Welcome, and thank you for making Jenny an aunt

My brother and his wife had their first baby this week. My s-in-l was in labor for, no lie, eleventy hundred hours before she ended up having a C-section. Everyone is doing fine and they're home.

And here's precious baby Madeline:


Lookit that li'l rosebud mouth!


This was the conversation I had with Jenny during the Multiple Days of Labor while we were waiting for news.

Jenny: ALSO! I AM SO EXCITED TO BE AN AUNT!
SO EXCITED!
I mean, I know I technically am one already but it doesn't feel like it.
I think I'm going to like this being an aunt stuff.

Me: Oh my gosh, that's right! You've NEVER BEEN AN AUNT!
How did I not realize this? The rest of us have been aunts but you were always the mom!

Jenny: I need to MAIL HER THINGS.

Me: YEAH. Yeah you do.

Now Jenny gets why I was always turning up with baby clothes and accessories and books and toys for Savannah. You become an aunt and some sort of switch goes off and you Must. Buy. Things. For. Baby. It is a very, very real force.

They're coming out in January for coolboy's wedding and I cannot wait to eat that baby's face.

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My new favorite thing

Is when families go to the doctor and their children are diagnosed with H1N1 and are told to go home and get themselves quarantined. The family then leaves the doctor's office to go home . . .

. . . and stops by the library on the way home, where they all spend an hour choosing all the books and DVDs they'll need for the week.

Thanks for that, guys.

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Not pregnant, sorry

Although that would be a fabulous excuse for not posting as opposed to, "Nope, I really am just that lame all on my own without any gestating feti, actually." But thanks for asking.

For those who participated, I hope your Weekend o' Conference was good. Mine was one in which I was a Domestic Goddess Type Person.

Evidence:

Sunday morning made breakfast of pumpkin waffles with real maple syrup (using last year's frozen pumpkin puree, aw yeah), Julia Child's scrambled egg recipe, fresh apple juice, hot chocolate, and really cheap-trash bacon. We invited coolboy and his charming new fie-ance (Yep! Seriously!) over to share in the bounty. Then I lured them into staying longer by making chocolate-chip-Reese's-pieces cookies. Which were amazing, and I am right now eating the leftover dough as my lunch.

Dinner was a crockpot roast with carrots, potatoes, onion, and sides of fresh corn and peas. And a couple of Rhodes Rolls that didn't rise properly and therefore resembled hockey pucks in both taste and texture. Because maybe I need to be kept humble.

GH did the dishes like a champion, which meant that by the time it was all over he had washed nearly every dish and pot and pan we own.

During the different sessions, which were all great, I took notes and worked on Savvy's socks. And I pondered the same semiannual questions I always ponder, such as:

"Is it possible for Elder Scott to not seem like he's peering directly into my soul?"
"Which musical and/or poem will President Monson quote this time?"
"Do these women go to training sessions to learn to talk like that?"
"Should Sister Dibb be smiling quite so broadly when relating the story of a deadly construction accident?" (I'm putting that one down to nervousness at speaking in front of millions of people.)
"Do I need another cookie?" (Answer: no.)
"But do I want another cookie? Or four?" (Answer: Yep and Yep. And they were great.)

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