hear of Dofie's baby. (J and her sister took to calling each other Dofie, meaning "stupid" in German, when they were teens and it remains to this day an endearing sisterly habit. Shannon calls and leaves voice mails that start out "Hey Dofie-Doh!" which I find terrifically amusing and sweet.)